Plus, Slate's China reading list.

This was administrative week—a welcome relief, given the bruising I took last week for suggesting that the migration of low-end manufacturing jobs to China was not only inevitable, but, in many ways, good. This week I studied quietly, bought my plane tickets, and applied for a visa.

Even these activities, it turned out, led to an embarrassing confrontation with my ignorance. First, I wasn't sure whether I even needed a visa—no country I've visited in the last decade has required one. (I do.) Second, I wasn't sure what else I'd need. Slate readers have taught me that China is essentially two countries, one First World, one Third World, the equivalent of Frankfurt plopped into Guatemala. This observation, combined with a recent New York Times article about an epidemic of "snail fever" (aka schistosomiasis) made me wonder whether I had to get shots.

Then there was the transportation question. I had this romantic idea that I'd take the train from Shanghai to Beijing—me and my business suit in a car full of farmers and chickens. Then, I learned from the Internet that the trip would take some 13 hours, too long for my cover-China-in-two-weeks itinerary. So I called a travel agent and opted for air—Dragon Air. Despite my decade as a Wall Street road warrior, I've never been big on jet travel, even First World jet travel, and Third World jet travel is another thing altogether. The travel agent hadn't heard of Dragon Air, either, which didn't set me at ease. His Sinologist colleague assured him (and me) that it was fine, but I couldn't shake the image of Cultural Revolution-era Aeroflots and Communist maintenance practices.

Meanwhile, in the visa department, China wasn't doing a bang-up job of stoking my enthusiasm for "going east." Despite my broadband connection, the consulate's Web site repeatedly failed to load. Finally, after 12 hours of trying, I sucked down enough data to glean where and when I could apply for a visa in person. This morning, I went.

In New York, anyway, when it comes to consular real estate, China got the shaft. No 19^th-century, Upper East Side mansion for this emerging superpower. China's consulate is a cookie-cutter rectangle on the corner of 12^th Avenue and 42^nd Street, overlooking the West Side Highway and the docks of the Circle Line. As I made the pilgrimage west from Times Square, trudging into the icy wind, wiping construction grit from my eyes, I figured that the journey might be best conducted as a tribute to the late Hunter S. Thompson.

I'd brought along The China Dream, Joe Studwell's chronicle of centuries of idiot foreigners trying to "crack the greatest untapped market on earth," as an ironic prop, but I didn't even get to open it. In the consulate lobby, feeling guilty about being oblivious to the plight of the Falun Gong protesters outside, I was shooed through the metal detector into a Department of Motor Vehicles-like waiting room. I took a number, sat in a plastic bucket seat beside an incongruous, rock-sculpture fountain, and began to fill out the visa form. Then, even without pharmaceuticals, the experience became vaguely Thompson-esque:

AFFIX PASSPORT PHOTO HERE. Passport photo! Oh, Christ, I've forgotten to get a passport photo. I've wasted the trip!

Wait, why do I need a passport photo? Why can't I just Xerox the one in my passport? And just my luck that this appears to be the only DMV waiting room in history in which I won't have time to hike to Times Square and back before my number is called. Oh, wait, there's an in-house photographer!

Of course there's an in-house photographer. In fact, the system has clearly been designed to make me use the in-house photographer. She no doubt charges Shylock rates—if she'll even take my picture. This is China—and I don't have guanxi!

No line, no bribes, a pretty smile, and a (relatively) reasonable $8 for a last-minute Polaroid? What's the catch? No catch? Just a quick blow of the hair-dryer on the Polaroid paper and I'm done? How do I say "Thank you" in Chinese? Should I bow, too? Do they bow in China—or is that just Japan? If I bow, will I trigger some deep xeno-driven offense ("The clueless bastard thinks all Asians look alike!")?