We have a friend who has just come to stay with us. My wife went to the Haidian police station to register her, and the police officer is insisting our landlord come for the registration (we have a copy of his ID card and this was rejected). Not had this problem previously with relatives staying, and the police specifically said the problem was because it was a friend, not a relative.

Now, as residents know, most agencies, including the law, don't really know the actual rules, they just make it up as they go along. We have made a concious decision to 'play along' as good citizens/visitors. But we're currently in a bind.

Options as I see are:
a) friend goes to hotel for one night -- although only registered for the one night, it's probably going to be fine, in terms of lack of tracability.
b) Ignore the whole thing entirely -- friend will probably get away with it, but are _we_ acting illegally (prefer not to do so)?
c) call landlord to try and sort it out -- he's really nice, but I need to renegotiate our lease soon, so I don't want to come across as 'more trouble than it's worth'.

What do FTers suggest?

Police station now closed until 14:00...musn't interfere with the lunchbreak!

tb

Option b.

I concur with moondog. Option B it is. Unless your friend needs that piece of paper for something official, don't worry about it, especially since nobody is in crackdown mode at the moment.

You made a good faith effort to follow the rules, the landlord isn't readily available, and Haidian PSB are just being a-holes as usual. I fought with them on this a bunch of times when I was a student at PKU living in Haidian, with the end result that nobody ever ended up registered and nobody cared.

The Haidian police know the rules, they are just choosing to be nasty, as said above. I think I'd also choose option B, especially if the guest's stay is a week or less. In the future, make such guests you or your wife's "cousin"

My wife opted for option (c) -- our landlord is super nice, and came from his work to sort it out. Just hope it doesn't come back to bite us when we need to renew the lease.

Part of the problem was that this friend of ours is much older, so the police were incredulous that we were actually friends. They explicitly said that with family it would have been fine. Since the stay was a shade over a week, we also were keen to be above board.

But Haidian PSB really, really is a pain...

tb

meh, go with B, i stayed for over a month in china and never registered with the PSB. was at my wife's mom's private residence, never had any trouble

If only I had a time machine..."meh".

tb