The standard procedure for production crew intending to shoot overseas is that the production company has to apply for an ATA Carnet (pronounced kahr-ney, the origin of the word being French). The prep work involved in obtaining a carnet is to list all the serial and model numbers of every piece of equipment you will be carrying and then pay a deposit amounting to a percentage of the total cost of the equipment (50%, if I remember correctly). In Singapore, ATA Carnets are issued by the Singapore International Chamber of Commerce.

Essentially, the ATA Carnet is your equipment’s very own passport that grants you a license to temporarily export your equipment to other countries for trade purposes. I first learnt how to apply for a carnet when I had to do a Thailand-Vietnam-Malaysia-Indonesia shoot back in 2003. Since all of these countries are participants in the ATA Carnet System, I had no trouble with customs at any of these countries. Currently, the ATA Carnet System is enforced in 65 countries.

Including China. Except that it applies only for exhibition purposes.

So that makes it my problem??

* * * * * *

I explained all that to the customs officers at Pudong International but I might have well been explaining Shakespeare to monkeys.

When I finally arrived at Sammi & Eddie’s, Sammi set about calling up the Department of Foreign Affairs. But, after ten futile minutes on the phone with some department officer, it quickly became clear that 外事部 was more a 不关我的事部, when the officer insisted that, since I was not calling in the capacity as a production company and that I was there for a personal visit, it was not their problem. Ironically, that officer suggested that we arrange with customs to leave a deposit so that I could reclaim my equipment.

‘But airport customs said that wasn’t possible.’

‘Too bad. Can’t help you.’

We called airport customs. The fact that it was difficult to even get our call transferred to the right extension notwithstanding, airport customs categorically denied that a deposit arrangement could be made. It was  difficult as it was to even wrangle out the name of the officer on the other end of the line.

It was time for guanxi.

In the wake of the Cultural Revolution, backdoor arrangements were the only way one could get things done in that temporal void of order. I scratch your back, soon you’ll scratch mine, that sort of thing. Little has changed since, it would seem. Fortuitously, my hosts knew someone who knew someone who worked at some immigration department that oversaw airport customs. We lost the rest of the day just getting hold of that person. Somewhere in between, the helpful duty officer at the Singapore Embassy called us back and suggested that we should try getting hold of the PRC Embassy in Singapore, see if they could issue some kind of a formal letter. Violet got on the case immediately.

A half hour later, I checked in with Violet on her progress.

‘No one’s even picking up the fucking phone lor,’ she said in disgust.

At six in the evening, Eddie got a call from the friend who knew the unseen Very Important Person, who informed us that we could go down to the airpot the next day, find some so-and-so who’s some section head, leave a deposit of CNY10,000, and get my stuff out. My reaction upon hearing that was one of elation mixed with utter disgust.

You mean to tell me that this could’ve been done all along when every fucking officer said it couldn’t?

Eddie, Sammi and I could only nurse our drinks in bitter defeat.

The next day, we went back to the airport and got my luggage out. The process was relatively painless; we waited only, oh, 20 minutes or so for the section head to show up at the customs desk in the departure hall.

As our cab sped away from the airport, I turned to Sammi and announced my grand plan. Since I would be going back to Shanghai once again in late September, and that I would be arriving at the same time on the same flight, chances are I’ll run into the same bunch of customs officers. So here’s what I’m gonna do:

Impound this, you bastards!

I had just written an entry titled ‘The allure of traveling’ in my Moleskine an hour ago while en route to Pudong International, Shanghai to shoot a video and some photographs meant for Sam & Eddie’s forthcoming wedding. I had relished the thought of getting out of the country for a while even if it was a quasi-work trip.

It was barely 6:40am when I reached the immigration lanes. SQ 816 was one of the few flights into Pudong at that hour of the day so passport control and baggage retrieval were with neither delay nor fuss.

Just as I’d walked around the X-ray machine, fully intending to see my luggage at the other end of it, the portly customs officer softly ‘tsk’ed and asked if the gray Lojel luggage case was mine.

‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘Is there a problem?’

‘Can you open it, please?’

I was not happy to. Intending to not weigh myself down, I had packed all 26 kgs of equipment into one big luggage case that I could easily wheel around; one shoulder-mount type of video camera, its accompanying lens, two stills cameras and four of their accompanying lens, and an assortment of chargers, cables, batteries, et. cetera. My luggage case could barely close shut without I having to kneel on its lid before I could latch it up. Opening it would have amounted to a small explosion of gadgets.

‘This is professional equipment,’ the officer said.

No shit, Sherlock.

I knew where this was going. I quickly replied that I was there for a friend’s wedding and not for work. Well, it was a gray area; yes, I was flown out to Shanghai by my friends, so that was technically work-for-hire. But since I would not be receiving payment, technically it was not a work arrangement.

The customs officer poked around the equipment, evidently seeing but not comprehending what he was looking at exactly. After some deliberation, he looked up in the direction of the customs desk a few feet away, where two of his fellow officers were, and did the Beckon of Death.

It was then that I knew my fate was sealed and that I would not be getting out of the airport any time soon.

The two officers joined us. Upon a quick assessment of my luggage, one of them concluded that I should have had an authorization letter from the Department of Foreign Affairs at the Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China (中华人民共和国商务部外事部) granting me a license to bring in professional equipment. In defense, I argued my case, that, firstly, I was not on a work trip and that, secondly, nobody at the PRC Embassy in Singapore was able to advise me on such a procedure.

To their credit, the customs officers behaved professionally and were, more importantly, polite. Given the experience I had the previous time I visited Shanghai, I was half expecting them to be rude. And I thought I detected an apologetic tone in the way they phrased their assessment of the situation to me, though I suspected it was attributable more to the fact that they were enforcing a rule they were not quite able to substantiate with any official document rather than that they were sympathetic. But I was no position to feel grateful; to have equipment impounded after a red-eye flight, when you’re all bleary-eyed from having being woken up at 3am for in-flight breakfast, is not something you’d want.

‘Can’t I just give you an inventory list of my equipment serial numbers and leave a deposit?

‘No. We don’t practice that any more.’

A quick call Eddie made on my behalf to the Singapore Embassy produced only befuddlement on the other end; the night duty officer has never heard of such an enforcement. And since it was two hours before office hours, he could follow up only later, after he has stepped into the office.

I argued some more with the immigration officers, politely at first in Mandarin and then, increasingly frustrated, in a barrage of English. It was pointless. Not even with Sammi explaining away in Shanghainese on the other end of the line helped. It was a stalemate. The only solution was to have my equipment impounded while I pay the Ministry a visit to get the fucking letter. ‘But,’ the female officer added, ‘in my experience, a case like yours, when you’re not an official member of the media, the Ministry will probably reject you.’

Yeah. That really helped.

There was nothing else I could do except to extract whatever I needed from my luggage so that I could clear customs. Not that I could have taken my clothes and other necessities, since all I had on me was a laptop bag on one shoulder, a Lowepro camera bag on the other shoulder, and a duty-free bag in hand.

‘I can’t even take one camera on me?!’ I asked. ‘A tourist can’t even have a camera on him?!’

Nope. Which was just plain ridiculous.

It was almost eight when I indignantly stomped past the arrival doors into the hall. At that point in time, all I had on me were a box of disposable contact lenses, my MacBook Pro, and a bridal magazine containing photographs of Sam & Eddie’s ROM ceremony as a gift for my hosts.

Oh, and 200 cigarettes.

Talk about traveling light for once, ay?

But I managed a wry smile as I stepped out of the terminal. In my duty-free bag was a box of five blank DV tapes I had quietly slipped out of my soon-to-be-impounded luggage case when the officers had their backs to me while they were busy writing up an inventory chit of my equipment. What they also did not know was that there was a palm-sized Sony Handycam tucked away safely at the bottom of my laptop bag they had somehow missed or had forgotten about.

Customs be damned; I was hell bent to have something to shoot with, and I would shoot the whole video with the fucking Handycam if that was what it took…