The other day I had a test for AIDS and syphilis. Not out of concern for my health, I stress, but as a compulsory part of the painstaking process of applying for Chinese residency.
Like many things in this country, this is caught up in layers and layers of maddening red tape. There is no place like China for filling out forms and handing over passport-sized photographs. So far, I have parted with 12 photos between applying for residency, work permit and driving licence.
A comprehensive health check is part of the residency application process, and armed with pictures we arrived at the health clinic in Beijing last Tuesday.
China is only now beginning to mount AIDS awareness programmes, and the first thing we noticed were posters everywhere advocating safe sex. We were shunted from room to room to have a blood sample taken, and an ECG, a lung and heart X-ray and blood pressure tested.
When I indignantly inquired why they wanted some of my blood, the doctor pointed to yet another form where, in English and Chinese, the words "AIDS and Syphilis" were printed. I held out my arm, too shocked to say anything.
The next day, issued with our clean health certificates (I now officially don't have AIDS or syphilis), we went to the Beijing Public Security Bureau, where you apply for residency permits.
Here, more passport photographs were required for all the family, and after a quick visit to an official photographer in an adjoining office to boost dwindling stocks, we managed to get the paperwork sorted.
Bureau officials kept our passports and told us our residency permits would come through in 10 days' time. As I write, I'm still not resident, which means the contents of the crate we had shipped from Dublin to Beijing last month cannot be delivered to us yet.
Before I get a reputation as a crank, the scourge of red tape is widely acknowledged here, even by the Chinese. Two years ago Beijing was poised to sack up to half its higher-ranking public servants, possibly as many as four million bureaucrats, in a sweeping civil service shake-up.
A report to a session of China's parliament, the National People's Congress (NPC), proposed that 15 ministries be replaced with four new combined departments.
The plan was intended to cut government spending and the stifling red tape that commentators say is retarding economic growth.
So much for good intentions. Signs of reform are few and far between. Writing in the January issue of Business Beijing, the chief executive officer of the German Chamber of Commerce here, Dr Jorg-M. Rudolph, pulled no punches when it came to the hurdles facing businesses.
"There are many difficulties in setting up a business in Beijing. For example, if you register a representative office in Beijing, which is the basest form, you have to prepare and produce more than a dozen photographs," he said.
"People are often turned down because some departments concerned want colour photos, while others want black and white. Then you have to report every year your dealings with government offices of the administration of industry and commerce."
He went on: "Every three years you have to repeat the registration process, in our case bringing documents from Germany which require many official stamps.
"If a Chinese enterprise goes to Germany to set up a business, it is much easier. If it comes to a really major investment in China, I know from experience and through German companies that it takes an average five times longer to do it in China than it takes in Europe or the US."
The heavy hand of bureaucracy also extends to major department stores in Beijing. When you make a purchase, you queue to get a receipt, go to a cashier where you queue to pay, and return to the shop assistant where you queue again to collect the item. Many store employees wear identity tags with a number and, you've guessed it, a passport-sized photograph.
Despite all this red tape, the Beijingers could teach Irish shop and restaurant employees a few lessons about good service.
No fewer than seven eager department store staff converged on me as I checked out a new microwave on Saturday. They even tested the appliance before wrapping it, throwing in a few free containers, and ferrying it down five floors to the car.
And when it came to giving directions to a lost Irish journalist in search of a computer store, the eight staff at the Ritan Hotel deserve a special word of thanks as well.
It may smack of overstaffing, but as long as it's put at my disposal, I won't be complaining too loudly to the Chinese authorities.