Originally Posted by travelinmanS
Moondog, since you seem to have knowledge of this process I have a question maybe you can help me with. I've been told in HK that an American has to have at least 2 entrys on a previous F visa to get the 6 month or year F visa, is this true in the states? Does your F (if you have one) have the 30 day limit that lots of American's get put in theirs? I have a residence permit now but I'm considering quitting my job and would lose the permit but want to stay in China (I probably wont lose the permit until the expiration date in Jan, but I want to be prepared)
Also have you heard anything good or bad about the "visa consultants" in large cities (B.J., S.H., G.Z.)that will get foreigners a year long Residence permit of F visa for a fee of around Y3000?
-the de facto requiremennts differ from the written stuff; if you are nice to them, they will hook you up
-i have 90 days per stay on my current visa. that's enough for me because i like to go other places. i've been told that 1 year is the max for f visas. if you have a z visa, you can stay as long as you like
-we recently paid a visa consultant here in beijing y2500 to get my colleague's days-per-stay increased to the one year limit. however, she ended up getting him a new one-year visa in place of his two-year visa, which i felt was bs