Chinese visa discussion
 

I'm an American, and need to get a tourist visa for travel to China in June.

Any recommendations for a reliable service/agent that I can use? And, how long should this process take?

Thanks.

I used ZVS (Zierer Visa Service) http://www.zvs.com/

I needed one with only about a weeks notice, so I opted for their 2-3 day turnaround (at an extra expense of about $70) which worked out well (I had it back in 3 days). But since you have plenty of time, their normal 7-10 day turnaround should work well for you.

I used travisa: http://www.travisa.com/

The service was excellent, with emails noting when application was received and estimated issue date of visa, when materials were transmitted to Chinese embassy, etc. I used normal, non-expedited service and it arrived a couple days early.

It depends...
 

Depending on your itinerary.

If you are starting in HK, just wait and get a visa there. As a US citizen, you don't need a visa to enter HK. It will be quicker and cheaper, and you can often charge it to your hotel room.

One day turnaround. Take official passport photos with you - get a package of 4 at Kinko's stateside before you go. If you get over there and forget the pics, you can easily get them locally. There's a little photo shop behind the Sheraton on the Kowloon side that can do it in a short turnaround.

If you aren't starting in HK - more common now as HK slides ever more quickly into the abyss from its former dominance of the "gateway to China" position. get it done stateside before you go.

Go ahead and get a multi-entry.

Multi entry requires official letters if applying in the USA. Much easier to obtain out of HK.

I've always referenced www.traveldocs.com whenever needing to download visa forms and to know entry requirements. They are based in DC I believe.

though i won't deny that having 15 visas in my passport is an asset, i would like to state that the letter requirement isn't enforced all too strictly, especially during times where our countries have friendly relations, such as now.

also, the letters needn't be official. a friend just walked into the dc embassy last week and came a way with a 2-year f w/ 200 days per entry solely on the basis of a large stack of emails. he hasn't been to the PRC in 5 years.

ps - i believe you can can officially get a 6-month L without any supporting documentation. L and F are functionally equivalent as long as you don't boast about any hot business endeavors.

I used traveldocs and was very happy with the service.

China F-Visa for U.S. Citizens
 

Last week I walked into the Chinese Embassy in San Francisco and had no problem getting a multi-entry "F" visa for 120 days/visit. I had an admissions letter from a language school (two 4-week courses) and all I needed was a single entry visa. However, I asked about the 1-year F and she said fine. I only had one other visa for China in my passport (30 day "L" visa from last summer). I hope this means that I can get a 2-year F visa when this one expires next June.

2 Year F Visa
 

I ran across this , which sounds as if it might be accurate, though I don't claim it's authoritative.

i don't doubt that the referenced text comes from an official source, but three points are worth noting: 1) each consulate posts its own requirements; 2) most that i've seen are considerably more lenient than what you quoted; and 3) the de facto standards are typically even friendlier than anything you'll see in print.

paragraph 6, in particular, strikes me as particularly far afield. in fact, i'd be surprised if 10% of f-visa holding public has been forced to jump through that hoop.

as myself and many others have posted before, an amenable personality and a creative mind are the only hard prerequisites for a 2-year f. anyone that is accustomed to dealing with the types of problems that typically confront frequently travelers (i.e. canceled flights, sold out hotels, etc) should have no trouble getting good results on the visa front.

some visa tips
 

hey there are some tips for you on China visa:
Do not apply for your tourist visa too early. As the duration of a tourist visa is 3 months, the earliest time you should consider is 3 months before your journey starts. If you apply too early your visa will expire before you enter the country. To successfully apply for a Chinese Visa, you need to provide a valid passport (should be valid for at least 6 months), filled application form and photos. Usually the processing time is about 5-7 working days, but you might consider more time if you apply by mail (2 weeks of processing).
If u desire to prolong your stay in China you will need to apply for an extension to their visa with appropriate reasons. The application for extension should be made at the municipal public security bureaus 7 days before visa expires. However, you should know that extension request will be denied if your duration of stay was shortened, if you do not have sufficient traveling expenses, and if you are a family visitor with no special reason for extension. Also you should know that multiple visas cannot be extended .
good luck !

extensions
 

actually, pretty much any visa can be extended, but multiple entry visas often loose their multi-entry status when extended (maybe that's what you were referring to) unless you pay an agency to do the legwork for you (which costs around $200).

also, i can vouch from personal experience that extensions can be processed as much as 7 days after expiry. but, this often entails a visit to the back room and a power trip style lecture.

i've been in the above situation three times and have never had to fork over extra cash. however, the official penalty is around y400 per day iirc. on a related note, one of my friends from japan overstayed her visa by a whopping 60 days about 5 years ago and learned her lesson the hard way at the airport when she tried to leave. the officials didn't charge her the whole $3000, but they did hit her up for y5000 ($600). because she was a student at the time, she didn't have that kind of money on her person, but a fellow traveler did and advanced the cash so she could get out of town.

while i'm in story-telling mode, i might as well divulge my personal favorite. several years back one of my colleagues stayed in a philippines a week longer than he was supposed to. while the airport guys were trying to figure out how much money they could squeeze out of him, he decided to take advantage of the chaos and simply walk on through. he proceeded directly to his airplane, which was already boarding and hid in the bathroom until after they were airborne.

i certainly don't encourage people to overstay their visas, but if you do, it won't be the end of the world.

So let me see if I got this straight.

If I'm interested in going to China next May on a tourist visa with my family, I should apply for it not less than 3 months before the trip, right?

Here's a question. If I apply for the visa at the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C., can I just drop it off there and they will mail it to my home in Hawaii? Or do I have to go back and pick it up? The reason for this is that there will be six or eight of us going and those travel agency fees really add up. Or is there no way getting around paying a few hundred $ in fees along with the visa fee itself?

Yes, you can do that. In fact, I got my current visa there and had it mailed to Portland, OR. All relevant info is detailed on the consulate's web site. Key points include: 1) bring them a self-addressed FedEx/UPS/ExpressMail; 2) get a money order for the total fees plus $5 per person. The consulate is just north of Georgetown on Wisconsin Ave. I walked there from the Tenleytown Metro Station, which took about 30 minutes. I took a taxi back to Dupont Circle, which was about $6.

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

Chinese Visa
 

I have an "F" (business) visa at the moment for when I travel to China on business. I am going to be going on leisure in September will I have any trouble getting in on my visa or do I need to get an L visa.

There will be no problem with this at all. When filling in the immigration form that asks you your main reason for visiting you can choose the 'leisure' category. It doesn't matter.

Peter N-H

Price for a visa
 

How much does a tourist visa at the airport Shanghai cost?

For passport holders from most OECD countries, a tourist visa must be acquired before arriving in China. Paying for a tourist visa at the airport in Shanghai is not an option for Americans, Brits or most other EU nationals.

sort of....

-the (48-hour) transit visa program in sh is pretty legit these days; probably, partly due to the urging of mu, which is trying to establish an international hub there (i believe an overnight is required either to or from australia for european pax).

-i've also been told by a friend that is pretty high up at the us embassy in bj that those "visa-on-arrival" desks actually can issue a variety of actual visas in special and not-so-special circumstances; presumably, one should make such arrangements with their home consulate before taking flight

-although not too relevant here, hainan province has a visa free travel program in effect so that it can attempt to compete for tourists with [much better] beach destinations in se asia

regarding my second point above, i've entered china 10 times to far this year and on 9 of those 10 occasions, the desks were actually staffed; on 5, there were people standing in line.

Transiting at Shanghai without a visa (or without using your visa) should be well possible for Americans, Brits and a good number of other EU nationals under certain circumstances, but it still puts some of the PVG immigration officials into a bit of a spin and will result in a pax being pulled to the side. Sort of amusing to see the faces of immigration officials there and especially of a passenger who is being "pulled aside" there. :D

When someone is doing the transit at PVG, the Chinese immigration officials should be told in advance (upon getting to the desk), especially if you are on a limited number of entries visa or are doing so without a visa (i.e., including a visa on arrival kind of situation). And then being shuffled over will be facilitated and the option of preserving such a visa for later use actually may exist (if done properly and competently). That said, it's a tourist visa that is of interest to said poster, right? Any rather consistent way to convert the transit visa into a tourist visa upon entering China?

Earlier in July, I did my first 60-minute international-to-international transit at PVG. Not generally recommended by me. :o :D

This typically involves an invitation from a state-recognised entity cleared with the consulate, all details supplied in advance to said entity which then does a lot of running around and has further paperwork deposited with the immigration authorities when you arrive. Really only a business thing, and I would imagine there are occasionally some hassles at check-in counters with airline staff who've been told only to allow those with valid visas to board.

This is supposed to be for groups only, is only valid for a limited time, and only valid for travel in Hainan (although I dare say there are those who have got round some or all of this, one way or another, and particularly in fudging the group issue).

It's also possible to get a limited visa for the Shenzhen area only when crossing on foot from Hong Kong, but this is often time-consuming, costs the same as an ordinary tourist visa in Hong Kong, and isn't currently available to U.S. citizens or Britons.

There are sometimes other occasions when it is asserted that there are ordinary tourist visas available on arrival, but these are cases where one is dealing not directly with the Chinese authories, but with a travel agency in 'no man's land' before passing through Chinese immigration. This is possible at the crossing between Macau and Zhuhai, for instance, used to be true at Fuyong Matou en route from Hong Kong to Shenzhen Airport by turbojet but that office is now closed, and is said to be possible on arrival at Guangzhou East station by train from Hong Kong, but I've never tested this.

In general it's far safer to have a visa already even when using these crossings, especially since they all involve passing through Hong Kong where visas of all kinds are quickly, easily, and cheaply obtainable.

Peter N-H

GZ East Train Station Arrival
 

As Peter N-H said there is a "visa on arrival" booth at the Guangzhou East Train Station for passengers coming in on the thru train from Hong Kong. I've only seen it staffed 50% of the time I've come thru this border crossing although I'd imagine that the immigration people would be able to issue a visa even if the booth wasn't open. I have seen people at the booth before getting helped. The worst that would happen would be being sent back to H.K. by train.

I have a refundable ticket and am not yet 100% sure of my arrival or departure date. However, I know the earliest arrival date and latest departure date, both which are less than 3 months from today. Is there any reason not to use these dates and will there be a problem if I arrive later or leave earlier? If I use exact dates but arrive earlier, I assume that would be a problem. Right?

My TA recommended ZVS (Zierer Visa Service) http://www.zvs.com/ at a cost of $209 for two of us. Is that a competitive price and is it a good service? I saw someone near the start of this thread had used them.

Thanks.

it doesn't matter what dates you pick.

re the visa agency, figure out how much the agency's fee is (by subtracting the official fees from the total); $35 or less would be competitive imo

Standard 30 day visa is $50 each. Figure $30 for the agency fee per person and $15 or so to mail them back.

http://www.mychinavisa.com

I just used an agency called "Chinese Service Center of America" to get our visas. They were pretty quick and had the lowest fee I could find ($19.95 for one person or $17.95 ea for 2+).

Here is their website: http://www.visamailservice.com/

X Visa?
 

Hey Moondog and anyone else, whats the deal with getting an X visa (Multiple Entry 1 year)?

I've heard a ton of different stories. I know that I've gotten all of my medical tests and the forms have been filled out by my physician and myself. I hear that some people have been successful in getting X Visas in Washington and others have only been given single entry visas and being told to get another medical checkup when in Beijing with the forms filled out and then deal with it, via PSB or whoever the authority is...

What is the deal with getting a visa for Tibet? Is this something that is not easy to get, or is it just a matter of filling out a form and paying a fee?

Do you have to go with a tour, or can you travel on your own?

i believe that a permit is needed and this is obtained via travel agent, so that you are a part of a "group." Once you deplane in Lhasa however, its my knowledge that no one really checks to see what you are doing or where you are going, so the "being a part of the group" is just a way for you to shell out a couple of hundred bucks for a permit.

Based on all of the Chinese characters in your signature, I'm guessing that you are of Chinese descent. If so, I think you have a pretty good chance of bypassing the Tibet permit charade. If you (or anyone else) desires, send me a PM and I will put you in touch with my ABC friend that went there sans permit. But, that might not be necessary; just have an actual Chinese citizen buy your tickets and you should be fine.

Edited to correct typo that has already been quoted.

Actually, I'm only half-Chinese. And that's all on the inside. ;)

From the outside, I am a short, fat, redhead. So I don't think this will work. :D

My wife (who is full-blood Han Ren) and I are headed to China next week, and we were casually toying with the idea of taking a side-trip to Tibet. But I get the feeling this is not something to be done casually. So we'll save it for another time when we have more time to prepare for it. Thanks.

Skyman, though I have never done it, I think you are taking it too seriously. If you can, talk to a reputable travel agent in Beijing. I would bet that they could have everything arranged pretty quickly... How long will you be over there?

anyone with info on the X visa?

As I mentioned to you via PM, I think X visas are not well suited for people like yourself. Sure, you are a student, but you also plan on working in China in the future. In this case, I think you should shoot for F from the get-go.

What is a "transit visa"??
 

I am still not quite sure what a "transit visa" is. Does "transit visa" allow you go leave the airport and stay over night in the city, shopping and touring for 48 hours? or "transit visa" only allows you to stay at a transit hotel on the airside for 48 hours?

the latter. remember, you don't need transit visas to do the same in sh

In Shanghai, when using PVG, a "transit visa" (on arrival for Americans and a few other nationals) allows you to leave the airport and stay overnight in the city -- including to go shopping and touring within the 48 hours (or whatever time is applicable to get you out of China within the proscribed time).

Visa validity extended: now 6 months instead of 3
 

According to the visa service that I use, a Chinese visa now valid for 6 months instead of 3 months -- that is, you need to enter China within 6 months of the visa having been issued, not within 3 months. (The amount of time you can stay in China depends on the type of visa that you get. I have no reason to believe that this has changed.)

(Not sure how long this has been going on, but I don't recall reading about it.)

I have a two entry visa that was good for six months. Used one entry. Wonder if there has been an extension so I can use my second entry next year?