Items for customs declarations?

[joshuawbb]

For my travel to China later this month, I'll need to fit as much of my life (I suppose) as I can into my 26kg of luggage allowance, and I've read a lot about the customs procedure, declarations, etc. I was wondering if someone could help me - there are a few items I'm not at all sure whether I should declare or not, for example, gifts, etc. With the hope my girlfriend isn't reading this now and finding out what gifts are for her and others, it's probably best to describe most of what's in my luggage:

-My camera and laptop. I know I won't need to declare these.

-112 DVDs, all in a CD case except one or two boxed. All are legit, nothing suspicious

-Whatever clothes I will take with me - some trousers, shirts etc, including a pair of shoes and trainers.

-Gifts, etc: most are wrapped in gift paper (is this a bad thing?) - a board game (£20/CNY223), gift card, two books (both value = £10/CNY111), gold necklace (£125/CNY1399), mix of four fruit jams (all = £6/CNY67), Hello Kitty plush (£20/CNY222) earrings, normal metal (£8/CNY89). writing set (£5/CNY60), silk scarf (£15/CNY167), and maybe a small bottle of wine.

-Maybe a book or two, a few small things to remember from the UK.

-Two prescription ointments (rather important, to be honest)

I think that's about all. I know most of that won't need to be declared but I'm mostly concerned about the gifts and items like that. Most are wrapped up and of course maybe I should have had a bit of foresight in case they needed some sort of inspection, but should these be declared, and do you think anything would be paid on them? I'm just a little confused.

Thank you so much.

[imron]

I believe you only need to declare gifts over a certain amount and I'm guessing none of those items will exceed that value - from memory it was several thousand CNY - the exact amount will be written on the customs form you have to fill in so make sure to check and verify it then. I can't imagine you'll have any trouble.

To be honest, in my experience Chinese customs is pretty lax and they don't really seem to do much in the way of checking or caring about what you bring in (compared to say Australian Customs which is incredibly strict). I imagine it might be different if you were trying to import large quantities of illegal substances, but for everyday items such as this, no-one will care.

[abcdefg]

Be sure to pack the wine well so it doesn't break in flight and make a mess in your checked suitcase.

On one round trip from the US to Japan I was advised to fill out a form on departure at the US airport about my camera and laptop since both were originally made in Japan. Wrote down serial numbers and they stamped it. This was to prevent a customs agent thinking I had bought them during my trip and demanding that I pay duty on them when I returned. I figured it was overkill but did it anyhow.

[BrandeX]

green lane- nothing to decalre.

[flameproof]

I wonder about the DVDs I would put the DVDs onto an external HDD and bring that in. DVDs are so yesteryear anyway.

[Lu]

Looks like nothing to declare to me.

Some unasked-for packing tips:

Roll the wine into a pair of pants or something like that, and pack it in the middle of your suitcase. Generally, pack your bag so that one could play soccer with it without anything breaking.

Unless the dvd's are of rare and special movies, consider not bringing them and just getting new ones in China. They're almost free there anyway. If you do bring them, consider packing them all into one of those little cases you can pack tens of cd's in. It saves enormous amounts of space.

[joshuawbb]

Thanks again everyone for really helping me out here - looks like almost everything is ready for leaving From what I've read here most people haven't had many (or any) problems bringing things through customs - anyone got any stories to tell?

I think the value for gifts according to what I read was either CNY2000 or CNY5000, not quite sure. I wasn't sure if this upper limit applied to individual items, or the whole lot combined together. From what I know, in the UK the upper limit seems to be the total of everything.

I remember when I went on a holiday to Japan in 2007; I won a flight and hotel stay so I had the opportunity to bring quite a lot of spending money. Secretly bringing back what must have been about £700 over my tax-free alowance undeclared through Heathrow was quite satisfying. I haven't had too much travel experience to date though - imron, did you have an experience with Australian customs before?

Thanks everyone for the packing advice too. As wine might be quite heavy I'm not really sure whether I will just leave it and risk a rather high shipping charge to send it to me from my home sometime in the future. Hmm, let's see how much weight allowance I have left when things are ready. Ah, that's a good idea - in the pants probably works better than my obsession with bubble wrap

All my DVDs are in two DVD cases holding 96 and 12 DVDs respectively, and then one or two more in original cases. I've really been a DVD collector - mostly world cinema - for about 5 years now, so my huge amount is the result of that. All my cases (many special editions) will be kept at home - I guess I'm going overkill a little on the amount of DVDs I'm bringing, but part of me just wants them with me. A lot of the Chinese ones, though obviously available in China too, would be quite useful for both my study and my girlfriend's English study despite her fluency already, since they have English subtitles.

I read from one of imron's previous posts that a 100% declaration form process was in place instead of a lane system (according to the link to the US Chinese Embassy), though I suppose I won't have anything to write on this form.

[imron]

Even if you have nothing to declare at Australian customs all your bags will still be X-rayed and possibly also hand-checked. They're very strict about the types of things you can and can't bring in, and customs declaration forms are checked closely to decide which lane you need to go in (simple xray, hand inspection etc).

If you were going to Australia, the fact that you have jam would probably flag you for a hand-inspection as food products are strictly monitored. They would probably let you through with it after an inspection as long as they could determine it was sealed - although they might not allow if they saw it contained lots of seeds. Otherwise they would confiscate it. I once lost a set of good juggling balls this way. If you hadn't declared it and it was discovered during the x-ray, you'd be heavily fined.

China on the other hand is the complete opposite, you can pick up your luggage and walk out of the airport without anyone checking anything. The people collecting your customs declaration forms barely even bother to look at them. For the things you say you are carrying, you should have no problem.

If anything, the biggest problem you'll encounter is bringing those DVDs back to your home country. Personally, I agree that they should probably be left at home.

[joshuawbb]

That must be rather time-consuming and stressful - though unsurprising if part of their principle is to intimidate others into not importing anything questionable. I think my uncle had a similar experience going to the US; mostly the importance of staying behind any designated lines lest he get shouted at.

That's quite reassuring - I suppose H1N1 could be the only thing to screw up my carefully laid-out plans. I wouldn't want to be stuck in a room quarantined for a week.

I think the DVDs will be okay on coming home - with the exceptions of a few from Japan, Hong Kong and South Korea, they are all UK versions anyway and since (as far as I know) DVD regulations here mean that the BBFC age certificates have to appear on the DVDs as well as cases, they should be quite well recognisable by customs.

[imron]

They don't want to intimidate people. Australian customs are on the whole pretty friendly. However we're an island nation with a lot of flora and fauna that has not been exposed to various sorts of harmful organisms. The strict controls are not there to intimidate people, but rather to prevent the introduction of pests and disease that local plants/animals have not had any previous exposure to.

Back to DVDs though, how will the UK customs officer know they aren't pirated, especially when you're coming from a country known for DVD piracy?

The other question is, are you planning to watch all of these films during your stay, and if not are there any that you can leave behind - especially considering it will only cost £1 - £2 to buy the same DVD from the local DVD store if you really want to watch it again.

The simple fact of the matter is, after spending a length of time in China, you'll have a completely different perception of the value (both sentimental and financial) of DVDs, as DVDs here are basically a cheap disposable commodity.

[joshuawbb]

Ah yes that's certainly true - and understandable how protective they'd be of the environment there then.

Well, apart from taking the DVD serial codes, etc, on the front and back to identify them, there's not really another way except the way they look. To be honest, as I said, every DVD has a BBFC certificate on which has a serial/certificate code. Obviously they're not going to go verify them but I think customs officials would be impressed if bootleggers thought of making up age certificates and serial numbers. Most of the DVDs are only from two or three distributors anyway since world cinema DVDs in the UK tend to be carried by select distrubutors, so there's not a huge amount of variation between them. There's no quick-fix to verify that they are genuine, but I don't think they look like "typical" bootlegs at all - they look genuine, well, because they are. There's not much more I can say other than hoping they'll realise that too.

Every bootleg probably looks different, but I've seen plenty of bootlegs before and a lot seem to have quite typical features - like printing quality, type of image used as the DVD design (often a film screenshot), various weird unknown distributor names, and more often than not - spelling. Whilst you can't glance at something and say it's genuine, they'd be hard pushed to try and find any flaws with genuine DVDs, especially UK versions anyway.

I should say that virtually all of my DVDs are films from Japan, Hong Kong, China and South Korea (UK versions), which is why I'm intent on taking them. They are English-subtitled and not that it'll help my learning, but they'd be good to watch until my Chinese reading is good enough to understand the Chinese subtitles.

I have none and wouldn't bring any English/American films with me for the reasons you mentioned. I'm taking these because they are non-English and I'm not sure how easy it would be to find English-subtitled versions of non-English films. The only DVDs in English I'm bringing are things like BBC Wild China, Paul Merton in China, etc.