Renewing F Visa with old paper

[JamesOI]

Any advice or insight would be much appreciated.

My F visa, which runs from October 2009 - April 2010, is about to expire. My Letter of Invitation was from a school in Yantai (Shandong Province), where I taught for 3 months before coming west to Chengdu.

I am now living and have a Temporary Registration of Residence from the local police in Chengdu (Sichuan Province).

My question is: can I extend my F visa using a Letter of Invitation from a school in Shandong and a Residence Registration in Sichuan? Or must the Invitation and the Residence be from the same province?

My guess is that the paperwork must all be from the same place, but I have been wrong many many times.

thanks,

James

[fanglu]

I've never heard of needing a residence registration for getting a new F visa (you can't renew Chinese visas as far as I know). However, in theory the invitation letter should be less than 6 months old.

[JamesOI]

I have the registration just to be safe (and to not get fined for renting an apartment).

But of course my initial letter is 7 months old, so...

Thanks!

[roddy]

You need your 临时住宿登记表 (that's what mine's called anyway) for pretty much anything visa related, I think.

I don't fancy your chances of getting a visa on the basis of an out-of-province (it's not like you can even claim to be commuting) and out-of-date invitation. Best of luck, but . . .

[JamesOI]

Yeah, it seems like they'd just laugh at me. Since the location and the date of an invitation letter seem like pretty, y'know, major details.

Thanks. Other (legal!) means are being pursued.