New address, new permit, slight confusion

[joshuawbb]

Hey,

Just a quick request for advice if it's okay. My current resident permit expires on the 31st, and I'm busily going through the routine of extending it for my third year of university.

I moved house a few days ago, and just registered with the police yesterday as usual. Normally after changing address, one has to go to the PSB after the police registration to update your records with the new address, pay the Y200, etc. But I am also going to be handling my new resident permit this month too, and I've almost finished getting the documents together.

However I still have to pay my tuition fees and finish registration with the university, which could not have been done earlier, and changing your address at the PSB requires that they hold your passport for 7 days (in Xiamen, anyway), which would make doing my current formalities extremely inconvenient (several trips back and forth to the office, I need my passport, office hours are Tue/Fri only 9am-11am).

I originally thought that since my new permit was getting done in such a short timeframe from now anyway, it would be fine to skip the formal address-changing at the PSB and have everything done when I go to do my new permit in 5 days or so. What do you think of this - would this be okay? If they took my passport for 7 days just to change my address, I'd be looking at a really cramped timescale to get things done, not helped by the uni office hours. It didn't really seem that logical to me to have to go through all that trouble to update the address on my old permit which is getting replaced in less than a week.

I went to the PSB today and asked this. My answer from the on-duty officer was that 'I'd imagine it to be fine, but the officer able to answer your question fully is not working today, come back next time'. Curious, huh.

What do you think? Many thanks for your opinions.

[Matty]

I moved house a few days ago, and just registered with the police yesterday as usual. Normally after changing address, one has to go to the PSB after the police registration to update your records with the new address, pay the Y200, etc.

What is this exactly? I've never done nor heard of it. Sure, after I move I (in theory) go to the local police station and register... But after that, I've never heard of any requirement to register it with the PSB or pay 200元。

Unless I'm totally misunderstanding something here?

[roddy]

If you have a residence permit, your address is on file with the PSB as well as the local police station. You should tell them if you move - they'll likely want to see the registration slip from the police. In the olden days, when residence permits were a separate little green book, your address was written in there.

I wouldn't worry about it, Joshua. They're not going to start kicking your door in just because you're a week late with an address change.

[joshuawbb]

Okie dokie, thanks once again, I'll leave it until doing the new resident permit

As roddy said, the PSB also keep your address on record and you are generally required to update it officially in the PSB within 10 days of moving in, showing them the registration slip you just got from the police. If you weren't sure of this before I don't blame you, as far as I remember when I first moved apartment I had no idea of this; it was only when my uni office staff casually mentioned it - "Oh, by the way..." - that I actually realised. But regulations vary in each city and in the area you live it may not be important, e.g. the PSB might update it themselves from police records or something.