Chinese equivalent of a 'residence attestation'

[langxia]

Putting this in here as I don't know where else to put it.

What would be the equivalent of a residence attestation, is it the hukou or is there another document that would fall into this category ?

[roddy]

Never heard the word attestation before. What would this actually be, right to reside in a country, proof of address, etc. Assuming address, then hukou might work, and there's also a system for Chinese people to register temporary addresses.

[langxia]

Damn, that is when you juggle around with 5 languages...

Should be resident certificate (attestation is the french word for certificate)

[陳德聰]

Reminds me of French proof of residence. I think 户口 is a little bit more of a big deal than proof of residence though. I'm not sure what the name of the form is that people get as 外地人 in other cities when they move there, but you don't just up and change your 户口 willy-nilly as far as I know.

EDIT: dang, too slow to seem like I am all French-knowledge-y and stuff.

[roddy]

But would this be for citizens, or aliens? Proving the right to reside, or the place of residence, or what?

[陳德聰]

Wait are we talking "attestation du statut de residence" here?

[langxia]

Ok, I should have given more information from the beginning. Me and my girlfriend are gettin married and now they ask for a residence certificate in my home country (small country in europe) and now the question is if beside the hukou there might be another form of resident certificate in china or not.

So to answer Roddy : It would be the residence certificate for a citizen that is needed to be shown outside of china

[roddy]

Having done a Google image search, it looks to be an official document stating your address. I don't think we have an equivalent in the UK, but when necessary we'd use, eg, bank statements, utility bills, etc.

Given that, the hukou might be the closest equivalent. But the hukou is a joint document - you have one per household, not per person, so I don't see she can be expected to come up with the original. As I said, there's a system for registering temporary addresses, but would a temporary address do? Any other ideas?

[langxia]

To give a little update :

They accepted a translation of the hukou as residence certificate. The person in the office didn't like it that much but at the end I explained to her that that is the only official document in china whit your official address on it. She then shrugged and said : Ah well other countries, other customs. So she wasn't that satisfied with it but still accepted it.