Will I be rejected a Chinese Visa for being 'unemployed'

[TravellingGuy]

Hello Chinese Forums.

First post. Glad to be onboard.

I'm in Bangkok right now.

I have flights booked to China for late tomorrow evening and have to collect my Visa tomorrow before the flights.

The embassy opening times are fine. They do same day collection, too. Fine.

My concern is over the application itself.

I've saved money and I'm travelling for a year, 6 months planned for China. I'm technically currently unemployed.

My brother is a Science teacher at a Chinese/British private school in China. I'm hoping to stay with him for 6 months. They pay for him to have a flat. He's been there around 4 months and will spend around 3 years there in total (that's a minimum).

I was just talking with a girl from the States who's doing similar to me (saved money, travelling around) and they rejected her application due to her being 'unemployed' and therefor unable to give the embassy visa office a letter of employment.

Will the same happen to me? I will have a letter from my brother and also hopefully a senior person at the private school that employs him as a science teacher.

Any help appreciated. I'm filling in the form today.

Mark

[roddy]

Letter of employment? Sounds new to me, part of the new (July 1st) regulations? You might be a bit of a guinea pig, let us know what happens....

[TravellingGuy]

For sure, I'll post up a full review.

I'd love a hint as to what to put for the employment section. I'm tempted to put retired... It's entirely inaccurate. I'm kind of temporarily retired... Retired people work sometimes....

I really want this application to be successful >.<

[roddy]

Stick retired down then, and if they ask how you managed to retire so young, say you're rich. Then wait for them to ask to see your bank balance.

No real advice. Six months is pretty long for a tourist stay though, you may have more luck with a shorter stay, then worry about extensions later? Things are pretty much in flux at the moment, I'm afraid.

[TravellingGuy]

Yes, I think that's a good call. I'll probably do that and head down the immigration offices after 3 weeks.

Any further input on this from anywhere else is most welcome

[TravellingGuy]

Okay, looks like I'm going for a 1 month visa and will be getting extensions. I have a letter from my brother and have that backed up (with appropriate passport numbers) by a letter from the high school he teaches at, proper letterhead and whatnot.

Anyone got experience with entering with a 1 month and getting it extended? Would love to hear from you.

[msittig]

I've gotten a 30-day tourist visa and extended it at several points during my years in China (traveling, between jobs, etc). It's probably the most common of the options you've considered, and therefore the least likely to raise questions/problems when applying. Go with the story that you intend to stay for 25 days when you first apply, then extend at the visa office of whatever provincial capital or major city you're staying at when you have a few days left on your 30-day visa. You can only extend twice, so expect to have to make a border-run after ~90 days. Notes: ① Do not overstay by even one day, the fines are real and used to be RM 500 per day but I hear they've been raised as of July 1; ② I would have backup plans in case, after the first 90 days, you are refused a visa when you try to get back in.

[Cat Jones]

Try to avoid getting your tourist visa extended in Beijing. They have an extra rule where you have to prove you have 20,000RMB in a Chinese bank account to get a new tourist visa.

[shuoshuo]

Enroll for Mandarin classes for a semester. I suppose actually attending classes would be up to you after you get your visa. I once got an F visa (valid for 180 days), I applied with an admissions notice from my university. Except in my case, my purpose was actually for studies not holiday. But hey, there's an option.

[Matty]

You can only get 1 extension now, and it's to the same length of your allowed stay in China.

So if you had 30 days, you get another 30.

If you had 5 days, you get another 5.

Then you're done.

Though I believe only green visas can be extended and blue ones can't. -- Most are green!

[msittig]

Matty:

Source?

5-day visas?

Blue/green visas?

[roddy]

Visas issued within China (by the PSB) and outside (by embassies) have different colours. I can't remember which is which.

[Kanjiology]

The L visa I was issued in the USA is green, and the F visa and residence permit I was issued in China are blue.

[Matty]

Matty:

Source?

5-day visas?

Blue/green visas?

Source: Nanning PSB

5-day visa: Shenzhen 5 day border visa (not sure the colour of that one, it's too short for me to bother with)

Blue/Green: So far all L visas I've got in the mainland have been blue, and outside the mainland are green - I think. PSB told me they don't extend blue L visas.

[msittig]

Thanks everyone.

[TravellingGuy]

Okay, so I got in...

Been very busy settling and catching up.

I was applying for this Visa on the same day as my flight so it was kind of scary. Again, the Visa office was the Chinese Embassy in Bangkok

A few interesting points happened along the way. Maybe they can help someone later.

1. In addition to the embassy's document outlining what you need (photo here), they asked for a photocopy of my brother's visa, passport and rental certificate. I had a signed letter from my brother with his Ningbo address on it and also a letterhead stamped and signed from the Chinese private school that employs him, confirming they do so and mentioning his passport number. Clearly, this was not enough and they wanted something more official/concrete.

2. I was worried about the unemployment thing so I said that I had retired (not entirely untrue, sort of), my parents had come into money and they were funding the trip

3. I did not have an outbound ticket booked (the only document on the request list that I did not have). I didn't have one because I'm not sure which country I'm going to or whether I'll renew my Visa and I told them that. They seemed to be okay with this (probably because I had so much official documentation and an invite from China.

4. A British couple I have met in a similar situation to me got turned away and asked to come back with a letter from their previous employer saying that they no longer work for that company. This was not possible for them, so they nipped down the Internet cafe, wrote themselves a letter with a made-up letterhead and handed it in. They got their visas on that day.

5. I applied for a one-month visa as I thought it would stand a better chance of success (so I could catch my same day flight) but I later found out that if I had applied for six months, they would have just automatically downgraded me to a three-month so maybe that would have been a better option. However, it may have delayed the process if only by a few hours.

6. On the flight out, I happened to sit next to a German immigration lawyer (and the following is probably common knowledge to you guys, but I figured it was worth a mention) who lives in Shanghai. She told me the primary interests of the Chinese visa office is your justification for being in China and if you're adding value. If you make all of your supporting documentation decisions based on this fact of justification for your stay, you'll probably be all right.

7. I'll probably be enrolling in Mandarin classes so I can extend my visa for as long as possible to maximum six months. Apparently this is a good way to do things.

8. Obviously, I could not get a bank statement so I printed out screenshots of my Internet banking, making sure they had my name etc visible. This was fine.

Hope that helps anyone who comes across this thread.

[Johnny20270]

very useful post!

thanks

[roddy]

Yep, thanks for the follow-up.