Bit of a Catch-22; Advice needed

[Bob1234]

Hi everyone! New to the forum, but hoping that you'll be able to help me.

 

I've been in and out of China for the last 5 years on all sorts of visa (tourist, business, working residence permits, etc.), but seem to have outdone myself on the last one. Last year, while I was still only engaged to my wife (she's Chinese), we made an application in person at the HK visa office. All the visa agencies in HK had said that as I had just come off of a working residence permit and a subsequent 1 month tourist visa extension, I would have to go back to the States to apply for a tourist visa. We tried our luck with my fiancee writing an invitation letter and giving it to the visa office in person, and it worked--they gave me a 10 year S2 visa good for 3 months each visit.

 

My wife's family is in Hohhot, and we've lived there for about since 7 months since last year (with another 7 months in the US). This has meant I've had to make two visa runs to the Mongolian border before my 3 months run out. I'm back in the US now (until Nov.) and we're weighing our visa options, as it looks like we'll be keeping up this arrangement for a while.  As I see things, my options are either to keep the S2 visa or change to a Q1. My personal preference is for the S2 because I don't have to pay any more visa application fees for 10 years, and because I've heard that the Hohhot PSB are not very friendly to Q1 applicants. I've been registering with our local Hohhot police station, and they've never made an issue of it, although I've been feeling like they're getting a bit more uncomfortable with the situation.

 

On the other hand, no one seems to know whether or not this arrangement (S2 visa, make one visa run per year) is a good idea or not. In fact, when my wife applied for a US tourist visa earlier this month, she said that the US visa officer became pretty upset when he saw that I had been coming back and forth from Mongolia, and said I needed to change visas. Moreover, I recently took our car up to a small border town (not Erlian), was interrogated by the PLA for 4 hours, and I have a feeling that a small part of the problem was that they were perplexed by my S2 visa. The S2 visa is usually given to spouses of foreigners in China, so this whole thing is a bit sketchy.

 

So what does everyone think? Should I stick with the S2, or switch to the Q1?

[vellocet]

Well, a tourist visa is for tourism. You're not supposed to live and work in China on one.  The visa you want is 'visiting family', which does not allow work but will allow you to stay in China for a year at a time.  Residence permit is really the only way to go, and the only way to get one of those is to get a job or to start your own company. 

[Johnny20270]

Residence permit is really the only way to go, and the only way to get one of those is to get a job or to start your own company. 

 

 

or become student, if that interests you

[Bob1234]

Vellocet,

But the point is that I'm not working in China, just living in China half of the year with my wife. The more I think about this, the more convinced I am that there is really no reason for me to switch from the S2 to the Q1, as neither will allow me to work, and I'm a bit caught in the middle between a short-term and long-term stay.