My Visa Situation. Please help!!

[shuaishuai]

Hey guys i am a british chinese, got a british passport am now 19. Basically im planning to go back to china to see my girlfriend and stay at her college for around 10 months. I was told by her that her college may not be recognised for the X visa. So she asked PSB they said that i can get a maximum of 2 extensions if i am going to beijing with a visiting relatives visa. Which is L in this case. But i on the sites they say L visa is both family visit and tourist, how do i make sure i get the family visit one from UK, the beijing PSB said that if i am on a visiting relatives visa each extension can be up to 6 months resulting over a year of stay on this visa. Can someone give me some advice and help please. Thanks very much. I dont know what to do

[liuzhou]

As I remember (having done this in the past), there is no difference between the tourist L visa and the visiting family L visa.

When you go to renew, you need to take with you evidence that you are related to the people you are visiting. I remember taking my marriage certificate, along with wife's 户口本, ID card and body!

You are going to visit your girlfriend, so it seems you will be unable to provide such evidence. Unless you have missed something out in the info you give in your question here, you do not seem to be qualified for a visiting relatives extension.

[trevelyan]

Think seriously about getting an F visa. That's what I had the first time I was in China for study. The visa isn't technically for study so much as private business, but there is no problem enrolling at schools with them (the Chinese embassy in Canada actually recommended it instead of the X as there was less paperwork).

The catch is that they're only valid for six months at a time. You can renew in country once however, so if you don't mind a bit of paperwork twice a year, they are effectively year-long visas. Another consideration is that if you need to convert your existing visa to another class in-country (ie., after finding a job), there are a lot of hurdles to doing it with an X visa.

Any place that offers Chinese classes should be able to get you the paperwork you need for an F visa -- and its perfectly understandable if smaller schools don't have the authority to bring people in officially as students. If your girlfriend's college can't give you an X, find out if they can give you an F by giving you visiting scholar status or something. Saving that, you may be better off just finding a private language school in the city.

[Adam]

Is it possible to work on a F visa?

[roddy]

Possible, but not strictly legitimate. If you can then get the Z visa.

For the OP, as you are coming for 10 months I assume you're going to be studying or working during that time - I'd recommend you start organizing that now and get either the X or Z visa for studying / working.

Roddy

[shuaishuai]

hey guys i have relatives in china, got uncles and grandad and grandma etc, btw if u guys wanted to know, my gf went to beijing PSB and they confirmed that when you fill out relatives visit visa on ur visa application form, they give u 3 months, if u fill tourist u get 1 only. Thats how the beijing PSB recognises your visa. They confirmed that as long as you have the relatives visit visa (3months) u can then bring your relatives ID and stuff with you to PSB for a maximum of 6months extension. And u can do this twice!!

I was shocked by this info, My gf asked for a guarantee for it and the department head gave her a guarantee booklet which shows all this info. So if anyone is going china for a year and have relatives there, do it this way!!