Renting appartment and opening bank account with a tourist visa

[gregoire]

Hello,

I will be studying in Beiwai from September. I now live in Tokyo, and planned to move in Beijing from may. I will be back to my country (France) in August, then back again to Beijing.

in May, I will enter China with a 30 days tourist visa, which is double entry, so I plan to renew it in Beijing to be able to stay longer. I will take the train to Mongolia around July and have my X visa made in Paris.

Since I will live about one year in Beijing, I'd like:

1. to rent a place (my Chinese friends will help me with that)

2. open a bank account to wire euros from France

Question is, for both formalities, can I do it with a tourist visa? For the appartment for instance, I will need to declare to the police asap.

I already have all the papers to make the X visa, but it was too early

Thank you for your help!

Greg

PS: if you need anything for Japan, just ask me.

[roddy]

Bank account will be no problem - they'll want a copy of your passport, but they won't be concerned about your visa status.

Apartment is probably no problem. Some landlords may query why you don't have a visa for the full length of the lease (it's normal to give your landlord a copy of your passport, and let him / her see the original when you sign the lease), but more likely they won't even look and you have a plausible reason anyway.

Police registration - a lot of people don't bother to do this. If you want / have to, I very much doubt it will be an issue. If they ask, just tell them what you are doing and perhaps show a university acceptance letter or something if you have one. As long as you have a valid visa, they probably won't care. I think

[gregoire]

So I'll just have to bring photocopies and a Chinese friend. That's a relief.

For police registrations, I thought this was compulsory.

What are the reasons not to do it, and what would be the reasons to bother do it ?

[doumeizhen]

They didn't check my visa when I opened a bank account. I have one at Bank of China with a little book and a card. Right now I am in back in America, and the account is just sitting there, even without my visa and I, so it's no problem (I HOPE!). Once you get the account, they will give you a little card with the wire information.

If you are wiring large amounts, they might call you and ask you to come in and change it as soon as possible. This happened to me once, and perhaps they just aren't allowed to have big sums of foreign currency sitting around, or someone had too much tea...

I think the thing they wanted for the account was an address/number/passport for verification. The first two so that they can reach you.