I have a friend in Shenzhen. We’ve been talking about me visiting him in a month or so.
I’m a Canadian citizen (with passport), and the as born in the UK.
Apart from booking a plane ticket, is there something else I need to know, or do? Visa?
I traveled there for business, twice, to Shanghai. I had to get a letter from my company in Shanghai and then take that to the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco. I could’ve done it by mail but I’m close enough and did it in person. The letter had to state how many days, roughly, I was expected to be in country. I brought my passport and they put the visa into it and returned it a few hours later; and then I did my travel.
Anyway, probably the best answer for you is to check with the local Chinese Consulate closest to you.
This should have all the info for a Canadian - https://travel.gc.ca/destinations/china
I looked into a visa for China.
There is a complicated form one needs to fill out. They want to see plane tickets or dates of plane tickets, and want to know where you are staying, etc.
A friend suggested going through a broker. They know the correct answers to the questionnaire.
Once you receive the visa, it is normally good for 10 years.
Sometimes. For both of my trips the visas were good for 6 months.
And photos. And having gone through this process a number of times for my kids, the Chinese government has a reputation for being super picky about dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s. “What’s a passport photo?” is one that has tripped me up a couple of times. (An Australian passport photo is NOT a passport photo according to the Chinese consulate - too big. A Canadian passport photo may well be the same)
If you are planning to visit for less than 5 days, you can fly into Hong Kong and apply for a 5 day Visa on Arrival at the border (International flights are always almost cheaper to HK and there’s a ferry that takes you directly into China in 2 hours without having to handle your luggage or touch HK soil). The VOA is single entry and only applies to Shenzhen though. If you plan to ever come back to China, then you should apply for a 2 year, multi-entry visa. Its nice to not have to worry about visa stuff if you ever want to make another trip.
Honestly, there’s not much to do in Shenzhen. If I were you, I’d fly into Hong Kong and spend a few days in Hong Kong first. From there, it’s a 1 hour ferry ride away to Macau which is worth a day or two of exploring and then it’s another 1 hour ferry from Macau to Shenzhen. When friends come visit to Shenzhen, I struggle to find more than 2 days worth of activities for them although Dafen oil painting village is the coolest thing in the world and huaqiangbei is worth a wander if you’re into that kind of stuff. Fortunately, Guangzhou is just an hour up the road by High Speed Rail and Changsha, Wuhan, Nanning and Xiamen are all easy weekend trips.
PM me when you’ve made your plans and we can have a beer.
Only for Americans, for everyone else, 2 years is the max tourist visa you can get.
The last time we were in China was 2007. At that time, my visa as an American was good only for a single entry.
The Chinese Embassy/Consulate in Bangkok ran sort of a scam. There were three levels of processing, each one more expensive than the previous. Regular processing got your visa in a week, express (or whatever they called it) in three days, super express (or whatever) the next day. We were not in a hurry, so the wife and I paid for the cheapest option and were told to return in a week to pick up our passports. Which we did, and when we looked at the visas in them saw they were dated six days before, the day after we were there. So they essentially processed the visas next day for everyone but held your passport hostage for a week if you were not willing to cough up the extra cash.
You could actually try a Canadian Chinese Consulate for some facts. Here’s a website: http://vancouver.china-consulate.org/eng/visa/Visa/
Shalmanese, are you in SZ? I get out to Longhua 6-8 times per year. Be happy to buy you a beer…
Yup, I ragequit the US after Trump won and landed in SZ about 6 months ago! I have the same username on wechat if you want to add me.
Fly into Guangzhou/Canton; with a Canadian passport you get a 144 hour visit without a visa. A train to Shenzen is cheap and fast.
Note, this is a transit visa, which means Canada -> Guangzhou -> Canada would not be eligible for this visa. You would have to do something like Canada -> Guangzhou -> Thailand -> Guangzhou/Canada.
Also, you can also apply for the visa at SZ airport so no need to fly specifically into GZ airport for it. IMO, the biggest downside of this visa is that it precludes you from visiting HK/Macau. Flying into HK means you can spend as much time outside of the mainland as you want before getting a single entry into China.
I don’t know that it was particularly onerous. We went to China in 2010.
Fill in the forms, got the photos.
At that time, there was a company or travel agent or something I think they were just across the street from the Chinese embassy in Ottawa.
Send them the form, photos, our passports, and a small fee (IIR about $75 for each of us).
We had a rough idea when we were going and what our itinerary was. That’s what we put on the application.
Stuff came back within 2 weeks, all good to go, Visa stuck in passport.
Seemed to me that the application mainly was carefully asking if you were working for a media company or the government. (We were not)
The other piece of advice was “don’t tell them if you plan to go to Tibet” back when Tibet unrest was recently in the news.
We made final flight bookings after the visas were confirmed. In to HK then Shanghai, out via Beijing.
Ours were single entry, but if we wanted to make day trips From Hong Kong into mainland China, apparently we would have needed a multiple entry visa.
(Hong Kong is part of China but “special”, as is I think Macau. We did not need pre-approval visas to get into Hong Kong. )
Things may have changed in 8 years.
I’m pretty sure nowadays, you need plane tickets/at least one hotel booking before you apply for your visa which adds weird logistical kinks. That’s why I recommend people get the multi-entry. After you clear the first hurdle, you can just book tickets like a civilized person and go whenever you feel like.
Reported.