--On Monday, September 21, 2009 10:10 -0700 Ole Jacobsen
<ole@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Just a couple of comments regarding cost and visas, speaking
> from personal experience.
>...
> Visa:
>
> If you are a US citizen, the visa fee is $130 here in the US.
> For non-US citizens, the fee is only $30 :-) However, be very
> careful about visa validity. As a Norwegian citizen, I can
> (in San Francisco) only get a visa that is valid for 3
> months, single entry, but the clock starts on the day it is
> ISSUED, not, as one might expect, when you arrive in China in
> spite of the fact that the form asks when you will be
>...
> Depending on where you are from and where you apply,
> multi-entry visas for a year or even more may be available.
> Express service (1-2 days) may also be available for a fee,
> but in June in San Francisco, this was NOT available and the
> process took a week. All these are things to watch out for
> especially if you travel a lot since of course the consulate
> or embassy will hold your passport while processing the visa
> application.
Two additional observations may be useful. In the US, someone
must appear in person at the embassy or consulate -- there is no
mail-in service, at least for US citizens. In practice, that
means that if one is in a city with a consulate (or close to
one), one has to use a visa service as an intermediary. Their
fees can easily exceed the visa fees themselves unless one works
for a company that has a special deal with one of them. More
important, they often require far more documentation than the
embassy nominally requires, presumably to be sure that they have
what they need if the embassy (or local consulate) starts asking
questions about the traveler. That additional documentation may
include confirmed flight or hotel reservations, letters of
endorsement or guarantee (in addition to meeting invitations,
etc.). So, especially if one cannot appear in person, one
should get started early or be prepared to pay even higher fees.
If I remember correctly from the embassy's web site, part of the
documentation requirement for a multiple-entry visa is previous
visits to China and associated visas. I.e., if you haven't had
at least a couple of single-entry visas, there is no point
thinking about a multiple-entry one.
john
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