Experience in applying for a Chinese tourist visa in three days

A reader who regularly travels independently shares his experience of getting a Chinese visa after three days of submitting the application.

Reader Trinh Hang, over 40 years old, Hanoi, has been to dozens of countries around the world and many provinces in the country, shares her experience on how to apply for a Chinese visa after it opened in March.

While the Korean tourist visa application form only has about 5 pages of information, the Japanese visa has 2 pages and the Schengen visa has only 3 pages of information, the Chinese tourist visa application form has 8 pages with nearly 100 information fields. However, filling out the application form is not difficult because it is all personal information, just invest a little time and you can easily fill out the application form yourself. We received the visa in less than 3 days after submitting the application ourselves.

The Chinese tourist visa application form consists of 10 parts, but is not complicated.

Prepare

Just like traveling independently in any country, the first thing to do is to find out information and determine your needs such as which province you want to go to, what time, what means of transport, how to eat and stay. From there, you can make a preliminary plan for your trip to China, you can refer to the schedules of popular tours or the experiences of other tourists.

Have a rough plan, book your flight and hotel, both of which do not require payment, just get a reservation code. You will need to fill in this information on the visa application form. Visa preparation should be done at least 2 months before the intended departure date.

Make a declaration

After preparing all the information, go to www.visaforchina.cn to fill out the tourist visa application form. This is the official website for Chinese visas, available in three languages: Chinese, English and Vietnamese. Currently, all application forms and appointment bookings must be done through this website. Visitors cannot go to the Visa Center to fill out paper applications as before.

The Chinese tourist visa application form has 10 sections with nearly 100 items including detailed information about the applicant's education, work, family, travel history, etc. The form requires you to clearly state your planned itinerary for your upcoming trip to China.

Once you have completed the application, download the file, print it and sign it. Then you make an appointment on this website, there are many time slots during the day to choose from, each slot lasts 30 minutes, from 9am to 3pm from Monday to Friday. Currently, the number of people applying for a Chinese visa is very high, so you may have to wait 2-3 weeks for the nearest day to make an appointment. If you need to apply for a visa urgently, you can choose a service with a fee of 1 to 2 million VND, all of which are publicly available on the website.

Transaction to make an appointment on the visa application website.

Once you have completed the appointment booking process, please save and print your appointment slip. Without your appointment slip, you will not be able to submit your application.

Next, prepare a complete visa application. This application is quite simple compared to the requirements of many other countries, including:

- Application form and appointment slip

- ID photo: 1 color photo 4.8 cm x 3.3 cm, white background, front view, clear face, no hat and no obstacles.

- Passport: original and one black and white photocopy (no notarization required), valid for at least 6 months from the date of submission, at least 2 blank pages.

- If this is your first time traveling abroad or applying for a Chinese visa, you need to submit a photocopy of your household registration book (no notarization required). If you have been to China before, you need to submit a photocopy of your passport with an old Chinese visa (no notarization required).

- Book flight tickets to China, book hotel rooms in China (black and white print).

- If you travel in a group and have some shared documents (household registration, plane tickets, hotel rooms), each person's file must have all the above documents.

During the process of preparing the documents, as noted on the website, we carefully printed out both professional documents (employment contract, leave application, salary slip); financial documents (bank account statements, savings books), travel itinerary, and even handwritten letters, but all of these documents were returned because they were not needed.

Apply for visa

There are currently three places where you can apply for a Chinese visa:

In Hanoi : 7th Floor, Truong Thinh Building, No. 1 Phung Chi Kien Street, Nghia Do Ward, Cau Giay District.

In Da Nang: Unit B, 8th Floor, Indochina Riverside Towers, 74 Bach Dang, Hai Chau District.

In Ho Chi Minh City: Room 1607-1609, 16th Floor, SaiGon Trade Center, 37 Ton Duc Thang Street, Ben Nghe, District 1.

You need to be present at the Visa Center at the exact time stated on the appointment slip and wear a mask. When you arrive, take a number and wait your turn. Currently, many people need to apply for a Chinese visa, so you may have to wait a few hours for your turn.

At the Visa Center, you will go through three steps: submit your application, provide biometric data (photo, fingerprints) and pay the fee. Biometrics are mandatory, so you cannot ask someone else to submit it for you.

Chinese visas are usually processed quite quickly, in just 3-4 days.

Visa fees

Chinese visa fees vary depending on whether you want to apply for a single or multiple entry and for how long. At the application stage, you only need to pay a service fee, the minimum is 685,000 VND per person for a single entry general tourist visa. The center only accepts cash in VND, no transfers or card swipes.

After submitting your application and fee, you will be given an appointment to collect the results (and can choose to have them sent to your home). The results will be available within a few days from the date of application. You can also go to the website to track your visa application process, and when the website says "Application is available for collection", go to the Visa Center to receive the results. The time to receive the results may be longer than the time on the appointment.

On the day of receiving the results, you will need to pay an additional visa fee (visa fee), the minimum is 60 USD per person for a single-entry general tourist visa. The center only accepts cash in US dollars, only accepts denominations of 10, 20 or 100 USD, does not accept 50 USD bills, no bank transfers or card swipes.

Trinh Hang

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