Preparing for China
China on August 8, 2007 at 11:58 amTentatively set to visit China after graduation, May 31, 2008, for about a month. I have been doing research into the basic travel info: visa, passport, air fare. Some interesting things have come up though.
I am going with a Chinese family, so I run my questions by them a lot. For example the Chinese Embassy website says, very clearly, "No visa application can be done through mail, email, internet, or any express delivery service such as UPS, FedEx, etc. Visa application should be submitted and picked up by the applicant or someone else entrusted." I wouldn't trust someone to go 100 yards with my passport let along a couple hundred miles.
So it looks like I'll be making a trip to New York a few months before my trip, but at the same time the family I am going with tells me that is not true, you don't have to go to the Embassy.
I wish I bookmarked more sites because one told a story of a man charged $1500. He did not register with the local police when he stayed with a local family rather than in a hostel/hotel. I don't want to be that man, again, the family I am going with has never heard of this before.
So in short I don't have a clue what I'm doing or where I am going. At the moment I am going to China for a month, checking out Bejing for a couple days, then to a town I can't spell which is pretty rural.
Chinese visa for US Citizen costs $100 - Everyone else $30. Nice.