One Annual Challenge of Living in China

One of the annual challenges I face while living in China is getting a new visa, or residence permit as it is called. This process should be straightforward and not a problem, but every year it seems that something or other has changed or been updated, little differences that requires a change to the documentation, this in turn leads to added stress of renewing and extending your stay for another year.

A few weeks ago I went to the police bureau that deals with this process, in Wuhan it is across the other side of this large city, it takes a large part of your day (or days, in my case this year) getting there and back.

The first stage of the process is getting a letter from the local police in the area where you live to prove you are registered there. A simple process, armed with this letter, all my original documents and photocopies of each I headed off across the city. My documentation was denied on this first occasion because my wife needed a letter from the local police as well. Back to the original local police station, collect the letter, return across the city a few days later and this time all was accepted, come back in 3 weeks to collect your new visa.

One week later and on receiving a phone call to be informed that the visa was denied because my wife is not from that province, as time was now short for renewing in her home province I would be given an extension of one month, to enable us time to travel to my wife’s home province of Guangxi. Yesterday I collected my passport and temporary extension, next week we take a train to Guangxi province and begin the process of applying again. Hopefully this time all goes well.