深圳 notes 1: getting the visa for China

Hi guys, as you know, I am heading to Shenzhen and I have done my homework in looking up the details for this trip, having heard mostly good things. And that's when I get cynical: after all, I have been to China a few times and I really struggle to find good things to say about China. I think people who like China would gladly go there and embrace all things Chinese, then sing praises about China on social media. Then there are people who know they wouldn't like China, then they wouldn't even go near China. You then have the third category of people like myself who don't really like the idea of going to China, but end up going there anyway for the purpose of work (or for any other reason). I think it could be interesting because I already have so many negative impressions of China, so it is a chance for me to see if all these negative stereotypes are unfair and if the real China today is actually quite different from the one I have imagined.

I will arrive in Hong Kong on the 10th of May - but the first thing I need to do now is to get a visa for China given that I am a British citizen. Now if you're British, the process of getting a visa for China is a freaking nightmare. Firstly, you need to go to book an appointment with the Visa For China London center - but when I tried to visit the website, I get the message, "Attackers might be trying to steal your information from www.visaforchina.org (for example, passwords, messages or credit cards)." Gee, that's a great start. When you finally do get to the website, you need to fill up a hideously long form with so many questions - like what the hell do you need all this information about my family members for, what has that got to do with me requesting a visa to visit China? Then you need to book an appointment to visit the office itself for an interview and submit all the paperwork - then the fee schedule will knock you off your feet. There is a visa fee and an application fee - now in the old days, when you could actually get the visa from the China embassy, that would cost you about £65 in total for a regular single entry visa: expensive, but not unexpected. But now they have set up this dedicated visa center, good grief: the price shoots up to about £217 - how on earth do they justify that price hike?

Let me put things in perspective for those of you unfamiliar with how much things costs in London vis-a-vis a holiday to China: you can get a flight from London to Beijing or Shanghai for as little as £300 on one of the Chinese airlines. So if you find a cheap flight to China on Skyscanner and you wanna be spontaneous, you book the flight and then try to get an appointment for the visa - then you realize, oh it takes quite a few days, I need to get the express service just to be able to get the visa on time - that costs £256. And as for the Brits who are not in London, they have to use the postal service and that costs £265. You may end up spending nearly as much on the visa as you did on the flight; I'm not sure how many travelers are aware of the price of the visa these days. Given that it has practically quadrupled in the last few years, it is certainly enough to make a lot of tourists think, "that's just way too much hassle and money, I'll go somewhere else instead like Thailand or Malaysia where I don't need to get a visa to enter the country." Why did the Chinese authorities decide to make the visa process so difficult and expensive - did they not care that it would seriously make tourists just go somewhere else instead? Mind you, many third world countries from India to Nigeria to Myanmar to Cameroon have complicated and expensive visa application procedures - it's like they want to deter tourists from coming.

Firstly, it is a matter of tit for tat. The British government does make it really hard for Chinese citizens who want to visit the UK - they have to go through a lengthy process of verification to check if they are genuine about the purpose of their visits.You can submit all your paperwork, pay the application fees and still not be guaranteed a visa to come to the UK. It is an unequal relationship: the UK is always suspicious of Chinese illegal immigrants who want to come to the UK, so they treat all Chinese people with suspicion when it comes to the visa process. So in retaliation, the Chinese government gives British tourists an equally hard time and make them pay ludicrous amounts of money just for a tourist visa. The victims as a result are the tourists (from both countries!) who are subjected to these ludicrous and expensive procedures - not to mention everyone who works in the tourism industry. The hotels in China will lose business when the British tourists look at just how complex and expensive this process is and just plain give up. Certainly, making the visa process so complex and expensive is not good for the tourism sector in China - the amount of money they make from the visa process is nothing compared to the amount of revenue the hotels, resorts, restaurants and other services in the tourism sector could potentially make if more foreign tourists visited China. From a financial point of view, this makes no sense.

Fortunately for me, I found a much easier route - one can get a 5-day visa at the border crossing from Hong Kong into Shenzhen (plenty of details on this link). All you have to do is show up at the border crossing at Luohu or Huanggang, fill up some forms, submit the forms with a photo, pay the fee and you're granted a 5 day visa. It is limited of course, it is only for 5 days and you can't get it unless you're crossing over from Hong Kong. So if you have say booked a flight from London to Guangzhou, then no you cannot take advantage of this visa. This is also much cheaper as well - for me, it is 314 RMB (about £36) and that's a bargain compared to the £265 I would have had to pay if I got the visa in London. My partner pays even less, just 168 RMB (or about £19) as he will travel on an Irish passport. Thankfully for this trip, this visa is enough for me as I only needed to spend exactly 5 days in Shenzhen. There are other border crossings as well which do offer a similar kind of visa, such as from Macau to Zhuhai, as well as some of the major airports like Shanghai and Beijing offering transit passengers a transit visa which allows them to leave the airport for a while. Likewise, Hainan island also offers visa-free travel there if you are booked on a trip there (and if you don't leave the island of Hainan). Mind you, Russia is another country that makes it really hard for tourists to visit (for example, if you take the ferry sailing from Helsinki, Finland) - but also offers similar visa schemes for the savvy tourists who know how to take advantage of them.

Whilst I am relieved to have found a cheaper route to get into Shenzhen, I am still a little worried - I have read that they may deny you the visa at the border crossing if your passport is relatively new and they will demand to see your old passport. Now my passport will be 1 year 6 months old when I get there, would that be considered too new? I still have my old passport of course, but they may also deny you entry into China if you have ever been to Turkey - that shocks me as I have been to Turkey more than once on holiday. It is a very popular holiday destination for us Brits and the only reason why Turkey has become controversial was because of the raging civil war in Syria: Turkey shares a land border with Syria so anyone looking to get involved in that conflict usually flies into Turkey as a tourist and then makes the crossing over to Syria that way. Look, if you have visited somewhere like Yemen, Iraq or Afghanistan, I understand that may raise some eyebrows, but Turkey? It does seem crazy that taking a city break in Istanbul or spending a week on the beach in Bodrum could mean not being granted a visa for China - I have been to Turkey on my old passport as I visited Istanbul for work, so there are stamps on my old passport. The worst case scenario is that they demand to see my old passport, then deny me the visa on that basis. My friend in Hong Kong said to me, "don't bring your old passport with you, leave your old passport at home. They really have little reason to deny you entry if your passport is 18 months old."

OK so that's it for now. Crikey, this time next week, I would already be in hot and humid Shenzhen. This trip is just around the corner! I'm already looking at the packed schedule of meetings and realizing it is not going to be a holiday - quite the contrary, it's work work work all the way and if I get some sightseeing done on the way, that'll be a bonus. What do you think? Have you ever been to a country where you have to spend ages applying for a visa? And would that process put you off visiting a country? Let me know what you think, leave a comment below please and many thanks for reading.