Thursday 19 March 2009

How to... get a tourist (L) visa

Tourist visas are issued in Chinese embassies and consulates abroad and may be extended within China. To apply for a tourist visa, most Chinese embassies will only ask you for a completed visa application form and passport-sized pictures. However, some nationals, espcially those from Asian countries, might face tighter requirements and may need to provide


  • Outbound and return flight booking within the time the visa is applied for (that means that even if you plan to extend your visa in China, you still need to provide a flight within your original visa period).
  • Stamped (chopped) hotel reservation for the complete duration of stay. In case you or your hotel are not entirely sure about what this confirmation should look like. Only some embassies will accept online bookings.
  • Alternatively, if you are staying at a relative's house, proof of kinship (marriage / birth certificate) and copies of his/her passport, visa, residence permit and police registration along with a personal invitation letter need to be provided. Please note that currently in some embassies, applications for tourist visas are only accepted without a hotel booking if the applicant has close relatives in China!

L visas are usually issued for a period of 30, sometimes of 45 or 60 days. They can be extended twice in Beijing (note the current regulations on how to extend L visas in Beijing), which allows most visitors to stay in China for a maximum of 90 days in a row (assuming they started with a 30 days L visa). Extensions are subject to different regulations in other Chinese cities.

It seems that L visa can only be extended once for ten days in Beijing if you're from another Asian country.

However, if you are married to a Chinese national, you are eligible for a 12 months multiple entry L visa if you hand in your marriage certificate with your application (you can also do this in China). Please note that this L visa does not entitle you to work legally.

2 comments:

  1. My wife & I would like to teach English in China for about 6 months, from Sept 2011. We plan to be based in or near Beijing. Neither of us have degrees, but we do have TEFL certificates. (Also my wife has a diploma in interpreting sign language to English.) This limits the amount of jobs available to us, but it seems that it is possible to get a job teaching in China without a degree. But according to friends it's easier to actually be in China first and then find a job. To do this would require, I think, that we start with a tourist visa and then apply for a job, then change to a work visa (probably with the help of the school or institution). However, to get a tourist visa first, it seems that we need to have already bought a return ticket. Some questions on this: If we go in August and plan to come home in March 2012, and so buy a return flight now, going August & returning March, can we get a tourist visa for 7 months? I don't think so. So if we have a ticket that says we are returning in March, will that be acceptable to qualify for a 30 or 60 day tourist visa? If for some reason we can't get a job, can we just keep renewing our visa, even if that may involve going to Hong Kong or Mongolia briefly?
    Also, I believe we can buy a train ticket in Beijing to return via Moscow to western Europe by train. If we decide to do this, will we need to have already bought this ticket to get our tourist visas?
    We both have UK passports; I am aged 57 & my wife is 52. rggreen@gmail.com

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  2. Am a Nigerian who lives in Nigeria, how do I apply for the Chinese visa as a tourist. How do I apply for the invitation letter? mobabs2012@gmail.com

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