Getting a Chinese Visa : One of the toughest task in Korea

I planned to go to China at the end of April with my family, to visit Shanghai & Beijing, so exciteeeeeeeeeeeed,

But first I will tell you a little story about how to get a chinese visa when you're a french fresh incoming exchange student ... Let's begin !

Getting a chinese visa for a french student reveals of a real fight against the chinese machine (I accentuate it a little :) ...) But the fact is it's really hard to obtain. You need fisrt your plane tickets and your hotel reservation (but you have to think also about what would happen if your visa is refused by the embassy) so you have to take refundable plane tickets, but they're more expenssive than non-refundable ones.

So what I did is quite simple, I took so expensive non refundable plane tickets in a travel agency, then I booked a fake hotel (when I'll be in China I won't take that hotel but I already paid 10% of the entire price). Then I finally went to the chinese Embassy, with my alien registration card, my plane tickets, my hotel reservation, my passport, a certificate of incomes, the enrollment letter from Hanyang University, my application form and so on ...

After having been waiting something like 30 minutes, I finally reached the desk of the person who cares about the international applications forms. Then she just told me 'No, you cannot have it' wow .... problem : that was not in my plans to get my visa refused .... So that was over (for the moment) she told me that other people were waiting and I have to let them apply for their own visa. She added that anyway I had to fill another application form chinese/english whereas the one I gave to her was chinese/french (no difference actually but she wanted that)

So, I was so disappointed, because I really thought I couldn't go to China ... Then, I just tried again to see her, with the new application form. Then she finally explained me what the visa should be refused for me : Because my alien registration card (ARC) is only valid for 5 months and 28 days instead of being available for exactly 6 months ... So she told me I needed an extension of my ARC to get my visa. But the fact is I can't extend my ARC because I'm just a student ... so after lots of explanation concerning the fact that I was a student and lots of tears she told me she could make an exception for me (???) an exception concerning visa application ??? I said YES anyway ... So she told me that giving the visa was an exception and I just could get a 1 entry visa but that was fine for me !!!

So to conclude, all the students who already applied for a chinese visa were ALL exceptions, there are something like hundreds and hundreds of excpetions each year, but chinese embassy and chinese government still consider us as 'exceptions' and if you're just a normal studend, supposed to be here just for one semester you can just get a simple entry visa ...

Anyway, I received my visa, and I can now go to China... I also cancelled my refundable plane tickets and found other ones so much cheaper !!!

I think Chinese embassy just want to discourage lots of people going to china by process this way ...