Can anyone recommend a travel agency that will arrange a regular Chinese tourist (L) visa?
Astor Tours on Nanjing E. Road, Taipei. It takes a week. Ask for Margaret Pau.
Thanks Chris!
Just have the same question and wondered if there were any updates or if anyone has had good/bad experiences. I hear your passport is sent to Hong Kong for the tourist visa.
Yes, pretty much any reputable travel agency should be able to get you one from Hong Kong in a week or two. They now issue a 10-year multiple-entry visa to US passport holders by default. (My how times have changed!) Not sure what they do for EU or others.
One critical piece of information people may want to know is that you have to have an ARC - a work visa - before Margaret Pau can get you a Chinese visa.
does that have something to do with sending your passport off?
There are some other recent threads on this subject. Search for China Visa.
STTVisa says NTD16000, returned in 7 days and no ARC required.
16k for a China visa? My god, thatās expensive. At that price may be cheaper to fly over to HK and do it yourself.
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The cost was NT$7,500 last year when I got it through Margaret Pau ā also a 10-year China visa, which is now apparently the default for Canadian passports.
Also for American passports. Great to not have to renew it.
Take a short vacation to Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, etc and do it at the Chinese embassies there.
I just got mine last week in Sapporo Japan while on a snowboard trip. Cost me about $130 USD.
Just make sure you have you application, pictures, etc all ready. Speaking some mandarin helps.
Just picked up my Chinese visa from Lion Travel here in Taoyuan. I received it ten days after submitting everything. Here is my experience (American passport) if it helps anyone:
Documents that I needed:
- Visa application form (can download it here: äøåäŗŗę°å ±åå½å¤äŗ¤éØ)
- Passport & ARC
- Copy of flight information
- Copy of hotel bookings
- Employment Certificate
- Photo
- NT10,500 (ouch)
I actually had to make two trips to Lion because I didnāt know I needed the Employment Certificate, and I lacked one day of hotel bookings. Theyāre dealing with Chinese bureaucracy so they had to be real sticklers. (Example: Although I told them my parents have long been deceased, they insisted I had to put their names and information on the form) Anyway, it wasnāt too difficult and it was quick.
One thing: The application form doesnāt have an option for the ten-year visa, but an online guide said to just add the request in the āOtherā section, like I did below, and it was no problem. Maybe the ten-year is automatic, I donāt know, but I didnāt want to take a chance.
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What did you use for the employment certificate? I gave them a copy of my current contract when I applied (different agency) a week ago - Iāll see later this week if that was good enough, I suppose.
The agency was worried I didnāt have the right stamps with an invitation, so they applied for a tourist visa instead of a business visa. Iām accompanying students to a university competition, and that didnāt seem to fit nicely into any of the provided categories.
The agency form that I used didnāt have the option for ten-year validity at all, and they said since it was my first visa they couldnāt provide a multiple-entry visa for me.
FWIW the Lion Travel in Danshui wasnāt able to process China visas, so I guess it depends on the branch.
Thanks for sharing.
My employer gave me a åØč·čę like Iāve used for ARC purposes. Iām going to guess that your work contract is fine.
This is my first Chinese visa and Iād heard that too, but my ten year multi-entry validity request was approved. If Iām remembering correctly, you have a Canadian passport, right? If so, maybe that first-time rule applies?
From banking to cell phone contracts, this situation rears its ugly head once again.
Enjoy your time in China. Iām looking forward to comparing China to Taiwan. Oops, I guess I better practice saying āOther Chinaā 
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Where did you get the visa processed? I visited two different lion offices, and also CTS and they all told me I cannot get multiple entry visa, but I have to go to HK to apply.
I went to this Lion Travel in Taoyuan:
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č, No. 927, Zhongzheng Road, Taoyuan District, Taoyuan City, 330
03 341 1199
https://goo.gl/maps/8GJGTJ7a6wv
Edit: @henkka01 Are you American? I only know this visa experience applying as an American so if youāre another nationality YMMV.
ok, thanks.
I am not from the US, but I can get a 2 year visa(and I have 4 of them in my passport) but these were all issued in HK to me. For some reason they tell me at lion that it is āimpossibleā to get multiple entry visa in tw.
weird.