I have some questions about studying Chinese in Kunming.

1. Is it possible to change from F visa to X (student) visa without leaving China (for Canadians and Americans)?

2. Do the private language schools accept enrollment at anytime of year for group courses? If so, does that up tuition price?

3. Are there extra fees for the student visa (usually), or is the visa included in the tuition cost?

Cheers.

1.you can change your visa from F to X(STUDENT VISA),but you should find a school which can arrange student visa for their foreign students.
2. you should pay extra fees for the student visa,it is about 400RMB.
3.Kunming Mei's Mandarin School can accept enrollment at anytime of year for group courses and the tuition depand on how many courses you take.
4.WWW.meismandarin.com

5.any questions you can contact
E-mail: sky863@126.com skype: meismandarin
Contact person: Mr Liu

Tel: 15887267259

Address: 3rd Floor, 32 Long Xiang Street, Kunming, China

Tel：0871-5384000 Fax：0871-5324123 PC：650031

Keats School also accept enrollment at any time of the year, there fess are reasonable too.

As others have said, any good school (Keats, Mei's Mandarin, etc.) will help you with the Student Visa process - in fact my experience at Keats was they did all of the work. I assume other good schools will provide a similar service.

Yes, they will have you pay the fees for the visa itself as well as the medical exam and residence permits that are generally needed if you will be here for more than 6 months. As I will be here a total of 1 year I had to do that. Of course, I might be off a bit on the details of those requirements.

As I recall about 400 RMB covers the visa itself, a residence permit and medical exam for those staying longer costs more. I think I paid nearly 600 or 700 RMB or so when all was said and done, but I may be off a bit on that, it's been over 6 months.

The process is fairly painless (except of course for the prodding and blood drawing for the medical exam).