Not your usual visa question!

My girlfriend is wondering what she has to do to get a visa for HK. She is from a small town about 2 hours from Kunming, just wondering if anyone else here has taken their friend/girlfriend/boyfriend/chauffeur to Hong Kong and if so, what did he/she have to do to get the visa.

So far my girlfriend has had about 3 different stories, everything from "visa on arrival" (bollocks I suspect) to "you have to go with a travel agency who will have someone with you at all times" (also bollocks I suspect). I know it must be somewhere in between as I see umpteen mainlanders in HK all the time. I suspect she just has to go to the local PSB in her hometown and get a permit (and maybe a passport?).

Go to the police office in her hometown and apply for '港澳台通行证'easy to get and for me I got mine by paying 400 years ago, not sure about the price now, no trouble at all.

Cool, thanks, I will pass on the info.

I am just amazed you paid for something 400 years ago, that is some serious foresight and how old are you? You must have found the secret of eternal life! What is it???

The paragraph above is a joke, ha haa, I understand what you mean :-)

"The paragraph above is a joke, ha haa, I understand what you mean :-)"

You totally had us for a while there.

Refreshing old thread for new case.

In short: Chinese citizen with rural hukou flying from Kunming to Hong Kong.

So I booked tickets for the family (me as a foreigner, wife and son as Chinese), planning to fly from Kunming to Hong Kong for a week later in the spring.

No problems for me, and wife and son have already acquired Entry & Exit Permits for Hong Kong.

But now my wife chatted about the coming trip with some friends, and found that the type of permit she got is "L" (for tour groups), as opposed to "G" (for individual visits).

When she asked about this from the office in her hometown in Baoshan, Yunnan (place she got the permits from), they said that outside Kunming, only tour group permits can be issued. And not having Kunming hukou, that's where she must apply.

Since we are not travelling with tour group, she's now all stressed about whether she can go or not. She looked on baidu, and found conflicting information.

To further complicate things, she asked from Ctrip, where they said that she could only fly to Hong Kong from few select major cities (Kunming not included).

We next plan to go to Changshui Airport and ask at the service desk of the airline that we have tickets from. I assume they'd have final answer on whether we wil be able to board the plane.

Does anyone have experience on this matter?

EDIT: Wife corrected that for herself she could get the permit from Kunming (because she has temporary residence permit here), but our son does not have the final Kunming RP yet, so that's the problem - son's final permit will be ready 1 month after our scheduled trip, which is paid and non-refundable.

@JanJal: My sympathies, disgusting situation. You really want to get disgusted, try Taiwan - great place, but you'll have the same problems, only worse.

@janjal - Don't panic. Same thing happened to me. In my case my wife could buy some letter or stamped certificate on Taobao. Basically it's from a travel agent and it says that she's transiting via HK (and going to anywhere where Chinese don't need a visa before departure). There was no need to show proof of onward travel but this was about 4-5 years ago.

@Debaser: Yeah, my wife mentioned something like this too - buying a document on Taobao.

But then she also found something on internet, saying that in 2017 this changed so that the certificate from travel agent would not be needed.

I'm not sure now what document exactly she was referring to.

Anyway, mainland citizens can use Chinese passport to go to Hong Kong (and stay up to 7 days), IF they have onward travel to a "third" country (or on way home). I assume you refer to that kind of document.

This is somewhat different from going to HK with Exit/Entry permit for tour groups, without actually being in such tour group.

@Janjal. I am not sure if the PSB office in Tuodong Lu is also an exit bureau. If it is, and you wife cannot get the documentation there, they should be able to give her the correct information. Q. Does your wife have a Kunming temp ID. This might also make a difference.

@tigertiger:

Yes, Entry & Exit Administration of PSB on Tuodong Lu is the place where Chinese apply for their permits to go to Hong Kong.

To do that, they need either Kunming hukou, or the temp Kunming ID that you mentioned.

At the moment, rural residents from everywhere else in Yunnan than Kunming, can only ever get permit for tour groups. Situation is similar in other provinces that are far from HK.

It has been difficult for me to even understand what my wife's real problem in this it, but I'm getting there!

She didn't know that there are different types of Exit & Entry permits for HK visits, so she got the permits for her and our son from her hometown. We were visiting there earlier anyway, and it was certain she could apply there.

But they automatically gave permits of "group tour" type, because individual permits are not granted outside Kunming.

And then she only later found the problem with permit type.

My wife has the temp Kunming ID, and could apply for new permit for herself. So that'd be fine.

But our son, who's Kunming temp ID is being processed (and won't be ready until later in spring), cannot apply in Kunming with the bare paper receipt - which is similar to what foreigners get while waiting for their RPs being processed into their passports.

We went to airport to ask China Eastern service desk whether we could use the "tour group" permits without being in tour group, or whether buying such certificates from Taobao would work, but the person at desk said it will not work - my wife and son would really have to join a real tour group.

Our next step is to visit local PSB and ask if our son's Kunming temp ID processing could be completed faster.