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Many thanks Charlie. With just a bank card I can probably set up a bank account with a small local bank who probably won’t want DNA samples verifying my identity in conjuction with a hefty monthly income as security.
I have to take a deep breath before I turn the VPN off for the likes of the bank, PayPal and even Yahoo. Ironically, I don’t use a VPN for privacy/security reasons but to provide a decent/faster connection to outside of China.
Sorry – been off sick.
The trouble with Chinese characters is that they don’t print unless the computer has been set up for them. EBay and credit card companies have rules and will only post to an address that matches my registered address and that is in pinyin. Apart from that I wouldn’t think that the overwhelming number of suppliers outside of China could actually print Chinese characters. Expecting them to accept photographic or postscript images is pushing my luck albeit that it might work with something posted by the family who are more tolerant in these matter.
I tried chasing the local post office for my missing mail and they just asked me for the China Post number of the package then shrugged their shoulders when I couldn’t produce one because it wasn’t domestic mail. While registering a letter might be a good idea, some suppliers are just not interested in customer service – HSBC in the UK, for example, told me that they could not post my credit and debit card to my registered home address in Chengdu except by surface mail or airmail. I suggested that I would happily pay for a courier but it they declined as it “was not part of their service”.
My latest idea is to change my registered address logged with my bank to my son’s address in the UK and get him to post me the bank cards by registered post. On receipt I will change the registration address back to my address in Chengdu. As for buying things on eBay – that doesn’t seem to be an option any more.
Sorry – been off sick.
Many thanks for your replies Charlie. Are PayPal going to be satisfied with a Chinese Debit Card (e.g. Union Pay) where the Chinese bank will only release your funds to PayPal if I have a sufficient balance in my bank account or do PayPal want a Credit Card that I can use independent of the balance in my bank account?
My PayPal account is already registered to my address in Chengdu so provided that the Card is registered to the same address I assume that there shouldn’t be a problem with PayPal’s security – they can be a bit anally retentive about addresses and ISP etc etc.?
@ Raychan Everything I have heard says that unless you are a Chinese citizen you will have to go with a registered tour-group.
This morning, booted up and checked through a speed tester that I had an internet connection. I tried to connect to Chengduliving, BBC UK and Yahoo UK. All failed to connect. I retried and still all three failed. I connected the VPN to a server in Vietnam tested at roughly 1,800 kB/s and all three sites connected immediately.
Guess why I use a VPN!
I find it’s up and down but, yes, it has got worse recently. Were I to rely on a basic connection then I wouldn’t get a service worth paying for. Using a VPN in conjunction with a speed test tool enables me to get a respectable connection to the outside world but I might have to change to a new server a few times a day when the speed drops to an unworkable level after a while.
This connection has just been tested as running at 1605 Kb/s with a 151 ping. Most servers running at over 1000 Kb/s seems to work for me and I can usually find one somewhere in the world given enough time but the American servers seem to have dropped off dramatically in the past week or so.
@ Ben
My wife is acquainted with an English man and his Chinese wife who live in Chengdu and tried to move to Spain. I have double checked and he claimed that they were refused by the Spanish visa office as she needed to establish a minimum of 24 months residency in the UK before she could be accepted for residency in Spain.
Interesting links though.
@ Luca
I am led to believe that for any EU national to take up residence in another EU country with their Chinese wife, they must first spend a minimum of 6 months resident in their own country – in your case you would need to get her into France first before you could emigrate to the UK. That said, although you, as an EU citizen, qualify for residence in the UK, your Chinese wife will not be eligible to the same privileges as granted to an EU citizen. Even an English born native now finds it very hard to get their Chinese wife to the UK for residency and proof of income and savings are included in the requirements along with demonstrating a genuine marriage where the couple have been living together as husband and wife for (I think) 5 years.
Perhaps it is easier to get her into France, make her a French citizen after a couple of years and then emigrate to the UK – they shouldn’t be able to stop her with a French passport. Alternatively, jump on a lorry at Calais and experience for yourself just how lax border controls are. 🙂
That strikes me as counter productive unless your vacuum cleaner is fitted with a Hepa filter to the same standard as your air cleaner.
If you get English divorce papers, birth certificate or whatever translated by an agency in the UK then the agency needs to get it certified as a genuine translation by a UK solicitor. You then have to get the UK Gov to certify that the solicitor is licensed in the UK. I think you could find it cheaper and easier to get it translated in China at a Notary Public if the documents are intended to keep the Chinese Gov happy.
I married in the UK while another English friend got married in China and there were no real advantages except that I was in the position to argue with a civil servant when they considered there was a problem and understood exactly what was expected when I lost an argument. My wife’s bona-fide still has to be sourced and translated into English whenever we go to the UK and I still have to have my birth cert, decree-nici and marriage cert translated into Chinese for whenever I renew my residence permit in China.
The British Gov are more interested in the duration of your marriage and if you can prove she will go home when the visa expires, that she has sufficient funds for hospitalization and emergency flights home etc than they are in where you got married.
You will apparently need (but these things are not cast in stone as they can vary from city to city and at short notice):
- a current passport
- a valid Chinese Visa
- a Certificate of No Impediment (CNI) (try the British Embassy in Beijing)
- three photos of the marrying couple, taken together
- a registration fee
<b>The Chinese partner to the marriage will be asked to submit the following:</b>
- a certificate of marriageability (obtainable from the office which has the physical control of his or her file)
- a certificate of birth
- household registration book
- health certificate(obtainable from a regional level local hospital)
- a letter from the parents of the local partner giving permission for their child to marry a foreigner (this letter should include the index fingerprint of both parents below their signature and date). (probably if your bride is young – I’d never heard of it and it doesn’t always get mentioned.
<h3>Translation of documents:</h3>
ALL English-language documents must be translated into Chinese. Translations should be obtained from and certified by one of the Municipal Public Notary offices.This is worth a look for comparison bearing in mind that official requirements quickly change here as does the interpretation of them. http://www.travelchinaguide.com/embassy/visa/marriage-registration.htm
Don’t forget that your bride will want wedding photographs taken in a studio. A reception/wedding breakfast is traditional. Gifts of sweets presented at the reception in small cheapo boxes is also traditional as is handing out (single) cigarettes to the male guests.
Personally I chose to marry in the UK where I was on familiar territory.
Congratulations and good luck!
Use eBay as a guide: http://www.ebay.co.uk/
@ Ray – Astril’s Stealth Mode seems to work very reliably. It is worth doing a speed test on the full range of their servers to establish a list of the best performers. However, I have noticed that some of the Tiawan ones fail from time to time even though they can get listed as high speed performers. Always do an ISP check when you first connect to a server because frequently you aren’t connected albeit that it looks as if you are – switching the server connection of and on again seems to resolve this issue.
For the last couple of days I have been trying to update my security software with a 244 MB file. I finally gave up and used the VPN (USA – Los Angeles 2) and it zipped through it with no problems in a matter of minutes. I suspect that this may well be down to the network finding a route without a bottleneck.
I haven’t once felt motivated to try another VPN provider in 18 months regardless of all the free ones out there.
I think it’s more like 50,000 US$ a year for a bank to do an international transfer for you unless you can satisfy the Chinese bank that you came by the money honestly and is not a money laundering scheme.
Trouble with Strong was that it didn’t like my D’Link wireless router and technical support repeatedly failed to recognise this until challenged. You’d think they’d have a ‘buy and beware’ warning. Perhaps they’ve got their act together now but on the occasions when I have asked them, technical support has to go away and ask a backroom boy before they eventually say – no, can’t support D’Link model XXX.
Conversely, Astril has worked consistently for 18 months now with no issues and I can easily, freely and quickly change to a different server to reroute a connection if it should become unreliable and have the optional bonus of double layers of encryption rendering it nigh undetectible.
WCIF 23rd to 27th October at Century City ???
http://www.biztradeshows.com/trade-events/western-china-international-fair.html
