lele

Note one more requirement to apply for citizenship: Abandonment of Chinese Citizenship. This means, your SO can not go back to China without a visa, ever again. They can not open a business in China ever again, without a visa. It also means that you can never apply for a Chinese Green Card, and they only can, so long as their parents are still alive.

I was told, in many small cities, that any BOC will do it. This is only because most small cities only have ONE BOC. In Qingday, Yantai, Jinan, and other similarly sized cities (eg: FoShan, etc.) Only the MAIN BRANCH OF BOC can do this. It is simple. You just need to find the right one. Any taxi driver can take you, for a price, or your SO can just ask.

I would agree. Either: 1. have the chinese spouse wait to enter the US until the USA spouse is ready to really come and be married, 2. have the spouse return quickly, to formally get married 3. try to immigrate to England?!?!

My Post was removed????? Hey! Not fair! What I posted again was: My wife loves Jerry! <take the political commentary elsewhere> Before watching Jerry, <take the political commentary elsewhere>

The CC is only good in an emergency. It will never get you the 3-star hotel room for 50-100rmb a night, which you can do with cash, and still live a good life. It is cash which allows you to haggle over old silver that someone needs to sell, and will make an amazing gift for a friend back at home, or elsewhere in China. Remember, China is a country of much extremes, there is everything from extreme poverty (100RMB a day is a rich person who can do almost anything in parts of Yunnan or Guizhou) to extreme wealth (100RMB a day can barely buy you a rotten cot to sleep on in Shanghai). It is a culture where business men and women regularly transport around large sums of cash (an old business person I know regularly carries 30-40 Wan RMB a day back and forth between branches of his business), and where almost all deals are in Cash (if you want to buy that house/farm/business/jewelery/etc. you will get a better price, and have a higher chance of securing your item if you come with CASH IN HAND. Good Luck and happy travels!

For the Hope Tax Credit, you can apply if you make less than $55,000 a year. A pell grant, it depends on family size, and income, but it generally only applied for a family of 3 if less than 40,000 a year, and for a family of 2 less than about 30,000 a year. There may be other programs too. In MA, you can even deduct up to 15% of your hope or lifetime learning credit (even I can take this one, being a graduate student) off of your state taxes... However, the most you can get from these credits is about 2000 back, unless you live in the New Orleans Area this year. All in all, the pell grants are much more money (more than 4000 a year, in cash, not needed to be paid back). But, why not shoot for both???

If you pay in Cash, you get a better rate. It allows you to haggle, and to purchase from vendors who will not rip you off as much. This said, almost every city (except for a few small rural ones) I have been in (And I have been to more than 500 cities in China), has at least one Zhong Guo Yin Hong which will case a traveler's check, at face value. In fact, sometimes, you can get a better rate than for cash, since they know it is authentic and not forged.

We find EBAY not too good, except for peddling lower end products. sadly, the consumer trust (and high fees) seem to warn away people purchasing at the higher end of the spectrum. But it is good for building an initial clientel base!

Yes, if: 1. she has a Green Card 2. Your income is low enough 3. She is working on a degree for a BA at an accredited institution. my wife just got her pell grant check a few weeks ago.

Skype is good. Everyone I know uses it...however, I still only use it for computer to computer, until a local mainland china number opens up!

She can stay in china for as long as she wants, so long as she is a Chinese Citizen. If she is a Chinese Citizen, it will be EASY for you to stay there with her too. The only issue is that she will loose her Permenant Resident Status if she stays more than a year, without returning. However, since you are already married, and have been so for more than 2 years, and since she will still have her paperwork in order, you could always reapply for her to gain admission via a i-130 in the future. And if you applied in Europe this time, it would be much faster! The fact is, I know people who stay only 1 day a year and have no problem...but there are others who have large problems. I think, if your heart is there, do not worry about the legalese...you can always reapply if worse comes to worse, and if not, then no harm is done!

Quite good pics. It looks like 2-3 of mine are almost from the exact same spot! But those sunsets are really great! Whoever took these, I would like to meet and share some tricks and tips both ways with!

That's it! We are done. The CF-1 stamp was given this week, at the interview. We were told that our case file was so huge that we would not be called back for another interview after the 2 years (at least we hope that it still holds...he did type it into the computer). Thus, we are done with the USCIS, forever we hope! What was most interesting is that our interview was far from what we expected: 1. We were told to not keep giving more evidence (after seeing our file more than 5 inches thick, they believed us). 2. most of the questions were directed to me, not to my wife. 3. we spent more than 1/3 of the 15 minute interview talking about qingdao beer and the up-coming Olympics in the city in 2008 4. after changing into a dress-up skirt, the attendants in the building offered much "help" to my wife, although before, in her comfey pants, people ignored us both profusely. 5. the interviewer asked us about how we met, and then about what we ate the day before 6. we got a good interviewer, middle-aged male. it seems that the people with female interviewers, or younger ones, were having a rougher time. 7. we talked more informally than formally, and it made all 3 of us more at ease! 8. go in with everything organized...we wasted no time getting out papers when asked, and often, he saw another 5-6 important papers there, so that he did not need to ask much...this saved us more time to talk about qingdao beer and the up and coming Olympics! 9. bring pictures of the FAMILIES together. he wanted these for the file, and even just made copies of them, allowing us to keep the originals! For more information, feel free to ask. If you live in NJ/NYC, then I can give you more details in a private message! Now, back to having fun!!! :-)

There is one that we have used for Qingdao. They had a link on there for other cities. I can not remember if Changchuan was on there or not, but the page was in Chinese, and I do not know the characters for the city name (never needed to learn them). try: http://house.sohu.com/

The account can be kept active, and just like in the usa, just have it sent to a local bank (bank of china) and they can forward it. Or have a relative send it. Just so long as she remains Chinese, there are no problems! Otherwise, it is hard for her to go back (unless her parents are still alive, in which case she can get a Chinese Green Card), but will be nearly impossible for you to go back (unless you have a huge wad of cash to invest, or unless you can get hired to work as a professor at a University, etc.), at least on a permenant/semi-permenant basis. Plus, if she/he becomes a US Citizen, they may get drafted...Chinese citizens do not need to worry about that!