danswayne

Some of you are missing something. It has been said before in this thread but noone else seemed to see it. YOU CAN NOT USE DCF IF YOU ARE NOT MARRIED. If I am wrong please forgive me but do not think about this as a possibility if you are not married yet, or don't have a working visa (which I think you do actually have if I remember). I lived in China for 3 years and used my grandparents address for every piece of paperwork that asked ffor it whenever it was presented. As was also said before in this thread do not worry that they will throw you in jail, or refuse the petition because the address is your parents or grandparents or anyone else in your family, just make sure you use the same one. As for her address don't even think about using the schools address, use her parents address and don't think twice about it, unless of course they don't like you which I am sure could never happen anyway. My wife lived with me of course while we were married in China but it was also in the schools apartment so she also used her grandfathers address and did not change it through the whole process. DCF is the fastest way to get the visa and it requires the least amount of paperwork when you arrive stateside. I would suggest you use it, if you are going to get married in China anytime soon, and you have a working visa. This is just a small tidbit of info which may not be needed but I have a question. Have you considered starting your graduate school online while you are in China. I have had a few friends who lived in China even longer than me and they started AND finsihed their graduate degree online and are happy they did. If you could do this you could stay in China, get married, and return to America with your wife Husband and Wife and not get farther behind in your education. Sorry if I rambled on too long, if anyone has any questions I might be able to help them with please let me know and I will try to help as much as possible.

My wife is in China for a few weeks and the main thing she misses is her car. We live in South Florida so she has a nice little convertible and she likes to drive it a lot. Only problelm is she drives about 15 miles an hour.

My wife's parents are both doctors in China, and she just recently gave birth to our first child, a healthy baby boy. Her parents were surprised how quickly she recovered from the birth, and how healthy she was the whole time. I beleive the Chinese way is good, but her parents believed she did much better over here than almost any woman in China has in the last 50 years. The main reason they give for this is how much cleaner it is over here. The environment, the quality of the food, and everything else mixed in. This is coming from her parents and not me so I am not biased one way or the other. I do believe sometimes the Chinese hospital system is better than our way over here and sometimes our way is better.

My wife is vsiting China right now and has told me that when I go back to pick her up we are bringing at least 1 maybe 2 full suticases of just snack food back to America. She is from Hunan one of the 5 spiciest provinces in China. She does not like all the snacks here. She likes american food pretty good but really missed her chinese food while here. Her parents were here for 6 months also visiting and helping with their brand new grandson and got tired of the choice of Chinese food to choose from here in south Florida. Her mom liked American food more that Chinese food, but they could not find a good variety of Chinese food at all down here.

Trust your fiance almost half the country is short on power right now. My wife has been back for two weeks and has only had power every other day. They do not have grids the same as we do. They can turn power on for some things and leave it off for others for days at a time. She has not been able to get the computer to log onto the internet when the power is on because everyone is using it at the exact same time and it is way too slow. China is growing too fast for the technology they have now. Just trust your fiance and take her word for it we were thinking we might move back to China one day, but this trip has shown Diana she is way too Americanized already, won't even think about moving back in the future.

You might want to rephrase that to they don't really care about the first one. As stated before you can't get married a second time unless you were divorced the first time legally so they don't check here. Of course they can find out if they try even a little bit.

Doesn't 250 have something to do with 250 stupid thieves from Chinese legend?

A lot of people in China have problems with geocities because it is blocked pretty much all over the country. I was there for 3 years and could not log onto a geocities webpage once.

Mark, Before you think about changing names when you arrive here listen to our story and see what you think. Diana also got a CR-1 visa and things couldn't have gone smoother after we got here. She got her green card in just a couple short weeks and social security card was just an hours wait away in the SS office. Then we decided to change her name to English officially. This is where the problems started, in Florida it cost about $200 to change a name through the court, and then you have to pay INS something like $130 for a new greencard, with new name on it. We did all of this August of 2003, and we are still waiting for her greencard with new name on it. We did not know it takes about a year for them to get the new greencard to you. So now Diana has a drivers license and greencard with chinese name on it, and she has a social security card and credit card with english name on it. Needless to say this causes some confusion sometimes with banks and stores. We have been told if she is going to become a citizen she can have her name changed then and it should be free. You might want to check on the free part, but anyway since your wife is CR-1 like us she can apply for citizenship after being here for 3 years, not too much longer than it is taking us the long and expensive way. If we had known this before we would have kept her chinese name for legal purposes and just told friends and family her name is Diana. And then we would change her name at time of citizenship. Of course this is assuming your wife is going too become a citizen also.

Thank you to those of you who have tried to back me up a little bit on this question that I knew was dangerous to begin with. They will be going back to China and hope to return to America quite a few times. New2004summer as for you, I was member 30 out of 1047 at the time of this post. I have never asked a question with intentions of cheating anyone or anything. We were wondering if there was a legal way if they could return to China when they wanted to and go back and forth easier, maybe even do some work while here. If it is like Don, Mick, and Dave say they might just go back and wait until the wife becomes a citizen to immigrate that way. They do not want to stay here forever just want to travel to daughter and grandkid whenever they want to.

Our chinese parents are here for a few months. They are liking it here and wondering if they could get a greencard. I know they would not be following the stipulation of their visa if they try this, but if they try a legal way it must not be too wrong if it works. So the question is, is there a legal way to go about this.

My wife and I worked with a foundation from Tennessee in Hunan province for over a year and we worked to help orphans, victims of natural disasters, and pretty much the needy of the countryside. I do not have firsthand knowledge of anyone having an abortion no, but I do have firsthand, secondhand, and thirdhand knowledge of rules and laws in China being forgotten with a well placed wad of cash or favors at the right time. We met many people in our business in Hunan and even Beijing, and learned there are many rules that are not necessarily written, but can be enforced when needed. I have done things I was not supposed to because of family friends in all levels of government over there. So yes there is a one child policy, is it enforced; yes and no, all depends on who you are and where you are.

http://www.refugees.org/world/articles/wom...omen_rr99_8.htm China's One-Child Policy In 1973, after decades of encouragement to have multiple children, the Chinese government told its people that population growth was a danger and that each family should have only one child. Since then, the policy has, for the most part, been stringently enforced throughout the country. Though the policy is not itself written into Chinese law, Chinese officials have said it is mandated by laws governing other aspects of Chinese society. The official sanction for violating the one-child policy is a fine. However, the People's Republic of China (PRC) government acknowledges that it cannot always control how local officials enforce the policy. Because of regional population quotas, local officials have an incentive to keep the birth rate down. Chinese women have reported being forced to abort a pregnancy or to be sterilized. Men have told of being severely beaten and having to send their wives into hiding to deliver children. A Chinese national must obtain permission to be married as well as to have a child. Although the PRC government says that ethnic minorities are exempt from the one-child policy, some minorities, such as the Uighurs, allege that they have been brutally forced to comply. Some exemptions exist for men who remarry. In addition, if a first child is handicapped, it may be possible to get permission for a second child, especially if the handicapped child is a girl. In other areas, particularly the more rural regions, payment of a bribe may be sufficient to obtain permission for multiple children. Without permission, a second child cannot be registered and, therefore, does not legally exist. The child cannot attend school (without payment of bribes) and later will have difficulty obtaining permission to marry, to relocate, and for other life choices requiring the government's permission. In some areas, particularly cities, the one-child policy is often promoted through incentives, such as extra salary or larger houses for couples who pledge to have just one child. The government generally pays for birth control and abortions (and a woman who has an abortion receives a vacation with pay). Failure to abide by the policy may result in job loss or demotion. Despite local variations on enforcement of the policy, each local jurisdiction has a family planning office responsible for its implementation. In addition, most large employers have someone on-site to oversee compliance. According to many asylum seekers, if a woman is noticeably pregnant with a second child, peers often try to dissuade her from giving birth. If such pressure does not work, these women say, family planning officials will visit her home to convince her to abort the pregnancy and, voluntarily or otherwise, will escort her to the local hospital or clinic. Given the longstanding preference for boy babies in China, the one-child policy has made female infanticide common. Baby girls are also abandoned at orphanages and churches. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- September 1999

They tried the first time in January and were turned down, and then tried again last week and got it. They will be here in about 2 weeks, they got the interview date about 2 or 3 weeks after they called for it, and got the visa the same day. They had to get everything in order and we sent our most recent tax forms over there for them. They mainly they have things in China that will draw them back without a doubt.

We would be happy to give any info we can, but we were married in China and Diana came here on a CR1 visa so she did not have to go through the same steps most of the other girls here did. She received her greencard about 3 or 4 weeks after she arrived and her social security about the same time. When she arrived she was already a temporary permanent resident. So all we have to do now is wait for the time to remove her temporary status and then become a citizen if she wants to. Dave if you have any specific questions please ask, I am getting ready to give finals to my students and getting the house ready for Chinese parents, I will make a list soon if you want me to though.

They already have the visa, but we have heard that the decision as to how long you stay ultimately lies in the hands of the officer at the customs line in the airport. Does anyone know of any tips or tricks to make them see that it would be good to get a 6 month stay?

I will try to form a list in a day or two about what they did, but right now I can't think of anything that wasn't listed in the requirements. They do own property in 3 different provinces and ba ba does have a job that pays an American salary I am going to think that had a lot to do with it.

Is there anything you can do to help the guy in the line lean more towards 6 months, or does that time period just seem to be common anyway. They plan to buy a ticket with return in early December which would be six months, I am going to guess that is about all they can do to guarantee a longer stay, along with saying they are coming to visit their pregnant daughter and spend time with their brand new grand son.

Just about the only advice I can think of is be over prepared and pray that you get a nice interviewer. Like I said they got turned down the first time and then they got the same person the second time also. They were terrified when they saw they were going back to his window. As it turned out though he asked them if he had turned them down before and when they said yes he told them to go to a different window and it worked. They were given no real reason the first for the refusal, just that stupid blue piece of paper saying the general reasons. This time ba ba went prepared to fight until he got a visa or real reason for refusal at least, so it looks lilke confidence and refusal to give up is the main thing you need when dealing with the idiots in the embassy.

I have not posted much here lately, guess I got lost in the new wave of people joining over the last year. Anyway time for my first post in many moons. Wo de tai tai is pregnant and delivery date is August 20, so her parents were frantic in trying to get a visa to be here for the big day and take care of only daughter and brand new grandson. They tried to get a visa earlier in the year and were turned down by some idiot behind a window. They returned for interview number 2 on May 17 and were granted a visa. Weird thing about their visas is that daddy got a multiple entry visa good for about a year and mommy got a visa that ranges in date from May 18 - Aug 16. At first they did not understand everything about the dates and things so they thought the mom could only stay until August 16 so they were happy and sad at the same time, but now they know that she has until August 16 to enter the country. They are hoping to get a stamp at the airport that lets them stay for about 6 months. Do any of you think this is possible, since my tai tai is pregnant and needs her parents to help out, and of course they plan to buy a ticket with return sometime in December in hopes they can get a visa for that long. P.S. They said it looked like about 90% of people were getting visas that day and they are now taking interviews again, because my wifes uncle got an interview date yesterday for some busienss he has here. Maybe that little break they took is gonna be a good thing in the long run.

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We are thinking about returning to China next year and getting a job for me in one of the international schools, so I can get paid an American salary and a free place to stay and all those perks. Then my lao po seems a little interested in starting a day care/kindergarden where she does things the American way. We have a friend who has helped about 105 people in China this year who are there because of his help. He has shown interest in helping us with teachers and experience. We also have quite a few connections in various cities both Chinese and foreign who are interested in seeing us succeed.

Would your wife be against bribing one of the officials that is in charge of the birth certificate. I am sure she can find a friend or someone who knows who is in charge of such things and get the certificate anyway. After living there for 3 years I can tell you if you know the right people then anyting is possible, just ask a couple of other guys on here.

We use virginmobile for our emergency cell phone uses and it works out pretty good. We pay 25 cents a minute for the first 10 minutes every day and then 10 cents a minute thereafter. We had to buy the phone which was about 75 dollars with about 10 dollars of airtime included and then you have to top up every 90 days. This is the thing we liked most about it, we only were required to spend 20 bucks every 3 months and the time rolled over if we didn't use it. So for 5 months now we have been spending about 10 dollars a month for a cellphone since we do only use it for emergency.

My wife and I have been asked about starting a school in China to teach english quite a few times. Does anyone know a few things about doing something like this. Is it possible for a laowai like me to be part of this sort of business and is it really profitable.