Visa Process

Quick and skinny here is a visa is required, cost ~$395, requires you to mail your passport to a visa agency and takes 2-3 months

You will need a L-visa (Tourist Visa) for China. 


See below for the general guidelines for China visas, before you spend too much time navigating it, please know China Visa Agents (more on this below) would be the best and straight forward place to know what materials to submit. As of Jan 2024, it is not mandatory to submit flight and hotel confirmation as part of your visa application. But if you have either, please include it as it will only help speed up the approval process. 


Before you spend too much time navigating it, please know China Visa Agents (more on this below) would be the best and straight forward place to know what materials to submit. As of Jan 2024, it is not mandatory to submit flight and hotel confirmation as part of your visa application. But if you have either, please include it as it will only help speed up the approval process. 


What is a Visa Agent?  Given that the physical application documents alongside your US passport need to be submitted to the Visa Office, you would need to go to one of the 6 Chinese consulates in the US. The reason you need to submit your passport is that the visa itself will be an entire printed page on the passport itself, so you will need to drop off your passport when you submit the application and pick up the passport once it is processed.  


For friends in NYC, you are lucky as there is a consulate there. For folks based out of Denver, the consulate that governs Colorado state is Chicago (it is based on your primary residence). Since it’s not economical to travel to Chicago to drop off and pick up your passport, we will need to pay a visa agent to do this. 


We will be using this company. This seems to have the best reviews and shortest turn-around time. 


It’s $395 per visa. The lowest we were able to find.