Getting a 10-Year Chinese Visa in Hanoi, Vietnam in 2023
Why not the US
The intention was always to go to China for three months, get a driver’s license, and drive where no one has gone. Seattle's Chinese consulate office closed during the lockdown and the next closest one in the States was in San Francisco. Submitting a visa application requires one to stick around the area for a decent amount of time (I would say probably around a week for anywhere you go) before it’s accepted or denied and you can pick it up, and it wasn't super economically feasible for us, nor did our timeline allow for a week of idle time in SF.
Why Vietnam
The plan was initially to acquire Chinese visas in Tokyo, Japan, but we found out only too late that the Tokyo office is not doing Chinese visas for foreigners (in July 2023). Online individual sources reported attempts in Vietnam, Korea, and Thailand with indeterminate levels of success. At the time, successes in Korea were only reported at extremely low levels and Vietnam had a larger bulk of attempts but also concerning instances of failures of which reason was difficult to determine, but Vietnam had closer and cheaper access to our other option, Thailand, while Korea was more expensive, less vetted, and isolated by water. We opted for Vietnam. There were no instances of attempts in Saigon at the time as far as I know.
Visa application process and tips
Special warnings:
Individuals who have traveled to Turkey (Turkiye) in the past reported their visa applications denied. We traveled to Turkey the year prior in July 2022 and wrote a small explanation of our purpose of travel and were fine.
The visa center keeps your passport when you submit your application. Take a picture or keep a PDF of it on your phone if you plan on traveling around and checking into hotels while you wait for your application to be processed.
You must include a long list of document printouts that can be found from official sources, including in particular an ID photo taken in front of a white background with very specific requirements. At the time we did the photos, the specs were:
354-420 pixels width entire photo
472-560 pixels height entire photo
191-265 pixels width of widest part of your face
10-85 pixels between top of head/hair and top of photo
under 256 pixels between center of eye and bottom of photo
Special things to note:
The photo background must be VERY white. Alex edited it in Microsoft PowerPoint somehow.
Other than that, NO PHOTO EDITING. Detection of photo manipulation will lead to an automatic denial of visa.
Both ears MUST be showing. This was very difficult for me since my ears lie flat against my head so I had to prop them up with my hair.
No jewelry, hat, or accessories of any kind.
The photo must be printed out in those dimensions. I believe you can preliminarily submit it to an engine online that will tell you if the photo is acceptable or not. We also speculate that the specificity of the requirements are so the Chinese government can plug your photo into their facial recognition camera system across the entire country, but that is a conversation for another post that you can view here. <LINK>
We made an appointment for the Chinese Visa Application Service Center, showed up, took a number, sat down with all our papers, and gave away our passports. The processing fee was 690k VND (somewhere around $28.50); we dropped it off on Wednesday 9/20/23 and it was ready for pick up Tuesday for $185 cash. They only take US dollar denominations of 10, 20, 100, and 1 and it must be in pristine condition— no rips, no bent corners, no pen marks, and no crumpling. Many developing countries accept USD as a form of payment in instances like this and require the cash to be in great condition because it’s supposed to be like an investment to be kept for when needed, and it is ultimately a foreign currency that requires a higher degree of selectivity.
I believe we did not make an appointment to pick up our completed visas. They do not tell you ahead of time whether your visa application was accepted or denied; you have to find out when you go to pick it up. We had great success and took a bus to the border city Đồng Đăng and walked over the land border, which you can also read about.
Tl;dr
Applying for a Chinese visa in Hanoi was successful in September 2023, and with enough care and attention to detail, you should be successful too, given circumstances do not change.
Afterword
Alex gathered the bulk of the information so this isn't as comprehensive as it could be— feel free to reach out with questions— but I hope sharing my experience helps someone, though I wonder if it will even reach anyone since I have no idea how SEO works.
In the world of travel to niche, volatile destinations, information should be as recent as possible; consequently, if you see relevant information over a year old I would take it with a grain of salt. I would actively seek out something within the last 6 months, better within the last 3 months or even one month; this is best done via travel forums because in many cases, no accessible official sources exist.
Traveling after COVID is chockful of disappointing surprises and unpredictable changes. A lot of governments took the COVID lockdown as an opportunity to reduce the capacity for complicated tasks, abandon projects, close down offices, change policy, build infrastructure, etc., and a lot of developing non-western countries lack information online about such changes.
Safe travels!