How much do you know about Chinese visa?

When you want to teach English in China, the first thing you need to think about is visa. This is a very serious and important thing. How to deal with your visa if you want to an ESL teacher in China? There are many different types of visa in China and it has different ways to get them,, so you need to find out what kind of visa you want before you coming to China.

Some foreign teachers who want to do English teaching jobs in China only want a work visa. They want to get it before they arrive in China so that they won’t be any problems working in China. Work visa is the best visa to teach English in China. It’s 100% legal and you will never have any problems. Because of those advantages, work visa is very hard to get and takes a very long tome. Normally it takes around one month for the school to get the working permit and invitation letter. Then it takes around a week for the school to mail the original papers to you. You will also need a week to apply for the work visa. This is really a long time. And it needs a lot of documents, like degree authentication, tesol/tefl certificate, more than 2 years teaching experience, medical check and non criminal record. Those documents are required for Z visa and you need to get all of them ready before the school start to apply for the working permit and invitation letter. The most important thing is that you need to be qualified forgetting a work visa. Some people thought they can get a Z visa even though they are not qualified. This is very wrong. If it is so easy to get a Z visa, then everyone else can get a Z working visa before coming to China. I have helped a lot of teachers get a Z visa before they come to China. Although it is very hard and takes a pretty long time, but anyway we finally got it done. They have a good time teaching English in China. They got paid on time every month and really enjoy the life and English teaching jobs in China.

There are also some teachers who don’t want a work visa because it takes so much time to get it. And some teahcers don’t have teaching experience before. So they will prefer to come to China with a tourist visa first. Then they will enroll a 120 tefl course in Bejing. It costs 3000RMB.It is recognized all over China and can replace two years teaching experience. So there wil be no problem getting a Z working visa. The good thing is that some schools are willing to reimburse the fees for studying the tesol certificate. Some teachers may be afraid that they will encounter some problems with a tourist visa,but facts show that this can really work out and make their English teaching jobs in China succesfully.

For those who don’t even have a bachelor degree, then it’s very very hard for them to get a working visa, because degree is one of the required documents to apply for work visa and it needs to be authenticated by the Chinese embassy. There are many teachers asking me that if they are able to teach English in China without a degree. The answer is yes. But I suggest you to get a business visa or student visa to continue English teaching jobs in China. For business visa or student visa, most schools are willing to pay for the visa fees and fees to extend the visa in Hong Kong. Another option is that you find a visa angency to handle the visa for you. There are many visa agencies in Guangzhou and Shenzhen. You can find one to sort out your visa easily. Then you can find schools who are not qualified to apply for visas and negotiate with them about the visa fees. In this way, your visas fees can be coverd by the school and you can easily find good offers. It is easy and very fast also very convienient for both you and the school.

There are some teachers who are already in China now. They don’t need the help from the school to do the visa. They have their own ways. This is a big advantage. Many schools like this kind of teachers. Because the visa costs a lot of time, efforts and money. Teachers who are already in China and can handle the visa by themseleves and can start right away are very welcomed by schools and are easily to get higher offers.