Dave Daily

I came to China in July 2005 - and I haven´t been back home to Brisbane since. A lot has happened in the meantime: getting married, having a daughter, travelling around China. My family has been urging us to visit for the past year or more.

We have tried to go twice but each time have been defeated by red tape. Our daughter Allie was born in China (in Dongguan, Guangdong province) but is a naturalised Australian citizen and has an Australian passport.

Getting her an exit visa should be easy, but it hasn´t been.

Follow up:

In Dongguan we were told that we would have to go back to Yolanda´s hometown to do the paperwork. That killed trip number one in January 2009.

We tried again in July 2009. We took a ream of paperwork to the PSB and after a full day hanging around their office were told it was impossible for Allie toget the exit visa. They determined that because her mother was Chinese, so was Allie, regardless of the Aussie passport. We ended up making an application for her Chinese citizenship to be revoked and were advised it could be 6-12 months for the application to be determined.

While checking on the updates of the application over the next 4 months we were advisd that becasue the application was in process we could apply for an ¨interim¨ exit visa. This got us exited to attempt trip number 3, scheduled for February 2010.

It looks like it actually going to happen this time!

We´ve got the tickets booked and paid for.

Allie´s exit visa took 30 mins, 20RMB and is safely locked away at home. Finding the right office and the right officer to speak to made all the difference, and their level of service and professionalism was a really pleasant surprise.

The next obstacle was Yolanda´s tourist visa to Australia. I was expecting it to go through, but thought there would be questions asked and evidence required. It took all of 3 days and the Australian consulate in Guangzhou (who process visa applications for the Heilongjiang region) returned Yolanda´s passport with a 1-year multiple entry visa attached.

So we are good to go!

Leaving Harbin on Monday Feb 8th for the daytime fast-train to Beijing, arriving at 5.45pm, then to the Beijing airport for our flight to Brisbane at 12.10am on Tuesday Feb 9th.