The L visa for tourism

The L visa is the one most people want and the one whose paperwork has been cut hardest. The simplification is real and it is official, but plenty of guides and every agency still ask for the old bundle, because asking for more documents is how an agency justifies its fee.

What is actually required

What goes to the counter is shorter still: the passport itself, the printed barcode page, and any old passport carrying a Chinese visa that is still within validity.

Children under sixteen

A first-time applicant under sixteen needs a birth certificate. If either parent on that certificate was born in China, the file also needs the passports and proof of permanent residence those parents held at the time of the birth, and their naturalisation certificates if they have since acquired another nationality.

That requirement is not bureaucratic fussiness. It is how the office works out whether the child is Chinese by birth, because under Chinese law a child of a Chinese parent who had not settled abroad  is Chinese, and cannot hold a Chinese visa at all . Such a child needs a travel document instead.

The form is signed by a parent, and the child does not normally have to appear.

What the simplification did not remove

The documents that went were the ones proving your plans. The documents that stayed are the ones proving who you are and where you live, and those are checked as closely as ever. Proof of residence in the consular district is not a formality: it is the basis on which the office is allowed to accept your file at all.

Applicants who once held Chinese nationality are also still asked for the naturalisation certificate and the last Chinese passport on a first application, and that requirement did not move.

All the proceduresAppointments and walk-ins