Please help! BNO HK citizen, problems with visa to visit china??

[confusedinsh]

I am in Shanghai and flew my girlfriend here to visit me from Canada. She is studying there, but she is a HK citizen with a BNO passport.

She arrived in shanghai but did not have a visa, she thought she did not need one. So she flew to HK to get one planning to come back.

They told her that she could not easily get a visa for 5 days, she talkd with them a lot and finally she says she paid $1000 CANADIAN(!!) to get a visa so she can enter on dec 25th.

I couldn't get much more information on exactly what the circumstances were, she said they told her she was a special case because, as she put it "i am not foreign ( like canadain/ american) but i am not chinese either"

From what I've read (i read through a years worth of posts on this forum and didn't find anyone have the same problem), it should only cost less than 500HKD for a same day visa.

She got mad at me for getting mad, and says its already done and to forget it. But...curiosity is killing me, I have to know what is going on!

Anybody have any ideas? Is this legit or did she get scammed somehow? BTW this all took place in the HK airport, i'm not sure exactly what department but she said its where her case directed her to go.

[confusedinsh]

BTW She mentioned it was valid for 5 years.

[PDLM]

My guess was that this was at the China Travel Service counter at the airport. Basically that is a commercial operation and they can charge more or less whatever the market will bear for visa services for China. But in any case C$1000 is a bit of a rip-off - she must be quite wealthy not to have made some serious effort to look for alternative solutions.

Would I be right in guessing that she is not ethnically Chinese?

[confusedinsh]

I don't think she was at the China Service Travel desk. In fact, I asked her to check with that service since their website said for under 500HKD you could get a visa provided you had, a valid passport, HKID, and a photo. when I showed her that link, she said she needs a DIFFERENT kind of visa. I asked her to call anyway and by the time she got back to me she said it was done already.

She is from HK, she is 100% chinese. I was actually really surprised that she paid that $1000 canadian, she has money but she is usually quite frugal. I just talked with her on the phone and she sounded pretty frantic/sad/distraught...I didn't ask her for more information.

[PDLM]

I'm afraid she got shafted. Just write it off as one of life's learning experiences. But as someone from HK she really should have been a bit less clueless about what documentation she needed to enter the mainland...

[confusedinsh]

ahhh, new developments..so she told me 1000cdn includes flights to HK and shanghai back. So say 600cdn for those, around 3000RMB for the visa is still damn expensive but at least its a lot less than I thought before.

I am going to just do as you say, chalk it up to life experience and enjoy our christmas together!

Thanks for your input.

[PDLM]

Ah - so that sounds a bit less unreasonable. I would have expected around HK$2000-2500 for a 5 year instant China visa on a weekend.

[Aritaurus]

And I thought BN(O) Passports were not recognised as travel documents for HK Residents entering the mainland. I'm quite surprised she had a Chinese visa stamped onto that passport.

Assuming she's a Chinese citizen with the Right of abode in Hong Kong, she should be entitled to a Home return permit which gives her visa free access to the mainland.

[wtbhotia]

anybody know if a BNO passport holder can get a visa at the Lowu border for shenzhen only. been searching for info but its all very old. dont know if anything has changed as a friend of mine is thinking of doing a trip to shenzhen tomorrow. I have a 3 year visa so no problem for me.

any help will be highly appreciated.