Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Oh, I see, “validity” actually means that you have 3 months time, starting from the day of receiving the visa, to enter China. It means you have to use it to enter the mainland within 3 months. It doesn’t mean you can stay 3 months. 🙂
It’s not a mistake, it’s virtually impossible to get 3 month tourist visas these days, 30 days is what 99.99% of people get, regardless of how many days they wish they got. It’s just the standard. You should always check this when you get your passport/visa in your hands when you get it back from wherever you got it, but there is no way you would’ve gotten more time even if you did complain about it. 🙂
You are allowed to get 1 extension of an extra 30 days at the PSB at the north side of Tianfu square, behind the Mao statue.
Eli paid a large amount of money for not registering at the PSB in time, it was actually one of the first posts on Chengdu Living when we started in 2010: Talking Your Way Out of a Visa Fine
This is a different matter. Eli got a temporary entry visa from his school that said “Duration: 000”, he was supposed to go to the PSB to get this changed to a 6M student visa resident permit, because 000 actually means you have 30 days to do this. I had the exact same and unknowingly overstayed my 000 visa for over 2 months and almost got deported too. Eventually 5000kuai and an apology letter was all it needed too. And I know more people who went through the same.
This thread is referring to the Accommodation Registration for Aliens. It’s supposed to be done within 24hrs. Livinginchengdu’s post seems accurate, only you don’t need any passport photo. My roommate has been in China for almost 10 years and he literally never registers unless he needs a visa renewal, in which case he usually does it 2 days before his visa expires – 3 or 6 months after he entered China. He never got any problems.
That being said, I’ve heard from my visa agent that it can differ a lot depending on which police station you’re going to. There’s an increasing numbers of foreigners pouring in year after year and I’m guessing the fact that more and more of these offices are having to deal with this more often, some are getting more strict than others. Maybe they’re getting tired of people not doing what they’re supposed to, while others still don’t really care.
@Clayton, that’s just the standard routine way this thing goes. It wasn’t personal.Can anyone recommend a gym around the US Consulate, or the Yulin or Tongzilin area?
If I were looking for a commercial gym in that area I’d probably go to that 24/7 B-Active place in Poly Center. I went there for a workout with Brendan and Chris not so long ago. It’s surprisingly clean, not too busy and the equipment is decent.
That being said, I just found their pricelist online and a normal subscription is actually pretty pricy. The off-peak pass is doable, though, if you enjoy training at irregular times.
Oh, beforehand you’ll need to register your address at the police station and get a paper called the “Accommodation registration form for aliens.”
You’ll need that too. Don’t worry, it’s easy.
An extension at the PSB is an easy effort. You can get one for +30d for 160rmb or something. Take some copies of your passport, visa page, entry stamp, and your flight out of China.
Go there somewhere 1-2 weeks before your current visa expires and you’ll be fine.
You can only get this 1 time. It used to be 2 times.
They might be inaccurate depending on what you want to use it for but they can still be great tools to track certain trends in your life.
Whether or not they’re good value depends on yourself and why you feel like you want one.
Xiaomi is the bare minimum, it does nothing but counting steps and tracking sleep. The HR monitor is useless. But at 79RMB, sure, obviously great value. Completely different segment.
Fitbit is being the cool brand on the block and they do have a fancy app but I feel their firmware could be better and has a lot more potential than what they’re doing with it. Actually I’m just rustled their bands don’t have a activity reminder / idle alert, which seems like a super standard attribute for a device like this.
I like Garmin’s stuff a lot.
We just got some parallel bars and pull up bars in my complex so I’ve been sticking with a body weight exercise regimen instead of finding a gym. I was skeptical at first, but I’m in surprisingly good shape without lifting weights. I’ve definitely lost some mass, especially in my legs and chest, without a squat rack and bench. But anyways, not having gym access isn’t a legit excuse for not working out.
On another note, I’ve stopped taking creatine after I noticed my hair thinning… damnit.
Re no gym chest: download one of those “100 Pushups” apps. I haven’t benched in over a year and when I noticed some loss of mass I gave that a try (because it was something I could do outside of my workout regimen and only took ~10 minutes) I quickly went from 10-15 reps for a total of 75 to 30-40 reps sets for a total of 200 pushups a few times per week. That took me <2 months and chest started growing fast again.
Wow, that is expensive. I am shocked at the price of apartments which are listed for rent here.
Agree.
I unfortunately stopped tracking 11 days into April, so I only have data from 1/3rd of the month. It seems I spend about 200RMB/day on average excluding rent, and it’s very obvious that the majority (more than half) of that goes to eating out and going out for drinks.
Mastering the piano has been on my bucket list for a long time. I always feel like it would be hard to practice at home. What kind of budget would I realistically need to be able to play on something at home? I assume a keyboard could do the trick? I know nothing about all this.
I’m also in for April. So far so good.
By the way Chris I think your sheet is missing an average. It would be interesting to see how much you spend on each category per time. As in simply dividing the total by the count of that entry. That would give people a much better perspective of what they could expect to spend themselves.
Edit: re-reading your OP I guess you already did this, just didn’t include it in the screenshot
One thing I see missing is your phone+data bills…
Internet is also missing. He probably just paid some amount upfront and didn’t owe anything in March. But it’s offset by his royal VIP golden haircut subscription he got this month, so the total is probably still fairly accurate.
I think I might try this too in April.
Only 16RMB for water though Chris, really? I finish one of those 18L jugs every week, lol.
