Getting Your Child a 2-Year Entry-Exit Permit to China (Experience from within Canada)

 Holy Tolito!

This past summer (July/Aug. 2024), my family and I made our return to Canada for a visit. This was our first visit in about 5 years. Needless to say, it was a fast and sastiable visit. While we were booking and organizing the trip to Ontario though, there was a slight issue that concerned my son's entry and exit permit for China. When we applied for his permit, it was seemingly a reasonable amount of time, given we were unaware how long it would take it receive it. When we were given it (pretty much within 72 hours), the expiry was touch earlier than we had actually anticipated, making it a bit worrisesome (needlessly), with regards to the return back to China. 

While we were certain it wouldn't be an issue, my wife wanted to look into extending the permit. While contacting the government in China, it was stated that only in Canada my wife would be able to apply for an "extended" permit (2 years). Interesting, was the word that came to my mind as well.

There was a list of general documents that we needed to collect, the more pain-staking one was the "notarized" marriage certificate from my wife and I, granted we got married in Canada so we were a touch confused when asked for a notarized copy of the government document. We learned that governments enjoy making us spend money needlessly on an alfadavit (sort of document), that is essentially attached to the license to show it is, well, um, real, I guess-quite ridiculous really, but yes, now we have our certificate and a flimsy cardboard document attached to it-so ya. After that everything else was simple really, get a photo of you and your child at a Canada post office holding a newspaper with the current-most date (that of the application I wager is what they aim for), and submit that to the online application (through their wechat mini-program). Lastly they needed his permit document shipped with a prepaid postage enevelope (AND) money order of 23$ and change. 

Being frank, I dislike government checklists-passionately. This one though, certainly took the cake, the catchy thing about it, wasn't just that it was in Chinese (simplified) or even that it was on a a bloody wechat mini-program, but they didn't even have the courtesy to number list or bullet point the list of itens/documents we needed. We were reading through this list as if it were a recipe. In all honesty, my wife and I could both get that they certainly wanted money and the documents, I just-well-we both-just simply didn't get the logic of a bloody money order. So there we were on a mini-vacation to Edmonton, away from Ontario, getting a money order purchased with my cellphone by some bloody technological miracle (cause I don't carry cards or even really use my debit anymore), and we are told, if there is a need to return the money, you may only return it at the store you purchase it at. A smile, nod, headshake, "ok." The universe is having a laugh just watching my anxiety flair up to the max. 

So, in the event that you are wondering, is the juice worth the squeeze, meh. When we got back to China my wife ended up applying for my son's HuKou anyways. We didn't really plan on wasting time or money with that earlier as we didn't plan on being here this much longer-but ya, probably would have saved my anxiety a bit that day had we gotten that earlier. Also would have saved me about 30 +  bucks. 

Bloody governments.