# Long stay visa for Chinese spouse of French citizen



## celticwill (Feb 23, 2015)

For whom it may concern,

I will now give you a list of the documents we presented this month at the French Embassy in Beijing, for the application of my Chinese wife's Long Stay Visa for France (Visa de long séjour de conjoint de Français), with some details. 
The visa officer told us, and I quote, that the papers we provided were "Perfect".
My wife received her visa after 7 days.
Hope it helps some of you.

1- 2 long visa application form

2- 2 pictures (35mm x 45mm)

3- Original passport + copy of the 5 first pages + copy of any visa/stamp on the passport

4- Original of French marriage certificate (less than 3 months old)

5- Original of French Family Book

6- Proof of husband's nationality: French ID card (I am not officially registered at the French embassy)

7- Invitation letter hand-written by the husband

8- Proof of husband's residence in France: having lived in China for 10 years, I do not have my own place in France, so I gave them a paper of my french bank account + a letter from my dad stating that I was living in their house + copy of my dad's ID card + copy of my father's water bill

9- "Justificatifs de communauté de vie". This is basically a proof that you haven't stopped your relationship after the marriage, that you kept an "active" couple life.
Now that is a tricky one, especially in China! According to French law, married couple cannot live apart. So the embassy gives you a list of documents that you can give them as proof: joint accounts with both names on it, receipt with both names on it, bills with both names on it, exchange letters, etc...
BUT here is the thing... In China, there is no receipt with both names, the rent and charges are all paid cash so there is no bill, and you need at least 50000RMB (7130 euro) to open a joint account, which we couldn't afford. We also live together, so we don't send each other letters!
We were worried but collected anything we had:
- Copy of the Chinese police registration of our address in Beijing (mine and my wife's, same address but 2 different papers)
- Copy of my passport's Chinese visas
- Plane tickets receipt + photocopy of plane tickets (flights that we took together, of course)
- Copy of our SMS conversations since the marriage (screenshots)
- Copy of pictures we took since the marriage

As I said, we were anxious, especially about that last part of papers required, but we went to the visa office of the French Embassy in Beijing with what we had, and basically "prayed for the best".
The guy went carefully through all our papers. When he came to look at our proof of relationship, he quickly reassured me, saying that he was aware it was not easy to collect proofs since there are not such papers with both names and address in China.

I hope it will help and possibly reassure some of you who decided to apply for that visa.

Best Regards,
William


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