'We queued for nothing': Influencer queues for China visa at 4am with 170 people in front, told to go home 5 hours later

When China recently reopened its borders, there were understandably many foreign tourists keen to travel there. 

And this has resulted in long queues for China visas, with several Singaporeans taking to social media recently to complain about their agony waiting in line.

In a TikTok video uploaded on Saturday (May 6), Ong Yi Ting documented her experience trying to get hold of a visa at the Chinese Visa Application Service Centre.

Ong is a local TikToker who creates unique Hokkien content on the platform. 

At the start of the one-minute clip, the 22-year-old content creator showed herself getting into bed at 11pm on May 4 so she could get some rest before the arduous queue. 

"I heard one uncle started queuing at 3am. I need a visa to China quite urgently," she shared. 

The next morning (May 5), she and her friend reached the centre at around 4.30am.

And while they was already pretty early, there were already some who were there even earlier — over 170 of them, to be exact. 

Some of these people were so enthusiastic about lining up that they even brought tents and sleeping bags to make themselves cosy, Ong said.

She herself had prepared some drinks and snacks, she told AsiaOne. 

@lashyoyt

hearsay people are starting to queue at 5pm for next morning's slot👺

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At 7am, the queue began to move. Ong said she was told that the embassy only released 200 tickets a day and the line gets cut off at a certain point. 

And true enough, the 201st person in line was asked to head home.

Unfortunately, at 8.54am, Ong and her queuing companion were told that they were unable to get a slot, she said. 

"No hope guys, it's full," she told the camera sadly, adding that the line was suddenly cut off at around the first hundred-plus people in the queue. 

In one clip, a staff was also heard shouting: "No more already, can go back. Tomorrow then come." 

Ong told AsiaOne that she was pretty sad about being asked to leave despite queuing for so long.

"It was quite devastating because when we were in the queue, we kind of knew [that] we might not [be] able to get it.

"But we didn't have [another] way out, we queued for five hours, and many of us [were] there for urgent applications," she revealed. 

Not all was lost 

Ong said they then tried looking for a third-party tour operator online.  

Thankfully, she eventually found one on Carousell who had a free slot, so they visited him at his office at People's Park Complex on the same day. 

The tour operator told Ong and her companion that they could help them get their visas done within a week for a total of $350 each. 

"We weren't sure if this would work but we had no other options," said Ong. 

Ong told AsiaOne that she will likely be receiving her visa on May 15. 

She also revealed that she needs to get her visa urgently as she is representing Singapore at the China-Asean influencer conference in Fuzhou from May 18 to 21.

According to the Chinese Embassy's Facebook, the visa centre will have different arrangements for emergency visa applications. 

From 4pm to 6pm on each working day, 200 to 250 additional next-day appointment numbers will be issued on the website of the visa centre. 

This will replace the previous walk-in through on-site queuing to make the process more bearable. The visa centre will also no longer accept any on-site queuing for emergency visa applications. 

Since March, China has resumed issuing a range of visas to foreigners, with those having valid visas issued before March 28, 2020, being permitted entry to China once again.

ALSO READ: Do you need a visa to visit China now? Here's what one Singaporean found out during her recent trip

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melissateo@asiaone.com