We are preparing to visit your country. We are seeking a tourist visa (single entry). Our itinerary includes Harbin, Beijing, Xi'an, Kashgar and Shanghai. I completed the visa application form and fronted up to the Chinese Consulate in Brisbane, Qld. On presenting the form to the clerk, he looked it over twice. He was starting to fill out the payment slip (which is taken to a different counter to pay for the visa application) when he noticed our application included Xinjiang (Kashgar city). He said, "Why do you go to Xinjiang?". I said "For tourism". He said "No". He went on to say that, if we wanted to journey to Xinjiang, we needed "an authority" from Beijing.

Can anyone give me any information about this? Is it a fact that some letter or document is necessary to visit Xinjiang? I can't find any reference to such a thing on any website. If push comes to shove, we can drop Xinjiang from our itinerary, but we *would* like to go there. Any help would be gratefully received.

Secondly, when we returned to our agents (speaking to a different consultant), they told us we must have hotel bookings, and proof of payment for these hotel bookings with our visa application. There are posts here that confirm and deny this requirement. In the consulate, I (very carefully) watched several people in front of me in the line just hand over visa application and flight itinerary, and their apps were accepted for processing.

So could anyone please help me out? I suspect that hotel bookings are technically necessary, but are they actually mandatory to present with a visa application? Like I say, I watched people lodge apps without them, but I'm hoping someone can actually confirm they are not necessary.

I would be very appreciative for any help at all. I'm getting the run-around with the consulates and agents. No-one seems to know for sure.