I'm from the Philippines and I got a full scholarship to study in BNU for a year. I was supposed to apply for it last year but work and other stuff got in the way, so I had to wait until early this year to apply. Based on my experience, scholarship applications are rarely easy because it takes a certain kind of dedication to get through all of the requirements.

First, I got the application materials from the china scholarship council (CSC) website. It has all the requirements listed plus the soft copies of the forms to be filled up. Then i went to the Chinese embassy and submitted all the requirements plus the application form to the cultural attache (who was a super nice guy). After a week, the embassy called me up to say that they have the official hard copy of the application form and that I need to fill it up because that's what they're sending instead of the copy i downloaded off the site (i just printed mine on plain a4 paper). The content is basically the same, only this official form was printed on a nice green paper. They told me to follow up on the last week of May. This all happened February.

I followed up on my application during the last week of May but the people handling the scholarship didn't have news. I called them again on June and the person who answered the phone said that she doesn't know where my application is and that the people handling it flew back to Beijing and will return July. At that point, I was just hoping that they went to Beijing on official business (read: to fix my application and other peeps' too). when they haven\'t contacted me yet mid-July, I assumed that my application wasn't considered and resigned myself to applying again next year. Finally, they called at the veeery end of July to tell me that I got the scholarship, to pick up my package from the embassy and to fix my visa and the rest of my requirements asap. hahaha! So I’ve been running around getting my stuff ready.

List of expenses incurred or to be incurred in the course of doing this application:
physical exam stuff (lab exams)
transportation costs (all that shuttling around...)
plane ticket
insurance (although not sure whether to get one here or in china)

Hope this info helps.