I'm not sure how I missed this thread when it first came up.

To use the word transit in respect of what you are planning is perhaps I think rather beyond what Chinese officials had in mind when drawing up the visa-free transit regulations.

The flight from CAN-URC will be a domestic flight so there will be no hope at all of you avoiding immigration as you mentioned in your first post. What you will be doing in practical terms is arriving into China at CAN, and leaving China at URC. Whether you get between CAN and URC by plane or pit-pony is really neither here nor there.

The 24 hour visa-free transit rule only really seems to be phrased to cover arriving at and departing from the same airport.

So all up I think you will need a transit visa, or indeed just a regular tourist visa.

And I'd be a bit wary about only allowing 80 minutes at URC for the connection. Having no checked bags should make it doable in theory - but it's close and unless they've changed the URC-OVB schedule hugely since I was last in URC it's not just a case of waiting an hour for the next flight!

And how is Novosibirsk these days... it's a while ago but I actually went on holiday there! Of all my travels my 'feeling furtherst away from home' moment came getting off the plane in OVB at 5am one December morning and being a little disconcerted to find that the terminal for arrivals wasn't so much a terminal as a gate in the wall. And the temperature was such that the brass monkey had become bereft of its nuts.