I have talked to several FTers who live and work in US but have their homes in Hong Kong.

They travel from US to Mainland China then down to HKG may be couple times a year, especially when this might be the only way to find business class / first class award seats using Star A partners which many of them are airlines from mainland China.

Anyway, they all are born in HKG, have HKID cards as well as the permits that allow them to travel between HKG and China, but NO SARS passports. Instead they all hold their US Passports when flying out US. However upon entering China, they use their HKID cards and their Permits. Nobody needs a Chinese tourist visa on their US passports. Nobody has a SARS passport - therefore the practice seems to suggest that SARS passport is not required to get the permit.

As a matter of fact, one of them just returned from such a trip done in August. He flew from SEA to NRT/HND and then to PEK for a couple days before headed to HKG. All with his US Passport sans Visa, and his HKID card + Permit.

So experts here, setting aside the diplomatic protection, exactly how much you know in practice how this works?

I dont mind to get the Chinese tourist visa for traveling to China - however the annoying part is, giving our home state location we can only apply the visa from the Chinese Consulate in Houston via authorized travel agencies based in Houston. The last time I checked, the visa cannot be applied longer than 30 days prior to travel to China - this part is going to be tough as quite often our trips would be multiple weeks long and we will need our passports long before that 30 days window is opened for applying Visa. This pretty much precludes us from flying into China directly from US or Europe if the China portion is towards the tail end of our trips. So it would mean we would not be able to ticket an award with China/ HKG being our last stops before returning home. Instead we would need to get our visas in HKG and often have to pay for the express service if we want to add China as a side trip from HKG... just so much more hassles that I pretty much give up to visit China.

However my FTer friends told me what docs they travel with - since I have HKG birth cert, I should be able to do the same as they do, based on their actual experiences. This would mean we can fly directly to PEK or PVG from anywhere in the world - whether it is from US, Europe or Middle East - when construct a trip without having to think about the timeline because of the necessity of getting the Chinese Visa.

I cannot agree more to the above statement! We have no desire to go to Tibet or the Northwest part of the country where there are constant civil upheavals ... LOL.

I also knew that during the earth quake in 2008, the US tourists did not get any assistance from the US consulates in terms of evacuation from the stricken areas. They were totally left on their own. And those were TRUE Americans.

Hmmm, for many the qualify of life is far better overseas... There is hardly any hardship whether it is cultural or ethnic related, not to us anyway. May be not as much financial gain if one counts the housing value - but then the "wealth" created by the expensive housing costs in HKG actually is more a "prison" to us - for you could not turn that into spendable cash because you have to live in it (unless you have several flats for rental income or buy/sell purposes). The general flats ordinary folks live in are so tiny in footage that there is no comparison to those far more affordable lodging options overseas. And let's not forget the pollution of air, noise, overcrowded condition, etc etc Many of us who chose to live overseas DONT have any desire to return to HKG to live long term. Visiting is fine, especially when one still has family members there, it is even an obligation to return for visiting every now and then, but not for returning for good.

For us, we just want to see certain parts of the China that the sites of ancient history are still relatively intact... After all if we can travel all around the world to see the Greek and Roman ruins, Celtic ruins, even the Mayan, Inca and Aztec ruins, why not we come see our own ancient sites for whatever that is still there?

To us, getting the other documents is not for a shorter line to enter China - it would allow us to directly fly into China instead of having to go through HKG due to Chinese government's odd restrictions in Visa applications which can only be submitted to the Consulate that has jurisdiction over your state. For example there are 7 states in SE of US, including Florida, that is under Houston's jurisdiction. So even if we are in SFO, DC, or LAX etc in person, we could NOT apply our Chinese Visa there - Houston is our ONLY place where we could apply our Visa "in person" which can be "represented" by an authorized Travel Agency's employee... Talk about stupidity... Or may be that is just a reflection or extension of the Population Control of the Chinese government.