Nowadays, many Chinese missions will not process third country nationals unless they are residents or have a longer term visa in their host country. Hence the problem with your soon-to-expire US visa. If you are denied in the USA, here's your Plan B: Get your visa in Hong Kong, which should be OK but because there has been strife between China and Norway, you need to doublecheck.

1) Make sure this is viable--immediately send an email off to this reputable Hong Kong agent and make sure you tell them you are Norwegian. Ask what your options are and if any documents or hotel bookings are needed besides your passport. [email protected]

2) Assuming there's no problem, make a one-way flight booking from Shanghai to Hong Kong. You can do a search on what's available. If you need cheap fare, go online to Spring Airlines but as this is a low-cost carrier, make sure you take into account any baggage issues: http://www.china-sss.com/en

Since going from USA to China, you will move across the international date line, make absolutely sure you know when you are arriving in Shanghai before you make an onward flight. Get the day straight (it may be Dec 15 or 16, depending on when you leave Honolulu) and the time. From this scheduled time of arrival at PVG, you have 48 hours to use Transit Without Visa privileges--there is a thread on this on this forum to read the details. This means if you schedule an outbound to Hong Kong within that 48 hours, you're fine. This could theoretically give you enough time to get to Nanjing by train, dump stuff with your friend, and get back to Shanghai to fly to Hong Kong.

I recommend you use Forever Bright to get that visa, even with the additional small fee, rather than try to get it yourself in HK at the Commissioners Office. It will save you hassles and time. FB can do next-day processing and sometimes same day. HK is expensive to hang out in but worth 2-3 days if you've never been there before. Remember that visas cannot be processed on the weekend, so you may have to time it for first thing Monday morning. From HK, you can either fly back to Shanghai or Nanjing, or consider train, or hop the border to Shenzhen and head north from there....sometimes it's cheaper.