First for good news - $400 credit shows up in account activity screen, despite Reward Redemption History still not shows anything, also no email but the credit is in the account. Wiki is duly updated.

For US citizens, Chinese Tourist Visas have a flat fee of $160 standard processing fee, regardless of validity duration or number of entries. Expedited would have additional fees naturally.

Also ONLY for US citizens, thanks to a reciprocal agreement, we can get a One-Year, Multiple Entries Tourist Visa versus one-entry, two-entries, that normally are issued to other nationalities, PROVIDED you applied WITHIN US. Such reciprocal benefit does NOT extended to US citizens applied their Chinese Visas outside US.

Furthermore, China has 1 Embassy, 6 Consulate offices in US that each one governs a geographic district - you MUST apply your visa from the consulate office that governs your state, IN PERSON if you do not go thru the sanctioned travel agency. To put it in another way, if we happen to be in San Francisco and walk in the Chinese Consulate there to apply the visas, we would be turned away and told to apply at Houston.

So if you do not live in a city or very easily travel to a city where there is a Chinese Consulate, or DC, you most likely would use a sanctioned travel agency for your visa application.

We can go thru a sanctioned travel agency which would in turn submit our applications on our behalf, still IN PERSON but it is the agency's staff, authorized by us, and sanctioned by the Chinese Consulate of Houston.

The Travel Agency fee is $49 per person, plus a FedEx overnight return to send back your passports, that is $26, if you want to have a signature required delivery, add $3 (those are the standard FedEx charges). Paid by CC, 3% convenience fee. So it all adds up to $419.12 for 2 Visas standard process time (6 business days from receipt by the agency to receipt by us). Very professional service by the way.

In the Travel community of FT, you will find a China forum - there are threads talking about the nuts and bolts of Chinese Visa, if interested. I found the most recommended travel agency in that forum. The agency has 7 offices across the country but the customer service and main office happens to be in Houston.