Originally Posted by
wijomas
Yeah, think it was a little longer back then, but it was a perfectly legal connection and on same ticket. APEC card acts as a Chinese visa as well, so that helps
ETA: Oh, and there was a couple of misconnects so ended up going via MIA for one or two of them... have to dig it up and see now!

I lie - that routing was a single run another time. The 4 (not 5) China runs was this, without stops longer than ~8 hours:
AKL-SYD-LAX-SFO-JFK-LAX-ORD-PEK-ORD-SFO-JFK-MIA-ORD-PVG-ORD-LAX-JFK-LAX-ORD-PEK-ORD-LAX-JFK-SFO-ORD-PEK-ORD-LAX-JFK-SFO-LAX-SYD-AKL