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tuono07, I'm assuming you are a USA passport holder. If you want to get a Chinese visa, then use a visa agent in Atlanta (who will work with the Houston Consulate which services Georgia residents), or use a Houston-based agent. Chicago Consulate may refuse to process your application if you can't show an address in their consular district. You will need to show flights in/out of China--a printout of a confirmed reservation--and a confirmation printout of hotel bookings. If you are not a journalist, clergy, and not of Tibetan or Uighur background, your application has a 99% chance of being accepted. Be particularly careful about the photo requirements--they have recently changed and Consulates are very very nitpicky. A good agent can advise you further on this.
If you are not planning to go back to China in the next 10 years and wish to economize, then you can avoid getting a visa at all. But you must set up your flights correctly. Refer to our Transit Without Visa thread and sticky for details: but in a nutshell, you'd need to set up a flight sequence that adds a 3rd country in as transfer point, in one direction or the other. You cannot go USA-China-USA on the flights and qualify, but you can qualify for visa-free if you route USA-Japan-China-USA. You don't need to actually schedule a full stopover in the 3rd country, just a short connection between flights is enough. The Chinese only care about the flight segments that touch China: X - China - Y with X and Y being different countries. There are other workable permutations you'll have to look into for pricing. Transits Without Visa in the Shanghai region can be quite long, 144 hours (6 days) and cover the entire Shanghai-Jiangsu-Zhejiang region.