Originally Posted by
ehuang03
I just wanted to add a few things on my experience. When I did the technical stop at TAO, I had the blue card filled out. When I got to immigration, the officer asked me if I want to enter with the visa instead, so I did. I didn't really know what to do. He was going to give me the option to get the free visa.
I only bring that up, because there was another American, who had the same flight itinerary as me. She did NOT have a visa. She was able to pass immigration with a free visa. We're both about to board to Korea in a bit.
So she was able to transit through TAO to XMN perfectly fine on the free visa. I'm not sure if it was the 24 or 72 she was on, that she got from TAO immigration.
She's on your same flight to korea?
She may be lucky, but it is also a real chance she could be pulled off the plane, even after boarding. Having a visa for your itinerary was absolutely the right thing, not least on arrival in China, but also boarding at your point of origin. A good agent should have refused uplift as the TWOV requirements were not met.
The blue form is only for TWOV. You should have completed the yellow/orange form on board and joined the regular visa queue on arrival in TAO. In other ports like Shanghai the TWOV queue can be very long and time consuming, whereas the visa queue should have you though fairly quickly.