I know two people who have done VIP:
-a friend of mine has a friend pretty high up in Shanghai immigration, and cashed in on a favor
-the man directly behind me on UA857
The first got a Wyndham and the second got the Crowne Plaza Xujiahui. Honestly, neither of these are huge upgrades over the place I stayed, though the Crowne Plaza guy told me the food was good there. The fast track immigration (the current process is painfully slow) and the private car might be more valuable benefits than the better hotels because after a 15 hour flight, getting to your room in 1.5 hours is a lot more appealing than 4 hours. It's not just the time factor, but those 4 hours are miserable.
As I mentioned in the other thread, it seems that most hotels permit grocery deliveries (and, I had no problem including beer at the bottom of the boxes), but fewer permit prepared foods. A possible reason for this at my hotel was that they only accepted pre-noon deliveries, which they brought around to rooms at around 3p. Anyway, I ended up completely ditching the meal plan after day 7, and had lots of cheese, lunch meats, bread, cookies, fruits, vegetables, etc delivered almost daily. I also ordered instant noodles from the hotel every day (y8) and added bell peppers or similar in order to make them more delicious and somewhat healthy. I previously told you guys my knife story. In the end, it wasn't that hard smuggling one in, and the knife (box cutter) cost next to nothing, but waiting a day+ for it to show up meant that I wasn't able to eat much of the produce that I had. So, yeah, bring a knife with you.
To watch video content on the hotel room TV (instead of my computer), I prepared two solutions in advance, and both worked: 1. USB disks and 2. X-cast.
After I got out, I failed to show up for a PCR test on one of the designated days. This prompted my minder to become even more anal. When you leave the hotel, they'll give you a piece of paper showing hospitals (there are lots to choose from) along with the days you're supposed to go. I will say that the hospital I went to (Huaihai Road/Shanxi Road) was extremely efficient, and +7 people skip the line at the entrance.