Originally Posted by
GinFizz
That's good to know - thanks! I am leaving for my first trip outside China since Jan 2020 next week, and will need to re-register for e-channel when I return later in June (new passport issued last year).
You've been here since Jan 2020? Wow!
Originally Posted by
GinFizz
That is probably a different problem - the issue on exiting China is that (at least at airports) the system is set-up to associate the exit through emigration with a boarding pass. The problem with that is that it requires the name on the boarding pass to match exactly the name entered into the e-channel registration system - so if you have a longish name it is likely that it is truncated on the boarding pass, or maybe the flight is only booked using first and last name, but for e-channel registration they used all names in your passport.
There is a work-around for this - namely to tell the person manning the e-channel gates (there to tell people who don't know to first scan the boarding pass) that you are registered but have a foreign name so need a manual override. At Beijing T3 I had a 100% success rate doing this - at Beijing T2 (only tried twice) they simply refused and told me to use the regular lines.
Yeah, definitely some funny business going on somewhere; the name could be it, for sure.
But if I recall correctly, at PEK T3 there was a pre-E-Channel machine you had to first go to and have the passport checked, and it would give you either a YES or NO for your ability to use the E-Channel?
It was at this machine that I used to get a 'NO'.
Am I remembering this wrongly?