Originally Posted by
GinFizz
What I was told at that time was that after registration I should be able to use the e-channel for exit directly, BUT that next time I arrived back in China I should first use the passport/fingerprint machine, and after that use the e-channel gates. Maybe that explains why it didn't work for you?
Ah, thanks for that. Makes sense now. I'll try next time.
It appears that my issues are compounded by the fact that my passport seems to have readability issues. It always takes several times and several machines to scan. Just used it again to exit China and it worked after several tries.
(Passport never scans properly in Japan for some reason...)