That's political :)

I have sinopharm and Pfizer. I only declared the latter on the website but told Target DX about both, in case the former could skew my test results. I think I'm in good shape now, but I must confess that this has been a stressful experience.
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Following is the form I was missing:
http://www.chinaconsulatesf.org/eng/...1716241291.pdf
The website doesn't have a spot for uploading it, so I put it in the vaccination section, and the consulate was happy. Those guys are nice people.

I have recently (August '21) travelled to China.

I jumped through all the hoops back in London such as a Visa, PU Letter, Work Permit, IgM, PCR and HDC; then the quarantine for 21 days here in the PRC; and following this the medical test, conversion to residency and further home quarantine with further PCR tests. Now living happily in Shenzhen.

I was double vaxxed back in the UK too.

So yes, all possible - and definitely cheaper than the agent costs quoted above. All in was about GBP 1200.00.

If anyone needs pointers do ask away.

I'm at SFO now awaiting ua 857. My only new insight since my previous post is that you need two health codes in order to check in. The first is the one from the consulate; screenshots are not okay. The second is wechat based. The verification email didn't show up but the sms to my Shanghai phone worked. The guy next to me in line didn't have a China phone number so he called his company to find a phone number for a Chinese colleague.

Do you mean the entry exit Wechat based form from China customs? Also could you share your test results if you’re willing to? Was it positive on the antibodies?

Is that you I see on the upgrade cleared list? Damn, that is one sparsely populated airframe. Also, it looks like a standby pax got cleared directly into Polaris? Wow!

iirc they are only allowed to sell 40% of the seats, and there are weight/balance rules. As far as standbys are concerned, I'm sure they get a lot because check in takes a long time.

Not to answer for the OP, but in my case I needed two Green codes as well - but not the China Customs one (that was something we filled out on landing).

Both were from the embassy, and separate PCR test and IGM test codes.

I was positive for antibodies, and my antibody count was 0.78 and am Pziver double vax, never knowingly contracted Covid.

Yeah, the customs code was another surprise for me...so we're talking 3 codes that they wanted, and a bunch of others (e.g. normal Wehat and Alipay) that they didn't.

The procedures on landing were fairly well organized, but took a long time and entailed lots of walking. That was also one of my most painful nasal swabs to date, plus they stuck a popsicle stick in our throats.

My test results from San Jose were the same as yours.

Hope you don’t mind if I pick your brain a bit for some information regarding your journey from the UK to China… Which airline did you take to get to China, I haven’t checked but assume there were no direct flights so where did you transit?

I’ve been in China now for just over two years and finally taking the plunge at the end of November and returning to the UK for a three month visit. I already have a valid Chinese residency permit so will not have to jump through as many hoops as you did…I’m double jabbed with the SinoVac vaccine and will again be getting double jabbed with a western vaccine while in the UK….

Hi there! No problem at all. Do PM if you want my WeChat.

I flew Lufthansa to Frankfurt then connected on to a Condor flight to Xi'An with a thirteen hour layover. I spent fifteen days in quarantine in the Grand Nobel Hotel, before flying down to Shenzhen and being told - after being free - another seven days quarantine there.

The LHR - FRA was a breeze, but in hindsight I feel this in part due to only being checked in as far as Germany.

The Condor leg was nothing short of an 'admin disaster'; essentially anyone with a UK passport never received their IgM results in Germany, were denied boarding and cue a long argument at the airport later... we had to upload our boarding passes to the consulate and wait for an exemption letter:')

Good luck heading back, jealous is an understatement!

As for flights, Hong Kong are allowing in 2,000 people per day, and, OW flights back from there are extraordinarily cheap at the moment (I bought HKG - LHR, QR J for GBP801... next June). You can pick up Y for GBP 231 it seems... .

One thing I've been told (and not sure if whispers or not...) is ensure you have 6 months left on your RP. Have not seen it backed up anywhere else but it might be a hidden rule somewhere!

Thanks for the post, good information. Had you stayed in Xian for another 7 days would you have been able to return normally to Shenzhen?

I am checking to see if pre-approval is no longer required for RP holders.

My RP was issued in Q1 this year, and I have already made one trip back to US this summer. I did apply pre-approval before I return to China at the end of the summer.

I have a number of meetings back in the US in Nov and Dec, and will now plan to go back to the US and return at end of December via UA 857 out of SFO.

Based on what i have read so far in this thread:

1. Pre-approval is not necessary for RP holder (issued this year)
2. Schedule all the required tests at designated labs in San Francisco/San Jose area
3. Submit the test results, declaration, questionnaires to SFO PRC Consulate for clearance and issuance of green code for travel
4. Show UA the code and board the plane
5. Go through tests and serve the required 14-day quarantine in Shanghai (and any other additional days of quarantine as required by the local government)

Please confirm if above understanding is correct.

Thanks

1. The following is the email I received from health.sfconsulate at gmail on September 9 (might have posted it upthread)
2. yes

3. yes. Upload to the website mentioned in the point #1 email. They also wanted a "Statement on COVID-19 Vaccination" before they would issue the green code. I think I mentioned this document upthread. It's a pdf so I signed it with my Acrobat signature, and he was fine with that. If you can't find the pdf online, message me and I'd be happy to send it to you

4. yes, BUT there is a second code that I (and many other passengers) didn't find out about until I was at the airport. I gather this happens a lot because UA had people standing by to assist

5. I still have 4 days to go in those first 14, and will most definitely report back upon my release:D
-bring a knife with you if you plan on having produce delivered; my hotel, at least, doesn't lend out knives (or space heaters, but I digress), and they sort of prohibit them in deliveries (I say "sort of" because getting the knife I ordered past the guards simply entailed me asking the sender to put it in a SF Express mailer)

Where did you take your PCR and IgM tests at Frankfurt, at the airport?

Frankfurt, Vienna, and Zurich airports all, reportedly, have airside testing available.

Approved by the PRC consulates?

Reading the Chinese embassy in Germany website it would seem, if I've read it correctly, that you can take both the PCR and IgM tests at the Medical Center situated near gate Z12 in the transit zone, then upload the results to the health app for the QR code with HDC......


http://de.china-embassy.org/det/gdxw/t1836306.htm

Starting from 1. December, 2020, all Chinese and foreign passengers who are to fly to China will be required to take nucleic acid and IgM anti-body tests and then apply at the Chinese Embassy or Consulates in Germany for a green QR-code with the “HS” mark (for chinese passengers) or a green QR-code with the “HDC” mark (for non-chinese passengers) before boarding the flight. (please upload your tests results here: https://hrhk.cs.mfa.gov.cn/H5/ )

I. The practice of allowing China-bound passengers to board the flight with only the original negativity certificates of the Frankfurt airport (Centogene, Medical Center and the testing agency in the Non-Schengen area) is terminated. Passengers flying to China who complete the tests at the Frankfurt airport must upload the negativity certificates via the Wechat mini program “Health Code International” or its web version and obtain the corresponding QR-codes (for chinese passengers QR-Code with the “HS” Mark and for Non-chinese passengers QR-Code with the HDC Mark). Passengers can be allowed on board with the original negativity certificates from both nucleic acid and IgM anti-body tests issued by the testing agency of the Frankfurt airport, as well as the corresponding QR-codes. To obtain the above-mentioned testing certificates, passengers need to complete the sampling and testing within 48 hours before boarding.

That's pretty slick. None of the norcal places are convenient if you're trying to just stop over. I assumed other consulates were similar.

When you assume.. :)

Europe is in a unique situation. If these airport testing clinics didn't exist, Chinese nationals in the UK wouldn't be able to return home because there have been no direct flights between the UK and China since Christmas 2020.

The SF testing sites are all less than an hour from the airport via Bart and walking. Not bad. I think LAX has on airport testing for those leaving from there.

I have had 3 different domestic trips cancelled due to covid in the past 3 weeks.[mod removal per rules] Not a fun place to be anymore now that the rest of the world is moving on.

I'm finally actually in China!

The rest of the world is "moving on"? ymmv. in oregon we are mandated to wear masks outdoors and have to show proof of vax to attend some high school sporting events (also outdoors) that maybe have 50 people in the crowd. with hospitalizations among vax'd growing among the mRNA countries and booster mandates a seeming possibility, i'm not feeling like we are moving on just yet.

Now that the dust has pretty much settled in my case (I say "pretty much" because I still need to report to my overlooker frequently, something I can handle), I want add a few more thoughts. Please realize that I only have ONE personal data point, but my comments incorporate the wisdom of others who are far more experienced.

-Definitely fly to Shanghai. It doesn't matter whether or not you like Shanghai because you won't actually see it. The reason Shanghai is a better option than Beijing, Shenzhen, Xi'an, etc is because the 14 days thing is pretty much set in stone
-There is a small catch to "set in stone"; 14 = 21 if you don't provide them a Shanghai address; this is a pickle that I didn't foresee
-ideally, we should give them a residential address, but --if this isn't an option-- book a friendly +7 hotel. You will have a lot of time to pull off this task during days 1-4

The main difference seems to be that in China being vaccinated gets you no special treatment compared to not being vaccinated. Everyone gets the same quarantine, or gets rounded up regardless of vaccination status if you’re unlucky enough to ride the subway or be on a flight with someone potentially infected.

It seems Europe and the USA are being much more accommodating to vaccinated people than China is. Hopefully that will change soon.

I agree, and in case it's not obvious, you're looking at forking over $7k (I tried to keep costs down, to the extent that I stayed with my friend in Mountain View instead of a hotel) at minimum in order to come here (add another $2k for the return flight, but this is easy).

Whether or not it's worth it is a personal/company decision.

ETA: I suppose it's possible for US people to pull off the drill for less than $5k, but if you set the benchmark at 7, you will be okay.

If you buy round trip from China and are OK with economy I think you can do it for less than $4k. I paid $2300 for my RT flight, $320 for my test to come back and the quarantine is 550rmb/night for 14 days which puts me right around the $3.9k usd mark. Not cheap by any means and I’m lucky to have my usa home in a departure city to China negating the need for the flight to and 2 days stay in the city before departure, but still not completely unreasonable considering I was usually dropping $3.5k on a RT biz ticket pre-Covid at least twice a year.

The real pain is the timesuck of the quarantine.

Good points. I spent $7500 on the drill, so I used $7k as a benchmark. In retrospect, I probably could have shaved $1500 off if I had been a little smarter.

It’s cost be about 4x more than you on my last round trip out of China and back.

Expats are flooding out of China.

I'm honestly inclined to go with 10x because it used to be possible to fly over here for $750. This isn't the case at present; we are confronted with a sacred cow. Is a China visit worth $2k, $5k, or $7.5k to you? I suppose I am fine with 7.5k myself, but this hurdle pretty much eliminates casual tourists, even if you can reduce it by half.

This also assumes you value your time at zero. For a lot of people, myself included, 2 weeks of my time is worth more than $7500. That's only $535 of time value per day.

From an article in the HK forum https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/peopl...despite-exodus

I saw an article with the China numbers but can't find it. Basically it's going down too

It's possible to get things done during q time; in fact, we could argue that it helps us focus. That having been said, my threshold is currently ONE.

travelinmanS I want to bring you a care package. Please message me wrt your hotel's rules, and I'll make it happen.

This is a feature, not a bug, for XJP.

”4x more than you”

mine was over $25k in total cost

Yea the old ways of the party are rearing their head now.

My understanding is that you're in hotel quarantine for 14 days in Shanghai and then you're free to move around the city for the remaining 7 days before you can fly to your final destination, is that not correct?