I have just left the Mainland for the day, sorry for my late reply but Flyertalk takes ages to load in China...if it is not blocked by cloudflare that is.

I would not worry at all about the 15 day visa free being an issue in two weeks time anymore.

If you do not have an E-SIM ready smartphone, order a Travel-Sim card for China to have WiFi for Alipay/Weixin Pay.

Have been lucky twice with ICBC and ABC Bank ATM accepting my Curve Card, but I would not count on finding an ATM everywhere.

​​​​​​I have travelled CKG-HGH-SJW-FOC-ZUH train to Shenzen-SZX-FOC ...and just left FOC for TPE, before returning to CKG and back to BUD tonight. Zero issues.

My biggest "issue" by far in every Hotel, train station, Airport, even the ultra friendly immgration officer in FOC today took four attempts to find it - before I told her the page number - etc. was the entry stamp ink was/is barely visible...and exactly placed on the AUSTRIA watermark in the passport. The stamp that I left China today next to it in comparison is visible from a mile.

Thank you, that’s a bit of a relief regarding that 15 day VISA thing!

And no worries, I have signed up for roaming in China and got myself Express VPN too so I will hopefully be able to use the internet on my trip at the same time as being able to receive Australian 2-factor SMS on my Aussie number.

I don't know anyone in who still uses Express in China (it was our go in this forum 10 years ago, though; we even had a conga thread for it), but you might want investigate its current reliability a bit more (if having unfettered internet access is important to you).

That’s what I did and pretty much any resource on the (English language) internet recommended this. If there’s anything that’s considered better for use in China these day, then please share as I did not come across it during my search.

Flyertalk is a funny one. It's either:

- no VPN: blocked
- no VPN: not blocked but extremely slow loading because it has to first get past Google APIs
- with VPN: blocked
- with VPN: not blocked and everything a-okay

Almost everyone agrees that the best one nowadays is:

☜😳 𝔞𝓼ţя丨ℓ𝓁ѶℙŇ ☝🐲

Feel free to msg our WeChat group (or DM me on wx) and I'll respond with a list of fast servers that can access this site pretty much all the time and also aren't especially subject to "are you a human?" puzzles.

Cheers.
It was more of a general comment, indicating the Flyertalk-access possibilities...I know which ones to use.

I have my 2 or three "go-to's" which work for everything I need them for. Usually use the §†ęĺl†hVţń "setting", but have to go to σρєηωєв for some specific thing.

Just an update after my check in at Sydney airport: Of course, eyes roll, as expected, the Menzies clown at the check in counter insisted that I need a VISA and had never heard of the 15 days thing. When she told me that her system does not allow her to check me in without a valid Visa for China, my heart sank.

Luckily, the supervisor was at a desk right next to us and she has come across the 15 days thing before. It also took her ages to check me in, apparently the problem was me having two passports which needed both to be in the booking (the Australian one to come back to Australia and exit the country, the German one for China) which is usually not a problem but it seemed to have messed up the Visa thing. She somehow “manually overrode it and added a comment”, whatever this means, but it was good enough to print my boarding passes.

Now in the SQ lounge waiting for my departure. Big relief that I got my boarding passes in the end but it was quite a nailbiter, as feared.

Under these circumstances I can fully understand the check-in staff.

Pre March 14th I also had my fair share of issues with checking in for China flights. They basically have to register your arrival in China with your passport details before you are eligible/allowed to fly. E.g. Airlines like Qatar Airways make it impossible to print out boarding passes at the station abroad before someone in China gives the go ahead.

Fun fact: After the Chinese MFA published the visa free entry for Austrian citizens etc. the global media at first reported Australian citizens.

As Australian citizens cannot enter the country visa free they were absolutely correct in asking for a visa if the APIS for the PNR showed an Australian passport.

Lately the amount of manual overrides globally must have been staggering.

Save journey, have fun and enjoy your time in China.

The médias are reporting a healthy uptick in the visitors, nearly 3 million foreign visitors came to the mainland in Jan-Feb, with a large increase from the countries impacted by the new visa-free scheme. And I know locally, that there's renewed interest here in France and Germany for leisure travel there the next couple months.

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/dipl...es-take-effect

Will be interesting to see how many people will use the visa-free scheme for the upcoming Fomula 1 GP on the 21st of April in Shanghai.

The number of foreign visitors was 145 million in 2019. If one divides it by 6, it is 24 million per two months. The most recent two-month period is 1/8 of this number. By the way, my household contributed 3 to this 2.95 million number, slightly greater than 1 millionth🤪

Keep in mind that passengers who e.g. transit internationally via Chongqing have to enter the country, which also counts for the statistics.

During my upcoming trip to China, which starts tomorrow, I will skiplag one flight from TAO to HKG with Shandong Airlines (originally NKG-TAO-HKG, layover in between flights 14h 12 m) and already fly with Qingdao Airlines to Wenzhou before the TAO-HKG flight is scheduled to depart...therefore I cannot argue I missed the flight. Shandong Airlines sells the TAO-HKG leg for EUR 180 EUR, I have paid for NKG-TAO-HKG 48 EUR.

I hope it will not negatively impact/effect my visa free status in China, but it was just too good of an offer to miss out on.

Just as an update, now that we’ve come back from China (amazing trip overall-will also post full trip report and my comments on Domestic airlines in the respective threads in due course): Visa-free arrival into PVG was a breeze. We were lucky and one of the first international flights arriving in the early morning so the place was deserted. All signage in English and some funny fingerprint machines to front to get that step out of the way.

Then to immigration with most counters manned, despite the early hours (good luck with that in JFK or LHR!). Took about two minutes for me to clear this step, tiny red stamp into the passport in lieu of a proper Visa which was accepted in all the hotels on our trip. Then, luggage, took about another 3 minutes or so to arrive, then quickly bags onto an X-ray band and out we were. Between 5 and 10 minutes from our seat in the airplane till we were out in China.

Pretty amazing and beats most other international airports at length. We had similar experiences with our Domestic flights within China but I will post separately in the dedicated thread once I get some time for it.