https://www.tripadvisor.ca/Travel-g2....Transits.html

According to the summary on tripadvisor, the answer is yes for the 144 hour visa:

- You enter the country through one of these eligible airports and leave from another of these airports. So you do not need to leave the country by departing from the airport in the same city that you arrived in as long as the arriving and departing airport are among this list of four (You can arrive in Shanghai and leave from Hangzhou for example);

Note that they claim this isn't true for the 72-hour visa:

- You will leave the country by departing from the airport in the same city that you arrived in (for Shanghai you can arrive at one airport and leave from the other);

Thanks OP!, Firstly this is still available, I just booked this AWESOME trip, directly on the United Airlines website (not using Google Flights or ITA), for $340 USD/person. Warning: the website was extremely glitchy pricing out this itinerary:

Outbound:

-Burlington Vermont (BTV) -Chicago (ORD)
22 HOUR LAYOVER IN CHICAGO

-Chicago (ORD) to Guam (GUM) (via Honolulu Hawaii, 55 minute layover)
-23 HOUR LAYOVER IN GUAM

-Guam (GUM) to Tokyo Japan (NRT)
-14 HOUR LAYOVER IN TOKYO

Tokyo Japan (NRT) to Hangzhou China (HGH)


RETURN:

Hangzhou China (HGH) to Hong Kong (HKG)
14 LAYOVER IN HONG KONG

Hong Kong (HKG) to Chicago (ORD) (3 hour layover in Chicago)

Chicago (ORD) to Ottawa (YOW)


Out of all the destinations, I'm actually looking forward to seeing Guam the most... 23 hour layover in Guam is awesome. Also 14 hour layovers in both Tokyo and Hong Kong... super excited. My girlfriend never been to Chicago and always wanted to go, even though its for only 22 hours... she'll love it.

Good job!
 

Your reservation is most complicated on this board. Congratulations.
At Guam, you won't get a car if you do not book one before you arrive. At Hangzhou, you should get some cash with you. In other places, you can survive without cash.
Have a good journey.

Out of curiosity, what dates are you flying? That looks like a great trip! Congratulations on finding/booking that!

Yeah, I'm curious about this as well. I can mostly get the construction on UA.com (long layovers are a must due to the flight options), but it is quite buggy with the per-leg pricing.

I can't seem to get it to price into G class though.

March 20: BTV-ORD
March 21: ORD-HNL-GUM
March 23: GUM-NRT
March 24: NRT-HGH (ANA)

April 3: HGH-HKG (Dragonair)
April 4: HKG-ORD-YOW

Priced in G class

Was anyone able to get this to work with the United Island Hopper? I've been trying for days but I can only get the nonstop from HNL to GUM.

Have you checked the fare rules? I think it prohibits the Island Hopper but I'm fuzzy on the memory.

I've read it but the only flight it specifically mentions as a no go is UA 154 from GUM to PVG. From what I also get out of it there might be some small surcharges for the Island Hopper. Then again I'm not great at reading the fare rules.

Has anyone found a combo that works in the late December/early January timeframe? I played around with the dates and stops a bit and it looks like the ~$300 fares don't pop up until mid-January.

Ah, that must be it. i conflated the specific flight restriction with the surcharge for the Island Hopper.

Could be Christmas and New Year blackout dates.

Many thanks to the OP!

I pulled the trigger on LGA-HKG-HGH-SFO-DEN-LGA-XXX for ~$380 including two days in Hangzhao. Could have routed via GUM, but since I couldn't make a stopover work, it didn't appeal so much. Now I have 24 hours to decide if I actually want to do this!

(HKG-HGH-SFO is TWOV eligible, right?)

Yeah from all the itineraries i've constructed, the hopper comes back at significantly more ($300 vs $1000), even though there is the right fare class available.

The only way you can get the hopper to work would be to SDC to it, and that will be problematic on the outbound since you can't SDC when there's a partner flight on the reservation, so you'd only be able to do it on the way back, and you'd need to budget enough time in GUM/HNL in order to make the longer hopper work.

How did you get a LGA-HKG flight? Was it from EWR?

And yes, HKG-HGH-SFO is eligible, only the flights immediately arriving into and departing from China matters for the third country rule.