They used to fly exceedingly close to China (within 30 miles!) when they flew to Vladivostok, Russia in the early 90's.

It appears you've started another parallel discussion thread over China Forum since March 13:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/china...china-prc.html

All the consulate/embassy websites neglect to include an additional statement to the above, and this directly from Chinese Laws:

http://english.gov.cn/2005-08/27/content_26732.htm
http://www.ebeijing.gov.cn/feature_2...s/t1034962.htm

"Article 8 Aliens may be exempt from going through the procedures for obtaining a transit visa if they hold a through ticket and have booked seats on international airliners flying immediately through China and will stay in the transit city for not exceeding 24 hours without leaving the airport; aliens who wish to leave the airport shall apply to the border inspection office for stopover permits."

as someone who has been to china, and done the transit without Visa as an american, I'd say the information is "so so" readily available. Flyertalk actually has more information on it than any airline or embassy. I came equipped to Shanghai with a 4 pages of flyertalk threads printed to be prepared for "if/then" scenarios. And yes, the airline does get fined if they violate the rules, apparently of which not all agents are aware themselves. The fine is somewhere around $10k according to someone who actually experienced that related to chinese visas.

It all worked out well traveling without visa, but I'd hesitate to say that the Chinese visa rules are nearly as cut and dry as...anywhere. If you just want to blindly get a visa that's one thing, but getting through without said visa requires you to go to the supervisor desk at the immigrations line and they'll study your paperwork over for a few minutes, possibly make photocopies of your tickets, etc.

My understanding and take away though is that at Shanghai specifically they allow 48 hour stay overs, yes you can leave the airport. But that doesn't apply to Beijing the same. And also, it sounds like the intention is for you to not really leave Shanghai in such a case, e.g., you're not supposed to travel on another 12 hour roundtrip train in between. They wouldn't know if you didn't tell them, of course.

Also, they DO have Visa on Arrival at both Shanghai and Beijing, but it's not like in most countries where you just go and get in a line and pay. They have a list of specific reasons of why you can get a visa on arrival, and most of them relate to having some sort of urgent official business, I don't think any of them relate to anything of personal travel nature.

Still confused as to what the OP is saying he/she/it did, why they wanted to go to HKG instead, etc.

Well then, let's all contribute conflicting opinions in the other forum, that'll teach her/him never to double post again. :p

In case you didn't check closely enough, it's the boyfriend's FTer friend, not OP, who posted the other quoted thread. So technically speaking, it's not cross-posting. Maybe just "repost."

The reason why I pointed out the other thread in China Forum is that our China Ambassador FTers clearly indicate there are quite a few non-factual posts about China visas in thread here. It would be a disservice to OP, her BF, and their fellow FTer friend to be misinformed and not have all the facts w/r/t Chinese visas:

From my reading of jiejie's posts over the years, I'll take her posts on China over any other random FTers that ever visited China on any given day. YMMV.

FWIW, here's the sticky post on China visas:

China Visas and Getting Into China

After so many days passed, I guess we'll never get to see the boyfriend post this incident in his own words. Hope he at least read our two threads and got all the needed info on how to better prepare himself for any future visits to China.

Lin821: thank you for posting this helpful info! My friend is intending to (eventually) put up some additional details regarding observations and mistakes made during this trip.

I'm the guy the OP was talking about
 

It's quite surreal to stumble across a long conversation about your life on the internet, but since it's here I thought I would clear up a couple of the conversation points and let you all know what happened in the aftermath.

Ok, for starters, yes the two posts are related. (http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/newre...e=1&p=18228594 and http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trave...rements-4.html) One was started by my girlfriend and the other by a friend of mine, and they didn't know each other was doing it until after.

Here's the timeline:

First I went to book a round-trip ticket From Portland-PDX to Beijing-PEK via Seattle-SEA using Alaska Airlines award miles (Alaska was the PDX-SEA leg both ways, and Delta as their partner was the SEA-PEK leg both ways). They were not letting award tickets be booked online for some reason, so I had to call the reservations number and do it the old fashioned way. While on the line with the booking agent, I asked what the visa requirements were, and the agent said I would need to bring photos to with me for the visa process, but they would enter me in the system. That was probably bad phrasing on the booking agent's part, because it sounded to me like they were going to enter me into the prospective traveler system, which is how I got my Vietnamese visa last year (email ahead, issue on arrival).

Then I got the confirmation email from Alaska, with a link for international travel that listed all their visa requirements, which basically said "Americans must have a visa" and then 15 pages of exemptions that do not apply to me (diplomatic ones, various treaties, etc).

Now, "having" a visa is no big deal. I have had well over 100 in my time. Pretty much every border I have ever crossed issued me a visa on the spot. I once got a Visa for The Netherlands so I could go to a vending machine that was on the other side of the airport's passport control line. A visa is a stamp in your passport, and unless it's some complicated one like diplomat, student, fiancee or work visas, you just get your passport stamped and move on.

I then checked the Chinese official website (but only the English language section; I don't speak Mandarin) and it again said ... several things. I didn't need a visa if I was staying six days and joining a tourist group (I was joining at least one, but not for the whole six days), but otherwise I had to have a visa. Didn't say I would not be able to get one at the airport like most other countries.

Reading wayyyyyyy down the website, it says you can not mail a visa application, but must do it in person (no appointment needed, same-day service available) or you may entrust someone else or a travel/visa agent to submit your application at the visa office. Digging around long enough shows there are several other ways to get visas at other airports in China, but nothing on PEK. Well, ok.

So there I have my airline telling me I need a visa but not saying anything about China being a country you can't get one at the airport, and China saying I need one and having various ways to get one but not specifically mentioning PEK. But PEK is their national capital, and they do have a HUGE visa application office that is before passport control in Terminal 2 (which I was flying in), and my airline had said something about getting me in the system which sounded like that "travel/visa agent" thing which I had used before in a communist Asian country ...

So I went to the airport to check in, and the ticketing agent took my passport scanned it and spent a good amount of time typing, and then stamped my boarding pass with something like "international travel documents ok." and I boarded the Alaska flight to Seattle.

In Seattle, a Delta Airlines representative took my passport, scanned it, looked up a bunch of stuff, asked me some questions about my trip to China (duration, where I was going, etc) and then read from my passport while typing into a computer, at which point another boarding pass with "International Docs - OK" printed on it (exact wording may differ, for reasons you will see below).

Then I got on the airplane, went to China, walked by the very large but completely understaffed visa application offices, visa photo rooms, quarantine interview rooms, visa interview rooms and the inspection station (all understaffed) and went to passport control.

The police at passport control called over a Delta Airlines rep and between them told me I was unable to enter the country. Both were polite at that point and the Delta rep offered to let me use his local-only telephone to call anyone I knew in China (all my friends were arriving the next day, so no use). Then I was placed in the "immigration waiting area" which is 8 chairs with a rope around them, and the police and Delta reps kept trying to figure out what was going on. They were talking about giving me a 24 hour visa so I could go to my hotel and take a shower, and talk to the consulate in the morning (it was midnight at this point), or having me fly to another Chinese airport to get a visa and fly back, and asking me if I had any friends in Beijing who could come to the airport to get me (I still don't know what they meant by that). The police offered to basically let me go anywhere in the airport I wanted as long as I had one of them walking with me as an escort.

A Delta supervisor and a police officer with three rank clusters on his shoulder came over and asked more questions, asked if I had needed food and asked if I had money, at which point someone showed him the boarding passes.

The Delta supervisor FREAKED OUT at that point. He started swearing, yelling various insults at Americans in general, his face was red, he banished all the other Delta people from the area and they were all replaced with grim-faced people in suits (with Delta nametags, but in Chinese script). The police added a couple people to the mix (still polite, but not happy) and the whole "waiting area" was moved to some kind of side hall and I was held there by a rotating group of police and Delta reps. My passport was taken as were all my travel documents, and I was not allowed to call my consulate. I was not even allowed to talk to a Delta ticket agent, just guards and this supervisor.

I want to point out that I was very, very polite this whole time. I'm a military veteran and a police veteran and both those jobs basically involve getting yelled at a lot without being allowed to react. I didn't argue, I didn't yell back, I merely asked what options I had and asked if I could call my consulate.

At some point, a Chinese police officer came over when everyone else was standing a little bit away from me, and she handed me a stack of photocopies of my passport and boarding passes, and asked me to sign them (there was no other text, or I would not have signed. It was literally just the boarding passes and passport). I did, and she whisked them away as if trying to hide them from the others. Shortly after that, the Delta supervisor took all my original documents to his office, telling me he had to "make a report," at which point they were never seen again. Each person I asked said another person had them. My detention area was two rows of four plastic chairs facing each other about ten inches apart.

The Delta supervisor came by to yell at me a few more times, and then it was back to a new set of guards every hour. I was allowed to use the toilet and drink water, but that was it (no phone, no food). Then I was shown my new deportation boarding passes but not allowed to touch them. I was kept in the holding area until the final boarding call despite asking if I could go to the airplane when they started boarding (there was an internet kiosk at the gate as well as payphones). A Delta agent and a police officer escorted me to the airplane door and gave my passport (without any of my receipts and travel documents and personal papers) to the cabin staff, and a few hours later I was in Tokyo-Narita.

Once there I was free. I had my passport, there is wifi, computer and phone kiosks and so on. It's actually one of my favorite airports and I have been through there several times. The Delta staff there tried really hard to find a way for me to get back for the wedding, but basically there was nothing they could do that would not take me a couple days and cost me at least $1,500 (that's down from almost $3,600 they originally wanted) in airfare and hotel, which even if it was an affordable amount would still have gotten me there shortly after the wedding. I boarded the next flight to PDX.

So, that's it. I checked several times on my visa, two different airlines at two different airports in the USA checked my visa, and the Chinese police were at least willing to let me get a temp visa into the city to go to my hotel and maybe visit the U.S. Embassy to see if they had any advice.

But once Delta Airlines staff realized they were going to be on the hook for my repatriation (plus a 50,000Yuan fine according to the video they had playing in the office that scrolls through various Chinese laws in English) plus whatever else pissed them off, they had me locked down and out of sight until they could get me out of the country. The police seemed more to be following Delta's lead than the other way around, and I have no way to know what the Delta people were telling them (again, Mandarin, not one of my languages). The guard shifts were a mix of police, airport security and Delta staff, never less than 2, usually around 5 guards on me at all times.

I called Alaska (who originally booked it all and was the rewards program I paid for all this with) and they issued a complete refund (minus the taxes, of course) and an apology. I have yet to call Delta to complain about their supervisor swearing at me for most of his shift, making my documents vanish, getting me thrown in a makeshift jail all night and not letting me call my consulate.

Because I honestly don't know what to say to them.

I think what you're saying in a lot of words is what others have said up thread.

You didn't find out the requirements before you travelled and you've had to bare the unfortunate consequences.

There's a lot of complications and unusual/undesirable circumstances in all of it, but when you cut to the chase it's been down to you.

Really sorry that your trip got mucked up!

The one thing that stands out however is that there is a big difference between a visa and an entry stamp! Your arrival into AMS for example, as a US citizen, does NOT require a visa. It is a stamp of entry only.

That is the case for many countries around the world... entry stamp is in no way a visa.

The chinese embassy and consulate pages are quite restrictive in their texts. Basically they say everyone needs a visa, then there are some qualifications for this.

How you got on to the plane in the USA however is odd, and I agree that the error should have been picked up before you boarded.

Thank you very much for taking the time to get back to us and fill us in on all the details - it is appreciated!

Welcome to FT - and next time we are here if you have any questions :)

First things first, welcome to FT, YepThatsMe!

Sorry to hear you'd gone through all these troubles and didn't make it to the wedding. And thank you for your willingness to share your story with a whole bunch of strangers online.

Having a good manner is a nice thing. But being polite alone won't get you into China as a tourist. If you had come to our China Forum first, you would have known that you do need to obtain the proper visa before embarking your China trip. There are quite a few resident FTers who are very knowledgeable about China and they can give you the most accurate and up-to-date info than the official government websites (in English).

I noticed you've posted in both threads (this one and the one over China Forum) that your GF and FT friend started for you. To save you from more misery, I suggest you just focus on addressing your situation in one single thread, which is the one over China Forum. You will get the best info and great discussion over there. There's no need to burden yourself and reply to two threads. One of the reasons why FT asks folks to not cross-post or repost is that people don't have to come back and forth with repetitive info.

No, you didn't do anything wrong replying to two threads. The best advice I can give you and those who are interested in further discussion is to follow the other thread in China Forum:

HELP: Best Man for wedding denied entry to China (PRC)

Again, welcome to FT! And thanks to the chain of mishappening that lead you to us. :)

While I am not. A lawyer, I have seen pax not allowed to board from departure port for lack of visa for destination. seen this a lot at cruise ports also.

When the destination country prohibits entry for lack of a visa, the airline has to foot the bill for repatriation at the soonest.

I don't deny that I had failed to meet the requirements. And I never said it was anyone else's fault I didn't get in the country/got deported. I trusted airline info (which was either the correct info for a different airport, or the correct info for a different year at PE, but not the correct info for this year at this airport), backed up by vague government info, some inconclusive web searches and trusted two sets of system checks and assumed this would be like the other hundred or so visas I have gotten. What I should have done was pick up the telephone and call the PRC Embassy in San Francisco.

I screwed up, and I should know better because I have traveled to many, many countries over the years, many of which have insane bureaucracies and/or unfriendly relations with my country, and obtained around 100 visas from at least three different categories (tourist, student and diplomatic). I can't play the "sorry, I'm new at this" card, which makes my screw-up that much worse.

I mainly wanted to clear up the timeline, cross-posting issues and some specific facts (for instance, one comment had me flying through NRT on the way to PEK, when in fact that was only the outbound route).

Visa and deportation issues aside, I'm still bitter about the Delta airline rep's actions in Beijing. This could have been fixed on the spot if he let me use a payphone or talk to a ticketing agent or use one of the web kiosks, and sorting this out after the fact would have been a lot easier if he had not stolen all my travel documents (including my hotel reservation). And standing there while he yelled every nationalistic slur he could think of was kind of a drag. And it was the Delta rep that got the police to revoke their offer of a 24 hour visa; the government folk were totally willing to let me go to my hotel as long as I was back the next day (and registered with the hotel, kept them advised as to my whereabouts, stuck to a schedule, etc). At best, that 24 hour visa would have let me talk to my embassy and maybe either sort it out or find a way to Hong Kong to sort this out, at worst I would have gotten a shower, ate something and made some phone calls before being peacefully deported anyway.

The Dutch transit visa I did because I thought it was funny and I had a lot of time to kill. Passport control was entirely empty and I had a long layover, so I struck up a conversation with the guy who was bored at his desk, told him I wanted a visa for my collection rather than just a timestamp, and he let me in the country. I walked in and then walked out. This was many years ago, Internet surfing in airports wasn't really a thing yet so I had to occupy myself somehow and I had read all my books already.

I have had entry stamps too, but only if I already had a visa for that country (for instance, I flew in and out of the UK a lot one year, but only got a visa when I arrived. It said "leave to enter for six months, access to public" funds and [something] employment [something] prohibited (the last part is pretty blurry now, so not sure of the exact wording after the quotes) and then two lines starting with "visa class" and some signatures. Every stamp I got from that timespan after that was merely an arrival stamp, generally just the airport name and the date.

As I understand it, unless you change visa classes (student to employment for instance), in most countries the wording on a visa is usually explicitly something along the lines of "this stamp gives the bearer permission to enter the country under the following conditions," and then lists whatever however many re-entries and what activities/geographic restrictions you are under. I have had a ton of those. They often come with stickers or random things stapled to the sheets of the passport and tend to be in both the local language as well as some common international one (English, French).

Entry stamps are something I have a silly amount of. There are also some other stamps in my older passports (I have had to replace at least one because it was out of room for new stamps) due to various third-world border shakedowns. I think it was Costa Rica that made me donate a buck to the Red Cross before they would let me leave once, and put a stamp in my passport before they would let me into the immigration office to get my exit visa.

I'd definitely recommend following the discussion in the thread linked to above in the China Forum, with its very knowledgeable and helpful Ambassadors to guide on specific China-related issues.

(And - Russia is worse, far worse, particularly for U S Veterans.)