The Consulate Shuffle
It all started with a train trip through Laos. I was riding China’s sleek new high-speed rail from the current capital, Vientiane, to the former French colonial capital of Luang Prabang. Looking at the tracks stretching north, I was struck by a thought: if I just stayed on this train, I could wake up in China. Of course, that would require a visa—the ultimate “golden ticket.”
There are only two places in the US where you can apply for a visa to China: Washington DC and San Francisco. On a visit to San Francisco, I decided to “pop in” to the Chinese consulate to get my visa. In the age of eVisas, I had forgotten about the bureaucracy of getting a visa traditionally. However, seeing a line wrap around an entire city block in San Francisco quickly disabused me of that notion. When I learned I’d have to surrender my passport for three days—and I was leaving town in two—I had to fold my hand. Round one went to the bureaucrats.
The 144-Hour Loophole
A year later, I discovered a traveler’s “back door”: the Transit Without Visa (TWOV) program. Many countries allow you to transit through them without getting a visa for entry. For example, if you fly from Seattle to Bangkok with a stopover in Japan, they do not require you to get a visa for Japan. Some countries decided to take advantage of long layovers by allowing people transiting through to get a 24 hour visa, which basically is an opportunity for a country to make money off of the people transiting their country. Whole industries have popped up around these transit visas, including tours that pick you up at the airport and have you back in time to catch your ongoing flight. China has expanded on this concept by offering the option for you to spend money in their country for 240-hours (ten consecutive day). Talk about entrepreneurial!
The Quirky Catch: To qualify as “transit” you must arrive from Country A and depart to Country C. You cannot go from Hong Kong to China and back to Hong Kong. However, China officially classifies Hong Kong and Macau as “different countries” for transit purposes. In my case I wanted to travel across China which is allowed as long as you only travel to the 15 designated provinces, and they must be contiguous.
Pro-Tip for a day trip: You could technically take a one-hour ferry from Hong Kong to the mainland, enjoy world-class dim sum in Shenzhen, hop a ferry to Macau for a bit of gambling, and return to Hong Kong—all in the same day and without a formal visa.
My Own Loopholes
I decided to push the envelope. I would enter from Hong Kong and depart for Laos, completing my original dream of a cross-border rail journey. Since all of the provinces I would travel over my 10 days were contiguous, it met the criteria for the transit visa, at least from my perspective. Just in case the customs agents disagreed, I bought a sacrificial plane ticket out of Hong Kong the day after I planned to attempt entering China in case they sent me back.
There was another contingency I had to plan for. The train to Laos only issues tickets 3 days in advance. That meant that I would not have proof of onward travel when I entered China. To mitigate this, I purchased an onward flight from China. There are a couple ways to do this. You can use a company like Onward Ticket, which will purchase an onward ticket for you to show customs. It’s an affordable way to prove to customs you have an actual ticket. Of course, once you’re in the country, they cancel the ticket, but you’re only out the $25 fee. Since I was working with Chinese customs, I decided to go with a more legitimate option and, using Google flights, found the cheapest ticket out of Kunming, the same city where I hoped to catch the train to Laos. I booked it for the day after my proposed train trip just in case I actually needed to use it.
The “Paperwork as a Shield” Strategy
Knowing that Chinese Customs officials value order above all else, I prepared for battle. I didn’t just have my digital receipts; I had a physical folder of “spotless” printouts of all the hotels and train tickets throughout my journey. It had cost me $10, but in communist bureaucracies, fumbling with a smartphone is a one-way ticket to the back of the line.
I even bought a “sacrificial” plane ticket out of Kunming for $25 through an onward travel service. It’s a legitimate ticket that gets canceled after you clear customs—a small price to pay for peace of mind when an agent is staring at you over a pair of spectacles.
The High-Speed Ferry Slows to a Crawl
I could have just flown from Hong Kong to Shenzhen which I imagine would take about 20 minutes, but when investigating ports of entry, I found a more unique approach. According to the Chinese website, I could enter China by land if I used one of two ferry ports. You know if there’s a more interesting way to do something, I’m going to do it, so I bought a ferry ticket, and headed to the waiting area. When they announced, in Mandarin, that we should board our ferry I headed down. I don’t speak Mandarin, but I knew the name of the arrival port, and I was prompted by everyone else in the room getting up to leave.
As I walked down the ramp to the high speed catamaran ferry, I was greeted by the entire crew—smartly dressed in suits and skirts, welcoming us like we were boarding a luxury cruise. Once on board, the monitoring began. They counted us twice. I wasn’t sure if the ladies patrolling the aisles were there to serve tea or to ensure no one tried to jump overboard and swim to the mainland.
The closer we got to the landing port, the more hopeful I was that I was going to make it, but ten minutes from the dock, we came to a slow crawl. We were in a maritime “holding pattern.” For forty minutes, the ship’s speakers played the same four-minute soothing song on a loop. After the tenth repetition, I began to wonder if the music would have the opposite effect. Just as I feared we might be held indefinitely, the crew appeared with trays of snacks and bottled water—proving that they were ready and equipped to deal with the situation, removing any of the protestations that entitled travelers might have.
The Moment of Truth
When we finally docked, I followed everyone to customs but got into the “Foreigners” lane. When it was my turn, I just said to the agent, “Transit.” That word set the machinery in motion. I was whisked to a special desk where a woman scrutinized my folder of hotel bookings and train tickets. Once they were satisfied that I had onward travel, they sent me back to the main customs area. I was told to wait, which I did patiently, having been through this drill before. My favorite example of what not to do was this one time when a German woman pounded her fist on the counter declaring that the process was totally inefficient and that this was not how they do it in Germany. Despite having arrived after her, I was cleared first and have no idea if she was ever granted entry.
Finally, I heard it: the heavy thwack of a visa stamp. It’s a sound that evokes the same feeling of hitting a jackpot on a slot machine. The glass gate to my left opened, and I entered China. As I settled into my seat on the metro, I triumphantly updated my dad that I had gotten in! His reply was classic: “Getting into China isn’t the hard part, Tom. It’s getting out.“