From my favourite travel agency,

Dear Mr Didier,

I checked with visa office again, if French Passport, no need HKID Card.

For your information, the China Visa Policy was always changed recently. Today, I checked with Visa Office, there is a little bit changed, here is the new policy, please pay attention the application.

Please hand in the following materials for the individual visa application:
1) 01 passport size photo
2) Hotel Voucher of the Hotel in China
3) Return Ticket (i.e. from China return to home country)
4) Completed Form with client’s signature (form will be provided at our office)

Please come to our office on Monday-Friday (except the Public Holiday) before 09h30, we will deliver all the documents to the visa office for application before 10h00. If everything is fine, normally the client can come to our office and collect her passport with the visa done after 19h00 on the next day. (If the visa application is handed-in on Friday, then the visa will be ready on Monday after 19h00.)

For your information, as the condition of China Visa application is getting strict due to the Olympic Game & some political reason, the Visa Office maybe delay the application time, I suggest you can be prepare one more day for applying Visa, as I have some case can’t get back their passport at 19h00 on the next day,

Price
Individual China Visa - Single Entry for 03 months
Price: HK$680.00 per application

Individual China Visa - Double Entry for 03 months
Price: HK$780.00 per application

Cumbersome, and pricey, but probably workable, except when I have to go to Shenzhen for a day trip…

And more precisely a 5-day visa on the spot at Lowu/Luohu.

Non es possible, señor. Unless you have a valid HK ID card. If you don’t you get bounced back to HK, and it is a painfully long process. I should know, I just went through that process.

Apparently the only place where you can get a Chinese visa as a, ahem, tourist, in HK is:

Office of the Commissioner of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region
外交部駐香港特派員公署領事部外國人簽證處
7/F, Lower Block, China Resources Building, 26 Harbour Road, Wanchai, Hong Kong (Department of Consular Affairs) (CA)
香港灣仔區港灣道26號華潤大廈低座7樓
Tel: 3413 2424
Email: fmco_hk@mfa.gov.cn
Website: http://www.fmcoprc.gov.hk/eng/
Office hours: 9/12 - 14/17, Monday to Friday.

Sucks. Greatly. I’ll try on Monday to get a friggin’ 2-entry visa. Will update this post accordingly.

Skee, I suppose for Ski. This Olympic 2008 fever promises a nice harvest of ChinChongChenglish.

Got bitten today by my passion for Cantonese and too much travel. I was in Beijing today — where they don’t speak Canto,
thank you — and hopped in a cab, Richtung the airport. This much I can handle in Mandarin. The driver asked me which terminal? I looked at my eTicket receipt, and said, without thinking, “yi ho” — which is either good Korean or passable Cantonese. And reads “2號”. Right. Except. That “yi hao”, which could be what this poor foreigner had intended to pronounce, is “1号”. Duh.
Now. Can we unify “2″ once and for all, and make my life easier?