Urgent visa info for Taiwanese - help!!!

[pookie]

Hi all,

My wife is Taiwanese and will travel there on Feb 6th (week today). She is going to Tokyo to see a friend first and is booked on a China Eastern flight which has a layover in Shanghai. When I first contacted the airline to enquire about visa requirements, they said a free one day visa is issued to all foreigners by the airline for the purpose of this stopover.

Last week I realised there is a high probability that they wouldn't consider my wife to be a 'foreigner'. Being Chunjie I'm having no luck contacting the airline. The one response they did send was to say she might need a 'home visiting' certificate but I should check with the Chinese consulate. Well, the consulates website contains no contact information from what I can see. Not even a typical £1 per minute consulate phone line.

Does anyone here know if my wife would qualify as a foreigner in this case, or what she needs?

Thanks

Sean

P.S as a side note, I had a good laugh at my People's Daily e-newsletter last week. In an article describing Chunjie flights from Beijing to Taipei, Taiwan was constantly referred to as: 'South-East China's Taiwan'. Not just once to set the context at the start, but right throughout the article. My wife was angry to say the least. I just think it lowered the article to a very much sub-professional standard.

[koreth]

Is she planning to leave the airport? If she's just catching a connecting flight in Shanghai, she shouldn't need a visa -- she'll never leave the international terminal. But if her layover is long enough that she wants to go spend some time in Shanghai, then you might want to check out my message on the subject.

[pookie]

I read your thread - very helpful. She has a UK residency visa and will not be going to Shanghai from Taiwan so I think she'll be classed as a 'foreigner'. She will leave the airport and go to a hotel which the airline pays for. The airline also supplies the visa for all 'foreigner's. Hopefully my wife will be one.

How did your experience turn out?

Many thanks for the help.

[koreth]

I still don't know how it's going to turn out -- my girlfriend wanted to get her US visa renewed before handing her passport to the Chinese consulate, and we're still waiting for that to finish. I will post a followup when we know how it all works out.

[adrianlondon]

Also worth checking (if you can!) whether there are special, ie more relaxed, visa formalities over the spring holidays. This is the only time of year that one can fly direct from Taiwan to China.