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Originally Posted by langside

There are three free transit visas that you can do on arrival at Shanghai : 24, 72 and 144hrs- all you can get without having to pay/ apply at an embassy.

Both times I have used they actually start at 00.01 the next day so if your flight arrives at say 5am on the 1st your 144hr visa can actually give you almost 7 days

Important aspect is that you cannot do transit if you are are booking direct return flights to the uk (eg. Uk to Shanghai and return Shanghai to UK) but as you stated above going onwards to Hong Kong (so UK to Shanghai, Shanghai to Hong Kong and then Hong Kong to UK/ anywhere)would work. Your also limited to The Provence you arrive so sadly you wouldn’t be able to travel to Say Beijing on a transit visa But it’s still a great option especially considering it’s free and Shanghai is a great place to visit & I would recommend more rather than less days there as so much to do outside of Disney

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I am glad i saw this thread as I think you have confirmed what I had kind of thought. We have got Avios flights to / from Tokyo next year and we were thinking of a side trip to Shanghai for 144 hours. I would have booked a return flight, completely separate to my main UK flights which are already booked, between Tokyo and Shanghai. Then reading about this visa, I became doubtful that I would qualify for it.

So then we decided to book Tokyo - Shanghai - Seoul - Tokyo. I would look to get these on one booking or at least the first two flights, but would be not linked to my UK flights. Does this sound OK?