Boarding a China Eastern flight from Paris to Shanghai. There were security agents in the jetway checking travel documents. When they saw I didn't have a visa for China they checked my onward connection. It worked out fine. You could stay in Shanghai plus the neighboring provinces of Zhejiang and Jiangsu without a visa for just shy of seven days at a stretch without a visa, provided you had an onward ticket to a third country, in my case Thailand on the way out, and back to Schengen (Europe) coming back in.Read more