Answered by Borut | Apr. 21, 2023 09:02
You are limited to just one transit region. Some of them are just cities, but other are quite large. For example, Beijing transit area is large and consists of Beijing and Tianjin cities and Hebei province. In other words, you can explore quite a large area, but not outside of it.
To maximize your use of 144 hour visa free transit scheme you can do the following:
Tokyo - Beijing - Seoul - Shanghai - Tokyo
or
US - Tokyo - Beijing - Taipei - Shanghai - US
Like this you will be eligible for 144 hour visa free transit twice. Once in Beijing and once in Shanghai area. Only thing that you should take care about is that immediate points before and after your mainland Chinese destination have to be in two different geographical entities. Eligible geographical entities are countries and three Chinese provinces: Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau.
Also, this is not a visa, but a visa free transit, so there is no any kind of visa at all.