Hooray! My fiancé's visa was approved and issued. Now we are just waiting for it to get to the pick-up location! Started the process 7 July 2013. Finalized 22 April 2014. 9 months and 18 days :) Took 5 months at USCIS, 2 days at USNVC, and 1.5 months at Guangzhou Consulate. The rest was mailing time and waiting. Would have gone quicker but we missed a form. The US Consulate has subcontracted all applications processes to CGI. So I had to mail an original signed document to her (adding 12 days)before they would approve the visa. So happy I get to see my sweet-heart soon!
On a side-note: Guangzhou consulate is the only place in China that does fiancé visas.

If anybody has the patience to rad this long thread to learn about applying for their visa, they should be warner that the majority of these comments pre-date a number of changes in the rules and may not apply to your current situation.

Even with all the above problems it sound much easier than for a person from most countries to get a US visa.

Just wasted a day today and thinking I had everything prepared:

You have to commit by making airline reservation, hotel stay, etc. before getting the visa. This is for a tourist visa.

For an F or M visa, make sure you get the inviter. It has to be a personal invitation and should detail why you are being invited to China.

First time was not a favorable experience, but I got in line early 8:30 am and was the 9th of 500 people by the time it opened at 9:00 am. 4 people to help 500 people. Tellers don't care.

If not for my job, I would just skip China. I can live my life without ever seeing China. Same with Brazil, Argentina, Russia.

I received my tourist 10 year multiple entry Chinese visa for $140 on Monday, a week after sending it to A. Briggs's San Francisco office. Yes, you have provide photocopies of a round trip ticket, and if you're traveling independently as I am, make up a fake itinerary and provide photocopies of hotel bookings for the entire trip (easy to book through booking.com and then cancel). Since I don't live in SF, I had to pay a service fee & postage but the process was much quicker and easier than I had anticipated. I'll be traveling in Eastern Tibet this summer and then in the fall I'm heading down the Mekong to Vientiane (on the new Yunnan Pandaw). I see the new 10 year visas a definite improvement over the single entry and 1 yr multiple entry visa of the past.