Never had any eye treatment (other than wearing specs). Just the turning pale of colours that comes with age, I suppose.
I used my travel permit last week to go to Shenzhen via Lok Ma Chau. We went quite late at 4pm so immigration was empty, went to the manned chinese lane, wife and kids went through first. Wife mentioned to the officer I have not yet had my fingerprints taken for echannel.
Officer scanned full set of fingerprints and asked for a phone number. Whole process took 2mins. I am not sure if this means I am now registered for the e-channel but will give it a go next time.
Yes, you are now registered.
Registration is not done at the immigration counter, there is a separate area you need to go to once you clear immigration where they take your fingerprints again.
@SonicYouth1 Just keep it handy for the first trip
I have been using the e-channel from before Covid as I had a residence card (linked to passport). The procedure for collecting fingerprints hasn't changed. In my experience, they tell you to wait 24 hours to save Frontline staff the bother of checking why the card might not be working. It might work after 5 minutes and it might not. Coming back in, there is some type of double check they have to perform one time only. After that it's a breeze. Although the line for Hongkongers might seem long, there are lots of e-gates and you pass through very fast. Much faster than the foreign channel.
Did the fingerprint verification today at luohu border. They specifically told me to use the manual lane two more time (total three times) i.e. exiting china after fingerprint verification and re-entering again next time. They told the above information and they also had these translated and printed out, which they pointed out to me.
Do we really have to go through manual lane again after verifying the finger print, or can we try the e-channel? I did not try e-channel as it was so crowded, but as pointed out from earlier posts, e-channel pretty much works after fingerprint verification, without having to go through manual lane three times.