Renewing an Australian Passport in Guangzhou

All bizarre theorising aside, I have to do something practical, and doing it in the next two weeks is a good idea, so...

Anyone ever renewed an Australian passport in Guangzhou? 

Plowing through the consulate website I'm finding I need someone to be guarantor (and I wonder if it can be a Yank I work with--5 years here as a "teacher," know me for the same amount of time), I need to get my foreign expert card translated (it's the only photo id with my current address), and though I've got it, maybe they won't accept my residential address written in Chinese (and so how are they going to post the new passport to me, huh?).  Or am I mistaken?  Do you just front up with the old one and say, "Yeah, that's me"?

Yeah, I'll call them tomorrow, but anyone got any happy, reassuring anecdotes?

(It's not lost, not stolen, still current, been valid for more than two years, I have it in my hand right now, and it's expiring in half a year...)

hang on! You've had it for how long for more than two years? Mine was gotten in 2002 and is valid for ten years.

That's a little jigger they use to confuse people on the website.  They say use Form X if you are over 18 and renewing a passport valid for two years.  They mean one that has seen at least two years worth of action.  Mine has.  I got it as a first-issue in January, 1998 when I thought I was going to Japan.

Anyone ever renewed an Australian passport anywhere?

Why don't you just call them and find out? More over, call the Embassy in Beijing.

I went through this with a friend in Amsterdam a few years ago - and I was the guarantor - basically just had to do an affidavit that the person was the one in the passport and I had known him for more than 1 year. Everything was pretty straightforward and he was soon in possession of a shiny new passport. I think from memory that the guarantor had to be an Australian citizen (but not 100% certain about that). The big thing is to still have the original passport, renewing this is much easier than renewing a lost one!

There will be a government Notary Public office somewhere that will translate and notarize your docs for you with very little hassle anf a few RMB. I just had my passport, residency visa and Oz drivers licence done in Dongguan - 2 days & 190RMB. This is the only acceptable form of translation for legal docs. If you have trouble finding the office let me know and I'll try to track it down for you.

Good luck!

Why not just call them?  Anxiety is its own reward, that's why, and the exhaustion helps me sleep.

I called them today.  Basically, you just turn up with the old passport and say, "Yeah, that's me, and here are two new photos."

I assume she told me the right thing.  Can it be so easy?  Those wily Guangdongers, you never can tell.  It might all be some Cantonese plot to make people give up and go to Hong Kong.  Cantonese English is pretty anyway.  Like a British school marm.

Don't know about the aussie's but a British passport takes 1 week to renew in Guangzhou, they say that it has to be sent to Beijing, so it's a week turnaround.
In Hong Kong i managed to get it the same day, but i had to have a good reason why it was so urgent.

I'm going to gamble and plan on having the bugger mailed to me.  Normal processing takes ten working days.  Two working days if you pay a sizeable hurry-up fee.  Not including mailing times.  The standard address of my current institution written in pinyin has worked for other international packages, so here's hopin'.