Hi Tony,
Last June I hand carried the applications for myself and my wife to the consulate in Houston, TX. Make sure EVERYTHING is filled out properly. My wife printed out our standby itinerary at work (It looks different than what we print at home) and it did look similar to an actual e-ticket. It did say "Standby" on it when she handed it to me, but it might have disappeared sometime before I turned it over to the Chinese. About 10 days later it was ready and I flew back to Houston and picked them up. As a bonus, they gave me multiple entries instead of the 1 that I had requested. (I had read that 1st time visitors rarely get multiple so I checked off 1 entry). We went to Beijing in July and had a wonderful time.