Wire transfers cost so I’d suggest just doing a few a year. The good news is that you can, when in the US, use your Union Pay card. I think ICBC has a Union Pay logo on it. You can use this at your Wells Fargo bank and take out the money there in USD (they might only allow you to do this using the ATM) and deposit the cash into your Wells Fargo bank account.
For those of you without a Wells Fargo account you can only use the Wells Fargo ATM, which has a daily maximum withdrawal of $800USD, and will then charge your account in China $5USD.
I did this with a Bank of China (also Union Pay) card recently and was only charge 19 RMB per daily $800USD withdrawal. This helped me take out the other 30% of my salary that I couldn’t legally electronically transfer.
