I have an agricultural bank account in Yunnan and want to send some money to a credit union back in the states. Is there a way to transfer money....without a lot of paperwork or hoops to go through?

I think the chances of your bank being able to do a money transfer to a small bank in the states is pretty low. Can you send a moneygram or Western Union to someone who can then deposit it?

so transfer money from the insignificant bank in china to the insignificant bank in us. you have two hopes, no hope and bob hope.

Ha.Ha.

The Agricultural Bank of China is far from insignificant.

I saved this www.gokunming.com/en/forums/thread/9789/money_transfers in my favourites about this topic, but there were other similar discussions here on GoKM.
What I recall being the best solution is to invest money in an international fund from your CHN account and get the money back into your US account. By doing so you should avoid fees and limits on the maximum allowable sum to transfer. The US tax agency may charge you, though. In many European countries you get around taxation by buying a life insurance product without time limits, instead, but the companies which allow foreigners as clients are not many. I heard there is an Irish company providing one such rare product, but I never got around getting to know the name of this company.
To recap, this seems to be the only legit solution without incurring into considerable charges, taxes or transfer limits.

Money gram only costs $13. Ricsnap's idea is confusing for me but maybe you get it. But it also depends how much money you are talking about.

.

the abc is not an international bank and looked down upon in finanacial cirlcles in china

I'm only talking about a couple of thousand dollars, not a major investment (so I don't think I want to invest in some life insurance), I can't seem to get the monogram website to load up...or western union, but who knows maybe in the morning....