Help - renew Chinese passport and H-1b extension

Does anyone have the experience to renew Chinese passport at San Francisco? My passport will be expired on Feb 14th, 2011, and I also need to file H-1B extension on Aug 2010, so my lawyer suggested me to get passport renew first before file H-1b extension… So I will have to make a trip to San Francisco Chinese embassy….Do I need to make appointment? Is it too early to renew the passport now?

Thanks a lot in advance.....