The Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) has announced the cancellation of the Wuhan-Nanjing flight route, beginning summer this year. The route is the first casualty of the onslaught by high-speed railway, which is now rapidly developing across China at breakneck speed. more ›

Shanghai-based carrier China Eastern Airlines has officially joined SkyTeam ahead of the Shanghai Expo, ending months of speculation over which global alliance it would join. The move leaves OneWorld the only major airline network without a mainland Chinese partner as Beijing-based Air China is a part of the Star Alliance, and Guangzhou-based China Southern is also a member of SkyTeam. Shanghai Airlines, before its anti-competitive takeover by merger with China Eastern, was also a member of the Star Alliance, but it may have to withdraw membership now that China Eastern has joined SkyTeam. more ›

• A 13-year-old student has become the second person in Beijing to be hospitalized with mercury poisoning after drinking a can of Sprite. Yeesh, we're gonna cut back on our soda habits. [China Daily]
• China is planning on building twelve new hydroelectric dams along the Yangtze River. While this is supposed to be a boon for local residents, Melissa Chan of Al Jazeera has found the neighborhood thinks otherwise. [Al Jazeera]
• Well, at least one guy thinks China will eventually reduce its censorship of the internet: the guy who created the world wide web. [Times Online]

Air China, China Eastern and China Southern have dispatched special charter flights to bring home stranded Chinese tourists caught in Bangkok during the recent anti-government protests there. more ›

If you've been looking to fly to Europe for that much-needed break, ladies and gentlemen, that time is now. Air fares to Europe are at all-time lows and have never been cheaper in the six years that we've been here. Lufthansa leads the pack with the eye-popping offer of a return flight to Germany from Beijing at RMB3,760 and from Shanghai at RMB4,880. Air France has the very special web deal of a return tic to the UK from both Beijing and Shanghai from RMB4,040. KLM is also flying to the UK from RMB4,040 and elsewhere in Europe via Amsterdam from RMB4,470. In the meanwhile, new kid on the block Air Berlin flies direct from Shanghai to a host of destinations in German-speaking Europe including Berlin, Hamburg, Duesseldorf, Nuremberg, Stuttgart, Munich, Vienna and Zurich. We found a one-way ticket to Duesseldorf for about EUR300 (incl. taxes) — not a bad price at all, if you're not thinking of coming back to Shanghai that is! more ›

As a country that has largely distanced itself from the clusterf*ck we call 'The International War on Terror' back in America, China has generally been considered one of the safer places in the world in terms of not getting blown up. While we hope that this doesn't change any time soon, recent developments have given us some cause for concern. more ›

Photo from gruntzooki more ›

Singapore’s Temasek Holdings and Singapore Airline’s joint bid for a 24 percent stake of China Eastern Airline finally received its blessing from Beijing last week. The deal valued CEA at HK$3.80 per share. China Eastern’s Hong Kong listing after a three month halt resumed trading earlier today and promptly doubled from HK$ 3.73 to HK$ 7.50 before paring back to settle around HK$ 6.90 in the afternoon. Today’s surge in gave the two new investors an instant HK$5.84 billion profit on paper, about USD $750 million. Not bad for a day’s work! Shares of all four major Chinese airlines (the other three are Air China, China Southern and Hainan Air) traded on the domestic exchange rallied 10 percent on the news, the maximum daily limit allowed under local rules. In related news, the Shanghai Composite Index closed at another a record high, up 102 points, or 2 percent, at 5321. more ›

Not content with making cars and computers for the world, China is now on to its next big thing -- aircraft. The long-awaited ARJ-21 (pictured here) is China's very first homegrown commercial aircraft and has been launched amid much fanfare by the aircraft maker AVIC I. Now only a name is lacking, and if you can come up with a creative Chinese name of between two and four Chinese characters before September 28, RMB50,000 will be yours! (Sorry apparently English names are worth nothing). more ›

Shanghaiist is somewhat of a frequent flyer to Beijing, and because he isn't employed by some big multinational but rather runs his own little business, he can only afford to put himself on cattle class and often has to scour the internet for the cheapest available deals. We especially love this nifty little function on eLong.com which shows you the cheapest available flight within a week of your selected departure date. That has worked to our advantage in the past because we have relatively flexible schedules, and we have flown to Beijing for as low as RMB530 (that's RMB400 for the ticket and RMB130 for miscellaneous taxes) on Hainan Airlines. more ›

Photo from ojour. more ›

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Tickets for domestic Chinese flights may be cheap, but really, is it worth it? Last week, we told you about the China Eastern plane that blew out its tires while landing. And over the weekend, reports emerged of a China Southern plane that had its tail cone (the rear of the airplane's fuselage) fall to the ground "just before the plane was to taxi to the runway": more ›

Photo by spiky247 taken from the Shanghaiist Contribute page. To see your photos on our Contribute page, use Flickr and tag your photos “shanghaiist”. Or you can email your photos to photos@shanghaiist.com and they will automatically appear on our site. more ›

We read the release before we saw the images, and we have to admit to being rather underwhelmed by the chic and bold and charming new outfits. In fact, we thought perhaps we were looking at the "before" images ... like, ones from the 1960s or 70s ... but then remembered that China Southern was founded in 1991. We looked up "boffo" and our dictionary told us it could mean "resoundingly successful or popular" and "boisterously funny." Neither one really fits. The uniforms are fine. They are unoffensive. They seem pretty normal. (But they are indeed an improvement on what came before them. See here, here and here.) more ›