Ctrip's Sascha Matuszak gives a whirlwind tour of Shanghai, hitting up the bingo spots we all know (Oriental Pearl Tower, Bar Rouge) and some more out of the way areas (Qipu Lu, various food streets). For those of you who don't have a vpn yet, Youku videos are located after the jump: more ›

Congratulations Giuseppe, your photo of yourself mustaching it up 25 feet underwater has won you a 20,000RMB gift certificate from Ctrip. Check out the second place and third place winners on the Ctrip blog. more ›

You know the Ctrip Mustache Summer photo contest? The one that asks you to submit photos of specific orange mustaches plastered over whatever you happen to be taking a picture of at the time? The submission period is now over and it's time for you to cast your vote for who gets to take home the grand prize: a 20,000RMB Ctrip gift certificate. more ›

This weekend, Shanghaiist Junior Editor Cary Hooper braves the winter elements to bring you coverage of the world famous Harbin International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival. While he's at it, he's going to do his best to slip and slide all over the ice covered city in hopes of finding the perfect tipping point between Harbin Beer-drunk and death from hypothermia, and maybe even a few cultural points of interest. Sponsored by the lovely folks over at Ctrip, the easiest way to find the best fares in China. more ›

This weekend, Shanghaiist Junior Editor Cary Hooper braves the winter elements to bring you coverage of the world famous Harbin International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival. While he's at it, he's going to do his best to slip and slide all over the ice covered city in hopes of finding the perfect tipping point between Harbin Beer-drunk and death from hypothermia, and maybe even a few cultural points of interest. Sponsored by the lovely folks over at Ctrip, the easiest way to find the best fares in China. more ›

This weekend, Shanghaiist Junior Editor Cary Hooper braves the winter elements to bring you coverage of the world famous Harbin International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival. While he's at it, he's going to do his best to slip and slide all over the ice covered city in hopes of finding the perfect tipping point between Harbin Beer-drunk and death from hypothermia, and maybe even a few cultural points of interest. Sponsored by the lovely folks over at Ctrip, the easiest way to find the best fares in China. more ›

It's a cold time to be in northern China: the weather has been plummeting for days, covering the north with blankets of snow and bitter temperatures, and causing delays and power rationing in what's shaping up to be one of the worst winters on record. Just the thought of such extreme weather sends most people shivering to their closets for extra layers: I, on the other hand, am packed and ready to go up into the wintry maw of Harbin for a fun and frigid romp through the annual Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival! more ›

Sure, you could stay past closing time in Harbin Ice and Snow World, evade security and sleep in a giant ice castle, but we hear the breakfast really sucks, Wi-Fi is spotty and a block of Songhua River ice is even harder than the mattress in your average Chinese 2 star hotel. A better solution? Book a cozy 4 or 5 star Harbin hotels starting at CNY 233/night! Check out Ctrip’s Harbin hotel deals for details. more ›

China’s biggest winter festival is just a short flight away, but with the Harbin Ice Festival on from January 5 to February 5, don’t delay. Book while the booking’s good to save on airfare to China’s hottest subzero winter destination. All the cool kids will be there! Check out Ctrip’s Harbin flight deals today. more ›

If you're like us, you love Halloween so much that you look forward to it for weeks, dreaming about stuffing yourself with candy and scaring every man, woman and small child in your freak-out radius. But if you're really like us, then you've probably thought a LOT about your costume, but haven't taken the time to travel all the way to Party Monster for your costume, or even log on to Taobao to look for one. Well, it's high time to get on it, because our annual Shanghaiist Halloween Party will have the definitive costume contest in all of Shanghai! more ›

Remember how we told you we were going to become Qingdaoist for this weekend? Well, we're flying out there today... in fact, we're probably in the air right now! We've got a tentative schedule lined up of seafood, beer and blogging, and not much to guide us by except for these websites: myredstar (which seems to think Qingdao has nothing going on on a Friday night) and That's Qingdao (relation to That's Shanghai unconfirmed as of yet). This will be the first time in a while we've not known where to go in a Chinese city... and we'll most likely be drunk on top of that, so forgive us if old Qingdao hands end up finding what we do supremely touristy! But hey, if you have any recommendations of places to go, we'd love to hear it. Send 'em to tips (at) shanghaiist.com. And as always, thanks to our sponsors: the great people over at Ctrip. more ›

The following post is from our advertiser Ctrip. So did we mention we’re going to Qingdao? Yeah, near the end of August we've got plans to infiltrate and report on the great Asian fraternity party of 2009. That means for a weekend, you'll get to hear about all the streaking, chugging, bonding and other ridiculous antics that will no doubt spawn from the copious amounts of beer we'll be drinking. Want to come too? Need a place to stay? Check out the hotel and flight deals the good people over at Ctrip have compiled. See you there! more ›

The following post is from our advertiser Ctrip To commemorate the annual pukefest celebration of life we call the Qingdao Beer Festival, we'll be turning into Qingdaoist in late August. We hear the fest, which spans from August 15 to August 30 is well worth the trip, so if you're a fan of beer and fun, you should think about coming too. Get a jump start making your way through the madness by booking through our friends at Ctrip, who have compiled all their flight deals to Qingdao here (flights from Shanghai start from just 500RMB). Come, not just for the beers but also to see a veritable cultural mashup when everyone begins using the nectar of the Gods as a diplomatic lubricant. more ›

@timrider: "Save elevator/qi che power with roof based building2building ziplines! Super quick commute & likely reduced death defiance!" Sure it's not the most practical, but it's a fun thought and it caused us to have a good laugh. If there's anything we WOULD love to do to save the environment, it'd be to act like an urban Tarzan. @timrider wins a night at URBN, China's only eco-friendly hotel, located in the heart of Jing'an. The runner ups: @leirda with "mass broadcast of Captain Planet on public transport TVs to begin the recruitment of 1.3 billion planeteers. Go Planet!" (We loved Captain Planet as kids) and @cedric_c with "Save tons of CO2/month forbidding all media besides Shanghaiist. Less CO2, Greener city, only 1 media to spend green $ for ads." (because we're flattered). more ›

Ctrip is holding another tweet contest and they've invited us to be guest judges once again. This time around, the winning tweeter gets a night in the penthouse room of URBN Hotels Shanghai. URBN, located in Jing An, is China's first carbon-neutral hotel and uses green materials and technology to make your stay as environmentally friendly as possible. Just tweet Ctrip (remember to add the @ctripenglish) with the most creative way to make Shanghai's environment a little better. We'll announce the winners next Monday. Happy tweeting and an extra hurrah for minimizing the impact your love of luxury has on the environment! more ›

Well shoot! If there's anything we're a fan of it's impromptu vacations, and now Ctrip.com's got a new FareAlert system in place to help us do fulfill our "adventure for the weekend" fantasies. Go to farealert.english.ctrip.com, enter your criteria - where you want to go, around when you'd like to go, and how much you would pay - and you'll get an SMS or an email if and when your criteria has been matched. more ›

Guess where you could be exactly a week from now? Drinking with us at Shanghaiist's first happy hour of the year! Assuming the weather gods decide to bless us with as sunny a Tuesday as today was, we'll all be hanging outdoors, chatting and listening to great (if we may say so ourselves) music at Cotton's Xinhua Lu location. more ›

...@samgaskin, for his hilarious (and kind of sexy!) tweet: "I’d buy Natalie Portman 2 tattoos. On her left thigh RITZ & her right CARLTON but I’d use retroactive ink so they’re in Closer" as an answer to Ctrip's question: If we gave you 1,000 RMB to spend, what would you do to show the world your appreciation to the Ritz Carlton for your amazing free stay? We knew that movie was good for something! Congrats, and enjoy your free weekend stay at the Portman Ritz Carlton's sweet Club Executive Suite (worth around 15,000RMB). And thank you Ctrip! more ›

Ctrip is hosting a Twitter competition to give away the sweet prize of weekend stay at the Portman Ritz Carlton’s Club Executive Suite (worth around 15,000RMB) and guess who's the guest judge? Everybody's favorite city blog - that's right, us (and don't you try to tell us differently). All you have to do to possibly win your stay at the Ritz is to answer this question from Ctrip: "If we gave you 1,000 RMB to spend, what would you do to show the world your appreciation to the Ritz Carlton for your amazing free stay?" as awesomely as possible. It can be funny, it can be touching, it can be plain weird - just Twitter Ctrip something 140 characters long that will make our eyes pop. (While you are at it, follow us on Twitter, too.) more ›

And you thought they'd never get to it! Ctrip.com is now looking a lot more like a dot.com because you can now finally pay for that ticket you booked online via Paypal and with your foreign credit card. As far as we can remember, the last time we tried to book a ticket with our foreign credit card, their customer service staff directed us to fax in an authorisation letter to allow them to charge our card, and since the last time we even touched a fax machine was like ten years ago, we gave up and decided to call another travel agent. ChinaTechNews.com reports that having built in payment options for non-Chinese, Ctrip is now going to work on brandbuilding among foreigners. We'll try buying our next ticket online with Ctrip and tell you how it goes. more ›