Apparently, tourists from the United States, Japan, and Korea. According to Xinhua, tourist visits from those countries were down 17.2 percent, 24.4 percent and 11 percent, respectively in April. Overall, Beijing experienced an overall drop of 5.3% in tourist visits, year on year, compared to 2007. By way of explanation, Xinhua reasonably blames the decline…
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Flying the Subsidized Skies.
[Get out your calculators] How is it possible that all five of the major US airlines were unprofitable last quarter – while Air China managed to see its profits climb 147%, to RMB 1.04 billion (US$149 million)? There were undoubtedly a range of factors at play, but the one that I’d like to touch on…
Don’t Mass in Sheshan
On Monday, under the innocuous headline, “Restricting Traffic,” the venerable Shanghai Daily quietly informed the city’s residents that: From 5am-5pm on April 30 and May 1, 4, and 24, cars are banned from the area inside Jiasong Highway, Shenzhuan Highway, Qianxin Highway and Sichen Highway. The roads themselves are not affected by the ban. Only…
What’s a disgruntled Chinese airline pilot supposed to do?
On March 31 and April 1, eighteen (some reports say seventeen) China Eastern flights departed Kunming with passengers, baggage, and cargo, flew around in circles, and then landed … in Kunming, leaving the passengers stranded and furious. [UPDATE 4/8: Xinhua now reports that twenty-one flights were turned around.] Now, what on earth could drive a…
Like A Refugee Museum
On Sunday afternoon I was in Hongkou, retracing some old reporting for a new story, and I decided to take a two block detour over to the old Ohel Moishe Synagogue. In 2006, I became quite familiar with the building, and its neighborhood, while researching two stories related to World War II-era Jews who were…
Terminal (3) Operations.
Chalk it up to my declining powers of perception, but yesterday I somehow managed to fly through Beijing Capitol Airport’s massive new terminal 3 building (986,000 square meters!) without knowing – or noticing – that it was the super-structure’s first fully operational day (h/t to Micah for pointing it out). In my defense: the terminal…
Inkstone Workshop, Anhui
All this talk about the rising price of Chinese manufacturing and the threat it poses to the proliferation of cheap consumer goods worldwide, well, it’s kinda got me down. China has long been capable of better, and I’m not just talking about computer chips, either. So, in the spirit of fair and balanced reporting, I…
What’s safer than sitting on the sofa?
Flying in China, apparently. According to Xinhua: China’s civil aviation industry achieved a clean sheet in safety last year and notched up 3.7 million hours of flight, both cargo and passenger, a 15.4 percent year-on-year increase. More people, more flights, no crashes. Who would have bet on that? In fact, according to Xinhua, there hasn’t…
Flying the “Foggy” Skies
On Saturday morning, Shanghai Airline Flight 9237, Shanghai Hongqiao to Linyi, Shandong, began boarding at 8:50 AM. Just before joining forty-some other passengers on the Bombarbdier CRJ, I took this photograph of the terminal through the morning haze. On the basis of too much experience, I try not to fly north of the Yangtze River…
Just in time for flu season … No more quarantine forms!
According to Xinhua: Beginning next month, international passengers will no longer need to fill out a quarantine form upon entering China. If you’ve been an international arrival at any of China’s airports over the last four years, you know the routine: it’s the little white photocopied sheet (in Shanghai, at least) requiring that you disclose…