ok first of all, yes the post probably should be moved to amex mr forum. but here are some suggestions.

Transfer MR reward points to continental before Sep 30th. continental has direct flight from ORD (chicago O'Hare) to PVG (Shanghai Pudong) The reward needed per ticket is 65K so for 3 tickets you are looking at 195K miles (amex MR transfer to continental at 1:1 ratio). Or if you need 4 tickets, one for yourself? then it's another 65K. 260K total and I believe it's ~$100 or so for the fee (I just booked 2 award tickets for my parents last month :P). you are also allowed a stopover on the way so you can play with that on continental.com using multi-city routing. my parents flew out of MCO made a week long stop over in Calgary Canada then flew on to PVG which 65K miles each using continental's *A partners (united, air canada).