Thank you for adjusting the thread title. I have a feeling that we are going to have more thoughts and experiences to add here....unfortunately.

Also, for those that might see references on older threads here, and on other forums, to online agent Travelzen (www.travelzen.com) which was another popular alternative to ctrip and elong: For most of 2015, the booking function has been offline and the website changed. It appears that this company has changed its business focus and therefore the retail B2C functionality may not be returning. A pity, there needs to be another option that is user-friendly to those outside China. 9588 http://ticket.9588.com/FlightTicket/Main_E.aspx is used by some expats and they've been around for quite a number of years and seem to take foreign credit cards, but I have no recent experience with their policies and customer service.