Nazdoom

Since I got to Guangzhou I've been fairly lucky with free suite upgrades at hotels (including a Premier Suite at the Ritz Carlton and the "Chairman Suite" at the FS Marriott, both for rates less than 150 USD/night), I've made some good friends, and I've tried to enjoy my vacation as best I can. This situation caused a lot of stress but I tried to avoid focussing on it, particularly during the weekend when I knew there'd be no news. I got fairly sick (coughing every couple minutes and wheezing like crazy) from the pollution and constant smoking everywhere but managed to come through by surrounding myself with air purifiers when I sleep.
I totally recognize it's a first world problem to be "stranded" at a Ritz Carlton in China, let alone to be stranded because I don't want to be forced to fly economy on a business class ticket. Worse things could happen. If push came to shove I'd just buy an Aeroplan ticket or revenue ticket in economy. It sucks to have someone else forcibly change your vacation plans for you, but travel requires flexibility (both time and $$$).

I fault AS for not having proper safeguards and for not handling this situation appropriately, but at the end of the day, I'm alive, relatively healthy, and I can get into the jacuzzi to decompress. There's not much more I could than I did, especially behind the great firewall where my VPN disconnects between every 3 and 60 minutes.

Ultimately this thread is a warning to others about this issue. Check your award tickets involving any Chinese airports on the days leading up to departure, including before going to the airport. You may not get any email about the cancellation. If this happens to you, you're not the first, and probably not the last; you probably weren't hacked or individually targetted. Don't let AS tell you to hire a lawyer to file a police report in a foreign country. AS will do the bare minimum to fix your ticket, so start immediately looking for rerouting options yourself or they will send you to the wrong city on the wrong day and tell you that's the best they can do. There is no way to escalate above supervisor; corporate contacts did not bother responding.

It sucks, and is totally unacceptable, but isn't so surprising when not a single one of the agents I spoke to could get even close to pronouncing Guangzhou or Shenzhen or Haikou. There's an inherent limitation of an almost exclusively US airline, that does not travel to other continents on their own metal but issues award tickets on a dozen foreign carriers, in their ability to understand issues that aren't happening in the USA. Time for bed...