Our next stop is Shanghai. I bought tickets on FM9105 from ctrip.com. For some reasons only certain flights can be e-ticketed and ours can't. So they have to be hand delivered to me. The delivery took place at 11pm. I was amazed by the dedication of workers in China nowadays.

Xi'an airport is quite far from the city, almost half way to Xian Yang, another ancient capital. The airport is new and impressive. After all, this is the aerospace and aeronautics center of China. Our flight was on a 738. It was operated by Shanghai airline. The in-flight service was excellant and the seat was very comfortable. Shanghai airline has received mixed reviews on FT but personally I would fly them again.

Arriving at SHA around noon, I noticed that they've now instituted two taxi queues. One for local zone and the other for non-local zone. The local zone included many Hong Qiao area hotels. It appears that there is a system in place to reward taxi drivers for picking up local bound passengers, so there're equal number of taxis for each queue.

After we were in Shanghai for couple days, we headed out to Hangzhou. Growing up in China, I had fond memories of West Lake, Hangzhou food and arty girls from the art institute. The art institute is now China academy of fine arts, with a brand new postmodern campus. The recent art boom has created quite a bit of wealth as seen from the Porsche and Ferrari dealers nearby. The hot pot at Hangzhou's best restaurant, Zhang Sheng Ji is still as good, but young people nowadays hang out at Xi Hu Tian Di, a clone of Shanghai's Xin Tian Di next to the picturesque West Lake.

While in Hangzhou we stayed/visited the Grand Hyatt, Shangri-la and the Xihu state guest house. The new Grand Hyatt has the best facility. But the service there was subpar. Every staff member we talked to was eager to help but clueless. The Shangri-la has a lush garden, a good location for sightseeing but was overall pretty tired. On the other hand, I really liked the Xihu state guest house. It has the perfect location by the lake, an amazing landscape completed with walk paths and boat decks. The service staff were attentive and attractive. This was the home away from home for many in the politburo so none of above probably came as a surprise.

On our return we took CA to Beijing on cheap tickets (60% off published price). The CA flight was on a sold out 733. The seat pitch on that equipment was probably only 27-28". The food was pretty bad too. I will try to avoid CA next time.

Our China trip was fairly smooth. We visited the great wall and the terracotta soldiers, tried out different airlines and hotels, and even managed to meet a FTer twice in different cities With many posts about China on the Asia forum nowadays, I hope this report can clarify some of the questions.