What months have the best weather in the Fall or Spring, that is warm and driest for a 2 week trip to Beijing and Shanghai?

We want to stay at the JW Marriotts in the two cities and do some sightseeing, but mostly enjoy the local activities, food and people for a new cultural experience.

It seems this Fall is already tight for the hotels, but the airlines are more of a scheduling problem, especially the return, when attempting miles upgrades. CO and NW reservations make it feel like it is the first time they are looking for available dates, rate, etc. Even the Int desks are lost in finding connections with flexible dates.

Have enough miles with CO, AA, NW for Business or First class upgrades, but would prefer an Asian Partner airline. Perhaps Korean Air, or someting as fine as Cathay Pacific Air to recapture a couple of wonderful trips to BKK! I have not been interested in travel to China until this week.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated to avoid cold rainy smoggy weather, so that walking all around is possible!

I prefer fall to spring.

I second that but avoid the first week of October as travelling is a nightmare due to the Chinese national holidays.

The reality of metro China's air quality is that the best days for touring are the days immediately after a full day of rain (almost thunderstorm quality) with high winds. That is probably more common in the late April/Early May time frame. There are several museums and hutong tours that you can do on a rainy day (plus, there are starbucks almost every 100 meters - not really - it just seems that way).

If you are in Beijing and it storms, go ahead and plan for a Great Wall or Forbidden City tour for the following day...but you might want to take a light jacket.

The flights are very booked all of Oct and into Nov.

Tenative reservation on Nov 11 to Shanghai on Cathay Pacific with a return on Japan Airlines Nov 27 from Beijing for a multicultural trip! :-::-::-: Hope that the weather is NOT too cold at that time, especially Beijing. It is a bit later, then I wanted to travel, but I understand the circumstances of the National Holidays, etc. I suspect the many variations of Green & Oolong Teas will keep me warm and relaxed! ^

In general, I think late April and mid Oct are good periods. On one trip to both Shanghai and Beijing in late April, I never saw sunshine (it was covered by haze and smog) for 3 days in SH. Of the 3 days in Beijing, I was sooooo happy that 1 day blessed with blue sky and a bit of white clouds. Never experienced that in my several trips to the capital city.