Now things start getting interesting!

After years of waiting, we are now finally at the beginning of a major expansion of flying between the USA and China, and this is going to be great news for family travel!

American Airlines will be entering the Los Angeles - Shanghai market in April 2011, which will help keep a lid on fares.

The bigger news is a set of new routes Delta will be launching from April through July 2011:  Atlanta - Shanghai, Detroit - Beijing, and most importantly for adoptive families, the return of Tokyo - Guangzhou service!

The Guangzhou flight will be operated by a Boeing 767-300, which is a much larger airplane than the 757-200 that predecessor Northwest Airlines used up to 2009.  That should also make seats more available and likewise keep fares out of Guangzhou from getting out of control.

As schedules start to load, we'll be updating our Transpacific Flight Planning page with fresh details.

One Perfect Bao

Had this absolutely perfect char siu bao last month at Ping, in Portland, OR's Chinatown.

The bun was steamed just enough to be puffy and warm, but still a little doughy and moist.

The pork was slow-cooked and succulent, juicy even without its sauce.

Plenty of cilantro for every bite to get a hit of fresh greens.

And the fried onion cracklins - so inspired - crunchy and approaching the flavor of crispy bacon.

And then I ordered another...

Link to our Portland (PDX) airport guide: Portland.html

Link to our article on Bao: Bao.html

Vancouver and Portland airport guides now added

Continuing our series of family-friendly North American airport guides for Transpacific gateways, this week week we've added entries for Vancouver, BC and Portland, OR.

Both facilities are exciting, comfortable spaces with plenty of natural light and public art. Here are some scenes from Vancouver:

We walk you through the customs arrival process and connecting between flights, showing you how to get around, shop, and eat; and where your children can play or relax.

Some scenes from Portland below:

And be sure to check out weninchina.com's Planning Transpacific Travel page as the complement to help you determine which options you'll choose to and from China.

Family-friendly airport guides

The big children's playspace in Terminal 2 at Chicago O'Hare Airport.

For many families, the adoption trip to China may be their first time across the Pacific or even out of the country. Even for experienced road warriors, a flight home from Asia may take them into an unfamiliar airport. Combine that with serious sleep deprivation and taking care of a new little person whom you've just met and are still trying to bond with, and you may not even be able to find your way through your own hometown terminal.


We're starting a new series of articles at weninchina.com to guide you through the primary North American gateways to Asia. We'll talk about your arrival, how long it will take to get through Customs, where your connecting flights are, and the features of the airport from a family-travel perspective. How are the restrooms? Where can we sit quietly and decompress? Where can the kids blow off excess energy?


This season, we've already posted guides to Seattle/Tacoma, Minneapolis/St. Paul, and Chicago O'Hare, with Portland OR, and Vancouver BC next on the list.


If you have suggestions, feedback, or want to share your stories with other travelers, please leave a comment here or email us at weninchinainfo (at) mac (dot) com. Hope you find these new guides useful.

Gotta disagree with Anthony Bourdain (in one small way)

My wife and I went to listen to Mr. Bourdain a few weeks ago as he swung through the Twin Cities on a speaking tour. In person, he's the same guy as he is on the Travel Channel and in his books; intelligent and inquisitive, the 'bad boy' who really does care about ideas and words and authentic work.


Most of the hardcore foodies, restaurateurs, and hospitality workers of our city were in attendance that night instead of being on the job. They were looking for a good time from their hero and he certainly delivered, with frank talk about the compromised state of the food and media businesses, meditations on what it means to do something meaningful, and crazy travel anecdotes.


He advocates forcefully that the whole point of travel is to know a place and its people as they are, not as mere entertainment, and that a traveler shouldn't be plastic-wrapped from his or her surroundings, fed only the familiar food, media, and interpersonal interaction.


That means you as a traveler need to take people and experiences as they come. And getting back to food (it was a food talk), eating what the locals eat, where they eat it, and not demanding your familiar foods from home.


We liked his analogy of "when you're at your grandma's house, even if you don't particularly care for her cooking, when she makes you dinner, you eat it, because you love her and want to show respect." He also points out that you're much more likely to get better quality and safer food from the local cook sweating it out at the stand down the street, who serves his neighbors every day the foods they like to eat, than at the international hotel, where the  local staff doesn't have the familiarity with Ceasar salad, and they know you're gone in two days.


(The only time I got sick in China was from an undercooked room-service shrimp and pork stir-fry, so I'm nodding my head in agreement.)


He also delivered indictments of the fast-food industry regarding factory farming, marketing to kids, and nutritional deficits. From that he was adamant about never patronizing fast-food chains, ever.


And there's where the headline of this post kicks in. I'm pretty sure that you, reading this blog and the articles at weninchina.com, do patronize a McDonald's, Taco Bell, or Burger King on occasion. I do too.


And I know you may be anxious about the food you'll encounter on your trip to China. Tony and I would both encourage you to be brave and "just try it;" if you've gone to the trouble of flying halfway around the world it would be wrong not to experience food the way your hosts enjoy it.


But in our time in China, my wife and I witnessed numerous families - bright, intelligent people who triumphed over homestudies and government bureaucracy - utterly afraid of walking two blocks down the street to McDonald's to get a cheeseburger. Not because of thoughts of what was in the burger, but anxiety of figuring out how to order. Would they make fools of themselves in a big crowd?


My belief is that if I can help you walk those two blocks and order something you're familiar with - and interact with local people - then you're a lot more likely the next day to walk one block further to that little bakery or noodle shop, or stop at the grocery store. So yes, my little language cheat sheet definitely gives you the words you need to order Combo Meal #2.


Getting out of your hotel and onto the streets is the best possible way for you to soak in your child's local culture, and every interaction will give you more memories and experience to draw upon as you work with your child to help her learn who she is as she grows up.  I think Tony would agree with me on that one.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------


Since we are talking about Chinese food, I have just posted new articles about Chinese Noodles (the original fast food) and Bao, those steamed buns with the great fillings.  There's also a great article in this month's issue of the travel magazine Afar about xiao long bao, the "soup dumplings" famous in Shanghai and Taiwan.

In Beijing, the airlines have the hots for slots

Whoa there buddy, don't get too confident about that start date...

Stuck in Chicago O'Hare for a month?

While US carriers are finally increasing nonstop service to China, the process this year hasn't gone all that smoothly.

American Airlines was due to start Chicago-Beijing flights on April 24, and had been selling tickets since November. Delta Air Lines has been advertising Seattle-Beijing service to begin June 4.

Even though both countries' governments have authorized the services (years ago, in fact), the airlines also need permission from the Chinese air traffic authority to land and take off at specific times at Beijing. 

In American's case, the takeoff and landing slots they requested would have put their flight into Beijing at 1:55 pm, and out at 4:50 pm - very convenient. American never received the OK to use those particular flight times. But, they kept planning as if they were going to get them - all the way up to the day of the inaugural flight. Which they had to cancel.

The slots that American was approved for had the aircraft landing in Beijing at 2:20 am, and taking off at 4:20 am. Not exactly what you'd want if you were doing business in Beijing - or for trying to get a hotel room on your arrival.

American ended up canceling the flight for an entire month; today (May 25) is supposed to be the new launch date. And they're stuck with the 2:20 / 4:20 slots.

You can't always get what you want, either.

In Delta's case, the times they'd requested would have their Seattle run leaving Sea-Tac at 3:30 pm, arriving Beijing at 6:05 pm, and the return flight leaving Beijing at 1 pm, getting into Sea-Tac at 9:30 pm.

These schedules would have allowed passengers arriving into China excellent same-day connections on Delta's SkyTeam partner, China Southern, to dozens of domestic cities. More importantly, the eastbound flight would have been perfect for same-day connecting traffic from domestic Chinese cities - and for adoptive families, would have given them the option to take either of the first two Guangzhou-Beijing departures on China Southern.

The 9:30 pm arrival in Seattle would have hooked up with the "red-eye" runs leaving there after midnight bound for Delta's other hubs at Minneapolis, Atlanta, Detroit, and Memphis, saving families the expense of a hotel room somewhere on the way home.

The requested slots were also a clever bit of engineering for Delta, in that they could use their aircraft coming in from Seattle to turn around to make a run to Tokyo, with the inbound Tokyo flight turning around to head for Seattle. Their airplanes would spend less time on the ground and more in the air, making money.

You shouldn't be surprised to read that Delta's plans didn't go how they wanted, either. Delta's slots were assigned just over a week ago. Instead of arriving in Beijing at 6 pm, the actual arrival will be 11:40 pm. And instead of leaving Beijing at 1 in the afternoon, the departure will be 8:55 in the morning.

Comparing the two airlines, Delta came out better than American; the eastbound arrival into Seattle will now be 5:30 am, so travelers can clear Customs and make all the morning flight banks to both coasts and all Delta's hubs. But Delta still doesn't have a chance of connecting to Chinese domestic flights inbound or outbound, and flyers going through Beijing are still stuck with an overnight stay in each direction.

And now once again I'll have to modify the weninchina.com Transpacific Flight Options page...

United and Continental to merge; no difference for adoption travel

By no means a surprise, the long-awaited completion of merger talks between fellow Star Alliance members United and Continental was announced last week. 


While the combination will take some time for regulatory approval - and then more time to actually go about the process of splicing the companies together - as far as Asian travel goes, you won't see much difference for many years.


Both carriers are in the same alliance, so you have already been able to earn frequent flier miles on either airline. Both carriers already cooperate on Transpacific flights, and coordinate arrivals and departures at Tokyo and Beijing with their fellow alliance partners All Nippon and Air China.


Also, no new routes to Asia in general (except for some tweaks to Tokyo) - or China in particular - are expected to come out of this deal. United has again pushed back its San Francisco - Guangzhou service by another year, there's no indication they'll be resuming the Washington DC - Beijing route. There are simply not enough long-haul airplanes in the combined fleet to do any more Pacific flying than they already do, until later this decade, when the new United will start receiving Boeing 787 and Airbus A350 long-haul super-efficient widebodies.


So for foreseeable future, this news should not impact your adoption travel plans one bit.