Monday, January 12, 2009

Naughty, naughty

A friend is contemplating a visit here in a few months, after attending to some business in Taipei. Over the weekend he asked me about the logistics of this. Despite a recent liberalisation of cross-strait communications, the answer at present still seems to be, "You can't get here from there." I couldn't find any direct Taipei to Beijing flights online.

I tried searching on E-Long - probably the most successful, and certainly the most foreigner-friendly travel website in China - and initially had difficulty in finding Taipei at all. It's not featured in the drop-down menu list of 'domestic' destinations, you see; it's categorised as an international flight.

I have long believed that one of the reasons for maintaining the 'Special Autonomous Region' status for Hong Kong and Macau is that this creates a conveniently fuzzy half-and-half category into which Taiwan can also be fitted. It is fundamentally "a part of China", of course; just not in quite the same way as the rest of China.

I recall that the last time I was at Beijing airport (quite a long time ago!), the signage there observed this same odd neither/nor pretence: flights for Hong Kong and Macau were neither 'domestic' nor 'international', and were slotted between the two in the Departures area (I think E-Long treats them as 'domestic'). I imagined that Taipei would be treated in the same way, if and when direct flights between there and Beijing ever get going.

Whether Taipei can be described as a 'domestic' destination, or whether some new and strange nomenclature needs to be invented for it, it certainly can't be an 'international' destination..... because, er, Taiwan isn't a nation. It's a part of China. You all know that, right? Course you do. Somebody ought to tell the chaps at E-Long, before they get sent off to Heilongjiang for a few months of "re-education through labour".


Footnote: E-Long is such a China-centric service that its flight-finder only seems to allow you to select a Chinese city (other than Taipei) as your point of origin. Surely this is encouraging the 'Brain Drain'??

5 comments:

The British Cowboy said...

According to expedia, there is a direct flight - Air China, presumably once a day. For the ridiculous sum of $990 round trip.

All other options take around 11 hours, and seem to heavily involve flying via Seoul.

Froog said...

Oh, that's probably only for big businessmen, then. That is pretty outrageous. I could fly home for that, which is around 10 times as far.

Picture may be skewed at the moment because of the imminence of the Chinese New Year. I think flights via HK are usually a good bet. And a pal here just told me he thinks there's a direct flight to Tianjin, which is only 80 miles from here. I will conduct further research.

The British Cowboy said...

It looks more than possible this might get significantly easier as we are trying to arrange it so we go Taipei to HK. I would then fly from HK to BJ.

This all depends on timing, because I have a Hawaii wedding in the mix.

Froog said...

Oh, you jetsetter, you!

The British Cowboy said...

Don't start me on the India trip that is not yet set in stone.