I assume Chengdu and Chendge are not the same place. Correct?

Between various combinations of ShanghaI, Beijing, Xi'an and Chengde, do planes fly?

Is there a good site for train travel?

Thanks and bear/bare with me. Both probably apply.

thursdayd gave me this site for train travel

http://seat61.com/China.htm

hope it helps

Chengde is a town in Hebei Province, just over 100 miles NE of Beijing. You go there for a summer palace complex and the lama temples in the outskirt of the city. Interesting place for an overtrip from Beijing. I don't think there's an airport there.

Chengdu is the capital of the huge Sichuan Province in SW China. You go there to pandas, and most flights to Tibet also depart from there, same for Jiuzhaigou/Huanglong.

Myer,

I find using this website for air travel quite useful - http://www.amadeus.net/plnext/meb/Ai...EU&LANGUAGE=GB

Just input the cities and date and you will get a list of airlines and other flight information.

Another site, a Chinese one, is: http://www.elong.net/

Here you can book the flights as well as hotels as well.

Try looking at the tours offered by elong and then modify it to your liking.

> I assume Chengdu and Chendge are not the same place. Correct?

The index of any guide book would tell you this, or even Google. One is the capital of Sichuan Province and the other an imperial resort town in Hebei.

> Between various combinations of ShanghaI, Beijing, Xi'an and Chengde, do planes fly?

Chengde does not have an airport. You could discover this by looking in a guide book or by using the link JaneB already gave you to a site for checking flights (under one of your other threads).

> Is there a good site for train travel?

The site mentioned above is good for its photographs of train interiors, accounts of train travel from contributors, and some other general information. But some of its links are poorly chosen or incorrect, and its booking advice is disastrous. Under this current thread:

http://www.fodors.com/community/asia...ft-sleeper.cfm

you'll find better links and booking advice, including links to reliable timetables and descriptions of how to use them.

Peter N-H

You'll find the Ctrip site is no harder to use than the Amadeus one, considerably faster to load, and its prices dramatically lower (50% lower in one random flight just tested). Overseas airline booking engines generally have not the slightest clue about real Chinese domestic prices, and should never be used for booking such flights.

Peter N-H

Hmm.. I suggested the Amadeus site to check information on flights only since they are a big reservation company that a lot of airlines and hotel uses. The link I provided is for the availability search page not the reservation page of Amadeus. Information provided by Amadeus that the travel agent sites does not usually provide include "Seat availability" or remaining seat count per class and many other useful information.

For the actual ticket purchases and hotel reservation I suggested elong. Ctrip is also easy to use but again these sites are good for buying the tickets not really good for research on flights availability.

Yes Peter, I had already found tha Chengdu and Chendge are not the same. Just thought I'd highlight how different it is the research a place when name are similar and I can't even pronounce them.

All part of the adventure.

Thanks for the patience and help.