China’s Hongqi 红旗 (Red Flag) Cars

My second favorite part of the China 60th Anniversary National Holiday Celebrations is seeing President Hu riding around in his deluxe new automobile.

Traditionally, the President will drive around in a Hongqi brand car on the National Holiday, standing through the sunroof with microphones built into the car for speaking to the audience.

It’s a tradition that goes all the way back to Mao and the early years of the country, and the car has become an iconic part of Chinese history. And there are a few for sale (without the sunroof/microphones) on Taobao.

That’s pretty much all you need to know, I guess.  Plan on spending an extra 5,000rmb on proper window tinting, and another 2,000rmb on that awesome VIP duck-quack horn. Guaranteed to turn more heads than a factory-owner’s Ferrari.

Now we are cooking. This 700,000rmb Red Flag car from 1969 is stated to have once belonged to former Vice Premier He Long.  (But if you read He Long’s wikipedia page, that timeline doesn’t really make sense.) Nice looking ride though!

If you can’t afford hundreds of thousands of rmb to buy a Red Flag, then you can still own a small piece of that noble essence with one of these 1:32 models. It is 35rmb.

Note that this process is for booking domestic flights (within China). You can buy international flights on Taobao too, but they are listed like any other Taobao product listing, and it’s not such a clever way to buy. If you need an international flight, try out Ctrip’s English site instead, or Qunar if you are comfortable with Chinese.  

Taobao makes it easy to find a cheap airfare by showing you the cheapest flight options three days before and after your chosen date. This can be easier than the trial-and-error method of typing in dates and searching for the results. Start here: jipiao.taobao.com 

This is Taobao travel portal. The panel on the left side is where you enter in your details:

To find your cities, just type in their English/pinyin names, and the right suggestion will pop up.

After you tell Taobao when and where you wanna fly, it will give you your options like this. The first circle is the best flight price on the date that you searched. But if you look at the green rectangle, you will see the cheapest options for different dates. In this example, airfares drop by nearly 300rmb just a couple days later.

Click around until you get the good price. And when you are satisfied, click on the second circle. (购买)

Box 1: Check out the Seller. Tickets are not sold by Taobao, but rather by independent travel agents, who compete on price. Taobao has a system to rate these Sellers. They will have a rating on a 10-point scale. If you don’t like the rating, you can choose a different Seller, but it may change your price.

Box 2: Enter the information of the person flying

Be sure to select passport (护照) which is highlighted in green below.

Box 3: Now enter in your contact info including the confirmation method. The one selected below is ‘Don’t Bother Confirming with Me.’ That’s probably what I would choose. But if you are carefully minded, you can choose confirmation by phone or by Wang Wang Chat.

Box 4: The default option is to receive an e-ticket. But if you want a paper ticket, you can have it delivered or choose to pick it up. Click on that 需要行程单 option to enter in your address. Remember the first one it goes Province 省 City 市 District 区 and then your street address. The box on the next line is for your zip code.  

The next steps are pretty self explanitory: one page to look at and confirm your personal data, and then enter your password to pay. If your ticket is a round-trip, you will pay for each flight seperately (by entering your password twice).

You can do everything on Taobao. And while it might not be my first choice for buying flight tickets in China, it is good to have the option for buying e-tickets entirely online.