So I discovered that Continental Airlines’ special low introductory fares between Shanghai and Newark are only for travel originating in the United States. Then, for some reason, I thought I’d check on prices for China Eastern’s Shanghai-to-JFK direct route. And here is why I now have a headache:

• I went to China Eastern’s main website and selected their North American site, because their China site listed Chinese as the only language available. But the North American site only allows you to search for flights originating in North America.
• Then I went to the China site, where I was notified twice by popup message that I should use IE5 — IE5 — or better to use the site. I clicked my way through the alerts and landed on the site, but was not able to select 国际及地区 to search for international flights. A friend using IE5 or better tried and was unsuccessful, too.
• I noticed that China Eastern’s Chinese site did have an English version. But every time I tried to search for flights I got the following message: “Sorry!Systems are being updated.” (This might be a browser issue. I was not able to use the calendar function using Firefox.)
• Another note on China Eastern’s internet ineptitude: Their Chinese website doesn’t work without the “www.” See for yourself: http://flychinaeastern.com.cn
• So then I went old school and called China Eastern — OK, my assistant called China Eastern — and they told her that the best roundtrip fare in April and May was RMB 9,450 ($1,382). Ctrip offers a fare of RMB 8,158 ($1,193) … on China Eastern.

Good times.