David Gray/Reuters

An Air China Boeing 737 passenger jet takes off as a China Southern Airbus A321-231 taxis at the Beijing airport in this January 11, 2008 file photo.

While a series of glitches in China’s trophy high-speed rail route linking Beijing and Shanghai have been a headache for the country’s rail authorities, they’ve managed to make at least one group smile.

No, it’s not Kawasaki and the other foreign bullet-train producers. Angry as they may be with China over what they describe as questionable intellectual property claims, problems with the new high speed line aren’t likely to help their cause much.

Instead, it’s the airlines that offer service between Beijing and Shanghai.

According to a report Monday in the state-run China Daily, airlines stopped giving deep discounts and started charging higher prices for air tickets between the two cities over the weekend, taking advantage of a string of delays caused by malfunctions on the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed train line last week.

Based on information available on Ctrip.com, an online travel service, China Daily said the cheapest price for a flight from Beijing to Shanghai in the following four days was 720 yuan ($111) before taxes and other surcharges. That amounts to a 36% discount on the full ticket price of 1,130 yuan. Most tickets were being offered at full price, and only a few came at a 20% discount, the newspaper said.

In contrast, airlines were selling tickets as low as 360 yuan immediately after the highly-heralded high-speed train line opened on June 30. Passengers traveling on the line pay 555 yuan for a one-way, economy-class ticket between Beijing and Shanghai.

The airlines’ move comes after a series of power failures last week led to stoppages on a few dozen trains along the Beijing-Shanghai line, leading China’s powerful Ministry of Railways to issue profuse apologies.

The combination of speed and reliability promised by the new rail link was supposed to deal a major blow to air travel between Beijing and Shanghai, which has long been notorious for delays caused by everything from poor weather to the monopolization of large tracts of Chinese domestic air space by the military.

On Thursday, Wang Yongping, spokesman for China’s powerful Ministry of Railways, expressed regret for those glitches during an online chat, which was later posted on the ministry’s website. Mr. Wang blamed the train delays on power outages and other malfunctions as he provided some technical details.

“The malfunctions haven’t affected the overall safety” of the rail line, the rail spokesman said. “Our technology and equipment are still very advanced and qualified. China’s high-speed rail will show better performance in the future once the current spate of malfunctions is resolved.”

The new line, he noted, was “still in a break-in period.”

Mr. Wang’s apology last week followed an incident on July 13 during which service on the line was temporarily halted after one of the trains broke down, causing hundreds of passengers to have to transfer to another train to complete their journey.

–Norihiko Shirouzu

Fan Min, the company’s co-founder and chief executive officer, calls Ctrip.com International Ltd. a combination of Expedia, American Express and Thomas Cook.

The business model is indeed a hybrid. Customers often learn about the company from face-to-face salespeople plying airport lounges and train stations. When the time comes to buy, they peruse the company’s travel deals online, then typically use the telephone to make reservations. And in the end, tickets are usually delivered, not by email, but motorcycle messenger.

“They like to call to have some people contact,” the English speaking Mr. Fan said of the 60% of customers who prefer to phone in their orders.

Mr. Fan delivered his comments Wednesday while offering a peak into his company’s operations to members of the Shanghai Foreign Correspondents Club.

The visit featured a tour of the central call center near Shanghai’s Hongqiao airport, purportedly mimicking step-for-step a tour taken by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao in 2008 that is now enshrined in cartoonish footprints stuck to the floor. (No word whether the People’s Premier came away impressed by the wide variety of miniature fish tanks many Ctrip phone operators have chosen to cohabit their tiny desks while taking orders for Chinese beach holidays.)

Ctrip is easily the most recognized name in China’s fast-growing online travel industry, and despite the incongruity of its business model, it is hard to fault with the Nasdaq-listed company’s performance. Mr. Fan’s preferred gauge of success is a chart he showed with an 11-year build of cumulative customers, to 12.7 million by the end of March. “I think the curve is very sexy,” he said.

Mr. Fan is eager for his customers to migrate online -– presumably so he wouldn’t have to pay to maintain so many phone operators, fish-loving or otherwise — and he noted with some relief that the percentage of bookings online has climbed to 40% even as Ctrip has added customers. In comments a year ago, Mr. Fan sounded slightly frustrated that percentage hadn’t yet crossed 35%.

On its English site, 90% of Ctrip’s bookings are executed fully online.

Growing credit card usage in China is helping, according to Mr. Fan. He noted that two-thirds of trips are paid for with plastic these days, which he says is far higher than the 35% rate on other Chinese e-commerce sites.

In response to a question about the latest online shopping craze, he discounted competitive threats posted by companies that offer “group buying” deals, notably Groupon, that also see travel as their market. “In China, you have 1,000 companies that deal with the Groupon model,” he said, suggesting that Ctrip has plenty of experience tangling with the group buy crowd.

Mr. Fan sidestepped other questions, including how the company deals with attempts to hack into its customer databases and what to do about China’s retrograde train-booking system.

As Ctrip rides – and helps drive – China’s growing taste for travel, one might expect the company to capitalize on opportunities abroad. As Mr. Fan noted, many of his competitors increasingly book expensive international travel to Bali, Australia and New Zealand. “People intend to spend more than in the past,” he said.

For Ctrip, however, outbound travel remains a small revenue source compared with its mainstay China hotel business and the company is likely to keep most of its operations close to home. Ctrip last year bought into an agent with footprints in Taiwan and Hong Kong. With future acquisitions, Mr. Fan said, the company will look most immediately at other opportunities in the Greater China region.

– James T. Areddy, with contributions from Yang Jie. Follow James on Twitter @jamestareddy

Browhaus

At Browhaus, eyebrow specialists will shape your brows according to face-reading traits that traditionally represent good relationships and smooth career paths

In the world of Chinese superstition — that of astrology and zodiac signs — there’s also face reading, an ancient practice built on the belief that a person’s present and future is directly reflected in his face. It is widely performed in Hong Kong, where many of these fortune tellers hold court in temporary street stalls in the city’s dingier neighborhoods. It’s not the kind of service you’d expect to find in the glossy confines of Asia’s top spas and beauty shops.

Until now.

In early March, the Mandarin Oriental Hong Kong brought face reader Eric Standop — from Germany, not from Hong Kong’s Temple Street — to read people’s fortunes for a week. The price: 1,500 Hong Kong dollars (about US$190).

“The spa and wellness world has often found exotic cultures alluring and a treasure trove for new ideas,” says Cathy Chon, founder of life and style consultancy CatchOn in Hong Kong. There was a time, she adds, when Chinese medicine treatments such as acupuncture and cupping were viewed by many as hokey. These days, such services are common in spas, and celebrities such as Gwyneth Paltrow are fans.

Other spas around the region are touting some version of face-reading treatments.

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