Chen Liying and Cai Wenjun/Shanghai Daily news

A famous singer from Taiwan who is seriously ill was one of 313 Taiwanese to take a charter flight from the city to the island province yesterday, the first day charter flights were operating for the Spring Festival.
While the flights will make a short stop in Hong Kong, passengers don't have to change planes, unlike traditional flights between the mainland and the province.
The first charter of the season, a China Airlines A330-300 plane, carried 313 people from Taipei to Shanghai Pudong International Airport yesterday morning.
The plane then left Shanghai for Taipei at 12:10pm carrying 313 Taiwanese who live in Shanghai and nearby cities to their hometowns. The flight landed in Taipei at 3:30pm.
China Airlines is one of 12 airlines - six from Taiwan and six from the mainland - that will offer 72 round-trip charter flights before and after the Spring Festival holidays. The flights will run through February 13.
The cross-strait charter flights were initiated in 2003 to make it more convenient for Taiwanese living on the mainland to go home for the Chinese lunar New Year.
Yeh Tsaiyu, a 63-year-old Taiwan native suffering from a muscular disease, was one of the passengers on yesterday's flight to Taipei.
The former famous Taiwan singer suffers from motor neuron disease, a fatally progressive and degenerative disorders of the muscles and nerves. She began to develop the disease in 2004 in Shanghai and has depended on a respiratory machine ever since.
China Airlines specially eliminated six economic cabin seats and arranged a curtained stretcher for her.
Huashan Hospital sent a doctor and a nurse with her to Taipei, said Wang Zhiming, a hospital official.
Zhang Huanzhen said he was the first to step off the charter flight from Taiwan when it arrived at Pudong International Airport yesterday.
"I saved about three hours by taking the charter flight instead of transferring at Hong Kong on a regular flight," said Zhang, who's a doctor and took the charter flight for the first time.
This is the first time the charter flights are open to all Taiwanese, not just businessmen.