Long way round

I am sat in the airport in Hongkong waiting for a connecting flight to Taipei. It has been a really long day which started with waking up at around 0630 and won't end until way past 0200 tomorrow morning when I land in Taipei.

No direct flights between the two sides means taking a big detour via Hongkong. It takes around 5-6 hours in total for Shanghai to Taipei. If direct flights are allowed, it would be around 90 minutes. To understand how much air traffic there is, there are around 300 flights daily between Taipei and Hongkong (and they don't fly 24 hours a day).

Over the Lunar New Year period there will be "direct" flights to get people back. However, "direct" is still not direct because I believe the planes still have to fly over Hongkong to maintain a pretense of no direct contact between the two sides.

Hongkong Airport ---------------- Pudong Airport (Shanghai)

Location 22°N 114°E