Well, which airline are you about to fly with anyway? The China Eastern Airlines has an office on Tuodong Lu and I've got cheaper flight tickets there at the counter than over Internet. (Those Chinese websites with stuff flying around, blinking lights, and whatelse are anyway damn difficult to make sense of - maybe they are better by now.)

@Serrure

If you are just paranoid about giving credit card numbers out to cTrip or eLong, then you can pay them with Paypal for a 3% fee. But this assumes you trust Paypal with all your info.