We’ve just pushed out a change to all our maps (Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou and Hong Kong) which dramatically increases speed and responsiveness! You should now find dragging the map around and planning routes faster than ever before.

Another late night at the office? Worried you’re going to miss the last train home? We’ve just pushed out an update to all our maps (Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou and Hong Kong) which lets you see at a glance which lines are still open.

Log on to ExploreShanghai at 10:33pm and you’ll see something like this: the greyed out stations are already closed, while the white stations still have train services.

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Today we launched a new standardised look for our four city sites ExploreShanghai, ExploreBeijing, ExploreGuangzhou and the brand new ExploreHK.

The navigation bar at the top of the screen has been simplified to give you quick access to the two most popular areas of the site: the interactive map and “pedia”.
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On our Shanghai metro map, visitors have long been able to listen to the sexy voice of Wang Jing reading out the station names:

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So that our female listeners do not feel left out, we thought we’d better have a guy for the Beijing map. Several days later, all 106 stations now have recordings by our very own Shaun Tang!

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On the ExploreBeijing subway map you can now hear a spoken Mandarin pronounciation of each station name. Simply click on any station, then click the “play” button which appears in the upper right hand corner of the bubble:

The big red arrow doesn’t actually appear on the real map.

Also on all the station pages in Subwaypedia (like this one) you can hear the station name by clicking on the ‘play’ button on the right hand side of the page.

Try it out here:

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Now if we can just find someone with a Guangzhou accent-ah…

Several people have noticed the fun loading messages which appear while our metro maps for Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou are loading.

To celebrate the festive season, we’ve written some new loading messages with the theme “Christmas with Chinese characteristics”. Check it out on one of our maps: SH BJ GZ.

Every station on the Shanghai Metro, Beijing Subway and Guangzhou Metro have their own page on ExploreShanghai’s Metropedia, ExploreBeijing’s Subwaypedia and ExploreGuangzhou’s Metropedia.

Now these pages are more colourful and interesting with the addition of local photos! Powered by Panoramia.com, you can now see photos taken in the geographical area around each metro station.

Examples:

• Shanghai: Nanpu Bridge
• Beijing: Yonghegong Lama Temple
• Guangzhou: Chigang Pagoda

Both ExploreShanghai and ExploreBeijing got an upgrade today. On ExploreBeijing you can now explore Subwaypedia, an encyclopedia containing information, timings and maps for every line and station on the Beijing Subway.

Beijing’s Subway Line 8 is now open to the public, providing easy access to the Olympic Green and Forest Park.

Shanghai’s matching Metropedia also got an upgrade, with more accurate information and faster-loading pages.

Don’t forget, to jump to the Metro/Subwaypedia for any station, just click on the station on the interactive map.

On July 19th Beijing got three new subway lines: line 8, line 10 and the Airport Express. Details of all the new lines are on the ExploreBeijing subway map. Changes in the latest version:

• First train/last train info for all the new lines (terminal stations only at present)
• Updated information on the Airport Express at Terminal 2 and 3
• Corrected some English station names
• Improved Chinese translations and highlighting on interchanges

According to Beijing city blog Beijingologist, the new line 8, line 10 and Airport Express will open this week! A date has been announced as “pre-July 20, 2008″… after several delays let’s hope it’s for real this time.

You can see the routes of the new lines on the interactive ExploreBeijing subway map.

The ExploreBeijing subway map now supports route planning. Simply drag your mouse between two stations to see an estimate for the time needed for the journey (including changes, and time spent waiting for trains).

Note that unlike on the Shanghai metro, all journeys cost a flat 2RMB. The new Airport Express line costs 25RMB! As with other features on explorebj.com, there may be some inaccuracies during the “beta” period, do get in touch if anything looks wrong!

The exact timings for the new lines (Line 8, Line 10 and the Airport Express) won’t be confirmed until later this month when the lines open.