Transit of Beijing Metro

I will never complain the transit station of Metro #1 and #2 – People’s Square Station, in Shanghai after I see the transit station of the Dong Zhi Men Station, where people transit to Metro line #13 from #2. The route is three times longer than in Shanghai.

beijing-metro.transit.jpg

© Jian Shuo Wang

As you can see from the map, people have to follow long stairs up, and enter the underground maze. There was even cross bridge underground (about two stories underground) and then follow a very long stairs up (about 100 stages of stairs). Then walk on the ground (what if it rains?). After finding the entrance, people have to go up with long stairs… Wow. It was really confusing. At the time I reached the area with three dots, I thought I should have arrived at the Metro #13 station. Actually, I just covered 1/3 of the trip.

BTW, the disk space of the server hosting my site is used up. I have notified the administrator. I will post the image of the transition plan tomorrow. Also, I have disabled comment to avoid corruption of database. You will see an error when you post comment. Sorry.

Update: The server disk space problem has been fixed. Now the comment function opens. I am sorry if any visitor has posted long comment but got lost during the emergency.

First Class On MU5106

Finally, I managed to go back home at the Valentine’s Day. The airport (both Beijing and Shanghai) were very crowded. I was informed at the counter that the tickets for my flight MU5106 at 11:00 AM were over-solded. There was no seat for me. Fortunately, I was compensated with a free upgrade to First Class. The seat No. is 1A.

There is no big difference for small planes (maybe a AB320). There are 12 first class seats there. The seat was bigger. The major difference was the meal:

beijing-meal-first.class.jpg

© Jian Shuo Wang

Also, I got enough orange juice this time since the drink cart was already available. Ha. This is the first time I fly at First Class.

Beijing Airport

I am very pround to take the Beijing Airport from the plane when it just took off from runway 36R.

beijing-airport-middle.jpg

From the picture, you can see the second runway has been completed (at the other side of the terminal).

Houses near Shanghai Airport

shanghai.vanke-city.garden-birdeyes.jpg

Voted as Top 10 Blogs in China

I am honored to be voted as Top 10 Blogs in China 2003 (Chinese site) in the English blog category.

scree-best.blog.of.china-logo.PNG

Logo in courtesy of wesnapcity.com

I’d like to congratulate those ten blogs in Chinese blog category, since the competition is much hotter there. 2003 is the year blogs got popular and attracted much attention. They did wonderful job. Here is the winners in the Chinese blog category.

English Blogs

In the English blog category, many are expats. Based on my knowledge, Leylop and I am exception.

I have to learn so much from them on English writing.

The Best of the Best Blogs

Although we got the prize, I know the actual winner should be the orgnizers of the award. Their blogs are listed on the right of the award page.

They consistently drove the popularity of blogs in China. Among them, we have the founders of CNBlog.org, Blogbus.com and Blogcn.com. The big names in the blog world in China. I have the honor to meet some of them and enjoyed their inspiration in minds.

The Prize

According to the Award Committee, I can get one-year subscription of E-Times Weekly, a sweater from CNBlog.org, coupon for Freeland Internet Bar and current issue of ESPN. Wow! Very nice. I know the organizers put their own money to sponsor the prize. Your effort (and money) is appreciated.

Fun, and Silly Activities Became Fashionable

This is an age of innovation. Recently, more and more people are devoted into activities that is fun, infeasible before, requiring combined effort of many people, but not SO useful.

Example 1: Degree Confluence Project

The goal of the Degree Confluence Project (blocked in China) is to visit every integer longitude and latitude point on the Earth, take pictures and write visit log. I participated by contributing an incomplete visit to 30N 119E.

Example 2: Geocaching

The game for anyone with a GPS to hide some caching anywhere in the world, post the details about it onto Internet and others with GPS visit the place and find out the caching. The finding of the cache is also posted on to the website. It has been a popular sport worldwide already.

Example 3: Flashmob

Flashmob is even crazy. Hundreds of people come to a place from different directions and do something really silly at exactly the same time, then disappear quickly. They may shout out loudly in a shopping mall or rush into a toy store to worship a huge dinosaur model. No matter what they do, they will disappear quickly before people understand what is going on and leave shocked people there. The activities were organized on blogs and BBS. If I were 5 years younger, I must have joined them.

Example 4: Send Your Name to Mars Program

This is the most reasonable (but still not useful) activities among the four is the Send Your Name to Mars Program. John Lee, the owner of this project at NASA is a genius to think about this idea when he was asked to engage as many people as possible into the Mars mission. About 4 million names were collected online and sent to Mars. My name was among them.

More and More Community Activities

These fun sports (if I can call Flashmob sports) have something in common:

  • Many people are involved.
  • Communication is done online and offline activities is often involved.
  • The result is typically not productive. It does not generate anything really valuable, but just like sports, they are fun and make people happier.
  • They reached tipping point already as you and me already know it.

Eric and Steven told me about the flashmob today at dinner table and asked: Why people are eager to do silly things like this? It is a very good question which I don’t have answer yet. I can understand the excitement of the people involved but cannot tell a reason. Can you?

P.S. I also started two projects of the same kind: The Bus Stop Project (to take a picture of all bus stops in Shanghai) and the Shanghai Map Viewer (to make a map of ourselves by pinning our own points) I just don’t have enough time to work on it.

Business Trips

Stayed in Beijing for 3 days.

I visited Beijing in the year of 1997 with Wendy, with a budget of a little bit over 1000 RMB for two persons and 7 days. We stepped to most of places in Beijing. I did spend a lot of time to calculate the most economical route to take buses, which turned out to be good exercise to know the roads of the city. That was wonderful time I always remember.

beijing-flower-on.wall.jpg

© Jian Shuo Wang. The flower on the wall of the Forbidden City.

This trip should be, at least, my 10th business trip to Beijing. However, I don’t think my knowable about the city significantly improved after so many visit since 1997. There are two reasons:

  1. There is no time to go to any other place in the city than the office building.
  2. I never took subway or buses in the trips since my taxi fee is covered. So I lost many chances to get a deeper touch with the people in the city. Because of the same reason, the geographic concept of the city is still blur in my brain.

Business Travel

Business travel is the comfortable but boring travel. The five-star hotels anywhere are very similar with the standard greetings, standard smile and standard guest room. The differences were killed by the five-star standard. It is much more comfortable but less interesting to stay in hostels.

Cheaper Hotel is More Interesting Hotel

Compare the two hotels:

beijing-renaissance-bow.jpg

© Jian Shuo Wang in courtesy of Renaissance Beijing Hotel

tongli-fanrong.hotel.jpg

© Jian Shuo Wang Image in courtesy of Fanrong Hostel

One picture is taken at Renaissance Beijing, costing 80 USD per night (discounted price) and the second is the Fanrong Hostel with less than 4 USD per night.

I even stayed at the best guest room in a hostel at 1.2 USD per night. See the room inside below:

yinjiang-hotel.room-tantou.jpg

© Jian Shuo Wang. Taken at a small hostel in Tantou, Zhejiang

It turned out that the lower the price is, the more memorable the trip will be.

Newsletter Switched to Yahoo! Groups

In the following week, I will send out emails to the 300 subscribers of Wangjianshuo’s Blog Update to nofity the change of the newsletter.

Dear Reader of Wangjianshuo’s Blog,

I am writing to notify you about the recent changes in the Wangjianshuo’s Blog Update Newsletter, which you have subscribed at http://home.wangjianshuo.com

As an effort to protect your privacy and give you more control over your subscription, like unsubscribing and changing deliver frequency, I have decided to switch from the built-in MovableType notification function to Yahoo! Groups.

This letter is to invite you to join the new mail list.

You are NOT added to the new list automatically. If you don’t want to receive daily update from Wangjianshuo’s Blog, NO action is required. Please kindly discard this letter and I’ll remove your email from my record.

If you still want to be notified when a new entry of my blog comes online, please kindly follow the instruction included in this email to confirm your subscription. I will be very happy to see your “renewal?of the subscription.

FAQ about the change can be found at http://home.wangjianshuo.com/archives/20040212_newsletter_switched_to_yahoo_groups.htm.

Thanks for your attention.

Jian Shuo Wang

http://home.wangjianshuo.com

Frequent Asked Questions are listed below.

Q: Tell me More about the Change.

Providing an update to readers about new entries is a good way to keep strong connections between a website and its readers. I started the newsletter, called Wangjianshuo’s Blog Update, from April, 2003. At the very beginning, I used the notification function of MovableType to send notifications. However, the lack of unsubscribe function is a big pain for me. My effort to add unsubscribe functions didn’t work well due to the manual administration. I don’t want to miss any unsubscribe request but don’t have the time to check everyday.

Later, I changed to the notification list of Links 2.0. There are still some problems with the time-out error. Anyway, I decided to find a better solution. Now, Yahoo! Groups is the best based on my research. So there is a change.

Q: Why Not Add the Existing Subscribers Directly Instead of Sending Invitation?

I don’t need a large number of members in my subscription list. It is meaningless. I just want to provide the right information that is helpful.

This is a good chance for people who are no longer interested to leave the list gracefully. I guess more than 30% of recipients won’t spend the effort to subscribe. That means, the value of the newsletter is less than two clicks of mouse. Then I respect their choice. Let’s save bandwidth of the over-loaded Internet together.

Q: I didn’t Receive Updates in the Last One or Two Months. Why?

Having the problems above said, I hesitate to send more updates in the last one and half month. I felt bad when I got bouncing email saying: “Who on hell are you?” or “If you dare to spam me again…”

People know how hardly I fought against spam. I have zero tolerance for people to call me myself a spammer. It is true that they entered their email address into my site but they forgot it, or someone else entered their emails (I don’t think it often happens). So I decide to utilize the email confirmation function of Yahoo! Groups so this won’t happen. From today, I have resumed the daily update to the new list. So subscribe and get synchronized.

Q: Is there any disadvantages in Yahoo! Groups?

Yes. Sometimes advertisements are inserted into the email. Well. It is the cost of a free service.

Q: Will You Change List Provider Again In the Future?

Maybe. If MovableType 3.0 provides more features, I am switch back.

Q: Can I Invite my Friends to Join this List Too?

Sure. It is appreciated if you recommend the site to your friend. However, please ask them to join by themselves instead of subscribing on behalf of them.

Q: I Haven’t Received the Inviation Yet. Can I Renew?

Yes. Just use the Subscribe form on every page (including this page) to subscribe yourself, even if you don’t receive an invitation.

Q: Other Question?

Post a comment on this page.

Subscribe to Wangjianshuo’s Blog Update

Wangjianshuo’s Blog was voted as Top 10 China Blogs, mentioned by BusinessWeek, MSNBC, UK Telegraph, China Radio International and many local magazines. It is visited 300,000 times by 45,000 visitors from 109 countries every month. Subscribe to get notified when articles like this was published. FREE! | Privacy Policy | More Info

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Watch Out Bad Taxi Drivers in Beijing

No only Shanghai has bad taxi drivers. My friends arrived in Beijing airport yesterday and took taxi to San Yuan Qiao. I know the destination is near and does not worth the long time waiting for the taxi driver (see more explaination in this entry), but the taxi driver cheated them by going to the farther way.

The trip should cost 50 RMB at most, but the taxi driver asked for more than 100 RMB accordign to the meter.

Buying Computer Parts in Shanghai

royston‘s comment:

You mentioned that we can purchase a computer from between 3000-6000 RMB. Do you have any idea how much a flat-screen computer monitor costs in Shanghai?

Or a CRT type? Do you have any recommendation as to where i can go in Shanghai to purchase all of my computer stuff? Is there something like an area where all the computer shops have set up their business together – sorta like a cluster? Posted by: royston on February 10, 2004 11:54 AM

The best place to ask prices is on the Internet. My favorite is www.pchome.net (Chinese site). Unfortunately, I don’t know English website for computer parts yet. Anyone has some idea?

I know a LCD monitor costs about 3000 RMB. For example, the latest Philips 150S4 is 2999 RMB, 150B = 3050 RMB and 170S = 3688, according to PCHOME.net. So you have the idea of a flat screen or CRT monitor.

The best place to purchase computer and computer parts in Xujiahui is the Metro City and the Pacific Computer Mall (Map). They are the largest market for computers in southwest area of the city.

Individual Entry Archive Template

Below is the Individual Entry Archive Template for my site. It is the code behind the page you are looking at. Share with MovableType funs. Please note: Changes always under way but the major elements will be stable for a very long time.

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Server IP Address Change

I got a short notice from my ISP (CompanyCN.com) that the server has to change its IP address and I will update my DNS record (hosted at www.net.cn) to the new IP address. Since these two actions may not be synchronized, a short period of service pause from this site may occure in the next few days. Sorry for that. (I hope they don’t lose any comments posted here.)

History of My Server Hosting

Here is the server change history of my server, according to netcraft.net

OS Server Last changed IP address Netblock Owner

Windows 2000 Microsoft-IIS/5.0 24-Jun-2003 210.15.187.12 Jitong Shanghai communications Co.,Ltd

Windows 2000 Microsoft-IIS/5.0 30-Jan-2003 210.78.22.54 JiTong Communication Co.,Ltd

Windows 2000 Microsoft-IIS/5.0 12-Nov-2002 202.101.10.123 Shanghai Telecom Co. Qingpu Telecom Breaure

Windows 2000 unknown 11-Nov-2002 202.101.10.123 Shanghai Telecom Co. Qingpu Telecom Breaure

Windows 2000 Microsoft-IIS/5.0 11-Oct-2002 202.101.10.123 Shanghai Telecom Co. Qingpu Telecom Breaure

Windows 2000 Microsoft-IIS/5.0 9-Oct-2002 202.101.10.123 Shanghai Telecom Co. Qingpu Telecom Breaure

unknown Microsoft-IIS/5.0 8-Oct-2002 202.101.10.123 Shanghai Telecom Co. Qingpu Telecom Breaure

Windows 2000 Microsoft-IIS/5.0 26-Sep-2002 202.101.10.123 Shanghai Telecom Co. Qingpu Telecom Breaure

Windows XP Microsoft-IIS/5.1 19-Sep-2002 211.161.107.18 FOR GWBN SHANGHAI # 145 RESIDENTIAL COMMUNITY BROADBAND NETWORK USERS’ BROADBAND ACCESS

The last record of the table above shows the short history when the blogging site was hosted on Windows XP on my home. I wrote an article: MovableType Successfully Installed on Windows XP as my first article. Then, I wrote: Server Outage – My Home is Still Not a Perfect Datacenter when there is a server outage from Sept 24 to Sept 26. I was in Chendu at that time, and there is no way for me fix the problem on my server in my home, since the Greatwall Broadband dropped the old IP address and I don’t knw the new one.

So I rushed to Internet and picked any hosting company that supports Perl. CompanyCN was the choice. It was not a bad, although not a perfect choice. The picture below shows the availability of the service.

screen-average-home.wangjianshuo.com.png

Image in courtesy of Netcraft.net

In coutrast is the service from Hotsales.net. I hosted my wangjianshuo.com and www.wangjianshuo.com there.

screen-average-wangjianshuo.com.png

Image in courtesy of Netcraft.net

Their number is better.

I have to say, to be fair, that the server hotsales provides are static HTML service. There may not be any application like ASP, Perl, PHP on the server. It is hundreds of times easier to make it stable. Disclaimer: I was the co-founder of Hotsales.net when I was in university. Now it is the largest domain name, hosting and real name provider in Shanghai with 200+ employees. Xiao Guang did wonderful job to turn a dream into reality. You have been warned that my comment regarding Hotsales tends to be favorable to it.

Below is the IP address history of wangjianshuo.com according to the record of netcraft.net:

OS, Web Server and Hosting History for wangjianshuo.com

OS Server Last changed IP address Netblock Owner

Windows 2000 Microsoft-IIS/5.0 5-Aug-2003 61.172.241.197 CHINANET Shanghai province network

Windows 2000 Microsoft-IIS/5.0 27-Nov-2001 61.151.249.186 CHINANET Shanghai province network

Windows 2000 unknown 26-Nov-2001 61.151.249.186 CHINANET Shanghai province network

Windows 2000 Microsoft-IIS/5.0 21-Nov-2001 61.151.249.186 CHINANET Shanghai province network

Linux Apache/1.3.9 (Unix) (Red Hat/Linux) 18-Sep-2001 61.129.65.72 CHINANET Shanghai province network

Linux Apache/1.3.9 (Unix) (Red Hat/Linux) 23-Nov-2000 202.96.235.211 Shanghai East Asian Videotex Information Co.

Hello From Beijing

I am in Renaissance Beijing Hotel now. The trip was pleasant and the 1100 KM or two hour flight from Shanghai to Beijing wasn’t boring. The flight attendants of China Eastern Airlines were interesting this time. They seemed very happy and even laughed when people talked with them. I believe they must have broken some so-called working standard of the airline. But I feel good (along with other amused passenger) that they behaved more like human instead of trained emotionless robots. In Shanghai, I took the time to take a lot of photos of Hong Qiao Airport so I can create a photo website for this older airport as I did for Pudong Airport.

Beijing is not as cold as I expected. I took heavy clothes only to find I sweat heavily here.

Stepping out of the airport, I began to wander how I should go to downtown. Taxi station is on the left hand and the airport bus stop is on the right.

I finally chose to go right. My destination is the San Yuan Bridge. It is the exit of the airport exit. So it is almost the nearest destination for a taxi driver. Considering any taxi driver should have waited in the long line for at least 3 hours, I hesitate to call a taxi. My trip only takes about 60 RMB. It seems I am the Mr. Un-Fortune. Whose car I get on board, whose whole day’s good mood would be messed up.

I would rather take a bus out of the airport and call a taxi there. Am I doing a favor for the taxi drivers? Maybe yes, maybe not. If more people like me take buses instead of taxi, the time they spend next time would be longer and their business will be worse. :-( There should be a seperated team to serve short distance passengers dedicated to protect the taxi driver, like Shanghai does.

Anyway, the airport bus is always a very good option since it is cheap, it is large and it is also fast.

Arriving at hotel, it is already 10:00 PM. I am feeling good for “saving a taxi driver”.

Vegetarianism in Shanghai

There is a special restaurant on the 4th floor or Metor City (map) – Larbre de Provence. They only serve vegetables and they always have a lot of customer. Why not have a try? I didn’t yet. :-D

shanghai-provence-door.jpg

© Jian Shuo Wang

shanghai-provence-window.jpg

© Jian Shuo Wang

I got emails asking me about whether a vetanist can survive in Shanghai. Surely they can.

Twin Tower Rise in Xujiahui

shanghai-two.tower-grand.gateway.jpg

© Jian Shuo Wang. The twin tower of Grand Gateway is under construction. View outside the window of my office

I am lucky to have a wonderful view out of the window of my office in Metro Tower. I am seeing the twin tower of the Grand Gateway growing higher and higher everyday. Now, it is reported that the twin tower will reach its top at the end of this month and will be fully completed in May.

According to what I heard (may not be true), the tower construction was suspendid due to the Asia Finacial Crisis. The Grand Gateway (the large mall under the two tower) has been in business for several years and the tower came late.

Signed Life Ensurance

Got my life ensurance today. There is a big progress in the insurance industry that people in Shanghai no longer treat it as lier. Mr. Xu is a very good agent and I will be happy to recommend him to others. Let me post his contact information on the web later. (Short entry today)

Shanghai Map Viewer 0.71 Released

New Feature / Bug Fix

  • Changed the wording of claim to profile.
  • Remove del button from the map and move it to the point profile page.
  • Bug fix: now the Place Name field can be modified in Profile.asp. In 0.7, it cannot be changed.
  • Added border image so broken image will not be shown at the edge of the map
  • Added statistics of most populated area on the map.

    screen-stat-shanghaimap.jpg

Loooong Domain Name – Pi

Guoqiang shared (Chinese page) a long domain name:

http://3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944592.com/

Wooooooooooooooooooow.

I did a lot of stupid things when I was young. Besides robbing girl’s magic cube, I also devoted quite some time to recite long numbers. Pi was my favorite. I managed to remeber the first 100 digits of Pi. I cannot remember some portion of the long number, till now, I can only write down the 85 digits after the dot now. Here is the try with my break of the numbers.

3. 14 15 926

535

8979

323

8462

643

3832

7950

2884

19716

93993

7510

5820974

9445923

0781640

6286208

9956280

Persons who can recite more than 100 digits of Pi include:

I am a RUBIK Cube (Magic Cube) Solver

Something you may not know about me. I am a Magic Cube Solver at my age of 13. I can turn any one of the 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 magic cube possiblity into the solved status (having a single color on each of its 6 sides). My average speed to solve a Magic Cube is about 2.5 (best situation) to 3.5 (worst situation) minutes.

I have trained many people to master the skill to solve a Rubik’s Cube, especially in middle school when I brought my Cube to school and made it the fasion. I taught one quater of the class to solve it. My proud experience was when I was in Grade 1 of my Junior Middle School, I was so naughty that I “robbed” a girl’s magic cube and run away. She runned after me from the forth floor to the first floor in the school, where I returned the solved cube (with single colors on each side) to her. Haha. I didn’t got any chance to show off the skill after I entered university.