Joel told me that he saw my article on April issue of Wired Magazine. I didn’t see this issue yet. I checked on their website and there is only March 2005 issue. Search for Yahoo! News does not return anything. Baidu does not search foreign media and Google News is not accessible. Anything saw it? The magazine may be on newsstands already. I assume it is the longest report on me so far on foreign media. :-) I believe my Goudaner was also mentioned.
Nothing is showing up yet (10:20 AM California time) on Google news either Jian Shuo. I just wrote to my son, a WIRED subscriber, to ask if he can scan and send me a copy of the article to forward you when it arrives. You’ll probably have received it from some other source before then, but, just in case…
WOW! It’s fabulous! WIRED is one of the most famous Geeks/IT magazine.
I am going to Redmond on first week of April. Definitely I can buy a WIRED apr issue for you from the booksellers in the airport, either Seattle or San Francisco. (I believe they sell).
Exerpted from the April ’05 Wired article entitled “China’s Next Cultural Revolution,” p108:
Here’s the new cultural revolution: Every morning, Wang Jian Shua and his wife leave their condo in the suburbs of Shanghai, get into their Fiat sedan, and drive to jobs in the city. Two years ago, they lived in a cramped, decrepit apartment in the center of Shanghai, and Wang, an engineer for Microsoft, traveled to work by bus or train. “I never thought of getting a car,” he says. “Driving was a very serious profession – like medicine.” Cars were for party bureaucrats, or at least the very rich.
But in 2000, Shanghai’s per capita GDP (already much higher than China’s overall) rose above $4,000, and the roads started filling with private cars. Local highways, which were designed by engineers who’d never driven, clogged. Shanghai’s narrow streets became so congested that commuters abandoned their bicycles for the subway just to avoid the cars. Smog grew so thick that on many days you couldn’t even see the boisterous skyscrapers looming above you.
And so, a year ago, Wang moved into a spacious condo in the suburbs – and bought a car. “The change the car brings in my life is bigger than the house,” he says. “My life scope is much larger now.” Today Wang and his wife shop in Western-style supermarkets instead of haggling with the fishmonger, and they can drive to visit friends and return home by car long after the subway has shut down for the nightr. They grew up in a world bounded by transit schedules, shabby housing, and nosy neighbors, but now they live in an airy apartment, surrounded by the brand-new high-rises that have sprung out of the rice paddies. Some nights, when they’re tired, Wang and his wife get in the car and drive out to the new airport just to experience speeding down the empty highway. But even that road is filling up. It makes Wang happy he bought a car as soon as he did. “What a car becomes something everyone can afford, forget it,” he says. “You won’t be able to drive.”
At a Hyundai dealership not far from Wang’s condo, families prowl the showroom, inspecting the stitching on the seats, criticizing the design of the rear lights, trying to find the biggest car for their yuan. A TV blares a gov’t program featuring a singer in a yellow dress crooning in front of a suburban development. “Nowadays life is getting better, sweeter and sweeter,” she sings. “You can fulfill your dreams. The roads are getting wider and wider.”
Apologies for any typos in the above… I assure you that everything is spelled right (including your name) and is grammatically correct in the actual article…
Hey,
I sent you the pdf of the article. Let me know if you have any problems downloading it. I saw on the Wired website that the article will be on there March 24th.
Keep up the hard work blogging and others are sure to notice as well. :)
I think what the magazine did was a case study analysis, and Wang Jian Shuo would be the perfect example, the best resource in all.
Hi, I have read the article which described you and your car story. Good work. Let me know if you want to read it.
jsw
Hi, I have read the article which described you and your car story. Good work. Let me know if you want to read it.
jsw
Here’s the story on Wired for all to read:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.04/china.html
You know, I can’t help thinking that your life as described in the article doesn’t really sound the same as you write about it in the blog. Do you really feel like you’ve escaped shabby housing, nosy neighbors and haggling with the fishmonger? That’s a very negative view of central Shanghai, I think, and one that I’ve never gotten reading the blog (or visiting Shanghai.) It was fun to see your name, and the most of the article is really interesting, but I thought this was an unjustified slam. What do you think?
I didn’t read about the WIRED article before I wrote this blog. I would say, the majority of the content is correct. WIRED magazine editor was quite professional and even sent me a fact sheet and asked me to verify the detailed facts before they went to publish. I may have changed some key facts.
However, as any article that is written about me but not written by me, it is the view of the writers, instead of me. “Shabby housing, nosy neighbors and haggling with the fishmonger?” is not my previous life – I wrote about the previous life in Waltz Garden in Xujiahui on this blog. It is actually not an escape. If possible, I may move back to the central part of Shanghai, at the sake of losing the car. However, the car did change my life. If you read back and you will see how painful the decision I had made to move from Puxi to Pudong:
Continue to Seek for an Apartment: http://home.wangjianshuo.com/archives/20040302_continue_to_seek_for_an_apartment.htm
Pudong or Puxi:http://home.wangjianshuo.com/archives/20040529_moving_to_the_new_apartment.htmBye bye Pudong: http://home.wangjianshuo.com/archives/20040229_bye_bye_pudong.htm
Moving to the New Apartment: http://home.wangjianshuo.com/archives/20040221_pudong_or_puxi.htm
First Week in Pudong: http://home.wangjianshuo.com/archives/20040410_first_week_in_pudong.htm
There are many articles reflecting the move from Puxi to Pudong. Of cause, I thank Lisa for putting out the article, and they have done a great job to make sure the facts are correct. I almost never saw one article on me that reflects 100% of what I am thinking. Above all, it is not my article.
Now I have learnt to value any place I have ever lived, worked. There is no bad place in the world. There is only bad mood.
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