Expo is Nearer

Expo is officially 31 days away. I saw the expo site from the Inner Ring Elevated Highway tonight.

They are testing the Expo light effect today. At night, the site is so beautiful. From the gap of two buildings, I saw a pavilion with OIL logo on it. That redish shining pavilion is like a magic box. I didn’t get the chance to take a photo of it.

The Nanpu Bridge is lightened, with color bar on the side facing the Expo site. I do have some blurred picture for the decorated Nanpu bridge.

It seems this part time Expo journalist need to get busy.

P.S. Get excited.

From time to time, we need someone around you to get you excited, and you pass the passion on and on. Some times, it is yourself initiating that passion, some times inspired by others. But always, it is good to keep passion about what we are doing, and do our best to be best.

Bye Bye Goudaner

Tonight, Goudaner left his sweet home in the last 6 years in the night rain. Man is a kind of animal that loves cars. A good car is part of his life. I stayed in the car for a long time before my friend pick him up. The mileage is 79020 KM – in 6 years.

Bye bye Goudaner, and have a great life. I am very sure that you will be take care of very well.

I Sold Out my Google Nexus One

One month after I bought Google Nexus One (I Should Not Open Nexus One at Night), I finally sold it out in Baixing.com Second-hand Phone category at a little bit lower price than I bought. If I had sold it the first day when I am got it, I can make a decent profit out of it, but the price of the new phone dropped from 6% higher than US to relative the same price in the last month.

I never wrote a serious review of this phone. My summary is: a full function phone that does not work.

Full Function

This phone has all the interesting input features that a phone should have – GPS, a magnetic sensor to report south and north, a nice high resolution camera, multi-touch touch screen, and all type of motion sensors.

The hardware and the Android platform support many great applications from the Google Android market place. I downloaded many of them. Among the applications, the most used are

  • Twidroid
  • Google Maps
  • Google Mail
  • Google Reader/Buzz

Most of the functions are also popular in other platform like iPhone, and Nokia.

A Phone that Does not Work

The Nexus One gives me similar impression as a Dell with Microsoft Windows – an ecosystem that many application run, but crashes from time to time, and can be slow.

  • It hangs from time to time (maybe because I installed too many applications)
  • Application crashes often, or stop responding
  • The ring tone is really bad – not bearable to use speaker
  • Touch screen frequently do not work

There are more than that. To be fair, it is a nice phone, but does not justify the price. I decided to get rid of it when it still sells a good price, and switch to others.

The Transaction

I listed the phone on Baixing.com and was called immediately by a man. It turned out he is a dealer, and since he is the first person to call, I met him at the Xujiahui Metro station. I gave him the phone and he gave me the cash. Deal done. When we conducted the transaction, some called to offer higher price, but it was too late.

Giving up my Stuff

The modern life is life full of different fun toys. We are surrounded by all type of things we buy. After I sold out my phone, I immediately regret. I missed the high-resolution camera, and large screen, and very well integrated GMail client on the phone… I touched my phone pocket three times, and suddenly stopped on the way back, thinking that I may have lost my phone – the feeling of having nothing on the right pocket in my pant is so strange. I spent the next 3 hours without a phone – rare moment in my life. I only have a SIM card in my wallet.

Besides that uncomfortable feeling, another feeling is refreshing. I felt my life is lighter, and I am fresher than before. We have to sadly accept the fact that we are going to lose everything around us in 100 years. To try to start to sell our stuff help to keep us in a mood of losing our favorite stuff, and that can help us to appreciate what we already have (but not lost yet) much more. I sold out many stuff many months ago (Chinese blog), and will continue to sell it on Baixing. That is not just about money back, it is more of a philosophy of living lightly, happily, and wisely.

Metro Line #11 Extension Opens

Metro Line #11 from Jiading 嘉定 to Shanghai opened for a while. Now, one month to Shanghai Expo 2010, the extension of the line opened.

To give you some sense about where the extension is, look at the current full map (I attached larger picture at the end of this blog to give you more detailed view (meanwhile not blocking the screen in case you have smaller screen or read it in other software than a browser).

Map credit: Google Maps

The Metro Line #11 is the purple line from the top-left corner to the middle of the city. Thanks to Google Maps. They provide a “transit” option under More… button to allow you see the current Metro Lines.

The new extension is the left side of the Y shaped line. In the map, the two lines are not connected (which is inaccurate). Now the Y shaped Metro Line #11 is a full Y now. The south extension is under construction now.

Below is the full screen bigger map of all the Shanghai metro lines that is current running.

Stay Tuned for More News

The month before May 1, the opening date for Shanghai Expo, is determined to be a Shanghai-news intensive month. Stay tuned of many future events. Here are some (including those just happened).

  • Hongqiao Airport T2 Opens
  • Metro Line #2 extends to Hongqiao Airport
  • Metro Line #2 will extend to Pudong Airport
  • Metro Line #10 will open
  • The new Bund opens to public.
  • The new Bund Tunnels opens to traffic
  • 42 Expo bus lines will start to operate
  • New Expo taxi started to serve passengers

I will report here live from Shanghai about the Expo and its impact to Shanghai.

GM EN-V Unveild in Shanghai

General Motor unveiled a new concept car – EN-V. That car is expected to hit market in 2030, 20 years from today. EN-V is electronic driven, and there will be a plug to re-charge the car. Once fully charged, it is said to be able to run for 40 km.

Thanks to Xiaojing and Jia to give me this very nice toy – a EN-V model. You can see the details of this car from inside out. Here are the photos:

Below is the local report about the launch of this concept car on TV.

More Hongqiao Airport T2 Photos

I took the photo of T2 two weeks ago. Let me share the rest of the photos in this blog.

Below is the arrival hall of Hongqiao Airport T2. It is hard to distinguish it from the arrival hall of Pudong Airport T1, and T2. The three halls are very like each other.

In my memory, this is the few decorations I found in the four airport terminals in Shanghai – the paper airplane on the top of the pole.

The new display board of flight departure information.

The path from the Hongqiao East Transportation Building (metro and taxi!) to the check-in counter.

For a list of airlines in this airport, check this table:

This is the diagram of the airport:

Bund Re-opened

The biggest local news in Shanghai today is, the new Bund re-opened. There are two part of it. The first part is the new Bund Tunnel – they put all the through traffic into the two-layered tunnel. The other part is the new Bund – they renovated the whole area in the last two years.

I haven’t visited the area yet. Will find time to be there to take some photos to share with my readers.

Travel is Life Intensified

Elliot Ng has many great thoughts. He does not talk too much, but from time to time, I think of something that often turned out to be from Elliot.

Elliot said this before:

Travel is life intensified

As an travel industry expert, his comment is very sensational from a personal level.

I searched for the term “life intensified”, and found out this interesting blog entry: Why I Travel:

Travel is intensified living.” The actual sentence reads “Travel is intensified living – maximum thrills per minute and one of the last great sources of legal adventure. Travel is freedom. It’s recess, and we need it

A topic I was thinking for a long time is, how to enable people to travel in their own city. Travel is a life-altering experience, and if we can get that experience without long distance travel, that would be both financially efficient.

One of the program I can imagine to help people in Shanghai to actually travel in Shanghai – get away at weekend to a little hotel at the city center (or far away) and start the day from there? Anyone has the same idea?

P.S. Another favorite quote about travel, and life is: Life, an Accumulation of Mileage.

Forward Hindsight

Forward Hindsight is the name of my friend Ashish’s company in Minneapolis, MN. It was because of this company name did I learn the English world: Hindsight.

Hindsight: recognition of the realities, possibilities, or requirements of a situation, event, decision etc., after its occurrence.

I started to love this word, and started to appreciate the name of Ashish’s company – how good it will be to have forward hindsight.

Photography

In University, I attended a class named “Photography”. The experienced photographer taught us how to take great photos. The key learning was, always keep notes before you take any photo on your notebook. Write down

– why you want to take this photo.

– what you want the viewers to see.

– what techniques you use to archive that

– what the final photo look like in your mind

– how you did to make it better.

After you write down all these on the notebook, you can take the photo. At that time, there were not digital camera, and you need to wait for the film to be developed before you see it. After you get the result (the photo), you can compare it with the note you took, and find out what is different from you see, and improve it the next time.

Today, I don’t now how digital photography impacted people’s photograph skill. It may improve it because it shortened the feedback loop, but it may also make it harder to master the beauty of nature, because people think less about taking photos – they always have chances to re-do it if the photo on LCD display is not perfect.

Decision Making

We all make decisions of all kinds, like what stock to buy, when to buy it; what house to buy; what car to buy; which school to attend, or what event to attend when there are many.

For all the decisions, I wonder if I can lesson to my photography teacher, and apply what he taught: write down the decision making process on a piece of paper, or on this blog if it is public, and take actions to make the decision. Then after a while, revisit the reasons of the decision and compare it with the result – that is the way people learn. Most people do it implicitly. I will try to make it explicit, and I hope that will continue to help me to learn and make better decisions in the future – that is, get the most out of the same experience.

Experienced Security Guard

Let me record the experienced I had in Pudong airport before I forgot.

At the X-ray security check machine, a female security guard is supervising people to put their stuff into the machine. This is the conversation.

Before I put the bag there, she asked: “Do you have a laptop?” I pulled my laptop out of the bag.

She asked: Anything in your pocket? I used my left hand to pull the wallet from my pocket.

“Phone?” She asked prompted. I got my phone from the other pocket.

“Coins left in your pocket?” She is right again. I got two 1 RMB coins. I laughed.

Then she said without any emotion: “You can go now.” She is right again. I have nothing in my pocket or hand at that time.

Hmmm… This lady is very experienced.

Complicated Roads to Hongqiao T2

The new Hongqiao Transportation Hub (including Hongqiao Airport T2) is a big project, with Airport, Maglev, and train station integrated in the same structure. There are many roads to this big hub, making it one of the most complicated road system in Shanghai.

Let me share with you some photos I took in my last visit to Hongqiao. If you are new to Shanghai, and rent a car at the new terminal, guess whether you know which road you choose to use when you first see these signs.

There are at least 5 choices you need to pick the right one from. Hard, isn’t it?

Here are more signs. Enjoy the puzzle!

Below: The arrival roads.

There are no good map about the area so far. The Google Maps has not been updated – there are nothing in that area yet. Let’s wait for few months, before we have a nice map about it.

Jian Shuo Got His New Car

About 6 years ago, I posted this entry: Jian Shuo Got His Car. The little car (I gave it the name Goudaner) has been with me and my family for 6 years.

This week, we got our new car – a Nissan Teana 2.5L XL with V6 engine, and CVT transmission. Today, Wendy went to the dealer to get the new car back (I hope it was myself who went there, as I picked up Goudaner 6 years ago). I quickly had my dinner and rushed down to see it. Then I drove to the nearby department store with Yifan and Wendy – just for a test drive.

Photograph by Jian Shuo Wang

© Jian Shuo Wang

So far, so good. – Did I say exactly the same thing when I got Goudaner?

The Change of A Normal Person’s Life

I spent few minutes to read all the blog entries of Goudaner. That articles brought me back to 6 years ago, when I was still an engineer in Microsoft, with a limited circle of friends, and a small world to handle. Obviously I had much more time to spend, have simpler life (no Yifan!), and surely younger than today. The life 6 years ago is very familiar to me (since it was my who wrote those articles) but at the same time, seems pretty distant from my current life.

The car is an example. It upgrades with the owner. With the arrival of Yifan and the change of our life, our need for cars also change. That is reflected honestly on this blog. Wendy and I am the type of person who are easy to get satisfied, and be happy. Our expectation to life is not very high. We buy things that we just need, and nothing more than that. Many of our friends bought Volkswagen Passat, or Honda Accord 6 years ago when we bought Goudaner (a FIAT compact car). Now, we finally upgraded to a bigger car, that is still just right for us, financially, and functionally. That is the type of life we enjoy.

I never shy away from sharing my personal life with my readers, with just one hope that people can have some real feeling about what the life in Shanghai, in China, or in the beginning of the 21st century looks like from an individual person’s view – his joy, his dream, his life, and his happiness. I am sure that differs from country to country, and from decade to decade. I hope my honest record of this fragmented, and detailed life can be of some value for others and for the future.

I hope the Jian Shuo 6 years later can get back to read what I am writing today, and still be able to feel the exact moment I am writing this.

Goudaner

I listed my first car, my favorite car, and my good friend Goudaner on Baixing.com to sell it. Quickly my friend saw it and we made the deal. Goudaner will find a new home next week. I am very sad that I cannot keep Goudaner with the new car.

The story with Goudaner started with a comment from my reader Nina in San Francisco:

Congratulations from San Francisco! It’s a very nice-looking car and I’m sure you will enjoy it.

Are you going to give the car a name? I don’t know whether there is enough of a car-owning culture yet in China to have developed the custom of pet names for cars. I think I’ve read that about 25% of Americans have named their cars and supposedly, cars that have names last longer and are more reliable, although presumably this is because the sort of people who name their cars usually take good care of them, rather than by magic. The most popular name is “Betsy” or “Bessie” and the speculation is that this was a common name for a cow back at the time when people first started owning cars, and the habit transferred over. Of course, this was when cars did not go much faster than a cow. You probably want to have a snappier and more elegant name for this little beauty.

Posted by: Nina on March 17, 2004 2:16 AM

That comment inspired me to give my first car a name. Nina is 100% right that when you give it a name, you treat it as a person, and then it becomes your friend. Goudaner was an excellent car, lasted very long, and never gave me hard time. Is it because I gave him a name?

What Nina didn’t told me, though, was it is so hard to sell it when you have given it a name – I do hope I could keep my Goudaner, which Wendy had told me to be not realistic.

OK, let me move on. I will spend time to give a name to this bigger white car.

What should I name it?

HTHT IPO

Hanting, the chain hotel group will go IPO tomorrow (March 26, 2010). The ticker will be HTHT – China Lodging Group.

I am a frequent Hanting customer. I know their style. It is a very cost concious and cost effective company. My gut feeling tells me that they should be doing well after IPO.

I will wait and see the final result, and do some reflection after comparing the final results with my thoughts, and learn more about how to valuate a company better.

Disclaimer: This is not an investment advice, and I don’t take any responsibility related to this article.

I Love the Garage in Hongqiao T2

The highlight of the new Hongqiao Airport T2 is the garage. There are plenty of them – not worried about parking any more.

Where is the Garage – P7 and P6

Look at this diagram below:

The horizontal yellow area on the right is the Hongqiao Airport Terminal 2. The yellow area in the middle is the East Transportation Hub, where the Parking Area P6 (at north) and P7 (at south) is located. At the B1 of this giant building is the Metro Station of Hongqiao Airport T2 for Metro Line #2 and #10 (opened Q4 this year).

Below are the few highlights of this new garage.

Fruit Signs

I love the designs that shows caring for people, although it does not cost too much.

Since there are so many parking lots in the Hongqiao Transportation Hub (not only the Hongqiao Airport, but also the future Maglev Station, and the Hongqiao Train Station), it is so easy to forget where the car is parked.

They designed signs like fruits and animals to help people to remember where the car is.

The first floor of P7 is banana – my favorite fruit!

© Jian Shuo Wang

I don’t know if other people feel like myself – I feel happy to park my car in a banana area, instead of F1 of P7.

Below: Goudnaner and my favorite fruit: banana. This way, there is no way for me to forget where the car is at. I even guess the next time, I will intentionally choose to park at banana level, not the water melon level.

© Jian Shuo Wang

Courtyard

Another great design I like for this new garage is the courtyards. In the middle of P6 and P7, there is a courtyard. It is like a well, allowing sun light to pour down into the garage. It also gives people a little bit sense of direction to help them find their cars quicker.

They also have nice plants in the courtyard – absolutely the highlights of this new terminal.

Trolleys

They also have plenty of trolleys lined up in the parking lot. You can easily get a trolley to move your luggage out of the car to the check-in counter.

Nicely Arranged Cars

Look at this: the garage looks clean and nice. I give 5 star out of 5 for it.

Below are the cars in the garage – many very nice cars. I know this is not a feature of the garage itself.

Another Simple Feature: Pedestrian

They have designated pedestrian path in the garage! The nice little sign for pedestrian and direction of signs. They list the signs like those hotel rooms – it guide you step by step along the way.

It first let you know all parking lots between 3000 and 3100 should go this way, and give you branches with numbers to the left, and the rest to the right. Very nice job indeed!

P6

P6 and P7 is a little bit different in garden design, AND fruit/animal signs, making it easier to distinguish the two.

Stairs

The stairs of the parking lots used the design common in US, but not very common in Shanghai: the stair cases with stripes.

It can be scary if you look down, and you always worry about the installation of the tiles. But, it is simple and cool.

Summary

Although I have many negative comments, like the taxi lines, for Hongqiao Airport T2, I will give my two thumbs up for this garage design. I have a feeling that the garage is designed by a different company than other buildings. Can anyone confirm or deny it? I love this garage – definitely one of the best one in Shanghai at this scale.

Global Village

This morning, I am very happy to host two talented students – Chengyi from Shanghai Jiaotong University, and Echo from Stanford University. It brought me back to the days when we, as a company and as a person, had strong connection with universities.

Internship Cross Borders

Regarding the summer internship program we had been for five years, we just realized that we can accept both students from Shanghai Jiaotong University, and from Stanford – 6000 miles, and 8 time zone away.

With Shanghai getting hotter, and ops, high living cost, the two places are less different. The two community started to interlace with each other.

Stanford GMIX Program

For the third year, we are accepting application from Stanford Graduate School of Business MBA program for a four week summer project. That program is called GMIX in Stanford (Global Management Immersion Experience). We had very talented students (well, one of them are not that “student”. He worked for famous consulting firms for years) in the past, and expecting to meet great persons this year. (Hey! My dear readers in Stanford MBA, and my friends there, help me to spread the message, and check out the project posting in April!)

Time Zone and Daylight Saving Time

Next Monday, I will have a phone call with Berlin, Germany. I was told that they are going to advance the clock one hour this weekend. No one wants to calculate the exact time to call.

Then I did some research and have this simple rule:

Berlin is GMT+1.

In DST time, it is at GMT+2 (advance one hour = follow the timezone east of them).

Shanghai is still GMT+8 (China abandoned DST years ago, and never change clock)

The new gap will be 6 hours.

That means, 9 AM in Berlin = 09 + 06 = 15:00 in Shanghai.

Hope my calculate is right.

Global Landscape

Friends, and travel are two vehicles to help us get global landscape. Without visiting a place or having a friend in certain part of the world, it is harder to setup that connection with certain type of world. If we have either of that, that personal tie makes us not afraid of things there.

So my personal goal – travel more and making more friends – the diversity of friends actually matters to help.

Long Taxi Lines in Hongqiao T2 Too

The biggest hope for Hongqiao Airport T2 was to solve the long taxi line in Hongqiao Airport T1. I complained about it many times.

Now the 4-times bigger T2 opens. My guess was, it will solve this problem. To my disappointment, the problem is still there – not as serious, but there are still many people waiting in long lines for taxi, and there are even longer lines of taxi waiting inn the parking lot. The only bottleneck is, again, the taxi pickup area – the design of this brand new airport is still far from efficient.

Look at this picture: Long lines of passengers.

© Jian Shuo Wang

© Jian Shuo Wang

In the picture below: long lines of taxis. Pay attention to the taxi lines on the upper right corner of the picture.

© Jian Shuo Wang

My Question

My question, when can this society leverage the knowledge in planning to help to make people’s life easier? Can students in universities, and even the professors really spend some time to dig into details and solve this simple problem? Is there any more effective way to handle this? In an airport with billions of dollars of investment, why just some parking lots can block people and waste their precious time in queuing for taxis, from morning to night, 365 days a year, and for years?

Sand Storm Hits Shanghai

I am happy that the sand storm is over. Yesterday, Wendy and I planned to go out for a walk at around 5:00 PM. It was windy, but the surprising part was, the air is full of dust, and it smelled like being in the middle of cleaning of an old building.

We are still luck. The sand storm from southern part of Xinjiang already hit many provinces including Beijing. It looked much worse than Shanghai.

Today, all the cars are covered with yellowish dust. It helped Wendy and I to finally make the decision about the color of our next car – WHITE! The concern was, white cars are too easy to look dirty when there is dust. However, this experiment rest assured us that black cars performed worse than white one in extreme conditions like sand storm.

G60 Shanghai-Kunming National Expressway

Wendy and I drove to Jiaxing via the formal A8 Shanghai-Hangzhou Expressway, and found out that the signs of the expressway have changed to its new name: G60 – Shanghai-Kunming National Expressway (or Hukun Expressway 沪昆高速). Let me tell you more about this national highway.

Name Change Matters

Although there are many criticism about the high cost and convention change of the new National Expressway system, I feel excited about the change (if we put aside the cost). The name gives people better sense of direction.

A8 is Shanghai – Hangzhou Expressway (named under the Shanghai local naming convention) tells you that beyond the horizon of the road before you is Hangzhou – 151 km away. You don’t know where the road leads to beyond Hangzhou.

G60 is the new name of the same road. It indicates the road start from Shanghai and ends at Kunming, Yunnan Province, a city that is 2730 km away, southwest of Shanghai (near the boarder of Burma. That inspires me of the bigger picture of the whole China.

My Travel Plan

I wish to be able to drive along the G60 to see other parts of China better. But before I start planning for it, let me just do some research on paper.

Below is the photo of G60 near the intersection with G15.

Photograph by Wendy

Toll gate near Xinzhuang in Shanghai.

Photograph by Wendy

Overview

The G60 connects the following cities. I use the city of Baixing.com as the link, to give myself a chance to virtually visit every single one of them.

In total, there are 17 cities along this G60.

G60 Map

Thanks to Google Maps, and my 2 hours of hard work, I created a map of G60 in China on Google Map:


View G60 Shanghai – Kunming National Expressway in a larger map

Below are the detailed explanation about the road.

G60 in Shanghai

The G60 is exactly the formal A8 in Shanghai. It started from Xinzhuang Interchange (the largest interchange in Asia). The interchange connect A20 (now S20), S4 (formally A4), G60, and Humin Elevated Highway and many local roads with each other.

G60 in Zhejiang

The G60 is exactly the Shanghai – Hangzhou Expressway before it hits the Hangzhou Ring Expressway. My GUESS is, it turns southwards at the Ring Expressway, and use the current Hangzhou – Jinhua – Quzhou Expressway (Hangjinqu Expressway 杭金衢高速公路).

The Hangjinqiu Expressway ends at the border of Zhejiang and Jiangxi – a small town called Liyuan. From Google earth, we can clearly see the big toll gate. A side note: the toll fee of expressways are collected by each province separately.

G60 in Jiangxi

In Jiangxi, the first part of G60 is the formal Liwen Expressway (Liyuan – Wenjiazhen Expressway 梨温高速). The passes Shangrao and Yingtan before it arrives at the Jiangxi capital Nanchang 南昌.

After Nanchang, it is named Changfu – Jinyu Expressway (Changjin Expressway). It ends at the Jiangxi and Hunan border – Jinyushi 金鱼石.

Unlike other province, Jiangxi named the expressway using names of very small towns, like Jinyushi – the exact town where the road ends in its border. Other places like Zhejiang used bigger city names, like Hangzhou – Jinhua – Quzhou Expressway. Personally, I feel the Jiangxi’s naming convention is more interesting since it created something so unique that people cannot obviously see the reason of the name, thus make it more unique, but it is not as clear as the bigger city naming convention.

G60 in Hunan

As in other provinces, the G60 in Hunan consists of 4 sections. Two of them on the east was already built before 2007, and the two on the west was just completed three years ago.

Liling – Xiangtan Expressway 醴陵 – 湘潭

Xiangtan – Shaoyang Expressway 湘潭 – 邵阳

Shaoyang – Huaihua Expressway 邵阳 – 怀化

Huaihua – Xinhuang Expressway 怀化- 新晃

The four sections have their own names.

When I came to this point, I already started to understand why it is necessary to use a unified name G60 to refer to all these sections of the local highways. Even getting the names right in this article is hard work for me and it already cost about one hour, not to mention figuring it out on the road: The drivers need to be extremely good at geography to navigate in the old road system.

G60 in Guizhou

Will work on this section later when it is finished soon.

G60 in Yunnan

Shengjingguan – Qusheng 胜境关 – 曲胜 (Official Name: Qusheng Expressway)

Qusheng – Songming Expressway 曲胜 – 嵩明

Songming – Kunming Expressway 嵩明 – 昆明 (Official Name: Kunsong Expressway)

Kunming – Baoshan Expressway 昆明 – 保山

The naming convention in Yunnan continued to be different from other provinces. It always put the more important city first. In other provinces and in the China wide, it is more common to put the east side city first – thus the names will continue from one section to another. Please pay attention to the official name section (different order from other convention)

The last section from Baoshan 保山 to Ruili 瑞丽 (at the border between China and Burma) is under construction. I wonder when it will start to connect with the highway in Burma.