Zong Rui is my university room mate. We lived in the same dorm for two years. After that, Rui went to Tokyo for his career there.
I got his SMS when I was in New York (yes, I could still receive my SMS with my China Mobile cellphone). He told me he was going to hold his wedding ceremony in Marriot (Hong Qiao) Hotel. It was a big surprise for me. Wendy and I went to the ceremony and were very appy for him. Congratulations to Mr. and Mrs. Zong! My best wishes to you two!
Edward is my colleague a MCS. He is a serious photographer with powerful digital canon and extreme passion on equipments and taking pictures.
I read his blog today and found some very interesting post. He is also in Shanghai and he sits near my cubicle. I guess the city from his eyes is also attractive to people who are moving to Shanghai.
At mid-Sept, he used the camera on his SmartPhone to catch the scene of a chief caught by police man. It bring my camera with me most of the time but I always feel I should bring it more frequently when I see something suddenly happen.
His photo of Cocacola and CNN very impressive. It convinced me that a better camera is still important to a high quality photo.
The best part is the F1 photos. Thanks to his longer lens camera so he can caught more details of the racing cars than I did.
There are many other interesting stuff on that site. Part of it was written in English and the other in Chinese. Enjoy the nice blog.
According to GAO’s blog, his test machine RJRI retired.
Image in courtesy of Hui-Jie Gao. Quoted from his blog
It is not a big piece of news of a retiring machine, especiall it is a common, Dell, personal computer, but we will miss that machine. RJRI started a new kind of naming convension for computers at work. My laptop was named \\sha-jswang-01. My previous test machine was named \\sha-jswang-02, some times when I have more than four computers under my command, I named it \\sha-jswang-03, \\sha-jswang-04… SHA means Shanghai and jswang is my alias in Microsoft. BTW, SHA sounds exactly as 傻, meaning silly or stupid in Chinese. So the names sounds “Stupid jswang 01”, “Stupid jswang 02″… Haha.
Xiao Gao came and named his machine RJRI, with the first letter of Ren Jian Ren Ai (人见人爱), meaning You see it, you love it. It seems a better name than “Stupid …”. Although it does not agree with the stand naming convension, it brings much fun.
After RJRI, the second PC was named RJRYI (人见人又爱) or You see it again, you love it again. :-D I remember there are many more and more working machines within Microsoft changed to this interesting name, such as JJYY (唧唧歪歪). I cannot remember it is Linda’s or Eddie, or Eddy’s machine.
So the retire of RJRI is a big thing for its computer friends.
BTW, Eddie’s blog has a post of some pictures of the owner of RJRI – XGAO.
If you keep reading this blog for enough time, you must know Carsten. He shared a lot of good comments on this blog. More than that, he contributed lots of his earplugs to my F1 trip. We met the B&Q in Pudong. It is nice to see my reader and good friend in person. :-D Thanks Carsten.
Image sent me by Carsten
If Carsten hadn’t reminded me of the noise of F1 race cars, I will go there without any protection, and it may be a disaster for Wendy and I.
Dan Washburn finally arrived in Beijing after his first stage of around China trip. We met at a Hakka restaurant called Lao Hanzi.
He Lost Weight
When Dan show up at the door of the Fujian style restaurant, I hesitated to say hello to him. His face became slimmer after the long trip. He left Shanghai on July 1, 2004 and this is about the fiftieth day of his trip. He told me he did lost some weight. Well. To travel with limited budget is an effective way to lose weight. Wanner have a try?
The Trip
I am happy that Dan has completed the first part of his plan of visiting some remote areas in China. He has been to small villages of less than 4 thousands population and saw the poor along with the rich, the accident side and the modern side of China.
I bet Dan, as an American, started to learn the country more complete and thorough than many people who were born here. Dan mentioned his trip mate Jason, who was born in Shanghai. Jason went to several places with Dan in about one month. It is a nice experience for Jason since he learnt a lot outside the city. I encourage everyone who live in the city to go out to see what the country really look like. I was moved when I get back to the village and to western part of the country. I started to realize how different the lives in the country are.
Anti-American?
Dan talked about the experience he interacted with local people. “I was surprised that I never feel the Anti-American moods in any area of China, as I felt in other part of the world.”. It is true since for most people in China, they are more curious about people from outside, instead of “Anti-“. Japan is a special case though.
Dan Wants More Contacts
As Dan is moving to the northeast and to the west, he needs more contacts around China. As the “China PR Director”, as Dan has called me, I’d like to seek for help for Dan.
If you currently in any of the city/county in China where Dan has not visited, no matter how small the place is, (or how big), you can help Dan to learn more about China by being his contact in your city. Drop him an email so he may visit the place you are. You can find his contact information on his website.
blogcn.com resumed (down) and this gave bloggers using its service a good choice to escape and look for alternatives. I am happy to welcome Eric and Claire to move their blogs to my site. I am like a fine blog collactor to move the blogs I really like to my site. The best part of this move is, I am more confident to check their blogs in the future because they are not likely to go down as blogcn. (Well. This site did have problems and go down. The service level has been improved a lot after iPowerWeb).
I am not a BSP, but Eric’s and Claire’s blogs, along with Wendy’s blog, are my three favorite blogs. I am most interested in blogs of my friends in real life and their blogs were telling stories.
http://home.wangjianshuo.com/fanfan
http://home.wangjianshuo.com/mvm
http://home.wangjianshuo.com/claire
Recommended Reading
Eric: 突然来临的爱情 A perfect love story, especially if you read about these entries of three months before: 每次醒来都看到你的短信 我心里的四个女孩 一段感情就此结束 牛魔王说: “感情破裂了”
Claire: 会有这样的周末，我一个人 熟悉的路
….
Dan is ready to step out the first step of his cross-country trip on July 1, 2004. There are only less than 20 days for him to prepare. Now he needs more contacts across China. He is going to explore “places not many tourists go, see things not many tourists see, meet people not many tourists meet.” Contacts are important to help him to find out these places along the way. I know there are many reads of this website in every corner of China. So if you are interested, read his plan and contact him. You can be a good guide for him.
I got to know Dan more than one year ago, during the SARS period. I was planning Kanas trip (Yes. I described the story in this article already) and Dan wanted to join me. Later, I quitted while Dan and other guys successfully reached Kanas and brought back great pictures.
I met Dan several weeks ago for the first after talking on mobile and exchange emails. To my surprise, Dan was not a super writer (award winning writer), but also a tech geek. He used Add-ons to iPod and turned it into a 1G (or so, I cannot remember) storage and a voice recorder. He is going to use a PDA to upload articles while he is on the road.
I chatted with Dan recently and was impressed by his plan. I volunteered to be the website sponsor for his trip and he gave me the title of his PR Director of the trip. :-D
Getting back, if you want to be Dan’s contact – no matter where you are, drop him an email. He is a nice guy and I believe the trip will be very successful for him and for all his readers. I hope one day I can take one year leave to explore the country I have been living for 27 years.
Larry sits beside me at office before and we talked learning to drive and talked a lot about buying a car. Finally, I got my FIAT Siena 1.5HL while he got a Bora. Via run2me (Chinese site), I learnt he also started his blog (Chinese site). It is a very interseting site especially for me, who share some thing in common, like having a new car, know someone in common, and working in the same company.
In my presentation on Blog??? Wiki??? Social Software???, people asked “What is the incentive of keeping a blog?”. Well. There is no explicit incentive. People just like to record and like to share. When people have interesting experience, like Larry’s hitting another VW car, they just like to share. The desire of share makes the readonly web to a publishable web. Reading Larry’s blog (it is among the most intersting blogs I read), I believe more people will join.
Eddie started a new blog. He is a great coworker of mine. He spent lot of effort on his new blog at http://liuzhijian.net. One day, Eddie sent me MSN Messenger to ask me to add a link to his site. I agreed but forgot to add the link. Days after, I check his blog again and found this post (Chinese page). I smiled when I saw he installed all kinds of IIS log analysis software and paid great attention on his site ranking in Google and Alexa. It is exactly what a new blogger will feel before he reaches the first 1 million page view. I got the following page view graph from his public visitor tracking tool. Wow. See the huge increase of readership in the first half month? I didn’t see this sharp increase trends for many months. :-D
Image in courtesy of liuzhijian.net and nebstatbasic.com
Then I realized I still didn’t help Eddie to add a link yet. He must be disappointed when he cannot see a referral from my site for many days. Well. I want to make up the mistake to devote a special post for his site.
Eddie gathered a lot of interesting stuff on his site. Go and check the Korea video and the campus singer Koni from Fudan University. His topic is among the most popular interesting emails sending back and forth between close friends. I got such kind of emails everyday from friends – just for fun. So go there and have a look.
Check this article: Traveling Across China: Need Your Help!. I am excited about Dan Washburn’s plan to travel across China. Dan is my friend I never met. We planned the Kanas trip last year via phone and email, but never met up. My wife and I didn’t go there at last, but Dan managed to go with my other friends, Eric and Simon.
His Plan
His plan to travel across China is so exciting. This is quoted from his plan:
To me, the most interesting stories are found far away from what is considered “famous,” far away from tour busses and tourist sites marked by colorful flags. I want to see the China not often seen … so my readers can see it, too.
There’s a good chance that I might be making this trip alone – and my Chinese language skills are just a little bit better than bu hao. So, wherever I go, it would be great to have a guide or a translator or just someone to have a beer with. Interested? Actually, if you are fluent in Chinese and English, have a sense of adventure – and have some time to kill this summer – maybe you could tag along for part of the trip. And if you happen to be an unemployed documentary filmmaker, all the better. (But you’d need to be able to pay your own way … otherwise, I’ll probably be broke by Beijing).
Help Dan
Since I know my blog has large number of reader in many different places in China, and they know both English and Chinese, I’d like to ask help for Dan. Please visit Dan’s plan and give him suggestions. If Dan happens to be in your city, just invite him for a cup of tea if you have time. That must be valuable memory for both you and Dan.
P.S. This is his plan on his Shanghai Diary.
Yesterday, lots of my friends gathered together in Shanghai. We have been friends since our primary school ages and have been together for more than 15 years. Imagine it! 15 years’s friendship.
Those who attended the get-together include:
Jingpingf
Xuchenh
Lijiex
Xings
Wenfengf
Chenw
Jian Shuo Wang
(Per Raymond’s suggestion, I am using only the first name plus the initial letter of the last name to mention anyone I am not 100% whether they’d like to be mentioned in real name throughout my blog)