This page is just for my personal reference in case one day I want to roll back to the original version.
The original version:
Home | Life | News | Shanghai | Tech | Travel | WWW | Random | About me
This page is just for my personal reference in case one day I want to roll back to the original version.
The original version:
Home | Life | News | Shanghai | Tech | Travel | WWW | Random | About me
The new version:
This change is to give higher visibility of photo and map section of this site. What is your feedback on this change?
Blogging in China is at its turning point. I just feel it.
Wendy
Wendy posted this entry yesterday. Here is rough translation: “Don’t know what to write… Should I write it as diary or around a fixed topic? Am I writing to myself or to others?”
The feeling of confusion was quickly acknowledged by Eddie and Claire.
Claire
Several days before, in July 13, Claire posted similar entry titled Continue or not…. In that post, she shared her experience to start the blog, to publish her blog URL to all her friends (including Wendy and me), and the initial excitement to see the increase of page view and the warm comments. However, in the end, she started to question:
Along the way to today, I often ask myself, am I going away from the initial motivation of blogging? Am I recording the true feeling or recording the feeling I want others to see? There are some direct and frank feelings I shy away from writing, because I know he is reading. I shied away from the private details, because I know they are reading. I don’t write the deepest thought in my heart, because I know….
Others
I searched in Grassroot and found many blogger posted the similar thoughts in the recent two months.
Slowing Down, China Blogsphere
According to CNBlog’s unpublished research (via IsaacMao), the blog number growth rate in China is about 34% in the 2nd quarter of 2004, comparing to 47% in 1st quarter. It is another indicator that some gradual changes have happened in China Blogsphere.
My Suggestions
I chatted with Jack recently about what I see the blogging. The time when I started blog is different than recent days. In 2002, it is widely believed that 911 event is the trigger to the popularity of blogging. After that event, people in U.S. started to pay more attention to the inside world (mind and heart) instead of the outside one (job, work, financial data). So people want to find some way to express, so Blogging comes into stage.
At that time, blogging was defined as daily updated chronically personal pages. I am still using the daily update (at least two day update) as my criteria for blogging nowadays.
I also started to wonder the meaning of blogging some times, in early 2003. But now, it is part of my life and I am pretty sure my blogging will continue.
Firstly, I don’t treat it as a diary. Diary is the secret log for myself (which I never continued for more than one week). If you are not comfortable to write something, just skip it. It is NOT a diary and don’t feel guilty if you cannot face yourself in the most frank way.
Secondly, blogging is about YOU, not a topic. Some use blogging software to maintain company website, or a project portal, or on specific topics, but if you want it to be personal, just keep in mind that it is all about yourself. Anything related to you can be put into the blog – the ONLY place in this world that represent yourself. So Owen calls it personal portal and topku call it personal branding. No matter that name you give it, it is just the ONLY place in this whole universe that clearly expresses you. You name is associated with this blog and whenever something wants to know YOU, they come here. Of cause you decided what you want to be perceived by others. Having that in mind, I don’t suggest any blogger to work hard to grab funny pictures, useful content and unfiltered links onto his/her blog. The attempt to do a better job that portal website or news website will eventually fail. People will go away. At last, you will go away. Remember, write about YOU and YOUR world.
At last, if you are lucky enough to have enough readership on a specific topic (I feel lucky), stick to it, without losing the presence of YOU. My Shanghai topic won’t be interesting to anyone, including myself, if it is not my own experience and from my real story – why bother quote some good review in my blog just because it is well written? So remember, any topic needs your own presence.
Great Guidelines from Mark
Mark’s 10 Tips on Writing the Living Web is my favorite guideline on blogging. I often review the guidelines in the last two years. I even sent a hard copy of the guideline to Eric yesterday.
Best wishes to every bloggers! You should continue.
Memorable Pictures
I guess you will like my photo album I posted yesterday. So do I. I browsed the photos and feel the need to add some note to the individual album. As bigbro suggested, I added a Photo button after HOME.
Daocheng
The most memorable trip I had so far is to Daocheng. I am a Daocheng fan and I am happy that my page on Daocheng is the number 1 result returned in Google and Yahoo. Haha.
I wrote more than 30 article around the trip. They can be found here
Here is my Dalian trip, my cycling to Chongming and visit to Microsoft campus. I would strongly recommend you to check my Light Madness in Seattle section. It contains my “art” design using Sony 707.
Tips to use the Album
On individual page, you can always click on the “i” button to get photography technical information about the picture, such as camera model (Sony P8 or Sony 707), Focal Length, Exposure Time, Shuttle Time. The most relavant part may be the exact time the photo was taken. All the information was stored by the digital camera when the picture was taken.
Keyboard
I used the BluePlusPlus skin in JAlbum. Thanks to Armond Avanes’, the author, great contribution. It natively support keyboard navigation:
* Keyboard Navigation Support:
——————————-
Keys:
RIGHT Arrow : Next page
LEFT Arrow : Previous page
Page UP : Index page
HOME : First page
END : Last page
S,s : Toggle start/stop slide show (not in index)
I,i : Toggle exif info (not in index)
Enjoy the album.
P.S. Small bug was found in some album index page, like Dalian, that the Album link actually goes to the home page of the whole site, instead of the Album page.
I have many photos. I have a “My Pictures” folder on my laptop containing all my pictures. I just checked the size. WOW! It is 7.76G already. The biggest folder in size is “Pictures in Different Places” which contains my pictures in different cities. It iis 3G along. Compared to this big repository, pictures on this site is just 1% of all my pictures. I have to find some way to share it on the web.
Edward recommended a great tool for me – JAlbum. It is with the style I like.
Photo folders
I created a new folder http://home.wangjianshuo.com/photo an create album under it. I have the following album ready today:
Enjoy!
Some reader reported that he/she cannot post comment onto this site. They get error message:
Comment Submission Error
Your comment submission failed for the following reasons:
You are not allowed to post comments.
Chances are, I have banned your IP address so you cannot post.
“What? Why ban me? I am a good netizen!”
Sorry if it happens to you. I intended to ban spammers who are in the same IP range of you. When I get any comment spam, I will remove it proactively and I will use the MovableType’s built-in IP Banning feature to ban future comment or trackbacks from the same IP range.
This is not a perfect solution. It will ban good guys like you and bad guys together. If this does happen, please drop me an email and tell me your IP address and I will lift it. I believe spammers don’t have time to write to me since they are busy posting to other blogs when they find this one does not work for them.
Meanwhile, I posted the following message to the error page so it is less confusing when people see this message:
Help on “You are not allowed to post comments.”.
If you post comment and see error message like above, chances are, I have put your IP block into my banned list. I take several minutes everyday to clean up spam comment onto my site everyday and I always take the extra mile to add the IP arrange of the spammer so they cannot post spam to my site in the future. However, this is not a perfect solution because it will ban many good citizens along with the spammer.
- If you are my reader, sorry for the inconvenience. Would you please drop me an email to and let me know your IP address. (You can find your IP address at http://whatismyipaddress.com/) and I will remove your IP arrange from my banned list.
- If you are a spammer (or marketer in your term), sorry that this is not the right place for you. Chances are, you don’t have time to contact me since you have tens or hundreds of website to go to post your spam. I suggest you to change post your spam comment from another computer with different IP address. I can guarantee you that I will ban the new IP address when I find it out
Update: I did Banned Many Good Readers
In five hours after I post this entry, I have got two readers to report the ban by mistake. I have lifted the ban. Keep sending me the unban request and I will process them ASAP. Sorry for banning you, good guys and welcome back.
Check my own web based RSS reader. It is based on Feed on Feeds. Let me add more explaination to this test tomorrow.
Update:
Feed on Feeds is a very nice tool written in PHP. It did some hack on the code so it caches the content into HTML in the RSS folder under archives folder in my website. I am adding more blogs I check everyday on to the list.
I run a schedule to update the blog entires every day so it always contains the latest posts from the blogs.
Around 6:15 yesterday, I stood at the lobby of Metro Tower, waiting for Wendy to go home together. I waited for about 5 minutes, felt boring and started to browse the free travel magazines on the reception’s counter. I even noticed the cheap tour package as low as 999 RMB, including round trip flight + 4 night of hotel – just incredible. I guess they must have great ways to make the money back from the rebate of all goods their customers buy in Hong Kong.
It looks nice outside and there is no hint for storm at all. Around 6:20, when Wendy shown up at the elevator, in just few seconds, almost everyone started to look straightly to outside the window and some opened their mouth widely. This surprised me. I turned and saw something I never seen before. It rained heavily outside and the sky out of the big window in the lobby turned completely white – I thought the rain of June 24 was the heaviest in Shanghai. I am obviously wrong when I see how the water splashed down to earth yesterday.
From the News
I didn’t know how destructive the storm was. Today, my father chatted with me and asked about the storm. I said I didn’t notice it – I thought there was a bigger storm at night. Soon, Wendy’s mother also checked with her to see if there is any damage to our home. Then I started to realize the storm is noticed by the media, and our parents who are not in Shanghai also know about it. I checked Sina and found some astonishing news. Seven people died and 20 wounded (Chinese site) in the storm.
After the Storm
The storm lasted for about 20 minutes and when I drove my car out of the underground garage, the wind and storm became weaker. 20 more minutes later, the rain completely stopped. Water is still kept on the elevated highway and cars ran very slow. Here are some pictures Wendy took when I drove our car home.
Photograph by Jian Shuo Wang
The Tian Yao Qiao Road, driving southward.
Photograph by Wendy Fan
Photograph by Wendy Fan
The elevated highway at the Wan Ping Road entrance.
Photograph by Wendy Fan
As I said in this article, “blogging is become really, really hot in Microsoft”. Here are more evidence to it.
If you visit Microsoft.com today and click Communities under Resources on the left navigation bar, you will reach the community page (I love communities. I have been working in this division before). There is a blogs entry on the left navigation bar.
The link leads to the Microsoft Community Blogs portal.
Screenshot in Courtesy of Microsoft.com
Microsoft.com enable all Microsoft Full Time Employees to publish their blogs onto the website. I am still looking for ways to publish only Microsoft related topics to the site yet.
Search for Wangjianshuo with the search tool and you can see my blog there.
Went to Starbucks at Riverside in Pudong tonight with Wendy. It was already 10:00 PM and the Starbucks was still full of people.
City Weekend
On the bookshelf was the free copy of City Weekend.
Image in courtesy of City Weekend.
One of the Two Major English City Guides
There are two major city guides in Shanghai – City Weekend and That’s Shanghai. Both are in English and targeted to ex-pats. I likeThat’s Shanghai better since it looks more fresh and fashionable with more useful information. However, it seems City Weekend are easily to get – I cannot find That’s Shanghai in Starbucks. Let me write about this issue of City Weekend (July 8 – July 21 Issue)
Talk de Talk
In cities like Shanghai, language learning is a hot business. There are enough companies/schools teaching Chinese English and teach foreigners Chinese. They all have good Business.
Talk de Talk is hosted by David Wu – my FOAF (a friend another friend). His radio talk show is on
Businesses Adverisements
The issue is full of advertisements of all kinds for ex-pats You can see the service market, the job market, property market – everything in the magzine. It is interested that there are many company providing Ayi service (Ayi is the Chinese word for servants).
LifeLine Shanghai
LifeLine is a helpline dedicate to addressing the needs ex-pats in China. They can be reached on 021-62798990, or by visiting www.lifeline.web.za/china.htm.
I learnt this from Adam Minter’s cover story – The Lunching Ladies. Her article talks about the living status of Ex-pats’ wives.
We’re here supporting our husbands… Some woman can’t do that – and those women either don’t come, or leave
According to the article, “For ex-pat wives, teaching remains the most likely employement option for those who choose to work”. I love this article, because it is just telling the truth.
I drove my car to Yang Cheng lake today with my friends. We have four cars today.
The Yang Chen Lake is the darker lake on the top to the characters Suzhou in the map below.
First Time on Highway
Thanks to the new transportaation regulation, I, as a intern driver, can drive onto the expressway now. In contrast, the old law requires driver to hold a driver’s license for at least one year before he/she can use the expressway.
The Route
From the Yan An Elevated Road, driving westward, and I arrived at the A9 entrance.
© Jian Shuo Wang
Above is the hand drawn map of Shanghai Basic Highway Infrustructure.
Pictures
I am clearning the wind screen when I waited for others.
© Jian Shuo Wang. Photographed by Wendy Fan
Factories in Kunshan. Kunshan is a rising star in China’s econimic zones. It is reported majority of Taiwan factories gather in Kunshan.
The Yang Cheng Lake. It is famous for the Big Crabs.
Below is the A11 from Nanjing to Shanghai direction. There are two lanes for single direction now. As you can see from the picture, contruction is unertaken to expand two more lanes.
Turning to the A11.
The other three cars in the same group to Yan Cheng Lake.
Turning to A9. It is good choice to name the Highways with numbers. It is much easier to remember A9 than the origional name – Huqingping Highway. The benifit is more obvious for foreigners who cannot read Chinese.
I am happy to receive a new laptop Dell Latitude D600. It is larger than my previous one – Dell Latitude C400. This is the third Dell laptop I used:
The laptop become senior as I am growing to senior. :-D
Dell Latitude D600
This is a nice one. I don’t have time to check the details of this laptop yet. Here are some facts about it I discovered immediately after I get it.
Intel Centrino Mobile Technoloy
Since there is a Centrino logo on the right corner of the keyboard, I know it comes with built-in wireless network adaptor. So I am able to start the laptop for the first time in my bed room and it automatically connects to my Wireless AP and accesses to Internet via my FTTB+LAN from Shanaghai telecom. Oh. I love wireless. My wireless dream finally comes true.
Intel Pentium M Processor
It reads as Intel (R) Pentium (R) M proccessor 1600 MHz.
Other
1 G Memory + 55G Disk + DVD ROM / CDRW
Screen
It has a large 17′ LCD screen. It looks so nice after I get used to the small 14′ Latitude C400 screen.
Blue Tooth
There is a blue tooth indicator besides the disk, power indicator. It seems it support Bluetooth. I assume the blue tooth module is not included by default. So my laptop is still not bluetooth enabled.
Conclusion
I am excited about this new laptop. I can run complicated Virtual PC images on this laptop, including running a large domain with three domain controllers and Exchange Servers on the same laptop. Bravo!
Image in courtesy of Newsweek
Ha. Newsweek is so funny! This picture is the cover picture of Newsweek June 21, 2004 Issue.
I LOL when I see the picture because the original picture are displayed in many restaurant till now. I happened to take one in our most favorite Hunan Restaurant – Yue Yang Lou.
According to Shanghai Jiaotong Network (Chinese site), the 1,000,000th passenger of Maglev arrives the Longyang Rd. Station. I started operation in Jan 2003. 74 train/times are scheduled every day and sees 7000 passengers everyday.
This proofs the privous figure of Maglev is wrong.
There are the following options for a visitor to get around in Shanghai.
Public Transportation Card
If you stay in Shanghai for more than one week, I suggest you to buy a public transportation card immediately after you arrive in Shanghai. It is a nice light-blue IC card that stores money value. It can be used in most public transportation vehicles:
You can buy one at any Metro Station ticket counter. You can deposit as much money as you want (upper limit is 999 RMB), and there will be a 30 RMB card cost, which is refundable after you return the card to the dealer.
Typically, 100 RMB card is a good choice.
I am very happy about the little plastic card. I always bring it with me and feel very cool when I swipe the card on the ticket checking system. This is one of the reasons I think Shanghai is very andvanced in the hardware public infrustructure. Well, I didn’t say software is also good – the people working in the metro need to improve their service level. At least, put some smile on their face. Last time, when CCTV reporter interviewed Shanghai Mayor Chen Liang Yu, he said, many Shanghainese have 3 cards – the national ID card, the public transportation card and the social medicial insurance card (the card I can swipe in the hospital’s cash counter so I don’t need to pay for medical services).
Buses
There are basically two types of buses – urban buses and longer-distance buses. Most urban buses charges 1 RMB or 2 RMB (those with AirCon) no matter how many stops you take. For longer-distance buses – those buses connecting to counties, it charges higher (1 RMB to 6 RMB). The most expensive buses are the Airport Shuttle Bus.
Taxi
Taxis charges 10 RMB as base fee and 2 RMB per more km. Check this article for detailed calculation: Shanghai Taxi Tickets
Metro
Metro is the most convenience public transportation. It costs 2 RMB at minimum and up to 6 RMB for Metro Line #1 and Line #2. There are line #3 and #5 too. Here is the Shanghai Metro Map and Timetable.
Website
jt.sh.cn (Chinese site) is the official government website for public transportation.
I have contemplated for some time and finally decided to put this into my blog. I have left Microsoft GTEC (Global Technical Engineering Center) and joined another Microsoft organization – Microsoft Consulting Service as a consultant from July.
This is a smooth transition for me. After working in a pure technical center and tried 6 different roles in the same organization in the last 5 years, it is time for me to step out of the green house to take more challenges in real world.
I will focus on infrastructure and will start to work on some server consolidation and Active Directory deployment projects. This job challenges me on technical side, on project management side, on business negotiation side and on inter-personal skills side. This is not a easy job since it requires much more travel and OT than it does in my previous job, but I believe the days and nights to come will add more aspect in my career portfolio.
I have moved to a new floor in the same office building, looking forward to take more challenges in this new role.
This brings two major changes to this blog:
Let me explain the two changes in details.
Update Frequency
I believe I still can write something meaningful in my life every day on this blog. I have kept writing for more about two years, and it has become a habit to write something or at least post some pictures. So it won’t be a big problem. If I just started for half year, chances are, I will stop updating this site.
Microsoft stuff
I didn’t write too much on stuff related to my company. Fons from Chinaherald.net even wondered whether “they (the employer) called him in and had a talk“.
I have thoroughly explained the reason in this blog entry: Reviewed by ChinaHerald.net
This may change a little bit after the transfer. In the new job, my daily life will be highly tightened to the customers and the industries in China. So my life may change. It is nature that what I write changes with my life. In contrast, my previous job does not require me to talk to customer everyday – it is all internal stuff.
Another reason is, blogging is become really, really hot in Microsoft. I don’t how other companies take it, but in Microsoft, people are so smart to pickup anything new and keep up with the trends. I have talked about Blogging in Microsoft before, introduced new Microsoft bloggers like Larry and Eddie. Now, the MCS organization has adopted the practice and requires all employees (around 60) in the organization to start writing organization level blog. It is expected greatly improve communication. It is one of the most successful usages of blogging in business I have ever seen so far.
Anyway, thanks for being with me. I hope to see more surprises, and challenges the life has to offer.
Thanks to the storm yesterday. The air in Beijing is fresh and crystal clear today. I took some pictures from the Microsoft office in Millennium Tower (north-east corner of Third Ring Road).
Two days before, the Oriental Pearl TV Tower in clouds.
The flight MU5125 I took delayed. It was planned to depart at 8:00 PM yesterday but we started as late as 0:15 AM this morning. I waited in the airport for 5 hours, cold and boring. When I arrived in Beijing Airport, it was already 2:00 AM. It cost me 1 hour to get to hotel. I finally went to bed around 3:30 AM in Liang Ma He Hotel (Landmark Hotel).
The delay was because of the storm in Beijing. Later, I learnt that the storm happened around 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM yesterday, and it caused long back log to all flights to Beijing. According to flight attendants, the planes waiting to land looked like flies in the sky. It took 4 hours to clear most of the flights in the queue. We were still lucky because when we arrived in PEK at 2:00 PM, there are still some passengers in the airport, waiting for their flights to depart.
Now I am in Beijing and enjoy good weather here.
The Top Commenters of the Month Award for June 2004 goes to:
Carsten 36
Lu Heli 17
bigbro 13
Here is the top 10 list:
Carsten 36
Lu Heli 17
bigbro 13
earthmilk 10
Shen 9
Shanghai Slim 9
Zhu Qingsi 7
James 7
WilliamW 6
Nirmalya Ghosh 6
Thanks for your contribution!
Wow. Typhoon Mindulle hits Shanghai today!
I happened to drive to Beijing Road from Pudong around 10:00 AM today. It started to rain. Soon, it became super heavy rain. I shifted my windscreen wiper to the fastest but still cannot see the car before me clearly. I felt my car was running at the bottom of sea, like a submarine. There is a long tail of splashed water after every car. The whole city looked so strange when I passed the Nanpu Bridge – like those in oil-painting.
At night, the wind became stronger and stronger. I sat before the window and watched the huge trees outside swinging back and forth. I have bind all the two small trees to the fence tightly so they will not get hurt in the typhoon.
Unlike Taiwan and Fujian, people in Shanghai seem to love typhoon. It cools down the whole city but does not bring too much trouble as it does in other places.
I am happy that ionic breeze told me the loading speed of this site had improved. This is the first comment I received so far regarding the speed of this site.
I also want to let you know that I visited the sanya articles before and after you changed your webhost to ipowerweb. The loading speed had improved tremendously. This is especially true when the article has extensive pictures such as the sanya, and daocheng scenary. Before the ipowerweb, I used to hit the stop button on my browser because it took too long to load the pictures.
Just to let you know that you have switched to a very fast host company and now we can enjoy lots of good pictures from you and your friends. Bravo!
Actually, I didn’t notice the change at all. The old host seemed very fast for me too, but it may not for people outside China. The old host is at Shanghai Telecom Datacenter and the new one should be in somewhere in U.S.
Thanks for the feedback. I am happy to hear from you about anything about this site.