How many hotels in Shanghai? It is a question without accurate answer. I just searched on expedia (EXPE), and it has 350 hotels in record. (25 per page, and 14 pages)
(BTW, in my recent study in the B2C business model, Expedia is in B2C segment, and to be complete in hotel information is key to its business.)
People Don’t Care Cheap Hotels in the Same City
I admit that I only know “splendid”, “wonderful”, “maganificant” and “excellent” hotels in Shanghai, since they are the landmarks of the city. As a local residence, I never have to worry about which hotel should I stay tonight.
However, when visiting another city (just as many travellers to Shanghai do), it is another story. On business trips, people typically can choose the best hotels (or pretty good hotels). On personal, especially on budget trip, we need to think about those cheap hotels.
I am the same. I can easily list 20 five-star hotels in Shanghai, and recently, I can name three cheap hotels or youth hostels but I am not so familiar with middle-level hotels.
Middle Level Hotels
There are limited number of 5 star hotels in Shanghai, many 4-star hotels, and a lot of 3-star hotels. 5-star hotels’ price is about 120 USD or higher, and 4-star hotels are below 120 USD, and many 3-star hotels are as around 500 RMB (or less). They are not as cheap as “Cheap Hotels” I gave (around 200 RMB), but provide very good facility and English-speaking staff. There are a lot, and I am thinking of featuring some, like East Asia Hotel on the opposite side of my office building.
There are many very cheap hotels, like 50 RMB per bed, or 100 RMB per room. Obversely, it is not suitable for many visitors, unless you are really ready to the miserable conditions. I believe there must be some who are as cheap as the cheapest hotel, and really good. I don’t know yet. Anyone has any idea?
It is Important to Check with Local People
When I browsed the list of travel site, I cannot stop wondering why people want to stay in such a hotel? It is in very bad location, inconvenient, and charges as high as those on the Bund or at the heart of the city! The problem people face when they book a hotel is, they have no idea about the surrounding area. All these information, local people can easily tell you. I am willing to help, but maybe not today, and not in recent month. I am still thinking ways to help to provide some suggestions to the 300+ hotels…
World Expo is Coming, Shanghai is Short of Hotel
One of the reason to build Shanghai-Hangzhou Maglev? They said Shanghai is short of hotel rooms, so they have to build a railway to have some people stay in another city. This news sounds true, since it is really hard to book hotels in Shanghai even today, especially those 5-star hotels. One key reason I can imagine is, people trust the 5-star standard, and they really offer good reservation system on the Internet…
are mothers throwing their newborn babies out hotel windows in Shanghai? I read the other day that this has happened in Shanghai.
Sorry, slightly off-topic, but I thought regarding hotels (and their location) in Shanghai, it fits in:
健硕， I recently find your really great Shanghai map reader seems broken, I cannot scroll or otherwise change to another area but the initial area near 新天地, also the search function or clicking on anything “Also in this area” does not change the view! Anybody else (not?) having this problem? 健硕, can you check please? 谢谢！
小卫
Shrek7, it was Michael Jackson. You are so confused.
Shrek has nothing better to do than be a shock jock on this site, get a life.
I am looking for good hotel recommandation in Shanghai, hope you will have your hotel artical be done by November. There are at least 2 hotel in Shanghai using the name “East Asia Hotel”, Regeal Shanghai East Asia Hotel and the East Asia Hotel on Naning Road, which one are you referring to or none of the above?
quote
—————-
They are not as cheap as “Cheap Hotels” I gave (around 200 USD), but provide very good facility and English-speaking staff.
—————-
unquote
should be
“(around 200 RMB)”
It is one of the great blogs I hv ever visitied.
From here I can get words and topics around our life everyday. I think maybe it is a wonderfrl way to obsorb spoken English material. Could anybody who’s native English people tell me if it is a right way I learned from it as teaching material ?? My e-mail:swimshen@hotmail.com. Many thanks in advance.
David from Xiamen,China
I also like this blog and read it everyday.
I really appreciate the author who made this great work.
thank you.
Most probably Jian Shuo , is nto very familiar witht he Iternational Hotel situation in Shanghai, that range from3 to 5 + stars, number of rooms, charge per room, as well what is the future developement.
anyway, i believe if before such blog post Jian Shuo would have consultated IBHS, anyway at the present room from 4 star to 5 stars available in Shanghai recorded by IBHS are almost 20,000rooms, operated by 46 internationally reconized hotels (i mean there is much more rooms, or service apt out there, but lets say the one that have subscribed to IBHS at the moment are onyl 46 hotels), as well there is much more hotels who didnt agree to be recorded by IBHS therefore the total rooms between 3, 4 and 5 stars in Shanghai are over 80,000, this means 3 star average room charge 350 to 600rmb, 4 star room charge from 600 to 900 rmb, 5 star room charge from 900 to 2,500rmb….
as well before end of 2006 ( i mena in the next 6 months there will be more rooms/hotel opening, schedule as follow
dec 2006 2500rooms
before end of 2007 another 5000 rooms
before end of 2008 another 14,000 rooms
as to say hotel are coming as mushrooms in this wet and humid metropolis :-)
sometime, need a bit fo research to ensure we give reader corect informations :-)
by the way we ( who live in Shanghai) shall thanks the last typhoon as from yesterday we can see the first blue sky of the springsteen and summer season… as u see pollution every year is more heavy and heavy that whine Bj and Sh becoem one of the most polluted cities inthe globe…., lets hope more thypoon will pass so we can brief more fresh air… :-)
obviously today its better of yesterday, as qindao flight schedule was very educative.
Ocassionally, I found this blog from an article called MSer’s Blogs, which provides microsoft employees’ blogs alphabatically. Then a strong curiosity drived me to search if there are any Chinese guys, suddenly, three charaters, namely Wang Jianshuo showed up…….
As you said, you would post an article everyday. But where are the ones for Jul 25 and 26?
The days before? I was OOB (out of blogging) for serveral days.
Shrek, you’re right.
I know it’s a little out of topic here, but YES.
It’s a story that HAS to be told.
I felt the article of the thrown baby rather disturbing too, so I refer from the “China Daily” article, a newspaper available by anyone on every corner of the streets of Shanghai :
By Zhang Yu
SHANGHAI: The trial of a 20-year old mother who dumped and killed her newborn baby opened yesterday in Shanghai’s Zhabei District People’s Court. The migrant worker from Yunnan Province was charged with intentionally killing her son by throwing him out of the window of her fifth floor room.
The woman confessed to this action.
“There have been many cases involving unmarried girls who abandoned their babies, but this is the first we have dealt with a mother killing her baby just after giving birth,” Wang Zhixiang, the prosecutor , told China Daily yesterday after the trial.
One evening five months ago Zhang Weixian, the defendant, gave birth to a baby boy in her dormitory, which is on Xizang North Road in Downtown Shanghai.
However, Zhang, who only received a primary school education, repeatedly claimed in the courtroom that she had no idea she was pregnant and was going to have a baby, although she often felt pains in her stomach and genitalia.
She admitted that she had had sex with her boyfriend in her hometown in Yunnan before she migrated to Shanghai last October to work in a restaurant as a waitress.
“But she said she never learned about sex or pregnancy in school, so she didn’t know that sex may lead to pregnancy” said the prosecutor.
“I just thought I had a really bad stomach ache before I went to the toilet and delivered the baby” said Zhang, none of her whose collegues and roommates were aware of her condition.
After 10 minutes of squatting she gave birth to the baby, which fell into the bowl of the toilet. “I lost a lot of blood and fainted after the delivery” said Zhang, who didn’t even try to tell the gender of the baby and whether or not it was alive.
After she came around, she tore off the umbilical cord by hand and threw the baby out of the window.
“I feared at that time that I would lose my job in the restaurant if they knew I had a child, so I decided to throw him away” said Zhang, who earned 700 yuan (US$87) per month in the restaurant.
Then she managed to go to bed and sleep until the police arrived 2 hours later.
After receiving a report from a security guard who saw the dumped baby, police immediately came and questioned Zhang.
“Now I regret throwing the baby away” said Zhang.
“I would have brought the baby back to my hometown if I had known beforehand that I was committing a crime by doing this”.
The article is referred exactly as written, so don’t blame me for bad chinglish….
But – in fact – I believe her ! Sex education in China is truly non-existing.
And conditions for restaurant workers are in (especially in western eyes) simply horrible.
What I couldn’t read straight out of the article was, how old was the baby/embryo, as she told that she had the baby by herself, in only 10 minutes. That means that maybe it was only an abortion, not a birth of a full grown 9 month baby.
If I calculate 5 months back, it was february. From October to february it’s 4 months.
This is a 16-20 month embryo, not very big. And not able to breathe by itself, so not possible to live at all.
Her true “crime” was in fact, to throw the baby out of the window, and should be judged as that in my opinion.
In the residential area where I live, I’d many times found garbage outside the kitchen window shelf, and I’m NOT living on the ground floor, I tell you !
So, it is a very common thing to do in China.
So – who would ever want to put her on trial ?????
Because it was a BOY ? Maybe. A baby girl would not have made such headlines in China, see how many times the word BOY appears…
And, how could the police and the guard immediately know that it was HER ?
She lived on 5’th floor…:-) I guess she didn’t scream out “HERE I AM, GET ME ! ”
In China several millions of abortions are done every year by hospitals around China to prevent mothers to have more babies than “required” (one only, and in a marriage).
Usually sterilisation is performed in the same sequence, so they can’t “fall into the pit” again. Am I wrong, then please correct me.
How about some sex education for all in the late middle school in China ?
I say – Go on, good idea !
Sub-sub thing about working conditions in China :
I heard from a student friend of mine, (she works as a cashier in a KFC in Shanghai to earn a little extra, she makes 0.6 US$/hour) that she would like to quit her job.
“NO, definitely not possible !” said the manager, “when you began, you signed a paper, and it says that you have to work 3 months after giving in your resignation, otherwise we will have to inform your university !”.
I asked her to give me a copy of the paper she signed, but SHE didn’t got a copy !!!
So – now she don’t dare to go from the job to do what she wanted – to attend an evening chinese-english interpretation class, only available in Shanghai, China.
Because she’s afraid of KFC !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Anyway, do the university have ANYTHING to do with a part time job ? I wonder…
I hereby officially ban and condemn KFC forever !!!
I will not put my or any of my friends and relatives teeth into that company’s products.
JOIN ME :-)
And friends, please read the papers all over the world with
the sense of “seeing behind the written word”.
Hi! everybody:
I’d like to know whose English Blog is the most famous one in China. Can anyone tell me. Thank U!
Carsten,
“I hereby officially ban and condemn KFC forever !!!”
Again a bit offtopic but I thought it would be worth telling this. I recently read something which could make you ban and condemn MC Donalds as well, and I wont blame you for that either.
It was an article in Dutch about workers in the factory for those happy meal toys at MC Donalds. The workers started some kind of demonstration because of their bad work situation. The workers have to work 11 hours a day, 6 days a week and this all for only 75 euro’s (I believe about 750 kuai) a month. They also don’t have any right to get a paid holiday or to get paid when sick (not even a small amount). The factory itself is located in Hengli, south China.
When I read that article, I started to hate MC Donalds instantly. Especially since MC Donalds wants ‘to look good’ towards the outside world, with their good deeds for mankind. And then they have a factory like this?
I like good and healthy food and would not eat at KFC or Mc. Donalds anyway. Much more reason now!
Thanks, Jie Lun.
Shall we send these informations to Reuter’s or CNN ?
You do McD and I do KFC, ok ?
Andreas, if the food is thoroughly cooked, any chinese food is good,
don’t worry when you come here !
Leave the “cold dishes” at any chinese meal if they don’t look like very recently done.
But definitely avoid cold noodles and muslim lamb sticks from a street stall,
even chinese gets sick from that (I have evidence !).
Any good food for humans are just yummy food for bacterias as well,
especially in a 30++ deg. environment !
That is why many foreigners eat at KFC and McD when going abroad,
they have basically better food handling rules.
But – they have to treat their employed personnel well, otherwise their
reputation will decline.
Haha, we could do that but the McD one is probably taken from Reuters so not much use in doing so… or so I think at least.
Btw, I agree on the food part. The food in China can be outstanding indeed. When I was in Shanghai, I ate mostly out. Sometimes in a ‘normal’ restaurant but I’ve also ate a lot in those smaller restaurants from which you may doubt their food in front sometimes. And also the delivery services brings good Chinese food imho.
Just looked for the article in English… it can be found here: http://www.chinalaborwatch.org/2006%20Editorials/07-27-2006%20Labor%20Riot%20in%20Dongguan.htm
It seems Disney isn’t that clean either :/
Jie Lun, you are not in China, haha !
I can’t open that page, it is banned !
By the way, Wikipedia is also banned now,
and I had a lot of good information from that before… Shit :-(
Anyone who have a link to all banned pages in China ?
I know it is very very long, but anyway…
Yeah I’m not in China at the moment…
I was already afraid that it would be banned, it is saying quite some ‘bad’ stuff about China… well, not that bad in my personal opinion but ok, you know ;)
I am unsure if yousendit.com is banned, but I copied and pasted the text into a word document (don’t look at the way how it is formatted now, it’s not the best looking document atm hehe) and uploaded it there: http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=download&ufid=5BEB5E2218F8041A
test…
Jian Shuo,
Sorry for that lame post “test” of me… I was testing if there was something wrong with posting new comments… when I want to post a comment in your latest blog item about MI3, I get to see the following:
Movable Type
An error occurred
No such entry ‘1443’.
Jianshou, I want to commend the East Asia Hotel on Nanjing Lu. As a regular overseas visitor to Shanghai for work, but always on a low budget, I have experienced a lot of the hotels with rooms with price around 250-400RMB. For that price you don’t expect much, so character or location make a place worthwhile. For character and history, I always choose the Pujiang! For location you cannot beat the East Asia Hotel on Nanjing Lu. A fifteen minute walk to the Bund and five minutes to People’s Square for the nightime views; shops and eating places on your doorstep; and even a possible glimpse of Wang Jiangshou on his way to or from work make it a great place for an overnight stop in Shanghai en route to the airport. For 280RMB (elong and ctrip prices for a standard room) you may get a small box with no view (some “windows” look out into a small lightwell that is currently full of scaffold!), but who needs a view when you are out of the room excpet to sleep. The other major warning is that some of the undeveloped rooms are down a passage that takes you past the restaurant fish tanks, so visitors who do not enjoy an early morning face to face encounter with a lobster who survived being cooked the night before, or the smell of fish, may want to ask for another area. For me the only hassle is that taxi drivers never know where it is, and when they do drop you you have to drag your bags 50 meters. But the inconvenience is nothing compared with being in the throbbing heart of Shanghai and modern China. I will be there next Thursday evening!
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