Monthly Archives: March 2009

6 Years of Marriage

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Today, Wendy and I have been married for 6 years. Wow! I hear the applause…

It is a tradition between Wendy and I that we will take one day off, and spend the whole day together to celebrate our anniversary. I looked through my previous blog articles, to try to remember what we did before. Although I don’t write down exactly what we did each year, I have a rough idea of the past 5 years.

  1. March 17, 2003 Marriage Announcement. We got married.
  2. March 17, 2004 OOB for Wedding Anniversary We went to Sanya, Hainan to celebrate the first anniversary, after buying our car Goudaner.
  3. March 17, 2005 No blog entry, but we went to the Fengxian Beach of Shanghai.
  4. March 17, 2006 Report from Search Engine Strategies I was not able to be able to spend the third anniversary with Wendy due to business trip. A pity.
  5. March 17, 2007 4 Year Anniversary of Wedding – we went to attend Ziheng’s wedding ceremony.
  6. March 17, 2008 Shanghai Zoo. We took one day off, and visited the Shanghai Zoo together.

So today, both Wendy and I took one day off, and went out of Shanghai.

The Perfect Day

We once planed to have breakfast at Garden Hotel where we hold the wedding ceremony, but we wake up a little bit late, so we had simple but happy breakfast at KFC (oh. I know it is not as romantic as it should be, but it is also very sweet).

Then we drive all the way to Suzhou. We had nice lunch at Wumen Renjia 吴门人家 near Zhuo Zheng Yuan. Interestingly enough, we made a small mistake to have ordered three fat meat dishes. Anyway, we don’t care about adding weight today.

Then, we visited my favorite place in Suzhou – Suzhou Museum by I.M. Pei. I became the tour guide to show Wendy the wonderful architect of the museum.

In the afternoon, we visited Wendy’s favorite area Jinji Lake of Suzhou.

Photograph by Jian Shuo Wang

I will surely use another article to tell you the miracle of Jinji Lake. It is a another modern West Lake in Suzhou. We had Haagen-Daze ice cream, and Japanese food on the Ligongdi of Jinji lake.

At about 8:30 PM, we returned via A11 (1 and half hour drive). We are happy to see Yifan smiling at home.

The Perfect Wendy

I’d like to take the time to thank Wendy for all she has done for me and the family in the last 6 years (actually it is 10 years since we lived together). Wendy is always gentle, nice, smart, caring, and patient… I always think I am the luckiest man to have Wendy, and we fits each other very well.( According to MBTI test, I am an ENFP, and Wendy is an ESTJ.) Wendy, Happy Anniversary.

A Glass Cup of Water on Left Hand

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Foreigners have typically wrong perception about China. One is, Chinese all knows some Kongfu, and the other is, people in China all believe in Fengshui. I don’t believe in Fengshui, until recently.

Let me tell you the story.

A Glass Cup of Water on the Left Hand

I read a Fengshui book about where you should put your water glass. They suggest that according to Fengshui theory, you should keep a glass of water on the left hand on the desk, and always keeps above 60% of water in the glass.

The rational behind it is, the left side is the position for black dragon, and right side is for white tiger. Since dragon likes water, so put a glass of pure water at the position of dragon keeps the dragon happy, so it is good for your health.

Hmm… Pretty non-sense, isn’t it?

The Result of Testing

Then I tried to put the water of glass on the left hand, and keeps it 60% of water. The magic does happen in several days.

I found I obviously drink much more water than before. Whenever I put my attention onto the glass cup, the water is gone. It is not consciously that I reached out to the water. When I reply an email, or read a report, I drink the water, even without my explicit awareness. When I see the glass cup empty, my conscious told me “Hey! Fill it. It is more important than your work – the dragon is looking” – obviously I said it to myself in a joking tune.

Fengshui = Convenience + Time

Then I realized, there must be some reason behind many Fengshui practice. It is by no means the mysterious theory it pretend to be (just like the dragon stuff in this example), it is all about convenience.

Fengshui seldomly discuss about the topic making something accessible or not to. It is all about how easy something is accessible. Just because of The Power of Convenience, convenience makes it so easy to accumulate over time, and with enough time, even smallest change can make big impact, just like one or two years of drinking enough water may make a difference in my health, although most people don’t know the root cause, and attribute the change to the bless of dragon.

Office Fengshui

Now I am a practitioner of Office Fengshui. Fengshui is talking about Ch’i. Actually, the Ch’i, in my understand, is communication. The move of stuff in the office cause the flow of communication changes – the communication between you and the world, and between the team members. Putting a tree to block a path, causing everyone to go the other way, and changes how people interact with each other. These are all called Fengshui.

The glass cup and water story is a very simple one that I can understand, but many Fengshui principles are hard to understand, or even no way to understand today. Hope more mysterious Fengshui theory gets some backup of modern science theory, and prove by scientific methods.

Hotmail Opens POP3

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Yesterday, I tried to use Gmail to receive emails in Hotmail, and found out that Hotmail already opens POP3 access to all users. At least for me, I am in China.

Here is the necessary settings:

POP3 Server: pop3.live.com (port 995)

Need POP SSL? Yes

User name: your Windows Live ID, like somebody@hotmail.com (Please note: you have to include the @hotmail.com part, not just the name)

Password: your password

SMTP Server: smtp.live.com (port 25 or 587)

Requires authentication? Yes

Requires TLS/SSL? Yes

That is. You can start to abandon Hotmail.com slow and ugly interface.

Pi Day – I can Remember Pi

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Today is Pi Day, a new holiday invented by people in America.

I am a fan of pi. I once can remember a lot of digits of pie, but now, I can only remember the following, using the segmentation when I recite it:

3.1415926

535

8979

323

8462

643

3832

7950

2884

19716

93993

7510

5820974

9445923

0781640

6286208

9986280

This is roughly the first 85 digits of pie. Yes. I recite it when I write it.

When Yifan grows up, I will be sure to suggest (yes, only suggest) him to try to recite the first 200 digit of pie. It is a pretty interesting thing to recite. I also tried to recite e, but just found out e is not as interesting as pi. If Yifan don’t want to do that, I can cook a pie for him.

16300 Dialup Internet Access

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The other day Jack Gu reminded me that the easiest way for anyone to access Internet is still using dial up.

In today’s broadband Internet age, many people may already forget the existence of dial up network. It does exist, and is surely one of the easiest, and most widely available Internet access method. It is especially good for international travelers. Here is how you use it.

Number and Price

The most important piece of information is dial up number, user name and password:

Dial up number: 16300

User name: 16300

Password: 16300

Using this simple number, you can access Internet – yes, the whole Internet (I emphasize it is the whole Internet, because there is other ways to access only Internet in China, which is cheaper).

Cost: 3 RMB/hour

The cost will go directly with telephone bill.

Besides the 3 RMB/hour Internet fee. you still need to pay 0.02 RMB per minute for telephone bill (that is 1.2 RMB/hour).

Look at China Telecom website for more information (Chinese)

At national holidays, Saturdays, Sundays, and 23:00 PM to 8:00 AM next day, it will be 50% off original price.

Why Dial Up

Jack mentioned to me that he has already unsubscribed from brand band and switched to dial up at home – to make things more inconvenient greatly reduce the time you spend on it. That is a good point. I am also considering the same to reduce my time used on Internet at home.

Bad Behavior, Its Reason, and Future

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Under this blog entry Beer Can by the Highway vs Spitting about bad behavior like spitting, traffic rules (jay walking) and pushing in China, Stephen left comments, and I posted my response. It seems it worth sharing with more readers in case you ignored the comment part.

Disclaimer: Although we hold different point of view, I’d like to thank Stephen for pointing out a valid point, and he has all my due respect for doing this.

JS, your comment is not only passive but evasive!

Look at Singapore, you can call the ruling party the dictator, but it represent an effective government.

Posted by: stephen on March 12, 2009 11:10 PM

My first response:

As I always insist, to compare China and Singapore is always the easiest mistake to make. Singapore’s total population (4.6 million as of July 2008) is just like a district of a city like Shanghai. A pretty small city is bigger than Singapore. If there were only 4.6 million people in a city, and there is a immigration system to choose who can come into the city, that is much easier job to do. (Imagine twice as many migrate workers rushing into Singapore in one day)

China is a very diverse country. You can see the span of very uncivilized behavior mixed with very nice people – that is all about the different stages. The more people you are, the more diverse they are, the more time people need to move forward.

Having said that, I am not saying that everything is exactly right, or the government shouldn’t play a better role to speed up the civilization process. Yes. I do believe one of the root cause of some of the bad behavior comes from the bad government, not working education system, and many other things. However, I am optimistic about positive changes in the future. To understand that everything needs time to change, instead of cannot change is a big step. When I do some study about what China looks like before 1940’s, and talk with some very old people who were educated before 1940’s, I was shocked to see how good their behavior are. The current behavior of people were made by poverty, wars, culture revolution, broken communist dream, and the dramatic society change after opening up again… There is a history behind everything. You can never talk about something without looking at its history, especially when you are talking about 1/4 of the earth’s population.

Posted by: Jian Shuo Wang (external link) on March 12, 2009 11:32 PM

Then Stephen’s response:

JS, thank you for your explicit comment!

I cannot envisage the present social norm is the result of the past history of China.

The City of Shanghai deployed an army of traffic assistances to guard the major intersections to prevent jay-walking and the result is encouraging.

I don’t see people smoking in a confined space when a ‘no-smoking’ sign is posted.

So don’t think the installation of contemporary norm and moral standard in China is a daunting task.

Posted by: stephen on March 13, 2009 1:08 AM

The traffic assistants example is very interesting. In case you don’t know what it is, in most cross road (where there are traffic lights) in downtown Shanghai, there is one to two, sometimes 4 people standing there all day, just to use their arm to stop people who insist to go at red light, and sometimes give signs to the right turning cars not to rush into the people on the pedestrian, or horn too long to people before them.

Yes. I do think the army of traffic assistance helped a lot, but considering the quick change of people in the city (there are more people coming to this city than any previous year ever), the task is a long-lasting task. Shanghai is not isolated. This is all I want to say. You cannot just improve the level of people’s behavior within just one city. With the massive urbanization in China, the generation of Chinese people need to face the challenge of living in a city, which is never been faced before. Living in a city not only means the density of people is high, the requirement for public service is higher, it also means people need to get used to live with strangers (city is all about strangers, especially larger cities). So new norms need to be setup v.s the lives in villages. US has spent the last century changing the norms, so this is what you see what it looks like today. China need to do the transform, but it is a much bigger topic than deploying traffic assistant. The change is deep, and it takes time. China has already been forced to complete part of the change in 30 years, instead of several centuries. The quick change obviously resulted in some chaos, in the economy orders, and more obviously, in the disorder of social norms. Spitting, pushing, yelling in public, and traffic rules are just some of the more obvious sample of the disorder. The root cause and symptoms are far beyond that. Read the BBS post in major portals, can you can get some idea.

Again, having said that, I am still more optimistic about China’s future than anybody else. By understand how the current situation came into being, we understand that time will cure this. “Installation of contemporary norm and moral standard in China is a daunting task.” I completely agree, but I won’t be surprised or disappointed, if this process lasts for more than two generations. If that happens within the next generations, it is already be faster than I expected.

Posted by: Jian Shuo Wang (external link) on March 13, 2009 7:26 AM

I’d like more comments about this issue. My thought is always inspired by comments, and even better, by debates.

Meetings Today

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Since talking with industry insiders have been my full time recently, I talked with many great people today. I met with Zhongwei Lee, president of Shopex over lunch. He is an expert on sales management, and business model. Then I talked with Carsten – we found out that we are in the same building (Hao Ran Hi-Tech Building), but we never met each other (even not in elevator), and in the afternoon, I met with John Chow (yes, the famous John from Johnchow.com). I finished my day with great conversation with Jack Gu, CEO of PPDAI.com, the C2C Lending platform in China. He mentioned that he has unsubscribed his broadband Internet plan at home and switched to dial-up. I think it is a fantastic idea to free up some time at night.

Weather

Today’s weather is terrible – heavy rain. Looking from the platform of our office to Pudong direction, you can hardly see anything further than 2 km. Terrible visibility. This winter of Shanghai is maybe the rainiest winter in Shanghai – I do miss the sunlight, but Shanghai has not officially entered raining season yet (it is around April to June).

Planting Trees

Today is the National Tree Planting Day. Many people go to plant trees. From twitter, I heard someone says: “Check out TV tonight. All the party and government leaders must be planting trees before camera tonight.” I smiled. Yes. Today, as in the last decade, you don’t really need to turn on TV to know that is on the news today. It is always the same format. You don’t miss too much if you don’t watch it…

Fengshui

Recently, I am started to pay attention to the Fengshui – it is a mystery for many people, including me. But I felt I have found some rules within it, and start to understand some of it. I just wrote a blog in Chinese titled: A Water Glass on the Left Hand. I may write about it in my English blog some day when I understand it more…

Beer Can by the Highway vs Spitting

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I guess one of the biggest “culture shock” on the first day for foreigners visiting Shanghai are two things: 1) Traffic Rules, 2) Spitting. At least this is what I heard from time to time from my friends, and this 10 Things You Love/Hate About Shanghai post comments. BTW, is there any others?

For this issue, I always take it easy and want to say:

1. It is embarrassing that the situation is still as it is, but there is a historical and reality reason behind it. It has nothing to do with culture, or morality.

2. I am more confident than anybody else that the situation will change. It takes time, but not as long as two generations.

Before I tell you more about what I thought, let me quote one interesting story I heard.

Beer Can by the Highway

Today, I had a nice conversation with Richard from Cornel University. When we talked about spitting in Shanghai, he mentioned a book called The beer can by the highway: essays on what’s “American” about America. The book basically researches on what makes American “American”. He studied the trends of ever-changing culture and behavior change, and found out a shocking reality: The coolest thing American think they can do is to have a can of beer on the highway, and throw the used can out of the window to the side of the highway. The book was published in 1961 by John Kuowenhoven, not far away from today.

The book talks about the two terrible behavior from today’s point of view: Drink and drive, and litter (not to mention about waste and environment protection).

Seat Belt?

Richard also told me another impressive story. When he was in Taiwan with his father, they rent a car without seat belt. His was very upset, and his father told him that “don’t worry. People don’t wear seat belt before 1960s.”. This also echos the fact that front seat belt was only introduced as standard configuration in 1964, and 1968 for back seats. The first legalization of mandatory seat belt only happens after 1970 in one state (src).

The point was, it was not that far away in the ages when people jay walk, spit, don’t wear seat belt, drink and drive, and litter in US. It takes time for the country to progress. Although it seems very slow from the perspective of a person (it takes a generation), but it is much quicker if you put it in the history perspective (just 20 to 30 years!)

China is the same.

Jay walking? It happens so often that my foreign friends joked “It is illegal to use pedestrian in Shanghai“. I also think when people learn to drive, they may obey traffic rules better – majority of people in China don’t drive.

Spitting? It is a normal process of urbanization. When more and more move into city, they cannot afford people spit around, but it is OK in villages, especially in most of villages where fresh water is not as easily accessible as in city. Imagine the situation where I was trapped into: A Jungle without a Toilet

Seat Belt? People just get used to cars, and it takes time to learn to use it right (unfortunately it takes time, and it is inevitable). Seat-Belt? Oh. No. Thanks!. This was people’s current reaction.

It is Not Culture Shock

After writing to this point, I realized that I shouldn’t have put all these bad behaviors too easily into culture difference bucket. It is not culture shock. It is just different stage shock – US has the same thing before, and China will be OK in the future. If someone was dropped to 30 years ago, either in US or in China, he/she will be shocked by his/her own country’s “culture”.

P.S. Jeremy told me that this favorite entry on this blog is My Boat Sunk in Dishui Lake. I didn’t realize that my little sotry can make him laugh for the day. :-) I am happy that the story makes people happy, although at the cost of a small lovely boat. I still didn’t buy another one yet. I really should.

Thoughts After Seeing Dubai Tower

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Anyone here ever visited Dubai? Saw the Dubai Tower?

Image in courtesy of Ammar Abd Rabbo

I saw an article about Dubai on the recent issue of Asia Business Leaders. I was very impressed by the Dubai Tower. It is so tall. When you see things as tall as this big, people may give up the idea of building a even taller building than that.

At least, I lost my interest in the future Shanghai Tower (632m when finished), which is taller than the current Shanghai World Financial Center, but much lower than this tower.

I admit that people sometimes get crazy about building really tall architect, and be very passionate about it, until you see some really really tall things, and ops… why bother doing that?

Living Cost in Shanghai (2009 Edition)

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I have published a series of articles on Living Cost of Shanghai (2002 Edition, and 2007 Edition). Let me continue to update this pure unofficial one-man effort index of the living cost of this city. It is not only a annual update, it is in the new background of global financial crisis, and I try to analyze its impact to living cost in Shanghai.

Please note: 1 USD = 6.80 RMB as this article is written. (It was 7.75 on January 22, 2007)

What is Not Changed

Since more of the information included in my Living Cost 2007 Edition didn’t change too much, please refer to the original article for most of the items. I will only update the changed items.

Transportation

On Transportation, the Living Cost 2007 Edition is still up to date: 2 RMB for most buses, 3-6 RMB for metro ride (3 is most possible), 2.1 RMB/km starting from 11 RMB (including 3 km), and 2 RMB single way ferry…

You may also check out the Daily Cost of a Tourist article for tourist specific transportation cost.

Drink

Coke:

A can of Coke now is 1.60 RMB, higher than 2007. For example, this online store sells 24 cans 355ml at 38.6 RMB. Most restaurants charges premium for serving coke – 5 RMB to 8 RMB is normal price.

Beer:

Let me also give you example. A can of Tsingtao Beer (355ml) costs 3.8 RMB

Food

Most of the items in my 2007 Edition is still valid today. The price range is from 10 RMB to 100 RMB per person.

There is something new today. There are more and more fast food chain appearing on the streets. Just like KFC, McDonald’s, they offer standard food, nice location, clean environment, but much more expensive than local noodle shop. Their food is at 20-30 RMB range.

House Rental

There is a big change since the 2007 Edition. You can safely add 50% to all the numbers I gave in that report.

The premium housing price has been up to something like 15,000 – 45,000 RMB per month (for nice places in Xujiahui area for a family).

The normal price also raises to 3000-5000 RMB.

Room sharing ranges from 800-1500 RMB in good areas. (Check Baixing.com Room Sharing to get a sense of room sharing. Disclaimer: I am the CEO of Baixing.com)

Others

Most of the other items are not changed since 2007 too much (where are the increase of CPI, Consumer Price Index?)

Expo China Pavilion – Oriental Crown

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Here is the Shanghai Expo 2010 China Pavilion, a.k.a Oriental Crown.

Taken by Jian Shuo Wang on March 8, 2009

It does look like a crown.

Where is it?

It is located the crossing road of horizontal and vertical axes. The photo above was taken at the Shangnan Road 上南路 and Pudong South Road 浦东南路. This cross road is also the terminal station of the current Metro Line #8. BTW, Shangnan Road will be the main axes for the Expo site.

The Architect

The China Pavilion is reported to cost 1.5 billion RMB. It is also one of the first visible architect in the Shanghai Expo Site…

The color of China Pavilion is red. They have a special name for this exact red: Gugong Red, ( 故宫红, or Forbidden City Red). If you see the rendered photo of the completed building, you will find out it is exactly the same red as the walls of the Forbidden City.

The shape of the China Pavilion seems to be created by wood. Imagine you have many toy bricks (long and short), you can create the same architect without any fixing equipment. The whole China Pavilion looks like everything is just put on a pile.

Rendered effect of China Pavilion. Photo in courtesy of Shanghai Expo 2010 Site

The 63 meter tall building looks much taller than it actually is. I guess it is because of its size – it is not higher than most of the buildings in Shanghai, but it is still may be one of the biggest buildings in this city.

The Wisdom of Chinese Architect

The wisdom of Chinese accident wooden architect is, they don’t use nail or fastening things like that. They just put wood part on top of each other. The core is, the wood has too be carefully crafted, so they fit each other perfectly. It is as simple as that.

The whole China Pavilion, as a whole, is just one of the basic element of Chinese architect. It is called Dougong 斗拱. Look at these pictures to understand what it is. Dougong is just the complicated supporting structure on top of a pole in a big building.

This structure started from 2000 years ago (700 BC) till today, and the architectural blood line passed on to 2010. I love this design a lot.

The next time you check out a Chinese wooden building, look up to the top of the big poles, and you will see a Dougong, or in the future, I guess people may say: “There is a Expo China Pavilion on top of each pole of Chinese accident architect”.

“We Thought…”

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In the gray cloudy Saturday morning, I sit down with Elliot Ng, and other friends in Meeting Place: Starbucks at Jinyan Road, Pudong for some free chat. For some reason, we talked about contrast of people’s belief and the reality of this world.

“We Can Change”

To better understand the different, I found by adding “We Think …” to whatever statement twist the meaning a lot. Even more interestingly, adding “We thought …” to any statement is even more clear about the difference.

We talked about Obama’s slogan: “We can Change.” By adding “We Think”, it becomes

We think we can Change

By adding “We thought”, it becomes

We thought we can change

(No offense at all. I am not joking about the slogan itself at all. Using it is just because it is so famous and widely spread out.)

The idea is, by adding something like that helps us to really understand the difference between what we believe and the reality, and face the fact that we don’t want to admit: What we think is not always what the reality is.

“Is this what they told you?”

Another interesting story is about how to distinguish what we were told and the reality.

Long time ago, when our close friend Clair left Shanghai for a small town in France to join the nuclear power station, we had a dinner to say good bye to her. Naturally, we worried about the safety to work in a nuclear station.

We asked: “Is it safe there?”

Clair answered with full confidence: “No worry at all. The radiation level in the nuclear plant is less than 1% of a normal X-ray check. Blah blah…”

Someone looked at her with full sympathy and asked: “Is this what they told you?”

Pretty embarrassingly, Clair admitted that this was what she was told…

I am not saying nuclear plant is not safe at all. The point is, sometimes, by asking “Is this what we were told?” to many questions helps us to understand the difference between the information we get, and the difference of the reality. Although many times, the two fit each other, most of the time, they don’t, at least not in full.

Be Sensitive to What We Think, and What We Were Told

What we think comes from what we see, and what we were told. What we see or touch or smell is also just what we were shown (by people. or by the nature). Be careful to use our perception and the reality.

Train is Better than Car to Hangzhou

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I am back from Hangzhou via CRH Train. I would still highly prefer train over cars to get to Hangzhou from Shanghai, especially for international visitors. Here are some advantages of train:

  • Train is faster – 1 hour and 30 minutes for train, but car can easily take 2 hours – both does not include the travel time in Shanghai or Hangzhou city.
  • Train is safer – I am not happy with the safety record of Shanghai-Hangzhou Expressway (aka A8). You have to deal with many full stop on the road – scary.
  • Train is more modern – look at the photos of Hangzhou-Shanghai train, and Beijing-Shanghai train – it is so beautiful – just like a five star hotel.
  • Train is smoother. Of cause you don’t expect that the train is completely still at speed of 170 km/hour, but you just feel very comfortable sitting there. Don’t try to stand up thus – you cannot stand there without holding something if the train is turning directions.
  • Train is reliable – 1 and half hour – with error within several minutes.
  • Shanghai South Railway Station – this is the bonus tip: You will regret if you don’t use the Shanghai South Railway Station during your stay in Shanghai – it is wonderful.
  • Train is better for a group of people – either poker or chat is good on train, not car.

So, the next time, I would use train over car – always.

Finished Talk in Hangzhou

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Pretty late now (12:55 AM), and I am sitting at a budget hotel at Hupan Garden 湖畔花园. It is 160 RMB (discount of 20 RMB comes Jim Sang, who is their frequent guest). Jim said the advertisement of this residential area stated many years ago that this is the only villa area in Hangzhou that you can hear the song of birds.

This garden is more famous in Internet community because of its connection with Taobao, and Alibaba – all of them are born in one villa in this area. People believe in Fengshui a lot and said this area has good Fengshui.

The Talk

The Shanghai-Hangzhou Talk happened in Dafeudi 大夫第 (not sure if this is the right pronounciation of the name) near edushi office. The attendant list:

As the last time, it is very educational talk for me. I may need to take some time to write down what we talked during the night. Conclusion: it is good to visit another city from time to time and gather some CEO friends to talk about how to run a company.

P.S. Logistic side, we drive from Shanghai to Hangzhou, took about 2 hours.

Eighth YLF Meeting in November

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YLF 2009 Time

Just got email from Jon that the eighth YLF (Young Leader’s Forum) meeting will happen in November 4-8, 2009, in China. The location is not confirmed yet. I am very expecting to join the meeting and see my old deep friends there.

WWW Conference Developer Track

Yesterday, just one day before the deadline, I managed to review the 11 papers assigned to me. I am pretty flattered that some of the paper sent to me are actually pretty important persons, like Matt, the architect of YUI… Hope the conference go on well in Spain – I don’t have plan to attend in person though.

Shanghai is Rainy

Many people complained on twitter about the rainy Shanghai, and look forward to the arrival of Spring. I am the same – it keeps raining, and raining. Shanghai is not in rainy seasons yet. How come?

Hangzhou Trip

I am leaving for Hangzhou in few minutes. I am expect to meet with Xiaowei from edushi.com, and other friends there – a traditional Shanghai-Hangzhou gather. When the Shanghai-Hangzhou train is built, the trip will be 38 minutes from Hong Qiao Airport to Hangzhou. I am sure that will impact the development of the two cities a lot.

Tired in Shanghai

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The recent Shanghai Daily Article We’re tired, say office workers caused some discussion about the pressure level of office workers in Shanghai.

FEELING tired is the top complaint of local office workers, followed by worries over their jobs and emotional problems, according to an online survey.

And the following finding put a smile on my face:

Global travelers and artists were considered the people with the most enviable lives and the survey found that the best sources of happiness and satisfaction came from going to places they had never been before and staying with family or people they loved.

Exactly. At least I feel the same – to go to places I have never been before is one of the key happiness source I can imagine, and the other one, staying with family members or people I love is also a great source. I want to say, at least the survey revealed exactly what I feel.

Am I Tired?

Sure. I am pretty tired these days after the Spring Festival. The fast pace of Shanghai drives people crazy, and some people even escaped to villages (Do Chinese Move to Small Cities)

YouTube Blocked in Shanghai

Just got message on twitter, and then confirmed by myself: YouTube.com was blocked here in Shanghai (I am using China Telecom ADSL). When this happens, you know there are either conferences going on in Beijing, or something happens. Hmm… It is not news at all for any content site to be blocked, especially user generated content site like YouTube.

Tera Wellness Club

Tera Wellness Club is a premium gym. It is building a new gym near my home, and to be completed very soon. @dianakuan said on Twitter:

Shanghai tweeps – How do you excercise? Gyms and yoga studios here seem way overpriced.

I do agree – over priced gym + yoga is a characteristic of Shanghai. But anyway, to have a new option near my home is a good thing – I can use not to use it, but I cannot choose if it does not exist.

Civitology and Shanghaiology

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Had a cup of coffee with @David Feng about Civitology and Shanghaiology. David did wonderful job in taking pictures and record every metro station in Shanghai, Beijing and Tianjin.

What I learn from David during our conversation is the western popular idea of “dummy proof”. “There are many be mistakes of giving too much information, and there are mistakes of giving too little information. If we can choose, we the first mistake” David explained, and he also talked about a sample equation: “Instead of giving 3+7 to your user, give 10”.

Pursue of preciousness is reflected in the whole website of civitology, and I admire the work he and his local team did.

Civitology and Shanghaiology

What is Happening in Shanghai

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Looking at twitter, and you can find out many people’s story related to Shanghai. Here is what is people are doing around Shanghai. Hit F5 from time to time to get update. You see, Shanghai as a big hub with many people coming and go, and they have something in comment – they are twitter users, and love to share what they are doing.

    Congratulations to Xiaoliang and Tangjing

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    I am in the Liudao Resort to attend Xiaoliag and Tangjing’s wedding. Xiaoliang is not only my business partner, he is also my good friend. In the last four years of Baixing.com (a.k.a Kijiji.cn), we went along the same ups and downs, and we have built enough trust possible. We are more than friends, and I am very happy that Xiaoliang finally get married – counting as another marriage after Jiachen/Yeyun and others.

    Baixing is a company strong tight of families – like most successful enterprises in China, we are not just working in the same company, 4 years of similar experience helped me to build strong personal connections, not only between our people, but their spouses – we are the same batch of people attending each wedding ceremony, and other important events for every people, like birthdays.

    Happy wedding for Xiaoliang and Tangjing. I feel very happy about your wedding, and hope you get a great future in the speed just as your exceptional run to the stage. I am a little bit over-drink today and feel drizzle now with the effect of full cup of white wine, but I still want to write down in the room 214 of Liudao Resort about my wishes.

    I just hope, that one day, when the business is really successful, ever shareholder of the company gets his/her own deserved part of the success. Most of the time, when I think about my personal mission in this company, I feel that I do need to make more rational decisions, and see the future more clearly to bring the team to final success. Think about the 20 employees in 2005, and 2006 who are still in the company, and many new friends joining the company, I feel I have a much greater responsibility than running the company, it is more in a sense of personal responsibility for the happiness of many families. That is also an integral part of entrepreneurship.

    Let me just stop here, and get back to the wonderful evening. Although I didn’t attended the Dongfang of Xiaoliang and Tangjing due to Yifan’s schedule of sleep, I want to wish Xiaoliang/Tangjing a happy marriage, and I am sure the friendship between the to families, and even Yifan and their future children is long-lasting – much longer than a company or our limited life lasts.

    It is nice to attend best friends’ wedding, isn’t it?

    I need to go sleep now.

    Written at Liudao Resort on February 28, 2009 (YLF)