Author Archives: Jian Shuo Wang

Metro Line #2 Extends to Pudong Airport

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It finally becomes official – tomorrow, the Shanghai Metro Line #2 will extend to the Pudong Airport.

This blog started with a simple question – how to get to downtown from Pudong airport about 10 years ago (with a static page). Finally, the easiest answer is available: just take the Metro Line #2 from Pudong airport to downtown Shanghai. This will replace taxi, maglev, and bus as the recommended transportation.

2-Hour Trip

There are some problems though. It takes 1 hour and 52 minutes, and 8 RMB to complete the trip. There are 30 stations of Metro Line #2 with total length of 60 km. That implies 30km/h speed.

Transition still needed

Passengers need to get off the train at Guanglan Road Station 广兰路 and wait at the same platform to another train to downtown Shanghai. The reason is, the newly added stations don’t have too many traffic. They use 4-cart train to operate on this segment, and the rest line uses 8-cart train. So get ready to transit after 40 minutes.

Time Table

The current time table for the section between Guanglan Road and Pudong Airport is from 9:00 AM to 16:00 PM, with 13 minutes interval. It is expected to get to full time operatoin soon.

In a Hurry?

If you are in a hurry, the best way to transfer between the two stations are still taxi. It takes one hour and about 150 RMB to get you there. Since the two airport is connected by S20 expressway, the traffic is relatively stable.

Metro Line #1 and #9 Transition

Another related news is, the transition tunnel from Line #1 to Line #9 is opened today. The designer leveraged the Grand Gateway garage as the transition tunnel. I have not used it yet, but I got a message from Ryun this morning: “Explored the new maze between #9 and #1, and got lost”.

Xindanwei is Cool

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I was in Xindanwei this afternoon to chat with @isaac, @popoever, and @aaajiao.

I heard about Xindanwei from time to time, but never related it to Isaac – who is an angle investor to this idea.

The idea is simple: you pay as low as 15 RMB per hour to get an office space there – by hour, or by month, with nice meeting room.

I put it this way: It is a real estate company + a property management company. Well. Isaac put it different: it is a place where people share space, share connection and share knowledge… I admit his version looks nicer.

I will be at Xindanwei from 16:30 – 18:30 this Friday to attend the Friday Chitchat with topic: Social Media and Me by @popoever. If you are also interested, see you there.

Xindanwei is a nice experiment to leverage social media to run a pretty traditional (but obviously something brand new) business. Anyone who visited there become a “big mouth” to broadcast the message. I am acting as a promoter of Xindanwei there. Enjoy your time in Xindanwei.

P.S. They offer 1 hour of free office space (with Wifi) there.

A Highschool Classmates Gather

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Spent the day in Century Park with highschool classmates – three families with two kids. It has been 15 years since we graduate, and we were planning a 15-year anniversary gather on Saturday, May 29, 2010 in Zhengzhou. Visibility is the best way to make things happen, so I put the date on my calendar and on my blog. I was the key organizer for the 10-year anniversary 5 years ago. We planned hotel in Qingdao, and we planned the date, and we planned the communication. The only problem was, we didn’t gather.

I am lucky to spend the most memorable 3 years from 1992 to 1995 at Luoyang No. 1 Middle school. We are still very well connected after 15 years.

Below is the photo we took in 1992 – few days after entering the high-school. Can you find me in this photo? I was there, although looked very different from today.

luoyang.luoyigao-all.926-milliary.training.jpg

The below is taken in one Sports Game.

luoyang.luoyigao-boys-sport.meeting.jpg

People on these photos do not appear as fashion as the current high school students, but as young as they are.

A side note: To setup the tent in Century park is a great idea. The trick is, find grassland without many people, and spend the afternoon there.

Shanghai Expressway Map

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It has been a while since I last draw the diagram of Shanghai Expressway. Compared to the old map I draw, I feel I grew up a little bit in the last 4 years.

Here I proudly present the new Shanghai expressway map as of 2010.

©Jian Shuo Wang

Let me give you a little bit explanation.

The Rings

There are basically four big ring expressways in Shanghai – the four blue square.

The Inner Ring Expressway (no numbered name)

The Middle Ring Expressway (no numbered name)

The Outer Ring Expressway (S20, formally A20)

The Suburb Ring Expressway (G1501, formally A30).

The G1501 is not completed yet (you can see absence of a corner at northeast side).

The four rings become the back bone of the transportation systems in Shanghai.

A fact that many people ignored was, although they are called Ring Road, they are not circles. Instead, they are more like a square. Pay attention to most of the corners, and you will see that it is well designed. The rings formed GRID, instead of some hard to handle round corners.

The Radiation Lines

From the rings, especially the S20, the Outer Ring, the radiation lines point out from Shanghai. They are basically the same road, but with a new name (G60 as example)

Now, the G42 goes from Shanghai to Chengdu (via Nanjing)

G50 goes to Chongqing

G60 goes to Kunming

S1 goes to Pudong Airport

S2 goes to Yangshan Deep Water Port

S4 goes to Jinshan and merge into G15

S36, and S19 connect the southwest corner of S30 to nearby expressways

National Expressway

Besides the radiation lines, G15 is the National Expressway from Shenyang to Haikou, passing Shanghai.

G1501 is named after G15. The 0 in the name implies a ring, and the 1 means the first round-city ring along the G15.

S32

The only one left without an explanation is S32, formally A15. That is one of the most impress highways in Shanghai, although it does not have a simple name as G60, or S30…

S32 starts from Pudong Airport, and goes all the way west and reaches G60.

If you drive from Hangzhou to Shanghai, far before you get close to the downtown Shanghai, you will see a sign pointing to Pudong Airport. That is the starting point of S32!

Enjoy the nice Shanghai expressway system.

P.S. My naive drawing 4 years ago

Movie – Crossing Hennessy

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After the busy day, Wendy and I went to theater. That is the rare time we have – Yifan fell asleep at home with his grandparents. We guess he will sleep for a lot time since he was too excited in the afternoon in our office and missed his noon snap.

The movie Wendy picked is Tang Wei and Zhang Xueyou’s Crossing Hennessy.

s4241522.jpg

Credit: the Corssing Hennessy team

In short, this is a great movie. Both thumbs up.

That is Exactly Life

This is maybe one of the best movie I saw. It seems boring, just like the orchestra – can be boring, but fine and smooth, with some touching moments from time to time.

On the taxi back, Wendy and I talked to the small details of the individuals there. They are all normal people, and the movie spent all the time to describe the individuals with great delicacy. After the movie, I can clearly feel the characters like knowing them for years.

Tang Wei didn’t disappoint me. She demonstrated great skills, and expressed the character with sensitivity. Jacky Zhang is the same. Just like Alian (Tang Wei) smiled when the doctor said decayed tooth (she thought of something special), I smiled time to time when I rewind the movie in my memory.

Boring Movie and Boring Life

I know many people will complain the movie is boring. Even at the last minute of the movie, the real story (in the sense of most movie) has not started. But it is good just because it is life. The characters there are people around us. I can easily find another Alian, or Alai, or Alai’s mother, her newly wedded husband, even the doctor – around us. That is the power of a movie. The male and female leading roles are also common people. Alian (Tang Wei) is just a detective movie fan with simple but not lucky childhood and a decayed tooth. Alai (Jacky Zhang) is another not-grown-up detective movie fan. That is it. As simple, as sweet, and as normal as our life.

I would highly recommend my friend to go to theater to watch the movie. It is not as delicate as Lust Caution, but another comfortable and pleasant style.

Nissan Teana 2.5 XL

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I started to drive the new white Nisson Teana. We still haven’t given it a name yet, but will surely do that in few days. Here are some initial thoughts

Bigger Car is Not Necessarily Better than Small One

For the first time, I realized that bigger car is not as convenient as small car, especially in crowded city like Shanghai. I picked up my feeling of a new driver again – on the elevated highway, I started to complain the lanes are too narrow. At parking lots, I have to reverse the car to the narrow place – before, I always dive into the parking lot without even slow down too much – the benefit of a small car.

CVT

The Teana CVT’s impact to driving is obvious. When I accelerate, the engine’s speed is always 2800 round/min, and stick there as a constant. That is very different from the 5AT automatic shift, or manual shift.

V6

The V6 engine is very quiet. That also brings a problem. Wendy forgot to turn on the engine for several times. There are not very good ways to identify whether the engine is on or off without look at the big orange Start button. It is too quiet.

Keys Always in Pocket

My favorite part of the design is, you never need to bring the key out of your pocket.

When you go near the car, the car is automatically unlocked, and you can press a small button in the handle to open the car. Then you just need to press the big orange start button to start the engine, and you are on the road.

At the destination, you just left the car. If you are 85cm away from the car, it is locked automatically, and the front lights are closed. That is a very nice feature. I know myself better than anyone else. I tend to be attracted by small stuff like this than the power of the engine.

Need More Time

There are many great feature that I have not explored yet. I need more time to get used to the new car.

Yifan’s Song – Night of Military Port

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Yifan loves to sing. In kindergarten, he will routinely sing a song for the class before everyone goes to bed at noon.

Here is his newest song – night of military port 军港之夜.

I know, you must be saying: Yifan grows up so fast. I feel so too. Yifan can learn a song in one night, and sing it in an accurate way – much better than his father. Another interesting thing about Yifan’s learning behavior is, he tend to listen to the same song again and again without ever giving it a try. The first time he sings it, he always sings from the beginning to the end corrected. That always surprises everyone.

Expo Taxi and More Blurred Night Shots

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More Expo news is coming from this blog. I am reporting 3 km away from the Shanghai 2010 Expo site.

Expo Taxi

I am not a big fan of this idea – to manufacture 4000 special taxi just for the Expo. My proposed plan is to leverage the current taxi system, and expand it. If the standard is not good enough for the expo, why not take the opportunity increase the standard?

However, when I see the taxi, I am still impressed. It looks nice. The 3600 Volkswagen Tourans look much better than I thought. Hmmm…. That is the good side of involving a big private company – Shanghai Volkswagen instead of everything done by the government (look at the advertisement for Expo in the Times Square in New York!) Good PR for VW.

© Jian Shuo Wang

I was luck to catch one of the first 100 taxi this morning, but I am not luckier to get a full shot of it.

Since no public vehicles can enter the Expo site, including taxis, they issued license to these special taxis to enter the site. Question: will the 4000 taxi serve the 400K people per day? Let’s still bet public transportation like Metro, and bus.

Expo at Night on April 1

The Expo lighting work is finished. From the South Pudong Road, you will see part of the Expo site.

© Jian Shuo Wang

With the laser lights with all colors shooting into the sky, Expo site at night is amazing. I asked “What is the meaning of an Expo?” With the lights, and the scene, I just fell an Expo is wonderful (if we put aside all the cost related to it aside for a moment).

Reward for Shanghai Citizen

Although today is not a good day to announce anything formal, the party secretary of Shanghai (who ranks higher than mayor in the Chinese power hierarchy) announced today that every household in Shanghai will get a free expo ticket, and a public transportation card with 200 RMB in it to show the appreciation from the government for the support and understanding.

That sounds good – a good and friendly move from the government.

Update April 2, 2010

Saw another Expo taxi at Gongcheng Road near Jiaotong University.

Bet is Greatest Tool to Increase Visability

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I just made a bet with college in my company. The bet is like this:

The loser will travel to a city in the middle of Hunan province named Loudi (Loudi on Wikipedia), and take a photo before the Loudi Train Station at the end of this month.

Here is the transition plan:

K859 4:54pm – 9:08AM Shanghai South Railway Station – Loudi

K80 – 2:02pm – 4:53am Loudi – Shanghai South Railway Station

This is an interesting practice. We all have goals. Most of the goals are easier to accomplish with the peer pressure. Run Liu put it this way: “The best way to accomplish something (like passing an exam, or losing weight) is to tell all your friends that you are going to do it.” By increase invisibility, you setup some pressure for you that you cannot remove by yourself. The only way out is to work hard on it.

A bet is like this. It draws excitement for everyone involved, and a great way to show case that you are serious about it.

Expo is Nearer

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

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

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

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

P.S. Get excited.

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

Bye Bye Goudaner

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

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

I Sold Out my Google Nexus One

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

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

Full Function

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

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

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

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

A Phone that Does not Work

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

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

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

The Transaction

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

Giving up my Stuff

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

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

Metro Line #11 Extension Opens

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

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

Map credit: Google Maps

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

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

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

Stay Tuned for More News

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

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

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

GM EN-V Unveild in Shanghai

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

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

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

More Hongqiao Airport T2 Photos

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

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

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

The new display board of flight departure information.

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

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

This is the diagram of the airport:

Bund Re-opened

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

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

Travel is Life Intensified

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

Elliot said this before:

Travel is life intensified

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

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

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

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

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

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

Forward Hindsight

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

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

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

Photography

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

– why you want to take this photo.

– what you want the viewers to see.

– what techniques you use to archive that

– what the final photo look like in your mind

– how you did to make it better.

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

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

Decision Making

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

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

Experienced Security Guard

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hmmm… This lady is very experienced.