TnDao, Shanghai’s TED

I attended the TnDao forum. It was great.

TnDao forum was inspired by TED, and was initiated by Mr. Dai Jianbiao and many other great people like Miss Jian Fang, and Mr. Jian Changjian. It is a monthly talk of great people and offers an opportunity for few hundreds people to escape from their busy lives to get inspired by new ideas, especially from different industries.

You can get more information and the past video from http://tndao.com.

It is free to attend, but you have to register on the website when it opens to registration. The next time should be around the early of June. I am invited to talk on the forum but I don’t have any idea what to talk yet, so likely to skip.

Happy Women’s Day

Here from Shanghai, greetings to all the girls/women.

In many companies in China, female employees enjoy half day off on March 8. So does the girls in my office. It was quiet in the afternoon, and the conference rooms are free. I thought: maybe part of the design to have half day off only for women is to remind the rest in the office of the importance of women. Just kidding.

I dressed up in suite today, and stood at the entrance of office to hand out cut flowers to every single female employees in the morning with other managers. I like the program designed by the admin team very much. It is a different Women’s day, for girls and for me.

Anyway, it is a good day to have. Happy Women’s Day.

P.S. Wendy also had a half day leave, but now, at 9:00 PM, she is sitting besides me to process all the backlog emails she left in the afternoon.

National Holiday Begins

This is the real time information broadcasting on National Holiday status in Shanghai, brought to you by Wangjianshuo.

:-D I take the advantage to live in this city, which is the destination for millions of visitors and travelers in the next few days. The National Holiday is one of the most important (and among the longest holiday) in China, starting form Oct 1 to oct 7.

screen-china.national.flag.jpg

If you can choose, do NOT come to Shanghai these days – since it is the most crowded season in this city. If you can choose, DO come to the city these days, since it shows the most exciting and beautiful side of the city.

How Many Visitors?

Here are some numbers.

There will be 7.12 million people riding bus every day, the Metro are expected to transport 1.50 million people with peak of 1.85 million during the 7 days. According to news report, 4 million visitors will arrive in Shangha in the long vacation.

Imagine how many people in 16 million people metropolitan!

Shops and Restaurants

Unlike other countries, most of shops and restaurants open during the holiday. Many of them even extended the business hour. The national flag is every where on the street and flowers bloom at every corner.

Transportation

The transportation is a little bit irregular. The intensive traffic control has been announced. Vehichles are not allowed in the restricted area (a very large area) from 5:30 pm to 11:00 pm. The Metro may close some stations – I guess the People’s Square station will be closed and only allow transition between Line #1 and #2. The most reliable transportation on Oct 1 – 3 is by walking. Good news is, it is very interesting to see people with national flags in hands and big plastic toys.

Temperature

It is very comfortable here in Shanghai today. The temperature drops a little bit and it feels like autumn. It is notable that the temperature difference between noon and morning/night is significant. It is really hot at noon but cool down immedately after sunset.

Again, welcome to Shanghai at the special season.

More Information

Note: All the information provided above is my personal experience from the last several years of national holiday in Shanghai. Unless I quoted with a source, the information may not be accurate and is not personally confirmed. Although I am pretty confident that my experience of the last year may be more accurate than any news report available, but do take it for your reference only.

P.S. If you wrote me recently, you may need to expect a longer delay since I received many emails these days. I suggest you to either post the question under relative entries or post it on the BBS (not formally announced yet). So other experienced visitors to Shanghai can help to answer your question and the anwers will benifit more readers.

World AIDS Day

Today is the World AIDS Day. I have put the Link and Think Project logo onto my website.

This is the second time I joined the project and help to spread the information of AIDS.

1 Million AIDS-Affected People

There are already 1 Million AIDS-Affected People in China. People around me are still not well informed of the prevential measures for this disease. Many people still think if they don’t have drug and don’t have many sex partner, they will be 100% free of AIDS. It is wrong!

Discrimination!

Everytime I open the discussion forum of news.sina.com.cn, I feel sad and cold. This time is no exception.

When I clicked the discussion link related to the report of 1 Million Affected by AIDS in China, I found majority of the comments look like:

  1. Anyone affected by AIDS should be kill immediately!
  2. Kill those who affected AIDS by sex and drugs
  3. Seperate them!

It is astonishing! It is so astonish!!

I clearly see the word of “KILL THEM” in the comments repeatly on may comments. What a nation! In my definition, this is called discrimination.

If 1 out of 100 people are posting this kind of comment, it is not a big deal, is it? But what if 9 out of 10 posters are saying so? It is a big socialty problem. This is just like the thread about Japan Spy Satellites Fail to Reach Orbit – it was so-called “The Sea of Happiness”. People from all of the country posted “congratulations” posts and shared their “happiness” with each other. How naive it is.

AIDS Resources

Yahoo!

AIDS Directory

The Body

The NAMES Project

AIDS 101

United Nations AIDS Project

National AIDS Trust

Site Note

Suggested by Isaac, I have put more content into my MovableType RSS feed. The template directly comes from Ben’s article. Now you can use SharpReader to read my blog now. The RSS 1.0 source is at http://home.wangjianshuo.com/index.rdf

World Toilet Day

After getting up, I have the feeling that Nov 19 is a speicial day but cannot find out why it is special. I remember I read about it on some blogs but just cannot recall what it is.

Finally, I found out it is the World Toilet Day (via Flyingchair) I really laughed to see there is an organization in Singapore focusing on Toilet.

screen-world.toilet.organization-logo.gif

Shanghai’s Toilet is Dirty

What is most impressive about your visit to Shanghai? I didn’t conduct a survey yet, but I believe many foreigner’s will say: First, the skycrapers and the second, the toilet.

Shanghai’s toilet is by no means clean. There are still lots of toilets with strong bad smell and tissue is not supplied. Sometimes you cannot find water to wash your hand and sometimes, it is very hard to find a toilet. :-(

I do hope the movement will make the toilet cleaner.

Do you Know

From the World Toilet Organization website, I learnt

  1. An average person visits the toilet 2500 times a year. About 6-8 times a day.

    You spend about 3 years of your life in the toilet.

  2. Poor toilet condition is a worldwide problem. More than half of the world population have no proper sanitation.
  3. Suppression of urination due to dirty toilets can lead to kidney and bladder diseases.

    In order to avoid visting public toilets, Some people refrain from drinking and suffer dehydration.

  4. Most toilets are designed incorrectly.
  5. Female takes 3 times longer than male, yet both toilet sizes are often same.
  6. Toilet remains as a ‘taboo’ as people are shy to discuss the subject.
  7. There are toilet associations worldwide promoting toilet education and culture.

Interesting. But they really created ugly poster that made people sick!