Broadband Internet Providers in Shanghai

Posted on June 4, 2004 by Jian Shuo Wang

ADSL from China Telecom

Installation Fee: 310 RMB – including an account and an ADSL modem. NIC (Network Interface Card) is NOT included.

Package 1: 130 RMB/month for unlimited time at speed of 512K.

Package 2: 150 RMB/month for unlimited time at speed of 2M.

Package 3: 200 RMB/month for unlimited time at speed of 4M. (need to check)

Package 4: 1300 RMB/year for unlimited time at speed of 512K. Installation Fee is included.

Package 5: 1500 RMB/year for unlimited time at speed of 2M.

Apply and Information : Phone: 10000 (China Telecom service hotline)

Installation Requirements The area you are living in must meet the installation requirements and ADSL ports should be available. Check with their call center by your address. For example, I used ADSL in my old house in Vanke Waltz Garden but cannot install it in Pudong. Poor me. If you live in downtown Shanghai, chances are your place is ADSL ready.

My Personal Experience

I miss ADSL badly after I move to Pudong. ADSL is best broadband solution I have ever experienced. The speed is good enough for Internet suffering and downloading. It assigns a dynamic but real public IP to client computer, which means, I can setup my own server at home and others can access my site from anywhere. (If you are interested, you may need some dynamic domain service provider like ORAY.NET to bind your dynamic IP address to a domain name) ADSL from China Telecom is very reliable. I didn’t experience drop line or other unpleasant events in my one year subscription with ADSL. The 10000 call center’s service is pretty good – it is the standard service from the largest telecom infrastructure provider in Shanghai. I never called them because I didn’t meet any trouble.

Great Wall Broadband

Installation Requirements: Great Wall Broadband does not need YOU to take the trouble to install it. They make deals with the real estate company and build the network cable inside the wall of newly built apartment. Check with your property management company to see if Great Wall Broadband is available in your property. If it is installed, then all you need to do is to call them to enable your account and plug a network cable into the network port on your wall. If it is not installed, chances are, you have to choose other options. It is almost impossible for individuals to apply to install Great Wall Broadband.

Installation Fee: 0 RMB if it is installed when you move in.

Fee:

My Comments:

I was a happy customer at very beginning since the speed is really good. But I finally became a very dissatisfied customer of Great Wall Broadband and after complaining with their service team for a month or two, I quitted my subscription and switched to ADSL. Their technology is bad and it pops up the annoying IE time counter that you cannot close. It is stupid to count time for a all-you-can-eat subscriber like me. The company was started by a good professor from Shanghai Jiao Tong University. I have ever worked in his lab for one summer and that summer provided me enough time to start with Internet. I am grateful for the professor but finally said no to his company (and give negative comment). Sorry.

Cable Modem

Cable modem is a service I never tried. I hope I can put some content here from my friends who used cable modem.

ADSL is also Unavailable in my Home

Posted on June 4, 2004 by Jian Shuo Wang

I couldn’t imagine that I would face the challenge of getting Internet access after I move into my new home (Dahua Jin Xiu Hua Cheng) in Pudong. I was disappointed that I cannot use cable modem here. I called China Telecom to install ADSL. Today, I got confirmation from China Telecom that I cannot install ADSL in my home either. The equipment here is not ready for installation. In their technical term, the ADSL port is not available for this area.

Well. There is a long way to go to get Internet access and setup the Network Infrustructure as my previous apartment.

During my free chat with Andy, I learnt that China Unicom offers some kind of CDMA Internet access card – basically a SIM card – that enables a laptop to access Internet like GC75 + GPRS, but faster and cheaper. There is a package of 700 RMB for unlimited Internet access at speed of 200+ kps. (The data is not confirmed yet). The equipment (the PC card) needs to purchase separately.

People are asking me about which is the best broadband solution in Shanghai. Based on my limited experience with some providers, I still recommend ADSL from China Telecom. See my brief review of Broadband Internet Providers in Shanghai.

Cable Modem Unavaible in Pudong

Posted on June 3, 2004 by Jian Shuo Wang

I thought Pudong is a completely new area. I was wrong. Tonight, I borrowed a cable modem from Xiao Gao, hoping to install it in my home. Since the cable modem authentication is bound to MAC address, it should be connect-and-play without entering user name or password.

I connected the black magic box of cable modem to the cable port but the cable light didn’t turn on. I called 96877 for help. They checked the address of my apartment and told me: “Sorry. The cable TV system is not upgraded to support duplex data transfer right now. So it is impossible to install cable modem in your apartment”.

I asked whether there is a plan for the upgrade, the answer is “I don’t know”.

This reminded me that Pudong is not built from ground up. The areas are upgraded from counties and villages where the basic infrastructure is still not as good as Puxi. Puxi has been a CITY for two hundred years while Pudong is not. I cannot expect a brand new area there. Pudong new district, the government, is new, while Pudong is old, very old.

P.S. I helped Patrick, the first user of my Apartment Offered Form to put his apartment on this site. To avoid putting such advertisement (although it is free public service) to the headline of this blog, I marked all such posts’ date to be May 22, 2004.

Getting a Link is Like Receiving a Gift

Posted on June 2, 2004 by Jian Shuo Wang

“Dave Sifry, founder of Technorati, told me once that getting a link is like receiving a gift. It’s a social gesture.” (via Scobleizer). What a fantastic idea. I pays attention to my referral log to all incoming links – just curious abut what others say about me or my blog. It should be the same for most bloggers. Gift is a sweet word, just like the feeling of getting a link. Let me distribute some gift today.

Isaac

Isaac is a smart guy. His personal website isaacmao.com (Chinese site) is a FVS for me (I just invented this abbr. FVS = Frequently Visited Site). His is among the first few bloggers in China. Later, he co-founded cnblog.org. Now, it is the gathering place for academic bloggers. By academic, I mean most contributors to cnblog.org are taking blogging serious and doing research on blogging as a technology and social phenomena.

There is always interesting stuff on his site, especially his english site. It has a cool name META.

Topku

I never met Topku yet. topku.com is a popular site. The nick name topku has an interesting story behind it – it should be read as To-PKU, where PKU means Peking University. Topku is an active contributor to cnblog.org and a firm fighter against Fang Xing Dong’s blogchina.com

Zheng

Zheng is another famous guy that I wanted to meet for a long time. I read a lot on his blog http://blogs.51.net/ (Chinese site). His article quality is super good, with good thoughts, although I cannot understand (or have patient to think hard enough) all the posts (example).

Other websites

Here is some of my friend’s blogs.

Claire’s Blog – Claire was an intern here. She can speak French. She stayed in France for some time and worked (as an intern) in U.S. for some time. Her blog is among the most emotional blogs. There is another emotional blog Chinese tea. :-D

Eddy wrote a lot about his son. He uses his blog to record the days his son grows up. How lovely! The domain name yinzirui is the name of his son.

Eric is a geek. This is what I wrote about him in LinkedIn

Zi Ying is among the smartest people I know in this world. He is a great developer with unexceptional knowledge of computer. He is also a high-tech geek who never stops explore new things. He owns blue tooth equipments and changes his PDA more often than I change my tooth-brush

What I said is true. He ran to me yesterday and show me his new SmartPhone. He changed his mobile again. Thanks to Eric that I am able to use the GC75 GPRS Modem so I could update this blog at home in the last month.

I have several geek friends in my friend cycle like Eric. Xiao Gao is another. His girl friend is studying in Switzerland. He named his domain name by his girl friend’s name – Tanqi.

He is the kind of guy who digs into the technical details. I am very surprised that he bought a IBM tablet-PC like equipment at only 800 RMB. The 14′ LCD display comes with a PC inside, a touch screen and wireless LAN PC card. Now it is running Windows 98. Haha… He spent too much time on programming at Tanqi.com. Before Tanqi.com migrated to SPS, it has forum, wiki, blog with comment, pictures, font replacement functions, but with almost no articles, so with not many visitors. LOL.

Frank is of strong characteristics. He quitted Microsoft and joined a college to teach computer. He is going to Kanas this August. I am not sure if I can go there as I planned.

Grace uses her blog as part of her work. If she starts a personal blog one day, she will definitely become a good writer because she always has the latest news.

run2me.com is a continuously updating site (although not everyday). Check his trip to Paris. It is very nice. Run is so humorous that he issued 5 website logos to celebrate one month’s opening of his site in Nov, the last year.

Eddie told me excitedly that after I put a link to his site, his site got 500 visitors in the following three days.

Airport Construction Fee

Posted on June 2, 2004 by Jian Shuo Wang

Airport Construction Fee

I don’t have the impression to pay for this fee when I was in U.S. or Singapore. Michael asked about whether it is required for departing passengers or arriving passengers. The answer is, it is for departing passengers only. You need to hold your flight tickets and the airport construction fee receipt to enter the waiting area. It is collected at all airport in China.

Fee

It is 90 RMB for international flight, 50 RMB for domestic flight and 30 RMB for branch flight (from major city to small city).

Usage

It is gathered and put into the governmental funding to improve the aviation system in China. According to this report, in China, 50% of the airport construction fee will be handed in to the central goverment and the rest 50% will be kepted by the airport.

It is reported that the Airport Construction Fee may be put into tickets so passengers don’t have to buy it at airport.

Who can void the Airport Construction Fee

According to Xinhuanews, the following passengers don’t have to pay the China Airport Construction Fee:

International Passenger transitting in China airport. The ratio of transition passengers seem still very low currently. Shanghai, or Beijing is still far behind Tokoyo in terms of aviation hub. Not many flight transits in Shanghai or Beijing. So chances are, you are not in this category.
Diploma passport holders taking flights to leave Mainland China.
Children under 12 (including 12)
Domestic transition flights with interval less than 8 hours.

Update Airport Construction Fee combined wth tickets September 3, 2004

See this article Airport Construction Fee Included in Tickets for more information about the change.

Update Airport Construction Fee continues in 2007 May 11, 2007

With all the requests from passengers to cancel the airport construction fee, it is announced that the 50 – 90 RMB construction fee will continue to be collected in 2007, making it the 16th year to collect this fee. According to this news, 30 billion RMB has been collected from this so far.

Shanghai Map Viewer 0.5 Restored

Posted on June 1, 2004 by Jian Shuo Wang

In the last few weeks, after moving my server to IpowerWeb, the Shanghai Map Viewer does not work as it well as before. Actually, the IPowerWeb only support Perl and PHP while the previous version 0.71 was written in ASP + Access database.

In the last few days, I migrated the application to PHP version so the original links to this site is not broken. Now, only the most two baisc functions work.

1. Navigate using the thumb view.

2. Navigate via 8 direction arrows.

3. Display places names if it is encoded in URL, such as Jian Shuo Wang’s Pudong Home, or Ramada Hotel (Pudong).

4. You can add a point to the map now and embed the map into any web page.

Back from Karting

Posted on May 31, 2004 by Jian Shuo Wang

Just got back from Karting racing with friends.

Shanghai Quyang Racing Club

880 Zhong Shan Bei Yi Road.

Quyang Park, Hong kou

Shanghai 2000437, China

Tel: 021-65316800

65614959

Email:quyangkart@yahoo.com.cn

Website: quyangracing.com

50 RMB/8 mins YAMAHA FK-9 Max Speed: 80 km/h

150 RMB/8 mins YAMAHA KT-100 Max Speed: 120 km/h

It is said they have professional cars running on the circuit. I will go there to take a look one day. They will hold the forth race of the Shanghai Kart GP on June 20, 2004.

IKEA (Shanghai) Pictures

Posted on May 30, 2004 by Jian Shuo Wang

Hey, where are my IKEA pictures? I looked into my picture archives and found some. They were taken one year ago, exactly after the new IKEA store opened in Shanghai.

Location of Shanghai IKEA:

At the intersectoin between Cao Xi Road and Inner Ring.
Opposite to Hua Ting Hotel.
At the Metro Line #1 Shanghai Studium Station
If you take bus, find the Shanghai Studium Station and get off board there.

More IKEA archives:

New IKEA Store Opens in Shanghai.
More IKEA Furnitures in my Home.
Foreign Companies in Shanghai.
All other articles mentioning IKEA on Wangjianshuo’s blog.

IKEA Becomes Cheap in China

Posted on May 30, 2004 by Jian Shuo Wang

IKEA successfully built the global consistent image of cheap furniture. Now, it successfully bring the same image to Shanghai, China. IKEA furniture is really cheap for local residents.

When I was in university (around 1998), IKEA’s image is super good design + super unreasonable price. We talked about joke that how IKEA can sell the colorful PAPER boxes at 59 RMB. It was ridiculous for most people at that time. We don’t think a paper box is that expensive.

However, IKEA’s products were so appealling to me, as a newly graduated student in 1999 that I spent my first month salary to buy a Billy Bookcase. It was the first furniture I bought. It was about 840 RMB (100 USD), I remember.

At that time, most products sold in IKEA was made outside China. I can seldom see something with label “Made in People’s Republic of China”. Maybe it is part of the reason why they are so expensive. Now, the majority of products there are manufatured locally.

Turning Point

Before IKEA opens the new store, IKEA started to decreases its price. This champaign has lasted for more than one year.

On Oct 21, 2002 (thanks to my blog) that I can still remember when I bought them), I bought some more Billy Bookcases. The same model only cost me about 450 RMB, almost half of the price.

Yesterday, I was surprised to see the same Billy Bookcase drops to 340 RMB already. It is almost the same story for all the other IKEA furniture I have purchased.

The recent IKEA’s on sale campaign is astonishing. A set of flower picture that was sold at 19 RMB now only costs 1 RMB. Hey. IKEA is on sale, as more as 95% off! I believe IKEA intentionally put this product as the first article in the store people can see – so creating an atermsphere of big on sale….

Cheap but…

With the drop of price, unfortunately, is the drop of quality. Before, I never worried taking the bad product home. But now, I have to examine carefully for anything I put into my shopping cart, to make sure it is not broken. I begin to complain the poor quality of IKEA. For example, I cannot install the curtain pole because of the hole is a little bit smaller than required. The newly bought GLANT table has two obvious area of color-difference.. I am not sure whether I have been moving out of the target customer segment (as I was when I just graduated), or the quality does drops.

Something I like in IKEA

The underground parking area. It is among the best in Shanghai. I like the colorful pole and clear direction of the garage. It is higher than other garage. The most important thing is, it is almost empty and always free.
Icecream. The IKEA icecream is only 1 RMB and is sold at the checkout area. It is so nice to treat myself and Wendy some icecrease after successfully follow the big arrow and go through all the areas of the big IKEA store. It is said that the one way policy is part of the reason why IKEA keeps low price. Since the customers have to see everything once they enter the store, they have to buy something every time. :0)
Return. I like the return policy of IKEA. No question was asked. Just give the product to the counter and get money back.
Meal. Now IKEA starts to serve lunch and dinner. Ha. I often say, “hey, Wendy, why not have dinner at IKEA?”.

More IKEA archives:

New IKEA Store Opens in Shanghai.
More IKEA Furnitures in my Home.
Foreign Companies in Shanghai.
All other articles mentioning IKEA on Wangjianshuo’s blog.

Moving to the New Apartment

Posted on May 29, 2004 by Jian Shuo Wang

The decoration (or re-moduling in foreigners’ concept, even “building” for someone) almost completed. The project will be signed up tomorrow with the last equipments like the table in the kitchen will be completed. The project was “outsourced” to the B&Q decoration team and the work was wonderful. I didn’t spend much time in controlling the quality as for my Vanke Waltz Apartment, but the quality is almost the same, if not higher. I am very happy with it.

Now the apartment is of a little smell of paints and dust. I am going to place pine-apples into the room to remove the smells. Hopeful, I am able to move in very soon. There will be no furnitures in the new apartment. We started over again.

Today, we went to Yongle (yongle.com.cn) and put two air-conditions and a 29′ TV set into my shopping cart.

Eddie’s Blog

Posted on May 28, 2004 by Jian Shuo Wang

Eddie started a new blog. He is a great coworker of mine. He spent lot of effort on his new blog at http://liuzhijian.net. One day, Eddie sent me MSN Messenger to ask me to add a link to his site. I agreed but forgot to add the link. Days after, I check his blog again and found this post (Chinese page). I smiled when I saw he installed all kinds of IIS log analysis software and paid great attention on his site ranking in Google and Alexa. It is exactly what a new blogger will feel before he reaches the first 1 million page view. I got the following page view graph from his public visitor tracking tool. Wow. See the huge increase of readership in the first half month? I didn’t see this sharp increase trends for many months. :-D

Image in courtesy of liuzhijian.net and nebstatbasic.com

Then I realized I still didn’t help Eddie to add a link yet. He must be disappointed when he cannot see a referral from my site for many days. Well. I want to make up the mistake to devote a special post for his site.

Eddie gathered a lot of interesting stuff on his site. Go and check the Korea video and the campus singer Koni from Fudan University. His topic is among the most popular interesting emails sending back and forth between close friends. I got such kind of emails everyday from friends – just for fun. So go there and have a look.

Shanghai Morning in A Car

Posted on May 27, 2004 by Jian Shuo Wang

I wake up at around 8:05 this morning, about 15 minutes later than normal days. Wendy has left for Xiamen already without my awareness. What a strange world! She flies there to interview some guys in Xiamen and will get back by late flight tonight. It all happens in a day. Maybe at the time I wake up, the plane carrying her already left Shanghai and was flying over Zhejiang.

Rushing to dirty kitchen, I start to wash. As I described before, the place I live right now is a poor, miserable, and old apartment without telephone. The washroom was occupied by the new SIEMENS Extra 1550 Front Load Washing Machine. Thank God that the decoration of the new apartment is almost finished and I am expecting new life very soon.

At around 8:10 AM, I stepped out of the door. The wood door with simple lock is a little bit better than no lock, but I don’t have any high expectation for this kind of lock. Once I left my key in my Meilong home. I hired a lock picker to help me. He put two sticks into the lock and about 3 seconds later, the door is open – he opened the door quicker than I do with my key. Howstuffworks.com provides a tutorial about how lock picking works.

After that, I know when I lock the door of this kind, it take effects only on physiologic aspect. It does not prevent any thief from breaking it.

Shanghai becomes warm these days. It is really warm. The temperature raised to 26°C already, according to the Living in Shanghai Talk Show at Shanghai Radio Station. I started the car, pull it back and went into the Jinxiu Rd. There is bad sign that more and more cars appeared on the road. This is not unexpected. Even Jian Shuo Wang got a car, why shouldn’t others? I just feel the traffic of Jinxiu Rd. increased dramatically in the last one month after I moved here. Maybe because more and more people are moving to Pudong area, while before, there is almost no people living there.

Within 10 minutes, I am at the entrance of the Nanpu Bridge, heading to Puxi. After Lupu Bridge opens, there is almost no traffic jam on Nanpu. I only need to be patient to drive slowly at the ramp. As soon as I get onto the bridge, all cars speeded up and I switched to shift 5 for full speed.

Since I am using a Hangzhou plate, I cannot use the elevated high-way at this time. The ban is lifted after 9:30 AM. I chose the Lujiabang Rd. -> Zhaojiabang Rd. -> Tianyaoqiao Rd. route. Shanghai’s traffic is not that bad. On this road, I never met traffic jam so far. There is only a longer red light at the interaction of Wanping Road.

Around 8:50, I am at the turning point of #30, Tianyaoqiao Rd. I pulled my car to the right. There are so many passengers and bicycles on the way. I have to be extremely careful to drive. If I drive a little bit faster, I may hit a pedestrian. If I drive a little slower, more and more people will get into the way before me so I have to wait endlessly. According to the newly announce Road Safety Law, if a car hit a pedestrian, no mater whose fault it is, the driver have to be responsible for the accident. Before the new law, the pedestrian has to share responsibility of the accident. News reported a driver hit a jaywalker to death and he paid 400,000 RMB to the family of the victim, although he had no fault.

8:52 AM. I parked the car at the underground parking lot of Metro Tower. The Metro Tower only charges 600 RMB per month for people working in this building. That is cheap! I heard the 66 Plaza charges 1800 RMB per month…

Well. This is a typical morning of my life. It may be a typical morning of many people (who have cars) in Shanghai – a city with 19 million people.

Wangjianshuo’s Blog is Famous

Posted on May 27, 2004 by Jian Shuo Wang

I am really flattered. Tchoo-Tchoo sent me MSN Message:

“You know you are really famous among foreigners…”
“I happen to discover that almost every French friend of me have visited your blog and are regular readers”
“I was so pound of myself to tell them that I KNOW YOU PERSONALLY”
“They were all surprised: Really? how do u know this guy?”
…

Thanks Tchoo-Tchoo. It brings me good mood to the day. I want to put a small announcement here: “Yes. I know a wonderful girl named Tchoo-Tchoo. She is a good girl with many independent thoughts.” I hope this give her some visibility among all her friends.

45,000 Unique Visitors

I checked my server log and was surprised to find that the average monthly unique visitors to this site increased 45,000 per month. That means, 45,000 persons from 109 countries visited my website every month!

People in the following 109 countries/regions are visiting Wangjianshuo’s Blog

ae United Arab Emirates

al Albania

ar Argentina

at Austria

au Australia

aw Aruba

ba Bosnia and Herzegowina

be Belgium

bg Bulgaria

bn Brunei Darussalam

br Brazil

bs Bahamas

by Belarus

bz Belize

ca Canada

cc Cocos (Keeling) Islands

ch Switzerland

cl Chile

cn China

co Colombia

cr Costa Rica

cu Cuba

cy Cyprus

cz Czech Republic

de Germany

dk Denmark

do Dominican Republic

ec Ecuador

ee Estonia

eg Egypt

es Spain

fi Finland

fj Fiji

fr France

gr Greece

gt Guatemala

hk Hong Kong

hn Honduras

hr Croatia (local name: Hrvatska)

hu Hungary

id Indonesia

ie Ireland

il Israel

in India

ir Iran (Islamic Republic of)

is Iceland

it Italy

jm Jamaica

jp Japan

ke Kenya

kh Cambodia

kr Korea, Republic of

ky Cayman Islands

kz Kazakhstan

lb Lebanon

lk Sri Lanka

lt Lithuania

lu Luxembourg

lv Latvia

ma Morocco

mg Madagascar

mk Macedonia, The Former Yugoslav republic OF

mt Malta

mu Mauritius

mx Mexico

my Malaysia

na Namibia

ni Nicaragua

nl Netherlands

no Norway

np Nepal

nu Niue

nz New Zealand

pa Panama

pe Peru

pf French Polynesia

ph Philippines

pk Pakistan

pl Poland

pt Portugal

qa Qatar

ro Romania

ru Russian Federation

sa Saudi Arabia

se Sweden

sg Singapore

si Slovenia

sk Slovakia (Slovak Republic)

sy Syrian Arab Republic

tc Turks and Caicos Islands

tg Togo

th Thailand

to Tonga

tr Turkey

tt Trinidad and Tobago

tv Tuvalu

tw Taiwan, Province of China

ua Ukraine

ug Uganda

uk United Kingdom

us United States

uy Uruguay

ve Venezuela

vi Virgin Islands (US)

vn Viet Nam

yu Yugoslavia

za South Africa

zm Zambia

zw Zimbabwe

Source: Wangjianshuo’s Blog Site Statistics of May, 2004

Even I cannot believe this. I started wangjianshuo.com in 2001, put some pages on to the hosted server at Hotsales, and was very happy to see two or three visitors coming to my personal page everyday. When I put the Pudong Airport information on to my personal site and it quickly went to the #1 result in Google for Pudong airport. I know a report about Shanghai from a local resident’s perspective may be interesting. I put more information like taxi and map onto the site and traffic is moving up. When I started my blogging site in 2002, the number of visitors kept increasing every month. Now I see about 2000 unique IP address in my server log everyday and I know a large portion of them are regular visitors (because 38% of page views comes from direct URL or bookmark). 5.5% visitors stayed on this website for more than 30 minutes and 2% stayed for more than 1 hour. I am very encouraged. Thanks everyone for your support. Well. Now it is a famous site. Haha.

Shanghai v.s. Central Government

Posted on May 26, 2004 by Jian Shuo Wang

For the first time I see a strong confront between Shanghai government and the central government in Beijing. It is for the car plate issue.

According to CCTV, a senior official from Ministry of Commerce commented that the car plate auction practice in Shanghai is illegal. It breaks the newly announced Road Safety Law.

Very soon, the spokesman of Shanghai gave firm response in a press conference that the auction is the right thing to do regarding the current situation and Shanghai will continue use auction as a market method to control the car ownership in Shanghai.

At the same time, rumors said the car plate auction practice will end no later than July. The spokesman claimed that he didn’t hear any official statement on this change.

Maybe due to the rumor (and the lower bidder v.s. car plate ratio), the lowest successful bid was only a little bit more than 10800 RMB this month.

Before this event, I never saw any incident that a local government in China speaks no to Beijing. This is a very good hint. Only debating and open discussion can lead to better decision.

Polution in Shanghai

Posted on May 25, 2004 by Jian Shuo Wang

I am moved by Carsten, one of my reader, after I read his email to me days ago. An expat as he is, he is more concerned with the polution in Shanghai than many local residents. After getting his permission, I am posting his first email with me here:

Hi Jianshuo

I have read your blog for almost 2 years by now, it is great !

I will spend at least one year more here.

Anyway, maybe you can tell me where and what protects Shanghai against pollution, some officials in the city hall or something ?

What trigged me into this topic was that yesterday I saw some guys working outside a small repair shop for motorcycles. They should change the oil, and just opened the oil plug of the motor and let it directly down on the street and into the rainwater drain system.

Then it will go to Huangpu and then the sea, polluting about one million times more seawater than the amount of oil. (How many motorcycles in Shanghai ?!)

I think at the moment noone informs anyone what the effects of this unawareness are.

At the moment people think : If I cannot see it, it is not doing any harm.

I would like to help people here to be more aware of, and understand, that if all do a little every day, it will have a tremendous impact.

In my country (Denmark) anyone can call the environment municipal office and say if someone pollutes unnecessary, so it will be stopped.

And when people feel that the air gets cleaner, and the streets are not stinking and dirty, then it will enhance itself.

Unfortunately I think that most people here in Shanghai believe that “the authorities will take care of this”.

Best regards,

Carsten

I agree that is a big problem in the polution status in Shanghai. A lot of effort should be spent on educating people on environment protection. This topic is not widely noticed yet.

Carsten continued to write in another email:

My idea was mainly to influence the people’s general attitude in Shanghai.

Shanghai is a good place to begin making people aware of this, as Shanghai soon will be the city with most influence, because the richest people lives there (you and me ?), and they are the only one who are able to pay for cleaning up after the factories waste!

But – it must begin at the factories.

My idea is – 1: start with the peoples attitude – 2: go for the polluting companies, which now buries the wonderful China in deep trash and chemical waste, just for a short term profit.

That demand must come from the people itself.

My country has been through all the same story before (chemicals – erosion, nitrogen pollution from farmers causing lack of oxygen on the sea, etc., etc.), and we have paid a tough burdon to get everything cleaned up (and still does).

As a good outcome of the efforts: in my home country’s capital Copenhagen, we are having swimming facilities in the downtown harbour for 3 years now !

See http://www.dhi.dk/News/2002/news20020802_UK.htm

It is a great idea. I have did some research and found the following information on the Shanghai Environmental Protection Bureau. They provide an email address to report any environment problems:

Welcome to the internet pages of Shanghai Environmental Protection Bureau.

Here you can find out the latest development in environmental policy and about the work of the SEPB. You can download environmental reports or regulations. We welcome your ideas and suggestions.

mailto:xinfang@sepb.gov.cn

They also provide hotline to report any pollution of air, water, soil, noise, radiation, hazardous wastes, toxic chemicals, and vehicle emission, etc.

62863110

-and-

12369

Once some workers were digging a very big hole on Cao Bao Rd. and made unbearable noise. I called the Environmental Protection Hotline of Xujiahui and within 10 minutes, their staff came and talked with the workers. 5 minutes later, the workers left the construciton site. I was very happy that time. I hope the hotline works for any pollution Carsten reported. A joint effort will make Shanghai a better place to live. Thanks Carsten!

Update: Carsten’s photo July 25, 2004

Carsten sent me the photo he mentioned in his comment.

Cheap and Clean Motel in Shanghai – Motel168

Posted on May 24, 2004 by Jian Shuo Wang

Yesterday, I met my sister-in-law and other 5 teachers from the primary school I graduated. They just returned from Hangzhou and visited Shanghai. I took the assignment to arrange a cheap but comfortable hotel for them. It is not an easy job, since a hotel that is both cheap and good is not easy to find everywhere in the world.

I recommended Motel 168 which is near my previous Vanke Waltz House. I am glad that they are very happy with the small motel, and would like to recommend this hotel to my readers.

Location

Motel 168 is a chain hotel that will have 10 more branches in Shanghai. The one they stayed last night is the Liuzhou Rd. Motel. It is relatively closer to Xujiahui and only 1,000 meters with the Metro Line #1.

map-shanghai.liuzhou.rd-motel.jpg

Map in courtesy of SMI

Price

Their standard room for two persons cost only 198 RMB per night (or 25 USD/night). That is very good price already. Their rooms are clean and the lobby/bars are very good. Here are some pictures.

Lobby

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The lobby looks better than some 3 stare hotels in China. The receiptions are very nice. Some of them speaks good English.

Wash Room

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The wash room is clean without any bad smell.

Room

shanghai.motel-room-entrance.jpg

They painted their rooms in vivid colors, like red, green and purple. This one is a green room.

shanghai.motel-tv.jpg

There is a TV in each room.

shanghai.motel-sign-night.jpg

Receiption

shanghai.motel-receiption.jpg

Mobile charger. I remember if you put one RMB coin into the machine and it allow you to charge your mobile phone. They provided many kinds of outlet so one must match your mobile.

shanghai.motel-mobile.charger.jpg

Entrance

The entrance at night. As any other motel, it provides a large parking area.

shanghai.motel-entrance-night.jpg

The bar in the lobby of the motel. It is rare for such level (less than 25 USD) hotel to have a bar in Shanghai.

shanghai.motel-bar-night.jpg

Cards Accepted

shanghai.motel-cards.accepted.jpg

According to the plate, they accept Visa, MasterCard, Diners Club, American Express, JCB, and Yinliang – The China Bank Cards.

All rooms are covered by Wireless LAN.

Detailed Map

Want detailed map? I am leveraging my new Shanghai Map Viewer to located it.

It is near Metro Cao Bao Rd. Station.

Booking

The hotel is near the Everbright Exbition and Convention Center. The rooms are very hot and almost all occupied for most time. Very advanced booking is needed.

Their reservation hotline line is +86-21-63168168. Their website is http://www.motel168.com/.

34226 RMB for a Car Plate in May

Posted on May 23, 2004 by Jian Shuo Wang

Big news that the Shanghai car plate average bidding price dropped down to 34226 RMB in May, almost 10000 RMB lower than last month’s 45000 RMB. The lowest successful bidding price is only 10800 RMB. Rumors said that the bidding process of car plate will be cancelled no later than July and there is almost no cost to get a car plate.

Resource:

2400 USD: Mandarin City

Posted on May 22, 2004 by Jian Shuo Wang

Name:

Steven Lee

Locaiton of your apartment:

Mandarin City located at Gui Bei. Address is Mandarin City, Tower 6, Room 406

Facilities:

Fully furnished three bedrooms apt (Can be converted to two bedrooms and one study room). Living room includes project screen build in. Has two balconies and two bathrooms newly renovated. All bedrooms are south-north direction.

Decoration:

The decoration is trendy and fashion. You can go to http://www.ofoto.com/BrowsePhotos.jsp?showSlide=true&Uc=i18sqzt.97urfd81&Uy=-303mb8&Ux=0

Is it near Metro?

Expected price per month:

2400 USD

Picture Available?

Email address:

sl215@hotmail.com

Name of the apartment:

Mandarin City

Apartment Offered Form

Posted on May 22, 2004 by Jian Shuo Wang

As more and more people are sending emails to me to ask about renting an apartment in Shanghai, and I am not able to help finding apartments for everyone, I’d like to open a form for apartments owners who are targeting to rent the apartment to Shanghai expats. After I get the form, I will create an article based on the apartment and list it onto this website. I hope this can help bridge the owner and the people who want an apartment. This service is free for both side (for now).

Update Novembere 13, 2004

Please be advised that this service has been upgraded to the BBS solution. No apartment offered form is required to submit your apartment information. Please visit Classified: Housing, Apartments to post your properties. It is free.

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