No only Shanghai has bad taxi drivers. My friends arrived in Beijing airport yesterday and took taxi to San Yuan Qiao. I know the destination is near and does not worth the long time waiting for the taxi driver (see more explaination in this entry), but the taxi driver cheated them by going to the farther way.
The trip should cost 50 RMB at most, but the taxi driver asked for more than 100 RMB accordign to the meter.
royston‘s comment:
You mentioned that we can purchase a computer from between 3000-6000 RMB. Do you have any idea how much a flat-screen computer monitor costs in Shanghai?
Or a CRT type? Do you have any recommendation as to where i can go in Shanghai to purchase all of my computer stuff? Is there something like an area where all the computer shops have set up their business together – sorta like a cluster? Posted by: royston on February 10, 2004 11:54 AM
The best place to ask prices is on the Internet. My favorite is www.pchome.net (Chinese site). Unfortunately, I don’t know English website for computer parts yet. Anyone has some idea?
I know a LCD monitor costs about 3000 RMB. For example, the latest Philips 150S4 is 2999 RMB, 150B = 3050 RMB and 170S = 3688, according to PCHOME.net. So you have the idea of a flat screen or CRT monitor.
The best place to purchase computer and computer parts in Xujiahui is the Metro City and the Pacific Computer Mall (Map). They are the largest market for computers in southwest area of the city.
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I got a short notice from my ISP (CompanyCN.com) that the server has to change its IP address and I will update my DNS record (hosted at www.net.cn) to the new IP address. Since these two actions may not be synchronized, a short period of service pause from this site may occure in the next few days. Sorry for that. (I hope they don’t lose any comments posted here.)
History of My Server Hosting
Here is the server change history of my server, according to netcraft.net
OS Server Last changed IP address Netblock Owner
Windows 2000 Microsoft-IIS/5.0 24-Jun-2003 210.15.187.12 Jitong Shanghai communications Co.,Ltd
Windows 2000 Microsoft-IIS/5.0 30-Jan-2003 210.78.22.54 JiTong Communication Co.,Ltd
Windows 2000 Microsoft-IIS/5.0 12-Nov-2002 202.101.10.123 Shanghai Telecom Co. Qingpu Telecom Breaure
Windows 2000 unknown 11-Nov-2002 202.101.10.123 Shanghai Telecom Co. Qingpu Telecom Breaure
Windows 2000 Microsoft-IIS/5.0 11-Oct-2002 202.101.10.123 Shanghai Telecom Co. Qingpu Telecom Breaure
Windows 2000 Microsoft-IIS/5.0 9-Oct-2002 202.101.10.123 Shanghai Telecom Co. Qingpu Telecom Breaure
unknown Microsoft-IIS/5.0 8-Oct-2002 202.101.10.123 Shanghai Telecom Co. Qingpu Telecom Breaure
Windows 2000 Microsoft-IIS/5.0 26-Sep-2002 202.101.10.123 Shanghai Telecom Co. Qingpu Telecom Breaure
Windows XP Microsoft-IIS/5.1 19-Sep-2002 211.161.107.18 FOR GWBN SHANGHAI # 145 RESIDENTIAL COMMUNITY BROADBAND NETWORK USERS’ BROADBAND ACCESS
The last record of the table above shows the short history when the blogging site was hosted on Windows XP on my home. I wrote an article: MovableType Successfully Installed on Windows XP as my first article. Then, I wrote: Server Outage – My Home is Still Not a Perfect Datacenter when there is a server outage from Sept 24 to Sept 26. I was in Chendu at that time, and there is no way for me fix the problem on my server in my home, since the Greatwall Broadband dropped the old IP address and I don’t knw the new one.
So I rushed to Internet and picked any hosting company that supports Perl. CompanyCN was the choice. It was not a bad, although not a perfect choice. The picture below shows the availability of the service.
Image in courtesy of Netcraft.net
In coutrast is the service from Hotsales.net. I hosted my wangjianshuo.com and www.wangjianshuo.com there.
Image in courtesy of Netcraft.net
Their number is better.
I have to say, to be fair, that the server hotsales provides are static HTML service. There may not be any application like ASP, Perl, PHP on the server. It is hundreds of times easier to make it stable. Disclaimer: I was the co-founder of Hotsales.net when I was in university. Now it is the largest domain name, hosting and real name provider in Shanghai with 200+ employees. Xiao Guang did wonderful job to turn a dream into reality. You have been warned that my comment regarding Hotsales tends to be favorable to it.
Below is the IP address history of wangjianshuo.com according to the record of netcraft.net:
OS, Web Server and Hosting History for wangjianshuo.com
OS Server Last changed IP address Netblock Owner
Windows 2000 Microsoft-IIS/5.0 5-Aug-2003 61.172.241.197 CHINANET Shanghai province network
Windows 2000 Microsoft-IIS/5.0 27-Nov-2001 61.151.249.186 CHINANET Shanghai province network
Windows 2000 unknown 26-Nov-2001 61.151.249.186 CHINANET Shanghai province network
Windows 2000 Microsoft-IIS/5.0 21-Nov-2001 61.151.249.186 CHINANET Shanghai province network
Linux Apache/1.3.9 (Unix) (Red Hat/Linux) 18-Sep-2001 61.129.65.72 CHINANET Shanghai province network
Linux Apache/1.3.9 (Unix) (Red Hat/Linux) 23-Nov-2000 202.96.235.211 Shanghai East Asian Videotex Information Co.
I am in Renaissance Beijing Hotel now. The trip was pleasant and the 1100 KM or two hour flight from Shanghai to Beijing wasn’t boring. The flight attendants of China Eastern Airlines were interesting this time. They seemed very happy and even laughed when people talked with them. I believe they must have broken some so-called working standard of the airline. But I feel good (along with other amused passenger) that they behaved more like human instead of trained emotionless robots. In Shanghai, I took the time to take a lot of photos of Hong Qiao Airport so I can create a photo website for this older airport as I did for Pudong Airport.
Beijing is not as cold as I expected. I took heavy clothes only to find I sweat heavily here.
Stepping out of the airport, I began to wander how I should go to downtown. Taxi station is on the left hand and the airport bus stop is on the right.
I finally chose to go right. My destination is the San Yuan Bridge. It is the exit of the airport exit. So it is almost the nearest destination for a taxi driver. Considering any taxi driver should have waited in the long line for at least 3 hours, I hesitate to call a taxi. My trip only takes about 60 RMB. It seems I am the Mr. Un-Fortune. Whose car I get on board, whose whole day’s good mood would be messed up.
I would rather take a bus out of the airport and call a taxi there. Am I doing a favor for the taxi drivers? Maybe yes, maybe not. If more people like me take buses instead of taxi, the time they spend next time would be longer and their business will be worse. :-( There should be a seperated team to serve short distance passengers dedicated to protect the taxi driver, like Shanghai does.
Anyway, the airport bus is always a very good option since it is cheap, it is large and it is also fast.
Arriving at hotel, it is already 10:00 PM. I am feeling good for “saving a taxi driver”.
There is a special restaurant on the 4th floor or Metor City (map) – Larbre de Provence. They only serve vegetables and they always have a lot of customer. Why not have a try? I didn’t yet. :-D
© Jian Shuo Wang
© Jian Shuo Wang
I got emails asking me about whether a vetanist can survive in Shanghai. Surely they can.
© Jian Shuo Wang. The twin tower of Grand Gateway is under construction. View outside the window of my office
I am lucky to have a wonderful view out of the window of my office in Metro Tower. I am seeing the twin tower of the Grand Gateway growing higher and higher everyday. Now, it is reported that the twin tower will reach its top at the end of this month and will be fully completed in May.
According to what I heard (may not be true), the tower construction was suspendid due to the Asia Finacial Crisis. The Grand Gateway (the large mall under the two tower) has been in business for several years and the tower came late.
Got my life ensurance today. There is a big progress in the insurance industry that people in Shanghai no longer treat it as lier. Mr. Xu is a very good agent and I will be happy to recommend him to others. Let me post his contact information on the web later. (Short entry today)
Oh, My God. What happened to the world? 37 people was killed when they were celebrating the Yuan Xiao Festival last night and 40 people were killded in Moscow metro fire. Since SARS, I found more and more news headlines are bad news…
New Feature / Bug Fix
Guoqiang shared (Chinese page) a long domain name:
http://3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944592.com/
Wooooooooooooooooooow.
I did a lot of stupid things when I was young. Besides robbing girl’s magic cube, I also devoted quite some time to recite long numbers. Pi was my favorite. I managed to remeber the first 100 digits of Pi. I cannot remember some portion of the long number, till now, I can only write down the 85 digits after the dot now. Here is the try with my break of the numbers.
3. 14 15 926
535
8979
323
8462
643
3832
7950
2884
19716
93993
7510
5820974
9445923
0781640
6286208
9956280
Persons who can recite more than 100 digits of Pi include:
Something you may not know about me. I am a Magic Cube Solver at my age of 13. I can turn any one of the 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 magic cube possiblity into the solved status (having a single color on each of its 6 sides). My average speed to solve a Magic Cube is about 2.5 (best situation) to 3.5 (worst situation) minutes.
I have trained many people to master the skill to solve a Rubik’s Cube, especially in middle school when I brought my Cube to school and made it the fasion. I taught one quater of the class to solve it. My proud experience was when I was in Grade 1 of my Junior Middle School, I was so naughty that I “robbed” a girl’s magic cube and run away. She runned after me from the forth floor to the first floor in the school, where I returned the solved cube (with single colors on each side) to her. Haha. I didn’t got any chance to show off the skill after I entered university.
My good friend Alex sent me some photos of the advertisements of a property near his home in northeast China. I was so amused by the photos. They have exactly the same name as mine: Jian Shuo (建硕)
Photographed by Alex Li. Image in courtesy of the developer and investor of the garden
Photographed by Alex Li. Image in courtesy of the developer and investor of the garden
I never saw my name printed in so big font. Friends joked that I have been pushed into the real estate business.
P.S. Many of my friends got spam email from Jianshuo Software Company in Shenzhen these days. They used the same name as mine.
My name is very uncommon and I only found one person with the same name with me in Google.
Shanghai Map Viewer 0.7 Released
New Features / Bug Fixes:
Feature Request in Future Releases:
Dick asked: “As you see, I have a Hotmail email address. Is there any problem in using this account in China.”
Sure. Hotmail works in China. Althought there is a short preiod of time of block of hotmail (who knows whether it is a block or technical difficulties), it is OK most of time.
There are some very big sites that people in China cannot see. Among them are Geocities.com and blogspot.com.
Update Ways to Access Hotmail May 4, 2006
Recently, I mean more than 2 years after this article was first written, some people report that they cannot access hotmail in China. I experienced the problem sometimes using other providers. Thanks for Mike in Guangzhou’s comment, if you cannot access Hotmail in China, try the following link:
https://login.passport.net/uilogin.srf?lc=1033&id=2
It is reported to work perfectly (I can access Hotmail in Shanghai with Shanghai Telecom FTTB+LAN using the normal login at http://hotmail.com).
Update Hotmail is Blocked May 10, 2006
The content of this original content is out-of-date. With so many people complaining about Hotmail problems, I think it is safe to say Hotmail is blocked in China. The reason people gather in this page is because, it is the top result in Google for Hotmail in China. Wow…
If anyone has any confirmed ways to workaround this problem, please let me know by posting comments. If someone confirmed the methods work, please also let us know, so I can promote the methods here.
Update Hotmail is Blocked May 10, 2006
I posted the workarounds I know in this article: Hotmail Blocked in China. Here is the content of the article.
It is brought to my attention that Hotmail is presently blocked in China. I can access it everyday (I don’t know why, but it just works for me.), but I saw a lot of complains on my old post: Does Hotmail Work in China?. There are 52 comments so far. Why? Because it is the first result for Hotmail China in both MSN Search and Google search.
Well. It seems I need to do a little bit homework to find ways to help people out. Here is my analysis.
The Problem
When you type http://hotmail.com or http://www.hotmail.com, you will receive DNS error, as if the site never existed. You may experience long waiting time, before it reports the error.
When you type in http://hotmail.com, it reports DNS error, like the screen capture. Created at 21:40 May 10, 2006 at China Telecom FTTB+LAN in Pudong, China
When you type in http://www.hotmail.com, it also return error, but this time, it return the default error page from China Telecom: advertisement from Yahoo! China, including Yahoo! MP3 search, Baidu.com and Sina.com.cn. Created at 21:40 May 10, 2006 at China Telecom FTTB+LAN in Pudong, China
It seems the domain name DNS service is blocked.
The same problem happens with the Windows Live services, http://live.com.
When you type in http://live.com, it returns this error. Created at 21:40 May 10, 2006 at China Telecom FTTB+LAN in Pudong, China
Other Impact
Since recently, MSN transformed its passport services (the familiar hotmail logon page) to live.com. When live.com is blocked, as shown above, all Microsoft services related to authentication dies. For example, the popular MSN Spaces, a blogging service, becomes instable because it requires authentication. Other services, like http://download.microsoft.com is also reported to be impacted.
I chatted with my friends who may know the situation. None of them really have any suggestions, except asking me to use a proxy server.
Workarounds
Let me try to give several workarounds I collected. It may work now, but no garrentee it works in near future. Just let me know if any method works or stop working. At least at the time I write this article, I personally tested all the methods. They work at least for me on China Telecom FTTB+LAN home broadband in Shanghai.
Option 1: Use Mobile Version
Only the domain names are blocked. The server is live. If you have ways to access the servers without using the hotmail.com or live.com domain, you have a chance. Here is a backdoor:
MSN Mobile logon interface
This interface is designed exclusively for Windows Mobile cellphones. You can login to check your emails. The interface is very simple and small – to fit into mobile – but it is better than nothing if you urgently need to check your Hotmail messages.
The reason it works is because, the link I provide will redirect you to this URL:
https://mobile.passport.net/si/default.aspx?
lc=2052&id=961&ru=http%3a%2f%2fmobile.msn.com%2
fwml%2fmigrate.aspx%3freturl%3dhttp%253a%252f%252f
mobile.msn.com%252fhm%252ffolder.aspx%26fti%3dy&
mlc=zh-CN&mspsty=302&tw=1814400&kv=7&ct=1147269673
&ns=hotmail.com&ver=2.5.1027.0&ec=e21
It does not use the hotmail.com or live.com domain
Thanks for this article to share this methods with me.
Option 2: Using MSN Messenger 7.0
If you have MSN Messenger 7.0 or 7.5 (I am using 7.5) on your computer, you can simply click on the Mail icon to enter Hotmail. It is still using the old passport service, not live.com. Please make sure you are using these versions, not MSN Messenger 8.0.
Option 3: Logon to Passport First
If you feel the mobile version is not acceptable, try this.
>
Passport logon page
Also live.com is not accessible, https://login.live.com is OK. Please note the URL is https:// instead of http://.
After you enter your Hotmail username and password, you will see the MSN Account Services page. Click the hotmail link on the left top of the page, and you should be able to access hotmail.
Option 4: Direct URL
This URL works for me. But I have no idea about whether it works for you. Let me know your feedback.
https://login.live.com/login.srf?lc=2052&sf=1&id=2&ru=
http://www.hotmail.msn.com/cgi-bin/sbox%3fid%3d2&tw=0&fs=1&kv=0&cb=&cbid=24325
Option 5: Use Outlook Express
Just configure Outlook Express to check emails from hotmail.
If you haven’t done it before, here are the steps:
Go to Start -> All Programs -> Outlook Express.
Tools -> Accounts -> Add… -> Mail
Display Name: Your real name, click Next.
Email address: yourname@hotmail.com, click Next.
Accept defult HTTP as server, Hotmail as provider, and click Next.
Enter your user name and password, click Next.
Click Finsih. Then click Close to close the account tab.
Then you will have all your mails in your hotmail in your mailbox.
I’d like to hear your feedback about what option worked and what didn’t. If it didn’t work, please post comments and let people know what you have tried, where are you, and which provider you use.
Good luck!
Option 5: Use Torpark.
Thanks for Amelia’s recommendation. Download Torpark may solve the problem. (I didn’t verify it yet).
Do you know there is a country called Tokelau on our planet? I didn’t know it either before blogopoly mentioned that I can get free top level domain from this country.
It is small island some where in the world – I still didn’t find a map with its name yet. Some crazy guys from the Dot TK team visited the atolls in September 2003 and presented what the Internet means to such a small country. They met with the Council of Elderly and concluded that they can use Internet to bring foods and medicines to the small country. The idea they thought of is to offer FREE .tk domain to the world.
Of cause, not all domains are free. I tried to register wjs.com and I was told it cost 5000 USD. Free domains only support URL forward and you actually don’t own the domain since the domain is not licensed to you.
Having the story told, let me tell you can get from the island. If you have any fancy idea that you want get started quickly, but don’t want those dynamics domain names, just visit DOT.TK and registered a FREE .TK domain name. For example, I just registered wangjianshuo.tk. Visitors to the domain is redirected to an URL you set.
Hurry. Plenty of very good domain names are available.
Today, I released Shanghai Map Viewer Version 0.6. Key features (including the features previously avaiable).
Someone posted it to Fudan BBS and attracted some hits. I got 22 qualified points today. Good!
Future plan:
I will add the following feature in the next release version 0.7.
Believe it or not, it was impossible to transfer money from one bank to the other easily before. No matter how huge the amount it is, you have to withdraw cash in one bank counter, bring it to the other bank counter (with high risk) and deposit the money in the destination bank – all are manual operations and used cash. I am almost driven mad to be forced get the money from ATM machine and wait in the long line to pay my mortgage for my apartment. As a habit of an IT industry professional, I kept asking: Why not a service to enable transfer of money electronically? The cash transactions are just stupid.
Run told me the availability of the service. The China Pay (run by the China Union Pay Co. Ltd.) started the cross-bank money transfer business from end of March, 2003. Now, it supports money transfer of 11 banks. According to their website, you need to go to the out-bound bank (the money you transfer your money out) counter to apply for the service and you can conduct online transfer with China Pay.
The application for Bank of China is only processed in three branches in Shanghai downtown. I remember one is at 1221, Nanjing West Road (map).
Update: Fraud Alert! October 06, 2006
Warning: If you happen to be ready to contact a person named Wang Yang Lee or other persons in ICBC that you have won a lottery, please STOP now! It seems to be a serious fraud. Check here for more information.
Disclaimer: What I wrote here only represents my personal opinion based on my limited experiences with the bank mentioned. It should not be regarded as a real reflection of the overall service level of the bank.
Let me tell you my story of ICBC. By the way, you may know the theory that an unsatisfied customer will tell at least 20 of his friends about the bad experience? I am the unsatisfied customer and I believe at least 50 persons will read this article – I am the powerful dissatisfied customer, aren’t I?
Counter Service. I often use the most crowded ICBC Tian Yao Qiao Rd. Branch. The good thing is, they have a Q-matic queue management system at the door. You can press a button to get a small piece ticket telling you how many people are waiting in line before you. The average number was around 50. Once I got a ticket with 120 people waiting before me while there were only two windows open! It often costs my whole noon break to wait there. Maybe this is a good sign of the heavy business volume of the bank from another point of view. Anway, it is one of the largest bank in China. Also, long line not only happens in ICBC. I also see long lines in my favorite China Merchant Bank.
My friend Willie told me that this never happens in U.S. since people will just go online to transfer money and to pay their bills. This is not the case in Shanghai yet. ICBC has its self-service facilities, telephone bank system and web bank system in place. They must have thrown millions of dollars into the systems. However, poor usability of the web bank are barriers preventing more people to try the service. I think I am among the most skillful web users. Even I gave it after attempting to use their online service since I don’t know how to continue. I doubt whether normal user like my mom would possibility utilize the system well. By the way, did the web developers know that if I didn’t configure my browser to send ZH-CN language code to the server, all the characters it returned are all question marks which are not readable at all?
I need to point out again here, that this is my personal experience. My experience didn’t prevent ICBC winning the World Best Online Bank award by The Banker. Why? I didn’t find a reason so far.
ICBC was the pioneer to try out non-password protected credit card. Its international credit card follows the international tradition, that only signature is needed and customers don’t need to input a PIN. Almost all credit cards from other banks in China require customer to key in a PIN to pay. Unexpectedly, this innovation brought trouble to ICBC and to card holders like me. Tellers at supermarkets are not trained to use this “new?card so they insisted me to enter a pin before I use my card. It is wired situation that I don’t have a pin. I don’t know the pin myself. It took quite some time to explain that this is an international credit card and it does not require a pin to use. Later, we found out the trick that keying any random 6-digit number on the keyboard will do the work. So less argument for me and time was saved. Recently, ICBC have to step one step back and added pin protection to all its credit card again. It proved again that customers in China have so different customer behaviors and something works internationally will not always work in China.
I also encountered several time the teller told me I cannot withdraw the money because the computer system is down. That was annoying. They have pre-printed, well decorated notice boards saying “Computer is down. Service paused” at every counter. It seems the computer-down is their daily routine and the utilization of the notice boards is high. I argued with them that why the computer system goes down so frequently. The young man at the right-most counter of the Tian Yao Qiao branch simply gave me an are-you-stupid look and said: “It is the computer that is down. Why yelling at ME?”
I cancelled my International Credit Card last October. Surprisingly, they returned the money on the card was as late as mid Jan, 2004. They used the 3 month to go through lengthy process to refund the 200 RMB annual fee (which they charged by mistake) to my bank account before they can refund me the large amount of deposit I made. I anxiously checked with them every week to get my money back.
Well. There is still something I like for ICBC. The number of outlets is the highest among all banks and I can always find a ICBC bank. Their Q-matic system is cool. Their telephone service hotline 95588 is good. Also, it is the issuer of my first international credit card.
OK. That is my personal experience that explains why I will give a 5 out of 1-9 rating system for ICBC. To be fair to ICBC, I want anyone read the report to know to the banks I use most are Bank of China, China Merchant Bank and ICBC. ICBC are still a good bank, but it happened I was shown its worse side to me.
Thanks for WilliamW to give me suggestions regarding this article
I told a short story of the service level of banks in China yesterday. In the story, a foreigner argued with the teller that the teller should help to fill in the form for him. Many people commented on the story. They shared their diversified view from Japan and U.S.
WilliamW believes it is the service mentality instead of language barrier that caused the problem. WilliamW also asked about the situation of smaller banks like China Merchant Banks.
JH argued “Unless there are some major holes in the current system of that bank, filling in an application form should have nothing to do with the customer’s authorization of accessing the money in the account.”
Billy was so nice to bring out the idea to take pictures of all the application form and help to translate English into Chinese annotations and post it to the web to help foreigners to survive.
Micah talked about his experience of working “under rules that seem to run against common sense” in a large chain book store. Micah suggested that “When a customer runs up against a rule like that, the best the she/he can do is ask to talk to the person who makes the rules and can override them: the manager. There’s no shame in asking to speak to a manager.”
Xu praised the extended service hours of banks in China. “Each bank here Japan is to be closed in exact 3 PM, and of course no Saturday and Sunday service.” He wondered “how a full-time job employee can catch time to visit a bank? or leave it all to his full-time housekeeper wife ? Sigh …”
Brad was lucky since the teller Brad met helped him to fill in the form. I wonder whether the “against-common-sense” policy is branch specific policy or the teller Brad met did the right thing by breaking the rule. Who knows?
Tane had different point of view and asked “why the foreginers kept arguing with the bank clerks while people waited in a long line. If it’s the way to do in there, let’s do it in that way.”
Well. It is a great discussion thread. Inspired by your comments, I want to share more about my personal experience with the major banks in China. Let’s start with ICBC.
