Shanghai-Hangzhou Express Train

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Breaking news. The Shanghai-Hangzhou Express Train will start operation officially on Oct 26, 2010, according to this news report. The ticket selling will start from October 22.

The first train G7401 will start from Shanghai Hongqiao Train Station at 6:32 am, and arrive at Hangzhou at 7:32, with duration of 1 hour.

When the operation passes the trail period, the single way will be 38 km, at 350 km/hour. The interval of trains will be 3 minutes (shorter many metro carts).

The price range from 82 to 156 RMB single way, depending on the class of seats, and departure stations.

Interestingly, the seating numbering follows airlines – from A to F with A as window seat, and C as aisle seats. It is said that passenger can choose their seat (well, I just feel it is over-designed feature for a trip less than one hour).

Looking forward to take it soon.

Timber Cove, Sonoma

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This year’s YLF (Young Leaders Forum, National Committee on US-China Relationships) took place in Timber Cove, Sonoma county, California. I have decided to make time for this great event no matter what. I am back from the three day trip, and have time to post some of the photos I took during the days. Well, the content is obviously 100 times better than the content, and I got great inspiration from the other fellows. Since that is a strictly confidential and off-record conference, I won’t disclose anything about the conference itself.

Below: Some times, this type of post card scene (I mean the scene, not my photo using iPhone 4) appears in dreams, and I completely enjoyed watching sunset, and talk with maybe the smarted young group I know. The fire was hot, and the ocean was cold, and the wine from Sonoma county was great.

timber.cove-fire-before.ocean

The scene outside the hotel room is splendid. The sound of wave washing the coast rocks is just like music.

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The ocean waves.

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This is the small inn, original owned, and designed by Mr. Richard Clement, the father of one of YLFer attending this event, and friend of Ansel Adams.

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This is, not surprisingly, me.

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The scene along the CA-1 is compariable with the Great Ocean Road of Australia.

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The room and platform I spent the days and nights.

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The road leading to the sea at Fort Ross.

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The mouth of Russia River, where I kayaked with Stacy.

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The cost line near the glass house in the middle the sea.

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Here is the location.

Map picture

Happy Birthday to Me

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It turned out today is my birthday today.

I didn’t realize it is already October 18, well, Beijing time.

It is the first birthday spanning on both sides of the Ocean. Although I haven’t enter Oct 18 at this side of the Pacific, when I am there, the day will end.

PS. Based on the boarding information I have, when I arrive at PVG, I will conveniently skip the day and will be 2 am the second day.

Anyway, as always, I am always delighted to say Happy Birthday to myself first.

International Financial Center Opens

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Heard the news that International Financial Center opens at Lujiazui (many weeks ago), and it offers free parking, we detoured there on our way to the post office to check out.

Location: It has many the best location in Lujiazui, just between Jinmao tower, and the Super Brand Mall, as shown in the map below (it was not completed yet in the satellite image).

Map picture

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After IFC opens, Shanghai has another top shopping center with the first line brands like Louis Vuitton, Gucci… I just feel I entered the world of "The Devil Wears Prada". Interestingly, I am the dummy who don’t understand the brand. I just cannot keep asking the question, why a bag worth 20K RMB? What is the value the branded product? My guess is, maybe the reason is just like people buying iPhone (I can certainly understand why iPhone justifies its 3x to 4x higher price than average phones).

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Look at the list of brands you can find in the building.

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I didn’t took a phone of the complex in the International Financial Center. It includes the HSBC Tower, Ritz Carlton, and office towers. Standing from there, you can see the Lujiazui skyscraper area.

shanghai-buildings-outside.ifc

Shanghai is very difference in the last few years. 10 years ago, when I walk on the Orchard Road of Singapore, I was completely overwhelmed by the magnificence of the road. Few weeks ago, when I go there, I saw the Orchard Road, and started to wonder if it is the same road as I saw 10 years ago. It turned out that Shanghai changed faster than Singapore’s Orchard road. In the last ten years, Nanjing road completely upgraded in the Nanjing West Road section, and the Huaihai Road also changed its face quietly. New places like the IFC, World Financial Center raised…. I am not actually too happy about the fact that Shanghai turning into a bigger metropolitan with luxurious brands covering the city faster than McDonald’s. It is just a matter of fact…

I provided the information for the people who loves shopping, although I am a confused speculator in this strange place.

Qingdao Area Geography

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The best way to understand geography of an area is by moving around. In a city, the best way is to walk, with biking as the second choice. For an area, driving is best.

After driving to Qingdao, I understand the area better, and can explain it to you – mainly from the expressway system perspective.

G15

Thanks to the G15 National Expressway, the driving from Shanghai to Qingdao is pretty straight forward – get to G15 by any of the many east-west expressways (G40 to Xi’an, G50 to Chongqing, G60 to Chengdu, or S5 to Jiading District, S32, S4 to Jinshan).

When you get to the long G15, just drive to the north, and pass Nantong, Yancheng, Lianyungang, Rizhao, before you enter Qingdao.

The Jiaozhou Bay

Although I visited Qingdao many times, I didn’t get a clear understanding of the bay it sits at. It is just like the San Francisco Bay to the bay area, it is a natural harbor. The problem for traffic from the south like us is, I have to detour 61 km around the bay to arrive at Qingdao.

Look at the small gap between Qingdao and Huangdao! People should build a bridge there.

The Jiaozhou Bay Bridge, and Qinghuang Tunnel

It turned out that people are really building it. They built a bridge inside the bay (strangely, that they chose the longest possible path along the bay to build that bridge). It was not that surprising when I found out another 10km tunnel is under construction (although more expensive, it does not block the big ships, which are the blood line for a port city like Qingdao.

I draw a map below to illustrate the G15 expressway (in red), the future Jiaozhou Bay Bridge (in black), and the Qinghuang Tunnel (in orange).

Hope this help people who haven’t travel to Qingdao, or people like me who travel frequently but still didn’t get the idea to know more about the beautiful city.

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Jiaozhou Bay Bridge, Qinghuang Tunnel, and G15

Intersections

The Bay Bridge will be part of the future G22 National Expressway, from Qingdao to Lanzhou (the horizontal line connecting the bridge in the map). On the south side, there are G1511, from Rizhao to Lankao of Kaifeng, Henan, and then G30, from Lianyungang to Huoshan (passing my hometown Luoyang), and finally, near Nantong, merge with G40 (Shanghai to Xi’an), and then enter Shanghai.

On a car, and running on looooooooooooooooooooong road gives people the feeling of freedom, but the expressway are special district separated by toll gates just make people to feel we are in the zoo, and need to pay to get out. Even the person travel, we are still bound tight to the land where the Hukou is. That is still not free.

My Contact Management Tips

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In the current world with most applications like iPhone contact manager, and Gmail contact designed around English names, it is a little bit challenging for Chinese users. Here are my tips:

1. Design a consistent naming system for yourself. Here is mine.

2. Whenever someone has a Chinese name, record it in contact manager using the correct Chinese name.

3. Always input Chinese name as a whole into the Last Name section. It is strange to enter two Chinese characters into the First Name columns, and one character into the Last Name. The worst is when it is displayed, like in iPhone, that last name is in bold font, and there is a space between the first and the last. Not necessary at all.

4. When enter English name, no matter for native American/English, or English name for Chinese, follow the tradition to input last name and first name into their columns.

5. For frequently used Chinese name, enter the phonetic first name, and phonetic last name (both iPhone, and Google contact manager support it), so it is sorted correctly as they were native English names. (Update I found out that I only need to change the International setting, and set the language to Chinese Simplified, it will enable iPhone to automatically sort by Pinyin of the corresponding Chinese. No need to input by ourselves).

6. When possible, enter company names – for family members, enter “Family”, and for classmates, enter the class name into company columns.

7. For certain people, enter “journalist” or similar into Title field, so it can be easily sorted out by search (in both iPhone, and Google Gmail contacts).

8. If I cannot recall who the person is from the contact information, I will delete it (well, with backup somewhere).

9. From time to time, ensure the contact information is up to date.

Tips: from time to time, backup your contact information into some secure places.

Running on G15

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Wendy is driving.

Yifan is sleeping.

The car is running on the long north to south national expressway G15 (a.k.a Shenyang-Haikou Expressway).

Inspired by the 2200 km travel across the western US, the family drove to Qingdao and back during the holiday.

The G15 is generally empty with just one or two cars ahead in sight for many sections except in Shanghai.

Car traveling is a feasible option for Chinese now.

Using iPhone to Blog

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With the help of iMT plugin, I am using iPhone to publish this entry now. Although the iPhone keyboard is more suitable for 140 character of twitter, at least I have some decent tool to blog on the go. I still don’t have any idea how it changes the way I blog. The most possible outcome of this tool is, I simply forget about it soon. The other possibility is, it may turn my blog into a mini blog, or twitter (if you want to use the more popular name for that kind of thing). It will be both good and bad – good to capture the inspiration on the go, but the other side of the coin is, maybe it is not as worthy as before.

BTW, I am still at Qingdao. The city is too charming to leave.

Shanghai to Hangzhou via Hangzhou Bay Bridge?

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The question reads:

Jian,

I have tried everywhere to find if we can do a trip from Shanghai to Hangzhou, staying overnight and coming back to Shanghai via the Hangzhou Bay bridge. Is it possible if we took an early D train to Ningbo and then made our way over the bridge by bus or cab? Any suggestions you have would be more than welcome.

The short answer is, you don’t to go over the Hangzhou Bay Bridge from Shanghai to Hangzhou. Actually, there is no need to use that bridge from any where in the world to get to Hangzhou.

Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Ningbo form a big triangle around the Hangzhou Bay. Hangzhou and Ningbo are on the east, and Hangzhou is on the west. The Hangzhou Bay Bridge connects Shanghai and Ningbo, by passing Hangzhou.

map-hangzhou.bay.bridge.png

So, if you want to go from Shanghai to Ningbo, the Bay Bridge is the best choice.

Shanghai to Hangzhou Highspeed Train

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The Shanghai to Hangzhou Highspeed Train will officially launch at the later half of October, 2010. Today, the headline news is, the train experimented to run at 416.6 km/hour (259 miles/hour).

At commercial operation, the train will link Shanghai and Hangzhou. It takes about 40 minutes to get to Hangzhou from Shanghai Hong Qiao Railway Station, running at 350 km/hour (217 miles/hour). The current D-Train, the fastest, is about 2 hours.

It seems we can take the high-speed train for our meeting in early November in Hangzhou.

I am embarrassed that, as a blogger, I still didn’t experienced the new high-speed train. Before I am aware of it, the high-speed train system has run 7055 km. Well. When did I first heard of the concept of high-speed train in China? 5 years ago, I guess.

I will send back report when I personally experience it.

I do have two photos to share. It is taken on the way back from Weihai to Shanghai.

I GUESS, the photo below is picture of a station along the train line.

Below is the bird’s view of the line. I GUESS it is the highspeed train line because – it is very straight – to keep it as straight as possible so trains can run really fast, and it is all the way elevated.

Apple Flagship Store in Shanghai

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The second day I am back from Singapore, I had a lunch meeting in Shangri-la, and after the meeting, I went to the Apple Flagship Store in Shanghai.

The store is located near the Grand Brand Mall, just the other side of the Pearl TV Tower. It is at basement of the International Financial Center (IFC) complex, near the LV flagship store.

Here is the entrance – the feeling is just like the glass entrance of the Louvre.

The rotating stairs are the perfect stage for the several hour queuing at Apple Store yesterday, for the first day of Apple iPhone 4 release in China.

From the inside, since Apple’s product is so consistent, and so few types, a visit to that particular store is just a visit to the store itself, which is not very different from the others.

My Friends in Singapore

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Here are some nice group photo.

A nice working lunch with faculty and students from School of Computer, National University of Singapore.

After the talk to students.

Meeting with NUS Entrepreneur Alumni at Soc, NUS

Meeting with MDA.

Below is the time of the lecture:

Meetings in Singapore

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Meetings include:

  • Meeting with faculties in National University of Singapore
  • Workshop on China’s Internet – The room will filled with 300 students with another same size room broadcasting the video
  • Meeting with Infocomm Development Agency
  • Meeting with Media Development Agency
  • Meeting with Temasek
  • Meeting with NUS alumni
  • Meeting with computer department of NUS.

There are other smaller meetings in it. I love my Singapore trip. Here are some photos.

Below: A cool demo by a company invested by MDA.

P.S. the F1 will be held inside the city tomorrow, roughly at the time I am flying above Vietnam.

Singapore Pte Ltd

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I joked with Prof. Juzar on the way to dinner, that I found myself on the campus of a big company called “Singapore Pte Ltd” these days. Some people joked that the president of China acts as CEO of China Limited Corparation. I felt more so in Singapore. I formed the impression from the interaction with the government agencies, universities, and private sectors, and some ideas comes from the autobiography of Lee Kuan Yew.

The National University of Singapore campus

It is obvious to me that the whole Singapore acted as one single company. The government, the universities, and the private sectors worked so well, just like the different teams in a big company. Universities can be the HR department, while the government can be the legal and finance depart, with the private sector act as R&D, and business develop organization.

One example is the way they acquire talent. In the lecture this afternoon, Prof. Tan asked how many students are Chinese. About 70-80% in the room raised their hand. I asked Prof. Tan what is the definition of Chinese students, he said, they are very likely to be from mainland China. After chatting more on this topic, I understand that the Singapore government sponsors the university to offer full scholarship to the students to attract them to study in Singapore (most of them are the best from the Tsinghua, Peking or SJTU). Most of the students stayed in Singapore, and contribute to this newly emerged economy. Think about it. It is just like the scholarship and internship program we are trying to run on campus – but Singapore is running it as a country.

From the different organizations and programs, I can feel the passion the government is trying to foster entrepreneurship. Developing the people is one of the four key strategies for iDa (Infocom Development Agency), and the key driver for School of Computer in National University of Singapore, and very likely to be key strategy for all universities here.

Take the workshop of this afternoon. The NUS sponsored the air-ticket and the hotel for the panels from Shanghai. What an effort! If the conference can help to accelerate one successful entrepreneurs out of the audience, that quite pays back everything.

From the autobiography of Lee Kuan Yew, they are using this effort to attract few hundred best students from around the world. Not a big number, in China scale (well, in China, people are talking about students in terms of million), but it is so critical for Singapore, especially when we consider the quality of the people they attract.

Obviously, Singapore has a clear strategy to attract and keep the world’s best talents. How about China?

P.S. The workshop went on very well. I enjoyed the conversation, and impressed by the sharp questions people asked. In case you are among the audience, and we didn’t have a chance to exchange name card, you can find my contact information on the right side of my blog homepage.

P.S. 2. During the presentation, prof. Tan quoted two “Singapore styles” – one is using mixed language to present the talk (English or Chinese or combined), and the other one is to keep the order by queuing after the microphone. If a country or company formed certain style that people living within can recognize and actively promote it, it is called a new culture.