Urbanization of Luoyang

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My hometown Luoyang is a typical sample of recent years of urbanization process in China.

Situated in the middle of China, Luoyang is a middle sized city. Although the total population is 6 million (too big a number in US to be a middle sized city), the urban population is only about 1 million, with the rest to be rural population.

In the last 10 years, Luoyang changes a lot. When I check satellite image on Google Maps, I found due to some reason, some tiles of the map was not updated to the current image. That provided an interesting view of the past and the current picture of Luoyang on the same page.

Image in courtesy of Google Maps

As you can see from the picture above, the lower part is the original state of the land – farm land with some villages. The upper part is the current Luoyang.

Let’s take a closer look.

Image in courtesy of Google Maps

Pay attention to the strange banks of the river, and the modern cities.

Below is a bigger picture of the whole Luoyang new district.

Image in courtesy of Google Maps

Let’s spotlight some of the areas on this map:

The new stadiums:

Image in courtesy of Google Maps

The new park:

Image in courtesy of Google Maps

The astonishing big pool before the new building of the government:

Image in courtesy of Google Maps

Finally is the government building, that assemblies the forbidden city.

Image in courtesy of Google Maps

Where is the farm land, and the villages? The following interesting photo illustrated that a big road went straightly into the village, and the commercial residential areas were built at the same place. There is no way for the old village to survive. They moved away – or to be more exact, they were moved away.

My Worries

When I was younger, to have a bigger and more beautiful city was my dream. Now, after I visited many places, and thought deeper about the future of China, the change made me worry. I have few questions.

Where are the farm land?

In the last 10 years, the city of Luoyang grew crazily. They moved the government from the old city center to this land – a piece of land in the middle of no where (well, in the old standard). Then the farm land was taken, and Luoyang developed using a pattern to leverage the land typically reserved for the next century. Look at the huge projects on the land – that is exactly the project you want to build when you have too many land to spare.

Where is the money?

Why the government has so much money to build it? The secret is the land. Since in the current Chinese system, the government is the only legal middle man to transfer a piece of land from the farmer to a developer, and then to house buyers. They often offer ridiculously low price (at the time I was there, it was 20 – 50 K RMB per Chinese ace) to the farmers (and they have to move because their land buildings were announced as illegal followed by police), and then they sell the land at 10x or higher price to developer. The more land they sell, the more profit the government (to be exact, the people involved) they get. The new government buildings, and the huge projects are maybe just some change.

Unfortunately, this is the general pattern in most cities in China. IMHO, I think the only way out is to allow end house buyers to buy land directly from farmers.

Luoyang is a typical example of urbanization in China, and you see the change in a “broken” Google map.

Want to see it by yourself in Google Maps? Here is the link.

Back to SJTU BBS

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When you lost an ID that you enjoy a lot, you don’t want to use that site any more. It is the case for me on SJTU BBS (Shanghai Jiaotong University Bulletin Board System). I started to use it when I was a junior there. I used a nick name stonebook for few years, before it was terminated on Oct 26, 2003.

I just registered a new nickname on http://bbs.sjtu.edu.cn: jianshuo. I will return to the Automation department board, SOEIEE board (what a strange name), and others.

Besides Facekbook.com/jianshuo, you can private message me @jianshuo on SJTU BBS now, if you have a nickname there.

Written Chinese Keeps China United

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One of my guesses (without any support) is, the written language of Chinese played a very important role in keeping China united as a country in the last 1000 years, although it separates, and then united. Why?

Unlike languages that records pronunciation, like English, Chinese characters is basically a “picture” represents the meaning. Look at the illustration in this blog: Chinese Characters.

No matter how you want to read it, the written language is always the same across China. A simple (over simplified) example are the number one, two, three in Chinese: 一. 二. 三. If you have Chinese system in your computer and can read Chinese, you will find one stroke means 1, two strokes means 2, and three vertical strokes means 3. (Of cause, 1000 strokes does not mean 1000). It is just like the Rome representation: I, II, III, IV, V, or the numerical representation: 1, 2, 3, 4… In different countries, they are read differently, but the meaning are the same.

Just like Arabic numbers keeps most of the human on the same page (unfortunately, there are just few signs in common), Chinese languages acted as a glue to keep the vast area together, and they can communicate with each other.

One example is, if Chinese people start to use Pinyin, or whatever representation of the pronunciation of the Chinese characters, within 50 years, there will be at least 100 different languages in China.

In Beijing, 谢谢你 “Thank you”, will be written as Xie Xie Ni. In Taiwan, it will be written as: ㄒㄝ ㄒㄝ ㄋㄧ, and in Shanghai, it may be written as Xia Xia Nong. I can imagine in most of the provinces, or even cities, they can be written differently, if according to pronunciation…

If that does happen, when a group of people cannot communicate with another group of people for too long, China will become an Europe of today.

That is just my guess. Any support to this idea?

Minimum Fee 120 RMB for Top of SWFC

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The top secret I have about this city is how to Get to Top of SWFC Within 100 RMB. Now, I found out that trick does not work.

The 91th floor of Shanghai World Financial Center is no longer the best value bar in Shanghai. Now, they require 120 RMB per person minimum pay for all afternoon tea guests.

Now, the only alternatives left for me are:

Quora is Growing Crazily

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I first learn Quora from Matt, and now, email about someone following me came in like crazy. I got about 120 email like this in the last few days.

The website by few ex-former employees of Facebook, and invested by Benchmark is very interesting. It showed the early characters of a promising website – the feeling of WOW when you first read it.

On my first page, I saw some interesting question answered by interesting people. For example, the best answer voted to “What does Matt do when he was in China” was answered by Matt himself, and the question “What does Craig of Craigslist think about money” also received a lot of answers, out of which, Craig’s own answer was chosen to be the best.

You can have a try there.

Questions About Trespassing

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I have few questions for my friends in US who are familiar with the legal system there. It is about definition of trespassing, and property owner’s right when it happens.

It is about the recent case of Guo Degang, the famous Chinese talk show (well, I know it is a funny translation, but what is the right one) actor. That is maybe the hottest news in the recent days before the media was ordered to stop reporting it. Huge amount of people rushed into debating whether they support Guo, or not, and why, but few people really dig into the details of the fact part. Let me try to repeat what is happening. I want to understand how people in the US deal with it, since there is no exact way to define trespassing in China yet.

The event in concern started when two persons claimed to be affiliated with Beijing TV got into the residential area of Guo (an area owned collectively by all the villa owners), and went along the stairs of Guo’s house (the part at the side of his garden), and knocked the door and talked with Mr. Lee, who associated with Guo. After few minutes, Lee physically forced the reporters to leave the house. (People are arguing whether the activity is defined as beating, or pushing, etc).

Here are my questions. Please help me to understand what the rules in America are.

Although in China, most people define trespassing by the fact whether they entered the DOOR of the building, I suspect by the time the reporter entered the gate of the residential area is the time they conducted trespassing. So questions:

  1. Is it a trespassing when the reporters enter the gate of the residential area? Collectively, the property is owned (well, in China, at least it can be defined as leased from the State for 70 years) by the residents of the residential area. If the reporter don’t have business with any of the residents, is it a trespassing?
  2. Can the activity of interviewing be defined as legitimate business reason without making appointment with one of the residents behind that gate? I know in some States in US, postman who is going to deliver, policeman when conducting business, and people who can prove to get lost are not trespassing when they enter the property. They are generally defined as Invitee. Are journalists also invitee?
  3. If entering the residential area, is entering the stairs of the house trespassing?
  4. If entering the stairs of the house not trespassing, is it trespassing when they knock the door of the house?

If the reporters WAS trespassing, or when told to leave and given enough time to leave, but still does not leave, what is the action the house keeper can do?

  1. Obviously, he has the right to call police immediately.
  2. Does the host have the right to physically drive the person away? I heard the idea that although in most States, shooting the trespasser have been strictly forbidden, in States like Taxes, trespassing after dark, and can cause immediate threat to the safety of the owner entitled the owner to shoot the trespasser to death. I am not sure whether it is true or still the case. Does pushing or beating allowed?
  3. To what extend can the house owner drive the trespasser? Can he only drive him out of the stairs, the garden of his individual house, or drive the trespasser all the way out of the residential area? In US, the case will be people living in an condo. Can he drive the person out of the whole building or just his apartment? If he cannot, who are the legal entity to drive the person out of the condo, if no management company exists for that condo? Even when they have a management company, can one of the house owners do it by himself?

Another set of question relates to the right of journalist and the rights of privacy.

  1. Does the answer to any of the questions above change if the person accused as trespasser is a journalist?
  2. Can the journalist take video or photo of the interviewee without him knowing that?
  3. If the above is illegal, what remedy action can the interviewee take? For example, if I found someone took a naked picture of me in my private area, can I force the person to delete the photo, or have to wait for the person to publicly distribute the photos and sue him? If he refuses to delete, what violate action can I take to avoid future damage?

I hope the answers to the questions at least help to educate people, like me, about the right thing to do in events like this.

Does Shanghai have Beach, Nearby?

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I answered the question Does Shanghai have Beach? before: No.

Wendy and I have been searching beach in Shanghai many times. We went to many claimed beach in Shanghai – the Jinshan Beach, or the Fengxian beach. So far, the nearest real beach is at Shengsi.

This time, we continued our search to the north side of the Yangtze River, and arrived at Changshazhen, at Rudong, Nantong.

To our disappointment, there is so no beach there. What we see is very like the scene at Dishui Lake in Shanghai.

My car, Bandenger, with wind mill as background.

We finally confirmed that in lands formed with sands from rivers, like Yangtze River, there is no way to form beach. Beach can only be found when waves of sea or ocean hit hard rock of mountains.

The next time, we may need to go to places as far as Shandong to find beach. Rizhao, or Qingdao is good candidate.

We will report when we finally find beach near Shanghai.

Integrity is Hard in China

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The integrity issue people pointed out in the comment section of this blog Integrity of Resume is deep rooted in the current system of China. The current system makes it so hard to keep integrity. Here are some examples:

  • Education. Although questioning authority is a virtue, it is so hard to do so in the current exam driven tests. There are fences everywhere to prevent students to think about. If a student really pursues the truth, and asks questions related to the culture revolution, China’s involvement in Korean war, he will be in big trouble, so is his/her teacher. The reason is political reason.
  • GN left an interesting comment about the question “What he did 20 years ago”. If his provide the real answer, he will be in jail.
  • Today, everyday there are fake news in the media. Comments related to the truth are always deleted.
  • For me, when I write blog, to keep honest to my heart, I have to avoid the most sensitive topics. I know there is a big area of topics I cannot touch. As foreign media reported, I tend to “shy away” from them. To tell the truth is easy, but to bear the tremendous cost (including safety of life, or future of yourself, or family) is hard.
  • Ridiculous rules are not changeable, then cheating can be the only choice. It is just the ridiculous situation when you see always-red traffic lights on all directions, or the speed limitation on an expressway is set to 5 km/hour. If there is nothing you can do, you break the law. If you are asked what you did, and tell you you will lose everything, and you are supposed to tell a lie as everyone else, you face a hard choice.

Human nature is the same. I received enough negative comments under the blog How I drive in Shanghai. Don’t be too quick to justify others behavior without being there yourself. When we look at the biggest tragedy like what Nazi did in WWII, we know it is the system that went wrong, not just the people involved. We are in the tough times in the Chinese history to face these systematic problems.

Having said that, as always, I am optimistic about the future of China. The dishonest behavior will be less when people can remove the fear they have in the bottom of their heart and build a system for the “good people”, and start to allow the universal principle to survive on this land.

Yangtze River is Now a Yellow River

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It is a sunny Saturday in Shanghai, and I guess it is so for the Yangtze delta. Wendy and I wanted to bring Yifan to a new city. After the US trip (1600+ miles in 7 days), we reset our definition of living area. 500 km is the new boundary of what we define as “far”.

After checking out cities as far as Rizhao 日照, which may cost 6 hours, we finally decided to go to Nantong 南通. It is at the north side of the Yangtze River, opposite of Suzhou.

The Yangtze River under Sutong Bridge

Sutong Bridge is the new bridge built on Yangtze river. The north side is Nantong, and the south side is Suzhou. The bridge itself, along with the highway running through it is called G15, a 3400 km expressway connecting Shenyang in very north part of China to Haikou, in the south in Hainan. We passed Sutong Bridge today.

The Yangtze River I saw today is very very different from all the photos I saw, and more different than the river in my impression. It is completely dark yellow. Look at this photo:

Photo by Jian Shuo Wang. Yangtze River under Sutong Bridge

Yangtze River is a Yellow River

I remember a comic about the subject. On one end of a phone line, Yellow River is calling: “Yangtze River, Yangtze River, this is Yellow River speaking…”. On the other side, Yangtze River replied: “Yellow River, Yellow River, this is also Yellow River!”.

Few decades ago, the lose of forest at the upstream of the Yellow River caused the river to contain huge amount of soil so it is completely yellow. At that time, Yangtze River is still relatively clean. The Yangtze Crocodile (Alligator sinensis), a rarely seen crocodile from millions of years ago are still living in the water of the Yangtze River in this area.

Today, look at the Yangtze River – the pollution has already made it a more yellow river than the Yellow River. I was shocked by the scene of wide yellowness before me. There are many ships floating in the disgusting surface of the river. I believe it is very hard for fish to survive (even there are fishes, I doubt they can see anything with their eyes under the water). I don’t think anyone can still swim in the river.

Whose River it is?

If it is a river in my own garden, I will spend money and effort to make it right. If it is a river of a neighborhood, we will gather and make something happen. Now, the longest river in China is highly polluted, but there is no political system to support the course to purify it, and protect it. Media is not free to report, or discuss who are the people cutting trees or pour polluted water into it; the government is not held responsible to sue the factories before court (well, court and government are the same organization with the same supervisor); NGO are under legal challenges. What can we do to protect the mother river of China?

I was shocked, completely shocked to see another yellow river in China.

Integrity of Resume

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Today, a candidate came to interview at our company. The experience, and the answers to questions looks very promising, but there is one problem: he intentionally changed the date of his employment history by few years. We immediately terminated the interview when we found out.

Integrity is the key to any person, and company. It is by trust that this society works together. No matter how good a person is, if there is integrity problem, that is a big problem. In Microsoft, for example, integrity issue is the biggest mistake someone can make, and will result in immediate termination of employment. The first value of the seven key values of Microsoft is Integrity and Honesty. At least in the few years I was in Microsoft, it was really enforced. I know it is a big deal.

So, don’t play trick with your resume, and don’t play tricks in most of the things.

I Love Tech Talk

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Thanks Jianqiu to deliver a tech talk on Data Mining at Baixing office. I enjoyed the talk, and enjoyed the way people share knowledge in the format of tech talks.

Baixing is recruiting PM interns these days, and I hope to get your resume if you are in grade 3 in universities. The benefits of being an intern at Baixing is to access to all technical sessions like this one every week.

Phoenix Tree-Lined Streets in Shanghai

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Besides the skyscrapers (not so interesting for the local, but serving as a good opportunity for visitors to take photo as background), the most charming characters of the city of Shanghai is its streets.

The streets in the old French Concession was lined by Phoenix trees, and villas. The villas are typically larger than those in the Silicon Valley, and walled by bricks, and high raised fences above it. There are many buildings along the edge of the streets, and you walk besides the window of the kitchen or leaving room of the residents of the building – a very unique experience only in Shanghai.

In strong contrast with the crowded, and over populated downtown Shanghai, the area at the heart of the downtown is very quiet, and lack of pedestrian. You will enjoy the lonely walk in the cave formed by the Phoenix trees for half an hour to two hours (depending how carefully you design your route) without getting back to the noisy Shanghai.

At night, if you walk along the roads near the West Fuxing Road, especially the Wu Yuan Road 五原路, you will be scared – it is just like walking in a old town with big houses that is completely dark, and there is no street lights in the lanes. That is quite a surprise . In some of the gardens, I often see people feed hens, or grow vegetables in their own place. That is maybe the most luxurious thing we can think of in this world: the house and the land can easily worth several billion RMB. That is also the funny part of this city: the residents in these most expensive, and well designed villa are often among the poorest in the city. They don’t own the house (the government owns it), but they have the rights to live there, and transfer their rights of continuing living there to their children.

The best way to explorer there streets are by walking. The area is very walkable, and surrounded by many metro atations. If it is raining, even better! The sounds on the leaves of the trees are more pleasant than orchestra. At night? It is also good time to visit, since some of the bars started to turn their lights, and open to customers. Unlike the highly restrictive building code in California, the bars, and teh residential areas, and other business facilities are mixed. So you may need to walk for few minutes to find another one.

Comparing to the street of San Francisco, I enjoy walking in Shanghai better, just because of the same reason I love San Francisco – the diversity of the buildings along the streets. They are of so many different styles from different countries. You must have a pen and a sketch book in hand to capture the moments when you encounter a Spanish window, or a French courtyard.

Back to Smallness – Fortress Besieged

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Marriage is like a fortress besieged: those who are outside want to get in, and those who are inside want to get out

– French proverb and quoted in and inspired the title of the Chinese novel, Fortress Besieged.

After being passionate about bigness, and the magnificent, the splendid, and the modern, I started to learn to appreciate the beauty of smallness.

Growing up in the Smallness

Grew up in a mid-sized city, Luoyang, in the middle part of China (with 6 million population), most of the things around me are small.

The biggest building in the area of my school is a theater. In the current world-class standard, that theater is just a mini model of the real theater at 3:1 scale.

The tallest building in the area is 6 stories high. In the current Shanghai standard, the lowest residential building that is not classified as a villa.

The road is narrow – just one wide lane in each direction, making it difficult to pass.

That was the memory in the early of 1990s.

Beijing! The Big City

My first visit to Beijing in 1993 shocked me a lot. I loved the high-raised residential buildings that stands 18 floors high from where I stand. The contrast made me, and I believe many Chinese people, to admire the height of the buildings, and the width of the road.

Later, after I am transplanted to Shanghai, the high buildings, and complicated road system, including the traffic jam, are mixed together to form a scene of the modern, and the future.

“How I hope one day, Luoyang can be as big as Shanghai!” I dreamed when the tallest building of 14 floors in height was just under discussion.

Back to Smallness

After 15 years in Shanghai, and travel to many places in this world, I started to really understand the beauty of smallness. I started to enjoy travel to the old Hongqiao Airport T1 instead of much more modern, and big Pudong Airport, because the small airport provide easy access to the city, and don’t require me to walk too long. Just few years ago, the bad news of losing the chance to fly to/from PVG would ruin my entire day. The airport I like most started to be the Nanyang Airport, and Aspen airport, where you pick up your luggage at the side of the aircraft, and everyone walk from the plane through the small room (they call it terminal), feeling as the VIP of VIPs.

I started to love small town like Aspen, CO, or small city in Hainan. If I have a choice, I live in places like Aspen where there is just 5000 residents. Los Angeles? Oh. No. Thanks. New York? Oh. No. Thanks!

Smallness is the outside of my besieged fortress.

Pigeon Point Lighthouse

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At the west coast of US, there is a lighthouse called Pigeon Point. Wendy and I arrived at that lighthouse at a dark night, thinking we were in the middle of nowhere.

We were driving lonely around 9:00 PM along the CA-1, planing to leave San Francisco the second day. Along the dark route, we only can barely hear the wave of ocean on the left, from deep down the cliffs.

Then there is light far away – the lighthouse. The house is always there, shining inn the dark, with reflection of the light on the surface of the ocean.

We have passed the lighthouse, but out of curiosity, I made an U turn when possible, and got back to a spur road leading to the lighthouse. That was pretty adventurous drive, since we didn’t know anything about it, and didn’t know what to expect. At the foot of the road, an old badge read: “Pigeon Point”.

It turned out the lighthouse was not lonely. At the foot of the lighthouse is an Pigeon Point Lighthouse Hostel. From the number of cars parked outside the hostel, we understood the hostel is more of a happy home, instead of a perfect background for a criminal scene.

We really wanted to get a room in that hostel, but the nice reception told us he had nothing left in that area. Anyway, we spent some time at the lighthouse, watching the stars on the Pacific ocean and listening to the “sound of waves crashing the Pacific coast”, as the hostel website put it.

I hope one day I can get back to the lonely Pigeon Point Lighthouse.

Many really great scenes are on the road, without any planning, and without any expectation. Only afterward you realized how beautiful it is.

Photo by (nz)dave

Shanghai is Hot and Humid

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After a week of incredibly nice weather, and beautiful sky, Shanghai returned to its gray, hot, and humid nature of summers.

Currently, the temperature of Shanaghai is 35°C, and humidity is 53%. I often pay more attention to temperature (well, this time, the visit to US enforced my attention to this metrics), but generally ignore humidity.

What does 53% means? I need to find out later. According to Wikipedia article on Humidity, “Shanghai and Hong Kong in China also have a extreme humid period in their summer months”. It is talking about weather like today. The 6km SW wind does not help at all.

Visiting Shanghai these days? Bad choice.

P.S. I am still keeping the sleep early and raise early theme after getting back to the States. The jet lag on the way back always helped to keep me an early raiser for a week or two before I return to my normal status. The key learning is, the only way to raise early is to go to bed early enough that you cannot fall asleep easily (an indicator that you slept early enough).

Lake Tahoe Photo of Me (Some kind of)

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Rick posted it on Sina Microblog about this photo. It is a late afternoon near the Lake Tahoe this March. If you watch this photo close enough, you will find the person at the lake is actually me.

photograph by Rick Zhuang

Thanks Rick!

Obviously, Rick has some nicer pictures of the same place without me breaking the beauty of the nature. Good photographer!

photograph by Rick Zhuang

photograph by Rick Zhuang

Now I have visited two of the most famous ski town in US, Tahoe in CA, and Aspen in CO. What are the others? Mt Rainer in WA?

Grand Canyon Photos

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These are the photos I took at the Grand Canyon.

Photograph by Jian Shuo Wang

Photograph by Jian Shuo Wang

Photograph by Jian Shuo Wang

Photograph by Jian Shuo Wang

Photograph by Jian Shuo Wang

Photograph by Jian Shuo Wang

Photograph by Jian Shuo Wang