S16 – Hangzhou – Pudong Expressway

During the three day vacation, the family went to Lin’an, the mountain area near Hangzhou. We used the G60 (Shanghai – Hangzhou) expressway on our way there, and used a new expressway S16 (Hangzhou – Pudong) Expressway back. Let me give you a quick overview of the new S16 Hangzhou – Pudong Expressway.

The new expressway 杭浦高速 is basically parallel to the old Shanghai – Hangzhou Expressway 沪杭高速. They both start from Hangzhou at basically the same place (about 5 km away from each other at the intersection of Hangzhou Ring Expressway (G2501), and extend to the Shanghai direction. The G60 (Shanghai – Hangzhou Expressway) is a little bit northward (1 o’clock direction), and the S16 is on the south (2 o’clock direction).

The G60 is very strait forward – it starts from Hangzhou and goes all the way to the Xinzhuang Intersection 上海莘庄立交.

The Hangzhou Pudong Expressway is more complicated. At the very beginning, it is called S16 (according to the numbering system in Zhejiang province). At the same time, it is also called G92 – the Hangzhou Ring Expressway of the National Highway System. It is common that a section of an expressway has more than one numbering system these days. Then, at the intersection of the Hangzhou Bay Bridge (The newly built bridge going cross the Hangzhou Bay, a long one), it is called G15 (The Shenyang to Haikou Expressway). The interesting part about that big intersection is, the east bound, and south bound roads are called G15, and the west bound, and north bound road is called G92.

After that intersection, as I explained, it continued to be called G15 until it gets to a new big intersection near Jinshan. The G15 continued to turn northward and follow the original A5. The S4 will pickup the road of original G15 (Hangzhou – Pudong Expressway) eastward. That S4 will finally end up at the Xinzhuang Interchange, and merge with G60.


在较大的地图中查看G50沪渝高速、G56杭瑞高速、G60沪昆高速、G92杭州湾环线高速、G9211甬舟高速

Train from Shenzhen to Guangzhou

In this Shenzhen, Guangzhou trip, I was impressed by the CRH train between Shenzhen and Guangzhou. The train is the same, but the schedule, and the train station, and the process are very different.

Schedule

Look at this schedule! There are train from Guangzhou to Shenzhen every few minutes from as early as 6:00 AM to 10:00 PM.

D7001 06:08 -07:26

D7013 06:40 -07:46

D7069 06:41 -08:01

D7091 07:10 -08:16

D7047 07:12 -08:31

D7135 07:40 -08:52

D7025 07:46 -09:06

D7113 07:50 -08:42

D7157 08:10 -09:16

D7037 08:25 -09:31

D7059 08:32 -09:51

D7081 08:35 -09:41

D7103 08:55 -10:01

D7125 09:05 -10:11

D7003 09:18 -10:24

D7147 09:30 -10:36

D7071 09:40 -10:46

D7015 09:46 -11:11

D7169 09:50 -10:56

D7093 10:15 -11:21

D7049 10:25 -11:31

D7115 10:35 -12:01

D7137 10:35 -11:41

D7027 10:45 -11:51

D7159 11:05 -12:11

D7039 11:18 -12:36

D7083 11:20 -12:26

D7061 11:40 -12:46

D7105 11:47 -13:06

D7127 11:50 -12:56

D7149 12:10 -13:16

D7005 12:16 -13:36

D7073 12:20 -13:26

D7171 12:45 -13:51

D7017 12:55 -14:01

D7095 13:05 -14:11

D7139 13:15 -14:21

D7051 13:19 -14:41

D7029 13:25 -14:31

D7117 13:45 -14:51

D7161 13:55 -15:16

D7085 14:00 -15:06

D7063 14:20 -15:26

D7041 14:23 -15:46

D7129 14:30 -15:36

D7151 14:50 -15:56

D7107 14:57 -16:16

D7075 15:00 -16:06

D7007 15:23 -16:41

D7173 15:25 -16:31

D7097 15:45 -16:51

D7019 15:52 -17:11

D7141 15:55 -17:01

D7031 16:15 -17:21

D7119 16:25 -17:31

D7053 16:27 -17:46

D7087 16:50 -18:02

D7065 17:00 -17:52

D7163 17:03 -18:26

D7131 17:10 -18:16

D7153 17:30 -18:36

D7043 17:32 -18:56

D7077 17:40 -18:46

D7109 18:00 -19:06

D7175 18:15 -19:21

D7009 18:20 -19:41

D7099 18:25 -19:31

D7143 18:45 -19:51

D7021 18:55 -20:01

D7121 19:05 -20:11

D7033 19:08 -20:26

D7055 19:30 -20:36

D7089 19:57 -21:16

D7165 20:00 -21:06

D7079 20:30 -21:36

D7111 20:40 -21:46

D7045 20:42 -22:01

D7101 21:15 -22:21

D7011 21:25 -22:31

D7145 21:35 -22:41

D7123 21:45 -22:51

D7023 21:47 -23:06

D7057 22:20 -23:26

D7035 22:22 -23:41

D7167 22:50 -23:56

Ticket

At the Guangzhou East Railway Station, they have separate ticket purchasing process. Passengers just need to go into the station without buying ticket. There are many automatic ticket vendor machines lining up. At the machine, you can buy train tickets of any future train of the day. The machine automatically assign the nearest train to you. The idea is, it is almost for sure that you can catch up a train in the next 10-20 minutes – something very like the metro system in Shanghai.

Shenzhen Station

At the Shenzhen train station, you can directly transit to the Hong Kong metro system, and the Shenzhen metro system.

Wow. I love this experience. Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Suzhou are not that connected, yet.

In Shenzhen

I am in Shenzhen.

For the first time, I see the city from top of a high building.

Hong Kong is just one bridge away.

Shenzhen is very like the life in Silicon Valley – green trees, clear sky, and … a little bit boring.

After the Tencent trip, we will appear in Netease in Guangzhou tomorrow.

Semi-Erotic Ballet in Argentina Pavilion

This is the third time I visit the Expo site. I don’t enjoy waiting in the long line for hours (up to 4 hours) under strong sun light, I choose some less popular pavilions to get start. My first visit happened to be Argentina Pavilion.

During the noon time, the theater was showing a ballet film. I don’t know the name, but something very strange happened. The film is semi-erotic, and semi-violent at least so with the Chinese standard. The story is a love story, and the 5 minutes long show is about two dancers (man and woman) half naked and artistically show the “love”, before they were shown completely naked in the bed…

It is pure artistic, and I have no problem with it. But that caused big problem to the audience. Obviously they didn’t expect how many children coming with their parents. The boy on the left side was forced to “sleep” on his mother’s lap, and the face of the girl three rows behind me was hidden behind big balloon by her mother. Other parents just brought their children strictly out of the theater.

For the older people, it is even a big problem. Most of them are very unease – they are more confused than interested. You know, it is awkward situation in that pavilion.

When the government takes care of its citizen too well, and protect all the adults as they were still 10 years old, film like this will never appear in this land, but Expo is a window for people to sniff the “outside” stuff. That is the key conflicts people encounter in many sites in expo.

Well… There are many other pavilions, but I just felt this scene to be the most funny.

Yifan is Three Years Old

Happy birthday to Yifan. Little Yifan is 3 years old today, officially.

We celebrated his birthday with his favorite cake, and brought him to his favorite playground. He really had a great day.

Yifan already grew up to be a big kid. He has his own principle, and his own rules already. Yifan loves to sing songs, and we are so lucky that we have a good singer in the house every day.

ShanghaiExpat Redirected to 114 Page

Mae from ShanghaiExpat need some help. ShanghaiExpat is one of the most popular English website for expats in Shanghai. When their server receives high load, their site is hi-jacked by the China Telecom to their 114 Search Page. They sent the following instruction so I can forward to my readers. If you have problem to access the site, you may find the following instruction helpful. Please also help ShanghaiExpat to spread out the word.

The following content is provided by ShanghaiExpat, used under permission.

If you’ve been having problems accessing our homepage, and being redirected to some random Chinese search engine called 114 then I’m afraid we can only humbly apologise. Due to the unique way that China Telecom works, when our server hits overload most of our traffic gets redirected directly to them.

Unfortunately there is no way for us to correct this problem. We had hoped that the new site and new server would resolve this problem but I’m afraid it hasn’t worked.

If you are experiencing this problem, you will need to do a couple of things to be able to reach us again.

1. Flush the dns on your system. (Don’t ask me what this is, I don’t have a clue. Our I.T team just told me how to do this.)

2. Empty your cache on your web browser.

This should reset something in your computer (and web browser) and allow you to directly access our homepage again.

If you don’t know how to do it (like me) then follow this simple guide that my boss has kindly given me.

Primary Instructions

The following instructions are tested and work on the platforms Vista/ Windows 7. If, after executing the primary instructions the problem still exists, there are additional instructions for resolving this problem.

o Step 1

Click on the start/windows icon to open up the dashboard panel. An example is shown below.

o Step 2

Type ‘cmd’ in the start search box. The first result should come up with a small black icon with the file name ‘

o Step 3

The previous action will open a terminal window. In this terminal window type the following command. ‘ipconfig/flushdns’. After hitting the enter key, you should be greeted with the response……

‘Successfully flushed the DNS Resolver Cache’. It should look like this on your screen.

Close the window, and then clear the ‘cache’ in your browser. Depending on what browser you are using, it is slightly different. But you be able to find the option or settings list somewhere in your browser. This should now resolve the’114 problem’.

In certain cases, this may not work. If so, please follow the secondary instructions below.

Secondary Instructions

The following instructions are for users who are still rerouted to 114 when trying to log onto particular sites.

o Step 1

Right-click on the internet connection sign at the bottom right-hand side of the taskbar. On Vista this should be a monitor with a globe on it. It should like this.

o Step 2

Click the ‘Manage Network Connections’ link in the left hand column. In Windows 7 this may be the ‘Change Adapter Settings’ option.

o Step 3

Right-click the active connection, which will usually be a ‘Wireless Network Connection’ on a laptop and a ‘Local Area Connection’ on a Desktop. Don’t worry about previous semantics; just ensure that you right click the connection with which you are connected to the internet. From the popup menu, select ‘Properties’.

o Step 4

There will be a popup window on whether to allow administrative privileges, just click continue. The properties window will then open. In this window select the ‘Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP /IPv4) list item so it is highlighted and click ‘Properties’.

o Step 5

Insert the actual DNS records necessary to work anywhere near convenient in China. Select ‘Use the following DNS Server addresses and set the preferred DNS server to ‘202.109.14.5’. Set the alternate DNS server to ‘124.74.213.68’. This action is depicted below. After this is done click ‘OK’ and this window will close. Close the remaining window and repeat the ‘Primary Instructions’ listed at the beginning of the article.

So that’s it. According to our I.T team that’s how you crack the 114 problem. We know it’s a pain and our I.T team is searching for a way round this process. However because the problem is directly related to China Telecom, it is not as easy as to completely fix as we had hoped. I hope the guide has proved helpful and not put you off visiting us.

Become a Baixing User

Happy Children Day.

A good news. If you are not using Baixing (one of the largest online classified sites and my company), you should do it now.

Using this link to post an ad today, and you can get 25 RMB worth of coupon. You can buy some interesting service like “refresh” on Baixing.com. Hope you enjoy the free gift.

Back from Beijing

The Beijing trip is very intensive. I met with many people:

CHINICT guys, GOAP, Christine Lu…

Li Min

Yumin

Chedong, Ada

Liang Gongjun

Chenjun

Rick

Zheng Yun

Bsun

XLVector

Hongbo

Dongqing

Boyu

Liu Yuan (Kevin)

Wanghua

Kaifu

Cuijin

Dai Zhikang

Peter Zheng

Beijing is a media center, I confirm that.

Beijing is the center of Internet in China. Positive confirmation for that.

Travel is life intensified

The new spring of Internet in China is coming, either at the second half of this year or 2011. I am very sure about it after attending the China Webmaster Conference.

Gary Wang’s Speech

Just read Gary’s speech on GroupM Asia. Very inspirational, and well written. You should read it.

Like all explorers before, there are plenty of things in the world to concern us and tie us down: money, relationships, families, values, customs, rules and regulations, but since we are here in this pale world to paint some colorful colors, to explore, to create new things, to inevitably break up things, to push the boundaries, and since surely we will get old and get mature and settled down, become one day the establishment to be broken up by the newer generation, and become the dead old man, I know the boundaries will eventually catch up and get me. But when they do get me, I hope to have traveled more distances, and have had a lot of fun.

More is here: http://blog.tudou.com/?p=97042

USA Pavilion at Shanghai Expo

I was at the USA Pavilion at Shanghai Expo. Surprisingly, it is much better than a tent (as people joked about it when the funding problem was not solved).

They have a nice opening area outside the 1776 Suite (VIP area) on the second floor)

Pay attention to the “hard” word in the posting. Funny. A good way to cure a minor design mistake.

As expected, there are many people visiting the expo this morning:

Similarity among Opposite Opinions

I found out an interesting fact: there are more similarity among the two opposite opinions than those who share more similarity.

Here are example:

If Tom and John are arguing Linux is better or Windows is better, they share more in common than another guy who thinks both Linux and Windows are good, depending on where to use.

Another example: Tom loves Facebook, and John hates Facebook, but they share much more in common than another guy who has never heard of Facebook, or yet another guy who does not care.

Long Line in Expo as a Biased Filter

In a meeting this afternoon, heard someone from one Expo pavilion. They have one of the longest lines in the expo site. The interesting finding they have was, the long line has acted as a biased filter. Most of the visitors coming to the pavilion are either labor workers, or old people – people who are less sensitive in time. They also want to attract people with higher education, or at least between 20-40, but they are just big fans of waiting in the line for hours.

I am Hiring an Assistant

I tend to separate my professional life (as CEO of one of the largest classified sites in China), and my blogging life separate. You typically see a person behind this blog, not a CEO. This entry is a rare exception, because I do need some help from my readers.

Simply put it, I am hiring an executive assistant. The job posting is here on Baixing.com. Obviously, you need to be able to read Chinese to apply for this position, so I didn’t provide translation. General introduction about Baixing is here, with other opening positions.

Besides the formal job description I posted (I wrote that myself), here are some personal notes about this job.

First of all, this person is my personal assistant, with the goal to help me to get organized, and save time. When I routinely need to interview job candidates, travel in China and in the States, and prepare all type of documents for journalists, government, board meetings, I need someone to help me take care of it. I am a person with strong passion for happiness, vision, inspiration, but not good at keeping myself organized, and feel bored about routines, and details. I know myself, and now is the point that I need a personal assistant on this.

Second, this role is critical for the success of the company. To run a company is a fine art, and we need to make every details right. The office setting, the culture, the outing, meetings, gifts, and celebration events all add up to the final result. This role help to create a great company. There is a nice office with splendid view (and a small garden on the 18th floor facing Xujiahui villa area) for you to exercise your creativity, and imagination. There are all kinds of events that you will organize (FYI, our next company outing are very likely to be in Japan). There are sports events every week that you may enjoy planning and participating yourself. We need this person to be a star of the company to energize people, and making people as productive as they can. It is exciting, and (well, I want you to be well prepared) very challenging.

Finally, Just in case you are wondering, we pay very well. The number of people we serve divided by number of our 20 people means, everyone single of us is serving millions of users daily. This role is backing everyone in the team, and we know the value, and we pay for that value.

If you are interested in this position, please send your resume to shhr@baixing.com. Please include wangjianshuo in your title, so it can get my personal attention. We will send written test (don’t worry, just two questions) to selected candidates, and arrange interview if you pass the written test. Don’t hesitate to contact us. Although we hold a high bar for this job, the reason I am still posting this blog is, we still haven’t find the right person yet. Maybe you are exactly who we are looking for.

Looking forward to hearing you, and I hope I have the honor to work with you.

MeiGuoGuan at Twitter

Two comment:

  1. The best way to get attention is to give attention. (MeiGuoGuan did, and I talked back).
  2. Twitter Blackbird Pie is nice – a simple to dead tool, but solve a big problem. Are people in twitter intentionally want to embarrass people in the Internet field by introducing really simple, but popular tools?

we are following @jianshuo after reading his blog post http://bit.ly/9nlhnDless than a minute ago via dabr

New Media from the State Department

I got an email from Philippe Reines, about the upcoming visit of Sectary Clinton to the Shanghai Expo site. Obviously I was just one of the many people he sent our his email to – bloggers, and other “new media” persons in Shanghai, and in China.

I was amazed by the message it sends – the State Department is engaging new media (bloggers like me) about the activities from the US government. Although I doubt the effectiveness of pinging each individual bloggers/new media about an update, it is a great move, at least a great attempt.

The effectiveness question I have in my mind is about the way they engage new media. Unlike traditional media, there are just few of them (well, I admit hundreds of them) that matter, and to briefing them is about 90% of the communication. Now, it is not only the increase influence of new media that attracts people’s attention, it is also the number of individual bloggers or participants of any SNS site. Is getting hold of individual like myself really matters? Shall we run programs (not just individual) to engage them?

P.S. I followed @StateDept on twitter.

OOB for Few Days

Recently, I am busy working on recruiting – getting the best people possible for the Baixing team. Chinese Job Posting is here. It takes quite some time, so, I am going to be OOB (Out of Blogging) for few days to concentrate to the most important job I have. If you happen to be willing to work at Baixing (formally Kijiji China), you are very welcome to send your resume this way. We have exciting positions for Software Engineer, Architect, Marketing Manager, and PR Manager here. The quicker I can fill these positions, I sooner I can get back to normal posting schedule on this blog. :-) We are open to talents across the whole China, and will also be interested in people from other part of this world.