Does Policital System in Taiwan Work?

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This is a discussion in the previous article: Millionaire Country Singapore. China?. There are many comments on Taiwan and I liked it. Take the Wonton’s comment as an example:

@JS:

Be very careful of what you wish for. I don’t want to go into details but in Taiwan, politics has degenerated into a bad soap opera. While it is true there is democracy, the system has open it’s doors to many fools and crooks. The voters have no idea who to trust. And the media is forever ready to pounce on gossip leaving the leaders no time to do what they were supposed to do. I don’t know what kind of “great hope” you saw in Taiwan’s “experiment”. Was it the wrestling kung fu brawl in their parliament ? There is no such thing as being “ahead” or “behind” in political processes. The only thing that matters is weather it works or not. Yes, while you rejoice in knowing that the crook president is behind bars, what about the 8 wasted years of screwing up the country ?

Politics is not entertainment. If we wait for the system to mature, the people would have starved to death.

Singapore has a one party show, Japan had a one party show for 54 years. As for the often repeated “one man” of Singapore, do note that the prime minister had changed twice. It just happened that the son happened to be in charge today. Please do not equate this situation with your North Korean neighbours. George Bush Sr and Jr. were seperated by Clinton, and nobody made a stink. The independant history of Singapore is only 44 years. While it is true that it should not, and cannot be compared with China, What the “infamous” man and party acheived is truely impressive and astounding.

When you have the lives of one billion people at stake, the last thing you want to do is “experiment”.

Posted by: wonton on September 22, 2009 3:20 PM

Here was my reply, and I would like to involve more people to discuss on the political system in Taiwan.

Regarding Taiwan, as my disclaimer goes, I don’t know too much details, but I want to share my thoughts based on the limited information I got from news (NOT CCTV news).

Re: fight in parliament. Fight is not a problem. If people don’t fight in parliament, they either fight on the street (violence!) or the rights of certain people are suppressed. I don’t believe it will be physical fighting for too long – it is just starting point.

Re: selection of CHEN Shui-Bian as president. The fake bulletin worked, and many fake promise worked to get him the way to power, but can we have a better way to educate the mass people about how vote works? People need education to excise the power in their hands. The education is not a easy to do – it takes centuries, and many generations. When history story like “President Chen” appear in the text book, people will learn how to vote. I don’t believe that people including myself will know how to do it without excises it many times, and make some mistakes.

Re: sentence of CHEN. The court only proved guilty for one former president, and people point fingers to them (especially CCTV and all media agencies in China by the order of central propaganda department): Hey! Look at what type of president democracy brought to Taiwan. The recent MA got very embarrassed because of the late response to earth quake. Shall we complain that Taiwan don’t have a “God” like Chairman Mao, or Chiang Kai-shek or Chiang Ching-kuo. Well. That is because they have put everyone who think they are bad into jail, and then they naturally became God. To have a graceful president means the president is above the Republic, and to have an embarrassed president like CHEN and MA, or Nixon, Clinton in US is no embarrassing, it is the hard fact that the Republic is above the individual, which is the goal of the founding fathers of the Republic of China.

Re: politics has degenerated into a bad soap opera, yes. It appears so in the last 8 years. But it is just like seeing a new born baby – you see it is on the track to be better – I am sure a second guy shoot is counter-productive for the next president candidate. There will always be new ways to fool the public beside what CHEN did, but people will be educated. I cannot imagine a way for people to progress without real practices like this. Between a dead-end road system that appears to be strong, and a promising system just like a new-born baby, I would like to generally classified Taiwan to the later. Did I see progress from LI, to CHEN, to MA? I think so.

Re: When you have the lives of one billion people at stake, the last thing you want to do is “experiment”. Yes and No. The hope of China lies in many people at least think about it and understand what the arrow of history is pointing to. Unfortunately, no one can possibly know the result of any change (or as you call it, experiment), including His Majority Chairman MAO, but I believe in natural evolve of human society.

A little bit long, but I’d be happy if someone educate me about a real Taiwan if what I am having is just an illusion. I never been to Taiwan or lived there, anyway.

Millionaire Country Singapore. China?

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My reader Soon sent me an email about this topic:

Singapore is a country rises from rags to riches and become the 3rd richest country in the world. A fervent autocratic and capitalist country. Can China repeats the same feat? Can you put this in your blog and let your readers debate? (more)

What is your thought? Here is mine.

Don’t Compare China and Singapore

With all the due respect to Singapore, I just don’t want to compare China and Singapore. You can compare Singapore and Shanghai, or Hong Kong, or we can compare a system, but on the macro level, Singapore and China may not be the good subject to compare.

Why?

Simply because of the scale of the two countries.

Singapore is a country (or a city) with 4 million population. Hong Kong is much bigger, 7 million, and Shanghai has 16 million local residents, and 19 million population in total. Besides there, there are many difference.

Free Trade Zone

Hong Kong and Singapore are very like each other, since they are free trade zones. Correct me if I am wrong since I know little about macro economy here. A free trade cannot be too large since it must has a relative small domestic economy. I have never seen a free trade zone as big as China. There are some free trade zones in China, like the one in Dalian, and Shanghai, but to include any city in China except Hong Kong, and Macau may not be feasible. Not only China, all other trade partners may not want it. A WTO is an attempt to archive some type of free trade, but it is still very far from free trade zones.

Politics

To rule a city of several million is of cause very different than ruling a bigger country. Having said that, I never want to use the population as an excuse to debate against democracy, or other political system. On the contrary, a big country actually needs more wisdom in political system, like the democracy system can be a good option (please note: I am not 100% sure, because it has never been tested in China in the last few thousands years). If we are still OK to have a centralized government to rule a city (which is fine, and maybe the only cost-effective way to do it), it is too hard for a bigger country, if you want to run it well. For example, I don’t want someone in Beijing to make decisions for me about what my children should believe. So, there is huge difference here between Singapore and China.

Millionaire?

I don’t think China can be a millionaire country. I just want China to be a country without poverty or injustice. If money represents ownership of resources, it is not a big deal to the earth when everyone in Singapore is millionaire, but in China, that is impossible. I don’t know what it means for 1/4 of the worlds population to be millionaires. At that time, USD, or RM, or RMB, or EURO must have been hugely deflated. What I am saying is, I don’t envision everyone to be super rich in near future. To have everyone have a reasonable life (no starving), and receive education, and have clean water to drink are the most important mission for the people on this land.

Singapore’s Inspiration

Although I don’t think we can compare these two countries, Singapore’s success did give people inspiration. It is one of the few Asian countries to reach a very high level of economy success and social improvement. I visited Singapore in 2000, and many things I saw became real in Shanghai. For example, I took the subway to take the ring ride in Singapore, and reached the far north (near the Malaysia entrance), and impressed by people living far away from downtown but can still conveniently go to work. Now the same place appeared in Shanghai. It is called Xinzhuang.

A Car Plate = 27200 RMB in Sept 2009

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The car plate bidding this morning resulted in the lowest bidding price to be 27200 RMB for one car plate in Shanghai (news source)

I kept tracking the car plate since 2003. I wanted to buy a car plate at the very beginning, and then choose a Hangzhou plate. Now, Wendy and I started to think about a Shanghai plate. We planned to participate in the bidding this month, but just didn’t take action to pay the required 2000 RMB bidding deposit. Maybe the next month.

Group Rental Appeared in my Neighborhood

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My neighbor knocked at our door this afternoon, and asked me to look at an apartment upstairs. They are transforming the apartment into a group rental suite.

What is Group Rental

It is like shared rooms – many people share the same apartment to lower the cost. But it is not exactly shared room. It is a very professional business. It transfers some good apartment into a new type of suite – separate the rooms into several independent rooms and rent it out separately. The biggest difference between group rental and shared room is, either the number of people living in the room (low end group rental), or the change of the house structure (high end group rental).

Low End Group Rental

The low end group rental is pretty obvious: they put 20 beds into one apartment, and there are 4-8 people living in the double deck room which was originally designed for one person. That is very annoying and cause security and fire risks to the building and other residents.

High End Group Rental

I have visited one pretty high end group rental. It is located in a top residential area, and it is a normal suite from outside. But when you enters, there is a long hall way, and there are 3 secure doors on the right, and two on the left. It is that type of door used for external doors – robbery proof and noisy proof. Each tenant has two keys: one for the external public door, and one for the private door.

On the left, if you open a box, there are five separate water meter, and electricity meter.

For the rooms, every room is equipped with bed, TV set (with satellite!), network cable, micro-wave, and a shower room. Due to the constrain of the original house, they share the same rest room.

The cost for such a room is about 1000 RMB.

I was very impressed when I saw this. Think about the value of 1000 RMB! It is like a residential suite with everything you need as a single, and it enjoys the same view and service as other residents in the top residential area (look at the big grassland downstairs).

The Problem

The benefits for the tenant, and owner of such property are obvious. Cheap but good place to stay, and higher return than renting the whole out to one tenant. It just needs some professional work.

The problem is for the neighbors. What if there are a lot of people living in the same area designed for households? They change all the time, and they are more like party guys, and they by pass all the security checks – tend to leave all the doors open since they don’t have enough door passes.

It brings additional burden to the building, and cause all kinds of risks that a residential area shouldn’t face.

My Naughty Neighbor

So, back to my story. When we found it out, the room was under construction. Workers are shipping many security doors, many hot water machines into the room. It is obvious that all the stuff were used. I guess they were just kicked from another residential area.

Many neighbors gathered, and wanted to do something. Then, the problem is, what can we do?

I described this dilemma in another article . Without a working legal system, everything is within the same government/party system, and you have to keep your finger crossed to have a “good person” handling the case.

The property management company obviously don’t know what they should do. They said they will report to “the above”. That’s it, and I don’t have any hope about what they do.

Then I called 962121, the hot-line by the government to solve this type of complain. They promised 15 days to call back. I have kept the tracking number.

What will happen? I don’t know. The first thing I thought about was to sue them. But, Hmm… “Suing? Are you joking?”

My Recent Thoughts

I am aware that I started to complain more than few years ago. I acknowledge the change, since the more I interact with this society, the harder I feel to get things done. Not just me – I think many people face the same problem. For small stuff like this, I tried to use my own way to solve it, although I know a better solution is call my friend in the government – Hmmm. I don’t like to do it that way. But for really big things like getting my son into a kindergarten, who knows what I will do?

In a twisted and weird society, you just cannot say, “I will do anything for my son”, or “I will do anything for my principle”, because you find yourself in a strange position when the two conflicts.

Stay at Home During Oct Holiday

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It seems the travel plan is just a plan. The doctor told me to keep the foot out of the ground for another two months. That means, I cannot use this foot to walk for three months. There is a Chinese saying that “any injure to the bone needs 100 days to cure”. That seems, unfortunately, true.

So, I am thinking about other things to do. The most possible thing to do during the holiday is to stay on bed, and really take care of the foot. The doctor also criticized me harshly about stilling going to work during the past month. He said what I need to do most is to stay on bed, and keep the foot higher. The X-Ray of the injured place does not look good either – the leak on the bone is still clearly seen.

:-)

That is life, isn’t it?

Tomorrow is Saturday again. Another day to stay on bed?

Flickr Travel

The other day to travel is to use Flickr or Google Earth, and Street View to travel to other part of the world. Look at the beautiful scene of Dubai!

The following images comes from Flickr. Credit is printed on the photos.

Life in Beijing Must be Interesting

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There are always surprises for people in Beijing. The residence just survived from a troubled Olympic Games the last year, and they welcomed the 60th anniversary of this country.

I hosted a friend today, who just get here from Beijing. She was happy that she choose flight of last night, since the Beijing airport will be closed for two days, and she can only fly back on Saturday night. That was of short notice, because they didn’t really disclose when the biggest rehearsal will happen.

Along with the close down of airport, it is side most of shops and office buildings along the Chang’an Street have been closed. I have another friend who worked in the SOHU area of Jiang Guo Road. He wrote to me yesterday and told me that they were suddenly notified that they will be required to leave their office building before noon tomorrow and for the rest of Friday…

My friend who lives in US and just visit Beijing and Shanghai also told me that she really saw the power of a communist government.

Hmmm….

This reminded me of my conversation with Robert Mao about the topic of people’s choice of immigration to Europe and US the other day. He said: “The best solution is to have a better motherland”. He is very right, and that is exactly the pain hidden in many Chinese people’s heart.

CMB, HSBC, CITI Swift Code

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I love to study all kinds of “code”, since it is a perfect combination of society and computer technology. I don’t like to use addresses that is readable by human, since it is not accurate, and a computer code of whatever kind is attractive to me. I have studied the code on Shanghai taxi, Chinese car plate and PNR on all airline tickets.

SWIFT Code

SWIFT standards for Society of Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (source). It is just like an international post code for banks to identify another bank.

Just as there are 6 digits for Chinese post code, the SWIFT is a 8 digit code (with option 3 more code attached).

The first four characters are bank code.

The following four are city name – two for country, and two for city. The country part follows ISO 3166-1 alpha-2, or to be easier, the top level domain name for the country.

Then the additional 3 can be branch offices, with default value to XXX – the primary office.

Bank Codes

Here is my collection of codes of banks.

DEUT = Deutsche Bank

HSBC = HSBC (Hong Kong-Shanghai Banking Cooperation) – nice name

CITI = CITI (Citi Bank) – nice name

CMBC = CMB (China Merchant Bank)

PCBC = China Construction Bank

BKCH= Bank of China – bad code

Bank of Agriculture

COMM = Bank of Communications – good name

ICBK = Bank of Industry and Commerce – really bad code since ICBC was taken

This is a handy tool to look up all the names and codes.

Country and City

In China, it is always CN. So CN… CN… CN… for the foreign and local banks in China.

The city code is weird, since there is no standard code for each city in each country, so it is very confusing. It seems there are different code for the same city.

There are at least two ways to say Shanghai: SH or SX.

There are two ways to say Beijing: BJ or BX.

I saw BS as in CMBCCNBS050 for CMBC

Final Examples

For international wire transfer, the following are the best bet with sources from their websites. Disclaimer: Never trust a non-office website like this one when you want to wire money.

CMBC => CMBCCNBSXXX (source)

Bank of China = BKCHCNBJ

HSBC = HSBCCNSH – the best swift code I saw so far – clear and simple.

Citibank = CITICNSX – What is SX? Is it Shanghai?

Old Technology?

When I started to transfer money, I am using CMB Online Bank, and PayPal, and Alipay. It is all electronic, and the destination is accurately identified by an email address or an account number.

Using bank transfer, you not only need to provide the account name, account number, and also the ADDRESS of the bank, and many other information. It seems to be complicated. I just feel the bank system is slow moving – just because of the network effect of existing infrustructure, like SWIFT, it is very hard for other system and more advanced system to replace it. It just takes time and some opportunities.

No Taxi at Huaihai Road

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It is so hard to get a taxi. Wendy and I were at the Huaihai Road and Xizang Road at around 9:00 PM tonight. We waited there for about half an hour but still don’t think there is any possibility to catch a taxi. There are people on both side of the streets waving their hands to every car – no matter it is a taxi, or non-taxi, but for a long time, there is no taxi stopping at all.

After about 1 hour standing on the street, we finally got on friends’ car to get back home. Thanks Echo…

The Demand Meets the Supply

It is not a secret that Shanghai is lack of taxi. It is very hard to get a taxi at rush hours (well, rush hours means 7:00 AM to 10:00 PM, including weekends).

Here are some records of terrible taxi waiting experience.

Hire a Taxi? Avoid Rainy Friday

40 Minutes for a Taxi at Hongqiao

Avoid Hong Qiao Airport on Friday Night

I chatted with a taxi driver few days ago. As almost everyone else, he complained about their tough life.

Shanghai Taxi Driver’s Life Tougher

Taxi Driver’s Life Tougher – Part II

But he is happy that the total number of taxi available in Shanghai has not changed for many years (is it true? I consistently get this message, but cannot find the official data). He said if the government increase the number of taxi, that will be disaster for their lives.

Who Got the Money?

Obviously, it is tougher at the current situation for taxi drivers if they increase the taxi number. But is it the right choice to keep it stable?

Look at this city. How many people rushed into this city in the last few years? What is the expectation for transportation? What is the passenger number for taxi? The nightmare to grasp a taxi tells the answer.

My personal guess is, the taxi company just got too much out of the taxi drivers.

Shanghai is famous for expense car plate (37K per plate in the bidding of last month), but a BX plate worth 800K RMB. BX car plate is a special plate for individual taxi drivers. They don’t belong to a taxi company and they get most of the money they earn. (Cautious: Avoid Taxi with BX in Plate Number).

The 800K RMB price tells the secret.

The big taxi companies monopolies the market, and charges very hight for the taxi drivers. The taxi driver’s life get tougher, so they cannot agree to put more taxi on the road. Then the problem is, the city is trading taxi availability for the profit of taxi companies.

An Open Market

What if it is an open market, and a free market?

Now, it is still unclear whether car pooling is legal or illegal. Although it is a general practice (and a very environment friendly approach), it is very risky.

Han Han talked about a trap on this blog the other day. It is about a story that the Shanghai government hired people to pretend to be in emergency (stomach pain, etc), and waving for help on the road. When victim driver stop by to help, the driver will be caught and charged for illegal operation, and fine 10K RMB.

There is no way to verify the story, but I am not surprised at all, since it matches my perception of how they behave. The society has been cold already, and they are trying very hard to pin-point those small percentage of people who still have conscious, and good heart and fine them for doing good deed, so they won’t do it again, and more importantly, tell others not to do it in the future.

Connecting the raid for illegal car operation, and lack of taxi, you see a scary picture.

Yifan, Dad and Mom

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These are the photos Yifan and I took one week ago:

Below: Yifan loves to be with his dad – laughs all the time:

Photograph by: Wendy Fan

Below: Yifan loves to watch Qiaohu (Clever Tiger) – a DVD program produced in Shanghai. As always, he has his red car with him – all the time:

Yifan is genereally a happy boy and loves to laugh at many things, including dad waving at him, or simply see his dad jumps from one sofa to another.

There is one person I feel Yifan loves more – his mom. His mom spent so much time with him, and he now is like another mom – he speaks in a way like his mom – like “Yeee…..?” whenever he sees something strange – just like his mom Wendy.

Below: Yifan’s poor dad – the cast on the right hand. I would be happy if you pay attention to the “father” on the toy brick board. I asked Yifan: How is this guy? Yifan said: Baba.

This is another “dad” I created for Yifan. As expected, Yifan laughed out loudly, and almost rolled on the ground:

At last, is the poor Yifan getting back from hospital that night.

He is as calm, cheerful as any previous days, but his parents were all in tears that night.

Small Cartoon Policeman at Each Website

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My reader ecodelta asked:

I have one question. What are those small cartoon police at the bottom of the website? To denounce violation of copyright by TV viewers? Strange…. I am confused ;-)

He was referring to the two small policemen icons at the bottom of http://ppstream.com/. It is not just for their website. If you browse Chinese Internet more often, you will find it everywhere. It is standard requirement by the police department for most Internet companies.

The Icons

The three icons are: a male policeman on the left – he is called Ping Ping; a female policeman on the right – she is called An An; a police office in the middle (no name given yet).

Ping An means Safe in Chinese. You can just think of it as calling two policemen “Sa” and “Fe”. The same type of meaning.

The Goal

Internet has been so important in people’s life that policeman cannot ignored. And the police department has so strong power that they can ask commercial websites to do anything they want them to do. So they asked them to put on this logos. Clicking the logo will land you to an online forum the local police department setup. There are dedicated resources to answer the questions, and to react to people’s claim. The idea is, it is just like a virtual policestation that people can turn to for help.

Is it an interesting idea that is only feasible in China?

Links at Footer

From time to time, there are government departments to add links at the homepage to different government websites. At the very beginning, all websites require an ICP license displayed at the bottom, and link to the page of Ministry of Information Industry, then Ping Ping and An An to police, and later, there are National Anti-Virus, and Anti-Attack Information Center. The idea behind it is simple: a link can solve the problem, so adding more links.

I Need Some Change

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I am not happy these days. Something terrible happens in life, one after another.

I broke my ankle first, and one month later, Yifan’s head is hurt. (well, I am very cheerful when my ankle broke – a very good experience for me, but I was mad when Yifan got hurt)

My mood falls down to lowest point in the recent years.

When things that is completely out of your control happens, people are more likely to be religious. Should I turn to a temple or church to find out some cure? Hmm… Wendy has already suggested me not to think that way.

To change the mood a little bit, we bought a new TV today. I will buy a good video camera (Sony HDRCX500E) this week. Then we are planning a travel this holiday.

I Need to Travel

The 8 day long national holiday is coming (Oct 1 to Oct 8), and we are thinking of getting out of Shanghai during the holiday and relax – to change the mood. We didn’t have this plan before. It is too late for a trip to Japan, or Europe – the two dream destination. Then we are now looking at another dream destination: Cairo.

Budget was always a big concern for us to choose where to go, but when we are in bad mood, we are not that sensitive to cost. Wendy and I just need to go to somewhere (better if it is far away), and spend some days.

We will decide whether we go or not tomorrow.

(Yes. I am still very sad these days, when I see Yifan – He is as cheerful as always, and he clearly shows his love and happiness to be with me)

Friends

This afternoon, when Yifan fells asleep, Wendy and I called our friends for a gather at Little Garden (220 Taikang Road), and dinner at Casa 13 (1100 Huashan Road). That helps. Sometimes you just need to talk and explore what others are thinking about. At least, good friends can act as a sounding board to help yourself to see your own situation better. Lesson learnt: When needed, pick up the phone and call your friends. That is always a very good choice. Thanks Eddie, Helen, Charles, Eric and Apple for your accompany.

P.S. Going bed now. Yifan is going bed, and he is calling me to tell stories for him.

Bought a TCL Internet TV

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Wendy and I have been watching small screen TV for a long time. We have been talking about it since we moved in our new home in 2001. Interestingly enough, we are never too materialism to buy big TV, big car, or big nice bags. The current 29” TV worked pretty good for us for a long time. These days, we just started to think about it: isn’t it nice to have a bigger TV?

Story: My “Old” Car

Talking about my tendency to stay as low-cost as possible, I thought about my friend Elliot Ng’s kind joke about my 5-year old Fiat car:

In China, famous Chinese blogger Wang Jianshuo is definitely not poor. Why? He has a car. However, Wang Jianshuo is not rich either. Why? Just look at his car (yes, I’m just teasing him, he’s a down to earth kind of guy).

Yes. Look at my car – at the current price, it is still a little bit cheaper than a Shanghai car plate.

Back to the TV Story

Back to the TV story, Wendy and I feel that we should treat ourselves a little bit better after both of us working hard for 10 years. We deserve a little bit better TV, especially a 52” LCD TV set cost less than 10K RMB (1500 USD). We thought about 46” initially and found the price gap between 46” and 52” is not obvious. We went to Yongle Applicant Shopping Center in Cloud Nine Shopping Center at Zhongshan Park area, and placed the order. I am expecting the TV set to be delivered tomorrow.

Impressive Internet TV

We initially thought about Sony, but I just realized that in the home entertainment segment, big foreign brands like Sony, Panasonic, LG, and Samsung do not have too much competitive advantage. Actually, local brands offer much better price and functions.

I was a happy customer of Konka before, and this time, I choose TCL because their very impressive Internet TV.

TCL Internet TV – MiTV

I know this idea will raise many concerns from my readers, and my purchase of this TV set can be contraversial. The Internet TV actually has a P2P Movie Player embedded. You just need to plug the network cable into the back of the TV set, and you see a huge list – thousands of, if not tens of thousands of DVD titles. You click on the title, and it plays immediately. Most of the newly released TV are in HD format – very nice to a big screen.

The back-end engine is PPStream, a P2P network for people to see real time TV programs, and DVDs. Via PPS and its head-to-head competitor PPLive, you can basically watch anything that is digital – free. Let me show you a sample page. You can watch the 1600 American DVD titles.

Copyright? Well, Can We Change a Topic?

Yes. The content is pirated, or it is not licensed. This product raised many discussion and criticism within China also, and there are companies suing TCL for this product, but as of today, all the major TV manufactures in China is shipping this type of Internet TV (free HD DVD TV) and is 1/4 of all LCD TV Set. It is increasing at 300% per month according to some reports. Millions of Internet TV are sold out to families like us.

What is the impact of this wave of Internet TV to the TV set industry, to the movie industry, and to the culture of this country? We need to wait and see.

The Chinese Way

After seeing the impressive MP4 Player, the Internet TV impressed me again not just by “pirating DVDs”, but also by some nice technology.

When we checked out Sony Bravia TV with Internet cable, they offer a dream of all devices supporting DLNA protocol, so TV can talk with PC, and mobile phone, and it only support MPEG format.

The Chinese Internet TV does not take that “protocol” and “agreement” approach. They just can ready any share folder on the same hub, and play all kinds of possible media, from WMV(720P), MPEG2/4(720P), RMVB, H.264, WMV, MPEG1/2/4, RM, AVI, ASF, VOB, MKV, FLV, DIVX. They support all kinds of subtitle format like SUB, SRT,SMI. They support all type of audio format: MP3, OGG, WMA, WAV, and of cause almost all possible image format.

They of cause support USB stick, or hard disk via USB, and all kinds of interesting way of sharing storage in China.

It is just like the Chinese society: don’t rely on others – everything you just do it yourselves, and provide a great user experience.

I will write a thorough review when we get the TV set few days later.

What is your first impression of such product?

P.S. There are some screen shots in this news article.

A Good Video Camcorder

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I have postponed it for a long time – I really need a good video camera to take videos for Yifan. We are not using the pretty early model of flip. What do you recommend me to buy?

My current choices are either a Sony HDR something, or a Flip UltraHD. I want to make the decision quick, and getting back with a good camera to record the precious life we have with Yifan.

Related:

Robert Scoble thinks Flip MinoHD is the best.

TechCrunch guys thinks Flip is bad: The Flip v. My Cheap Canon Camera: Flip Loses Across The Board

7 Years of Blogging

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Today marks the completion of my 7 years of blogging, and this entry is the first one in my eight years since I started blog on Sept 11, 2002. In the last 2557 days, I wrote 2498 entries on this blog, leaving just 59 days blank.

There is nothing to celebrate, since I am in the worst mood after Yifan was hurt yesterday. Obviously compared to the pain of the families of 911 victims, it is nothing, and every time I mark anniversary of my blog, I should have showed respect to the people who lost their loved ones in that disaster.

What happened to me in the last 7 years?

  • I turned myself from an engineer in Microsoft to an entry level entrepreneur.
  • Wendy and I got married and lived happily together since then.
  • Yifan joined us – what a great addition to the family (sorry, Yifan. I should not have allowed you to be hurt).
  • I traveled a lot – and recorded most of my travel on this little blog.
  • I thought a lot about the future of China, and I complained a lot, I suggested a lot, and I recorded a lot about this country.
  • I saw the change happened in Shanghai. I recorded many of the positive changes, and also noted the bad side from time to time.
  • I experienced SARS, H1N1, and other types of spread out of the diseases.
  • I completed many projects in the last few years in Microsoft when I have both the energy/idea and time to do it.
  • I met many new friends in the last few years, and that newly defined the boundary of my world.
  • I chased many things that is interesting to me, and learnt new things all the time.
  • I grew from 25 years old to 32 years old.
  • I witnessed the fall of Internet and the booming
  • I recorded my happiness, my exciting journey, my milestones in business and family, and sadness, frustration, and confusion.
  • …

I am actually not in the mood to write a lengthy post, but as a tradition, I think I should write something on anniversary of blogging.

Yifan’s Head was Hurt

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Sept 10 is a bad day. Bad day!

Yifan fell over, and hurt his head at 8:00 this morning. We sent him to hospital and have doctor sutured the wound. My heart was completely broken. The wound was about 1cm long on Yifan’s forehead, and took 5 surgical sewing.

This is the toughest day for me in the recent years. I worry so much that there will be a scar left on Yifan’s head. We tried everything we can to avoid that. But nothing is really that helpful after it happened.

Although I read a lot about happiness (and sadness), the theories just cannot help myself out from the deep pain. I complained myself not to take care of Yifan better to avoid it (Ayi brought Yifan out, and he fell – why I didn’t go with them?). I asked the question why it happens to Yifan. I wake up from deep thoughts in meetings wondering whether it happened or not.

For the first time, I realized that it is completely a different thing of hurting myself, and see my son hurt. The later is much more painful than doing it to myself.

I know it is not that a big deal – many people told me that it is so common to little boys, but I just cannot accept it. It is so painful to see the scar on the Yifan’s head – what a lovely, perfect boy. I saw him arriving to this world with my own eyes. What a perfect gift but I didn’t protect him well.

Yifan, I am sorry.

PubSubHubbub is Interesting

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Was away from tech for a long time.

Noticed Brad’s new protocol PubSubHubbub.

I told Wendy the name of this protocol. She, as I expected, was quite amused by the pronounciation of the name – pub – sub – hub – bub.

It is used for real-time publishing. I have asked Jim to do some research on it. Althoguh there are not too many people using this protocol yet, I would see the protential of this interesting idea.

P.S. The meaning:

Pub = publisher

Sub = Subscriber

Hub = hub

bub = … but what does bub mean?

The Movie Up

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Went to Kodak Super Cinema at Metro City with parents today to see Disney and Pixar’s new 3D movie – Up. Very good movie! The cinema delivers 3D effects, which is good.

It is another proof that a good movie does not necessarily mean “exciting” or “new”, it is all about old human feeling of love (and sometimes fear or hate) – the humanity.

Recommend people to go to cinema and see it.

UP_Poster_Russell.jpg

P.S. Wendy and Yifan got back to Wendy’s hometown Everyday I talk with Wendy over phone to get update from the little guy – Yifan. Happy to hear any news from him. In the Up movie, the scene I remembered most was about the blue car and red car counting game between Russell, and his father. That type of boring game and boring time are the most unforgettable time between family members.

Technology and Fairness

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I read an article about Craigslist and found a particular opinion very interesting. Here is the quote:

Universal search subverts craigslist’s mission to enable local, face-to-face transactions; it increases the risk of scams and can be exploited to snatch up bargains, giving technically sophisticated users an advantage over casual browsers

How interesting. Many Internet and new tech application tried hard to make things easier and more convenient for people, but in a marketplace like craigslist, that convenience and ability to “snatch up bargains” is not necessarily a good thing. By giving the power to a small group of people actually hurt other people.

Hospital Reservation System

We had a Shanghai Medical Card (issued by a public service platform 91985.com), and by paying a small annual fee, you can make hospital reservation online. It is extremely convenient for us, because it is so hard to make a reservation at the hospital gate (I talked about the long lines in this article Hospital is Badly Needed). When we make the reservation with a click of mouse to directly go to the Zhongshan Hospital nurse station to pick up our number, and by pass the lines to directly see a doctor, many others asked me where I got the ticket, and I taught them to use the website. I didn’t think too much about it when I enjoyed the “benefit of high-tech”, and wondered why other patient would rather spend 8 hours to wait in line instead of going online.

Inspired by the craigslist’s approach and seeing the long line myself, I now feel happy that Shanghai has forced the online reservation system to discontinue its service. It is not about application of new technology, it is about fairness in this society.

How Technology can Solve Social Problems

I am not anti-technology and anti-Internet person (look at my professional life!), but we can either let technology solve the root cause of the problem or just make a workaround to create unfairness.

In the hospital example, the key problem is the high demand for doctors vs the very limited supply of resources. If technology can solve this problem (more efficient patient handling, and diagnostic), that is great. When this is still the biggest problem, and it is getting worse, to allow some people like myself who can use Internet and know the trick to make reservation does not make sense.

Many people complained about there is no online train ticket reservation system. I believe it is partly because of this reason. When there is more supply than demand (there are just few days in the year), that makes a great sense (just like the airline industry). However, in times like Spring Festival, how can it be allowed for someone to make reservation online with 5 minutes to snatch those tickets, while millions of others waited in the train station days and nights but still cannot get a ticket?

Money and Fairness

We just talked about technology. Money is the other factor that can brake the fairness.

If a person has the money to afford a Rolex watch, it is OK, since that is part of the fairness of this market economy. It does not revoke other people’s right to buy a cheap watch.

In the race for the same social resources, like education, and healthcare, if someone can pay more money to get to the SAME hospital or the SAME school, that breaks the fairness. Again, in this case, I don’t think there is any problem if someone can AFFORD a private school, or private clinic, since their money helps to DEVELOP social resources, not SNATCHING from other people’s hand.

What do you think?