Bad Tourism: Killing Goose for Eggs

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Tourism is a prosperous industry in China. It drives the economy of many cities, like Guilin (where I am now) and Luoyang (my hometown). How to develop a sustainable tourist industry must have been the focus of many officials. Here is my observation, and thoughts, although I am not sure yet.

Moving Piers to Increase Transportation

Guilin is the popuar travel destination city (with an International airport), and Yangshuo is the emerging and even hotter place that people must visit. The cruise on the Lijiang River is many people’s choice to get to Yangshuo from Guilin, after arriving by air.

The origin pier to get onto the cruise was near the Elephant Hill, which is exactly at the downtown of Guilin. The tour guide told us in order to help the development of other areas, they moved the place to get on board to somewhere 29 km away from the city.

This way, it generate huge demand for transportation from the city. Almost all tourist company, taxi company, and local transportation company got customers. It easily cost much money.

I am not an expert of city planning. I just doubt whether this helps to build the local economy. The answer must be yes, but at what cost? I know the reason to put airports far away from the city is common practice for two reasons: 1) to avoid noise, and not to prevent the city from building tall buildings, 2) To help to pull the economy of places from airport to the city. That may makes sense for a big city, but for tourist city, travelers are customers, and does it still make sense?

Shopping Street

At the other side of the cruise, Yangshuo, situation is the same, or even worse. The moved the pier from the down to another one far from the old town. You have to take the electronic shuttles (10 RMB per person, which means 40 RMB for us) to the town. That is almost the only choice – walking is not feasible.

I am very sure that by providing that mandate transportation, the government get at least 20 RMB per tourist (round trip) as tourist tax (without the name of tax). That is, I would say, short sight.

Also, before we can get to the shuttle station, we have to walk for 15 minutes along a shopping street with hundreds of small shops along both way. Every single shop is selling exactly the same thing – they even do not bother to sell souvenirs – they sell the stuff you can see from every tourist place across China. By showing you the same thing hundreds of time, the local government official must believe this is the most effective way of increasing the local tourism income.

Well. I believe they must be very successful in doing this, but again, at what cost?

Too Commercialized

In Yangshuo, every tourists are bothered by people approaching you asking about Impression Liusan Jie, or restaurants or hotels (one guy said sincerely to me: “This hotel obviously does not suite people like you – it is way too expensive”). Is squeezing every penny out of tourist the most important thing? I know local government does not directly control vendors, but they can (just as they move the piers). It is just a matter of whether they want to or not.

My gut feeling is, every place needs to go through this process of squeezing money to provide value, and grow with its customers (refers to Customers Wants Service to be Bad). I know I am not on the driver seat to make the decision, and I really don’t know what my choice will be if I am in charge of the tourism of a small city – will I be too attracted by the golden eggs to kill the goose, or just kill one of my gooses, to get my first barrel of gold?

So, my question I want to seek for an answer is, Whether Making it Hard to Tour is the Solution for Chinese Tourism?

Thoughts on the Road

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People like to think on the road. I believe it is the massive input of information – the scene, the smell, the noise, the interesting stuff… Here are my thoughts during my Guilin, Yangshuo trip.

Travel

Why people like travel? Besides all the possible reasons, there is another one I found out: Convenience. Most hotels are close to nice streets, beautiful scenes. The nice view or the bar streets are much more accessible for travelers, not local residents. I believe my next travel destination will be Shanghai, the city I live. But I will spend the day in a hotel, which is exactly in the downtown or along the Huangpu Bund – that provides a completely different lifestyle than living in home.

Network Effects in Dining

In the small county of Yangshuo, a large percentage of restaurants offers beer fish. I had the impression that every shop offers that. Why? I doubt it is really the tradition of this emerging tourist destination. It should happen like this: A) When there are beer fish signs everywhere, visitors think it is the local specialty, and they think they must try it. B) When everyone wants to try it, more restaurants offer this dish… It is like A -> B -> A -> B… each feedback circle makes the next step stronger (I am Automation major in university, and I love feedback loops).

But… there is one unanswered question: who started the loop? The answer is CCTV. When CCTV first reported one restaurant offering beer fish, everyone follows, and put the CCTV sign to their logo, and the loop started…

Smart (or Over Smart) Tourism Industry

When we get onto the bus transporting us from Guilin to cruise port, the tour guide asked everyone to stick a sign with the bus plate number on it. She said that it is to help everyone to find the bus. Actually, I believe they do it just as Internet affiliate program set the cookie – it is a tracking code, so everything you consume along the way get credited back to the tour guide, which means $$$$.

On the cruise, at the final 20 minutes, they want everyone to get back to seat, instead of hanging around on the deck – dangerous for docking, or other reasons. They broadcast many times that they will send souvenir gift to everyone who is SITTING on the seat. That is much more helpful than anything – everyone gets back to seat immediately.

We are adult but sometimes, we behaves like kindergarten kids.

Photos of Yangshuo, Guilin

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Let me post some photos of Yangshuo. It is no longer that kind of backpacker trip with Yifan with us, and his fixed schedule of sleep, we are more hotel oriented with just random adventures out side the hotel.

The Gongnong Bridge of Yangshuo.

These mountains are famous because they are on the back of the 20 RMB note.

This is the view from our hotel – no easy way to access the river bank, but the view is still pretty nice.

Customers Wants Service to be Bad

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The day tour from Guilin to Yangshuo was by no means a pleasant trip. I don’t like the boat – with 100 people packed into the lower deck, and the bus picked us from the hotel to the pier turned out to be a tourist group, which means we were pushed into the sourviner market before we get on board the boat.

Photograph by Jian Shuo Wang. The boat – obviously, it is another boat, but ours is similar.

Photograph by Jian Shuo Wang. The lower deck of the boat

Photograph by Jian Shuo Wang.

People smokes, and the free lunch is terrible. BTW, we didn’t expect it to be good when we got on board. Wendy and I had the same comments as we had in Xi’an many years ago: “Why they cannot make it service, the environment or both a little bit better?”

Before I seek for the answer, let me get a little bit off topic and talk about another similar phenomenon.

The Annoying TV Commercial

On TV, we sometimes see really annoying TV commercials, like those by Naobaijin 脑白金. Everybody hates the simple, ugly and silly commercial, but it is still on almost all TV station, just as it appeared 10 years ago. Meanwhile, the TV commerical also boasted the sales of the product like crazy.

Many experts request to ban the commercial, but all in vail. They are pointing figures to Naobaijin about the annoying TV Commercial.

Well. I think the other way. I believe they have been using it for 10 years, and the company is a huge success in China, that means the commercial has been very effective. Many different versions have been tested, and this version was proved by sales to be the most effective version.

If that is the case, it is the audience who are not maturely enough. We need to build a mature consumer base before we ask advertisers to change. I am very sure that if the audience grow more mature, the commercial will.

The Service is Bad Just Because Customers Wanted

It is the same. I am not happy, just because I am still not the mainstream tourists. Maybe I should still go to Sanya, not popular points of interest, like a boat on Lijiang in Guilin. The service level the boat provides must have been adjusted to the need. It takes time.

Now, Shanghai has better public transportation system than 10 years ago. It is not only the improvement of the public transportation companies, it is also the improvement of the riders that made the change. Think about the ticket price – from several cents to 2 RMB (1 RMB bus still remains relatively lower service level). If customers are willing to pay more, the service surely will improve.

The point gets back to the choice: Better service v.s. Higher Price. If the majority of people choose the later, the service quality surely will improve, but, it takes so long time, especially tourist industry. It needs the whole country to get richer, and richer…

I enjoyed the cruise in Sydney, and I liked the bus tour of Great Ocean Road in Australia – but think about the price we paid – much much higher than the cruise today.

So, I just want to stop complain and get back to the basics of understanding: It is not a service level problem. It is just an economic problem. When people get richer, most problems are solved.

P.S. Ironically, most of the people on the boat liked the trip. I chatted with someone, and he said the highlight of the trip was the sourviner market… See? Customers shapes the service, and I am just not a “typical” customer, and you, my readers, maybe are not, either.

I am in Guilin

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I am in Guilin.

Before I came, I thought Guilin is like Sanya. I am wrong. I am presented a city like Luoyang.

The city is small, crowded (full of the atmosphere of life, of cause), and not so beauitiful. It is like the old town of Guangzhou, or Shanghai – you can find the energy from the chaos.

I even didn’t took a single picture in Guilin, before I left the city for Yangshuo.

To be exactly, I am now in Yangshuo. Guilin is just a glance of the Elephant Hill from taxi window just before sunset.

Today, we spent the morning doing a Guilin Hotel tour on bus (The bus took us to every hotel to pickup tourists, and it cost more than one hour), and spent the rest of the day on the boat from Guilin to Yangshuo.

Now, at 10:30 PM, when Yifan fall asleep – he is obviously too tired today, let me take some time to record my thoughts of the day. I will seperate the thoughts into many different blog entries, in an effort to cut each article shorter and more readable.

Shanghai Bejiing Express Railway Photos

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Only seeing is believing. Although I know the Shanghai Beijing Express Railway started construction on April 18, 2008, I didn’t realized that there is big progress there. On March 17, 2009, Wendy and I drove to Suzhou, and along the Shanghai-Nanjing Expressway (A11), you see the poles of the tracks are already completed.

The 1318 km high-speed railway will enable specialized CRH trains to run at 350 km/h, that cut the total travel time to Beijing to 5 hours, from current 10.

Below are two photos of the poles completed. It is very long – I saw at least 5 km of track like this.

Photograph by Wenfy Fan

Photograph by Wenfy Fan

According to reports, 80% of the 1318 km will be constructed like shown on the photos: elevated to save land, and reduce noises.

Pudong is Now Like Puxi

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Remember the painful move decision I made in 2004 about moving from Puxi to Pudong? Then look at what I observed at that time (that is, OMG, 5 years ago):

First Week in Pudong:

Pudong is Quiet

Pudong Sleeps Early

Fresh and Natural Life

No Restaurants, no entertainment

What does Pudong looks like in my eyes after 5 years?

I climbed to the top of one building in the area where I live, and took the following three photos:

Below is a mixture of villa area and high raising buildings:

Photograph by Jian Shuo Wang

Below: A new move is, almost every room in the building is occupied by people, instead of empty houses many years ago. It is not easy to identify a room with no people living in there.

Photograph by Jian Shuo Wang

See the blank area further than the park? It will be another round of high raising buildings.

Photograph by Jian Shuo Wang

Do you still feel it is the same Pudong as I described 5 years ago? It is very like another Puxi, at least by both the number of high-raising residential buildings, and the population density.

I am Going to Guilin

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Business is business – the excitement, daily thought (not only daily, it is also nightly), inspiration, challenges, and changes – when I look back, I just realized I didn’t go to a well planned trip in the last two years. What was the last time, I was from business and normal life? 2007 in Australia! It was before Yifan was born. I did visit nearby places like Hangzhou twice, and even fly as far as Sanya for several days, but these two cities are too familiar and we visited almost the same thing as before, and they even didn’t leave too much memories (even not a blog entry) for me.

I am taking leave in the next several days to go to Guilin 桂林, Guangxi Province. Yifan is old enough to understand interesting places (2 months to 2 years), and his grandpa and grandma have been busy baby sitting him for quite some time. It makes sense to have a family celebration for everyone. So I decided (well. It is partly Wendy decided) to go to Guilin for several days.

Although I have one thousand reasons not to take a vacation, at a second thoughts, I think it is too easy to say, business is not all of life, or family is important, without any action. So I want to take solid action about spending a week with the family, especially Yifan and Wendy, and do nothing else. For the business side, it is also good to pause a little bit and see the business from a little bit far away, and do some reflection. When we are too focused on something, it is hard to see the whole picture. Some meditation, reflection, and hindsight (I learn the word from my friend Ashish Gadnis‘s company name: Forwardhindsight) may be more helpful. Peace … Peace … in a place far away…

Where is Guilin

For my readers who don’t know where is Guilin, it is here:

It is at 34°ree;N and 115°ree;E (Shanghai is at 31°ree;N 121°ree;E).

We fly out to Guilin from Hongqiao Airport at CZ3252 at 13:45, and arrives at 16:15 – 2 and half hour flight.

Photos?

I am sure to take some photo and write down something about Guilin. Let me just give you a preview of the trip by using Flickr photo (with Creative Common licenses!)

Photograph by HL Wang

Beautiful Guilin by shengangxi

Beautiful Guilin by shengangxi

Look at the beautiful mountains and clear Li River! My photos may not as nice as these, and we may not be as lucky to get to the best weather, but it is always good to travel (instead of business travel), isn’t it?

Metro Between Hongqiao and Pudong Airport

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It is reported that the Metro Line #2 will connect the Pudong and Hongqiao airports by May 1, 2010, just in time for the Shanghai World Expo 2010.

Currently, the most effective transition between Shanghai Pudong Airport and Hongqiao Airport is still by bus or taxi. The Maglev is not a feasible approach yet, since it just arrives at Long Yang Road Station. You have to transit to Metro Line #2 first, and then transit to Airport shuttle at Jingan Temple Station, or taxi.

In 2010, with the east extension of Metro Line #2 to Pudong Airport, and the west extension to Hongqiao Airport, people can directly take Metro Line #2 to complete the transition. It is still not the fastest way. The pending Maglev, and event taxi or shuttle bus are faster than Metro, but the 1.5 hour is so much more reliable than other approaches.

So stay tuned, and wait… I will update as soon as Metro connects the two airports.

7 Office Design Ideas

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From the home office to the enterprise, our environment affects the way we work
– Office Design Gallery

With the idea of renovate our office and more interaction area, I visited the Microsoft R&D Center in Grand Gateway, where my good friend Eric and Helen work.

Eric is exactly the right person to turn to. He is very (if not over) sensitive to details, and is conscious about the impact of the small things. We toured from the 9th floor to the 8th, and here were our findings.

Writable Walls with/without Pens

There are many glass walls in the Microsoft office. Some of them are full of diagram and notes, and others are absolutely clean? What is the difference? Eric’s answer was: some walls are close to a holder of pens, while there are no pens nearby to others. Makes sense, doesn’t it?

Shutdown the Big White Fluorescent Lamps

Although fluorescent lamps on the top provide sunlight like consistent lighting, it does not provide an intimate atmosphere. Replace it with desktop lamps – that is a much better solution – to create the “deep night” type of working environment.

Height of Cubicle

In most modern offices, we have cubicles. The height of cubicles are always a hot topic to discuss. The UX team of Microsoft removed all their cubicle walls, so people can see each other face to face. It is said that the result is great.

I would tend to agree on this approach, but would add that we need to improve communication within a team, and may also want to intentionally cut communication between teams. The idea case is, lower the cubicle for people in the same team, and raise cubicle walls between teams. Ideally, a team is as small as 4 – 7 people, so they can be put into a bigger cubicle group, instead of two rows of cubicles.

Useless of Available/In Use Indicator

Nothing is more effective than bow a little bit and see whether there is people in it or not. The little sliding badge showing In Use or Available is something no one will use.

Conference Room Booking System

On each door, there are papers printed out (maybe by Ayi in the morning) showing that day’s schedule. It is the dream equipment I thought about when I worked in Microsoft, but it turned out to be not practical. It is hard to book the meeting room on the same day, since the paper have been printed out in the morning.

Further more, Eric argues that when a team cannot settle the room usage within the team using an interpersonal way, and they have to rely on a system, something is already wrong. I completely agree.

We should never use a room booking system – just grab a room that is available. If there is no room, just chat with the people using the room to see if they can cut the meeting short.

Every Meeting Room Needs a Clock

The presence of a clock is an effective way to keep meetings short. In places where you need people to take more time communicating, remove the clock.

Ensure at Least One Person can See the Screen of Others

This is absolutely not my idea – it is Eric’s. He suggests that although we should keep privacy of everyone as much as possible, but it is also important that from one direction, at least one other people can have a chance to glance what you are working on, so people can be more productive. This is very debatable. At least what I believe is, screen privacy is very important. We should leverage other ways like shared goal, and consistent reporting, communication to solve productivity issues. Anyway, just list this idea here, and maybe some people may like it.

6 Years of Marriage

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Today, Wendy and I have been married for 6 years. Wow! I hear the applause…

It is a tradition between Wendy and I that we will take one day off, and spend the whole day together to celebrate our anniversary. I looked through my previous blog articles, to try to remember what we did before. Although I don’t write down exactly what we did each year, I have a rough idea of the past 5 years.

  1. March 17, 2003 Marriage Announcement. We got married.
  2. March 17, 2004 OOB for Wedding Anniversary We went to Sanya, Hainan to celebrate the first anniversary, after buying our car Goudaner.
  3. March 17, 2005 No blog entry, but we went to the Fengxian Beach of Shanghai.
  4. March 17, 2006 Report from Search Engine Strategies I was not able to be able to spend the third anniversary with Wendy due to business trip. A pity.
  5. March 17, 2007 4 Year Anniversary of Wedding – we went to attend Ziheng’s wedding ceremony.
  6. March 17, 2008 Shanghai Zoo. We took one day off, and visited the Shanghai Zoo together.

So today, both Wendy and I took one day off, and went out of Shanghai.

The Perfect Day

We once planed to have breakfast at Garden Hotel where we hold the wedding ceremony, but we wake up a little bit late, so we had simple but happy breakfast at KFC (oh. I know it is not as romantic as it should be, but it is also very sweet).

Then we drive all the way to Suzhou. We had nice lunch at Wumen Renjia 吴门人家 near Zhuo Zheng Yuan. Interestingly enough, we made a small mistake to have ordered three fat meat dishes. Anyway, we don’t care about adding weight today.

Then, we visited my favorite place in Suzhou – Suzhou Museum by I.M. Pei. I became the tour guide to show Wendy the wonderful architect of the museum.

In the afternoon, we visited Wendy’s favorite area Jinji Lake of Suzhou.

Photograph by Jian Shuo Wang

I will surely use another article to tell you the miracle of Jinji Lake. It is a another modern West Lake in Suzhou. We had Haagen-Daze ice cream, and Japanese food on the Ligongdi of Jinji lake.

At about 8:30 PM, we returned via A11 (1 and half hour drive). We are happy to see Yifan smiling at home.

The Perfect Wendy

I’d like to take the time to thank Wendy for all she has done for me and the family in the last 6 years (actually it is 10 years since we lived together). Wendy is always gentle, nice, smart, caring, and patient… I always think I am the luckiest man to have Wendy, and we fits each other very well.( According to MBTI test, I am an ENFP, and Wendy is an ESTJ.) Wendy, Happy Anniversary.

A Glass Cup of Water on Left Hand

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Foreigners have typically wrong perception about China. One is, Chinese all knows some Kongfu, and the other is, people in China all believe in Fengshui. I don’t believe in Fengshui, until recently.

Let me tell you the story.

A Glass Cup of Water on the Left Hand

I read a Fengshui book about where you should put your water glass. They suggest that according to Fengshui theory, you should keep a glass of water on the left hand on the desk, and always keeps above 60% of water in the glass.

The rational behind it is, the left side is the position for black dragon, and right side is for white tiger. Since dragon likes water, so put a glass of pure water at the position of dragon keeps the dragon happy, so it is good for your health.

Hmm… Pretty non-sense, isn’t it?

The Result of Testing

Then I tried to put the water of glass on the left hand, and keeps it 60% of water. The magic does happen in several days.

I found I obviously drink much more water than before. Whenever I put my attention onto the glass cup, the water is gone. It is not consciously that I reached out to the water. When I reply an email, or read a report, I drink the water, even without my explicit awareness. When I see the glass cup empty, my conscious told me “Hey! Fill it. It is more important than your work – the dragon is looking” – obviously I said it to myself in a joking tune.

Fengshui = Convenience + Time

Then I realized, there must be some reason behind many Fengshui practice. It is by no means the mysterious theory it pretend to be (just like the dragon stuff in this example), it is all about convenience.

Fengshui seldomly discuss about the topic making something accessible or not to. It is all about how easy something is accessible. Just because of The Power of Convenience, convenience makes it so easy to accumulate over time, and with enough time, even smallest change can make big impact, just like one or two years of drinking enough water may make a difference in my health, although most people don’t know the root cause, and attribute the change to the bless of dragon.

Office Fengshui

Now I am a practitioner of Office Fengshui. Fengshui is talking about Ch’i. Actually, the Ch’i, in my understand, is communication. The move of stuff in the office cause the flow of communication changes – the communication between you and the world, and between the team members. Putting a tree to block a path, causing everyone to go the other way, and changes how people interact with each other. These are all called Fengshui.

The glass cup and water story is a very simple one that I can understand, but many Fengshui principles are hard to understand, or even no way to understand today. Hope more mysterious Fengshui theory gets some backup of modern science theory, and prove by scientific methods.

Hotmail Opens POP3

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Yesterday, I tried to use Gmail to receive emails in Hotmail, and found out that Hotmail already opens POP3 access to all users. At least for me, I am in China.

Here is the necessary settings:

POP3 Server: pop3.live.com (port 995)

Need POP SSL? Yes

User name: your Windows Live ID, like somebody@hotmail.com (Please note: you have to include the @hotmail.com part, not just the name)

Password: your password

SMTP Server: smtp.live.com (port 25 or 587)

Requires authentication? Yes

Requires TLS/SSL? Yes

That is. You can start to abandon Hotmail.com slow and ugly interface.

Pi Day – I can Remember Pi

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Today is Pi Day, a new holiday invented by people in America.

I am a fan of pi. I once can remember a lot of digits of pie, but now, I can only remember the following, using the segmentation when I recite it:

3.1415926

535

8979

323

8462

643

3832

7950

2884

19716

93993

7510

5820974

9445923

0781640

6286208

9986280

This is roughly the first 85 digits of pie. Yes. I recite it when I write it.

When Yifan grows up, I will be sure to suggest (yes, only suggest) him to try to recite the first 200 digit of pie. It is a pretty interesting thing to recite. I also tried to recite e, but just found out e is not as interesting as pi. If Yifan don’t want to do that, I can cook a pie for him.

16300 Dialup Internet Access

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The other day Jack Gu reminded me that the easiest way for anyone to access Internet is still using dial up.

In today’s broadband Internet age, many people may already forget the existence of dial up network. It does exist, and is surely one of the easiest, and most widely available Internet access method. It is especially good for international travelers. Here is how you use it.

Number and Price

The most important piece of information is dial up number, user name and password:

Dial up number: 16300

User name: 16300

Password: 16300

Using this simple number, you can access Internet – yes, the whole Internet (I emphasize it is the whole Internet, because there is other ways to access only Internet in China, which is cheaper).

Cost: 3 RMB/hour

The cost will go directly with telephone bill.

Besides the 3 RMB/hour Internet fee. you still need to pay 0.02 RMB per minute for telephone bill (that is 1.2 RMB/hour).

Look at China Telecom website for more information (Chinese)

At national holidays, Saturdays, Sundays, and 23:00 PM to 8:00 AM next day, it will be 50% off original price.

Why Dial Up

Jack mentioned to me that he has already unsubscribed from brand band and switched to dial up at home – to make things more inconvenient greatly reduce the time you spend on it. That is a good point. I am also considering the same to reduce my time used on Internet at home.

Bad Behavior, Its Reason, and Future

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Under this blog entry Beer Can by the Highway vs Spitting about bad behavior like spitting, traffic rules (jay walking) and pushing in China, Stephen left comments, and I posted my response. It seems it worth sharing with more readers in case you ignored the comment part.

Disclaimer: Although we hold different point of view, I’d like to thank Stephen for pointing out a valid point, and he has all my due respect for doing this.

JS, your comment is not only passive but evasive!

Look at Singapore, you can call the ruling party the dictator, but it represent an effective government.

Posted by: stephen on March 12, 2009 11:10 PM

My first response:

As I always insist, to compare China and Singapore is always the easiest mistake to make. Singapore’s total population (4.6 million as of July 2008) is just like a district of a city like Shanghai. A pretty small city is bigger than Singapore. If there were only 4.6 million people in a city, and there is a immigration system to choose who can come into the city, that is much easier job to do. (Imagine twice as many migrate workers rushing into Singapore in one day)

China is a very diverse country. You can see the span of very uncivilized behavior mixed with very nice people – that is all about the different stages. The more people you are, the more diverse they are, the more time people need to move forward.

Having said that, I am not saying that everything is exactly right, or the government shouldn’t play a better role to speed up the civilization process. Yes. I do believe one of the root cause of some of the bad behavior comes from the bad government, not working education system, and many other things. However, I am optimistic about positive changes in the future. To understand that everything needs time to change, instead of cannot change is a big step. When I do some study about what China looks like before 1940’s, and talk with some very old people who were educated before 1940’s, I was shocked to see how good their behavior are. The current behavior of people were made by poverty, wars, culture revolution, broken communist dream, and the dramatic society change after opening up again… There is a history behind everything. You can never talk about something without looking at its history, especially when you are talking about 1/4 of the earth’s population.

Posted by: Jian Shuo Wang (external link) on March 12, 2009 11:32 PM

Then Stephen’s response:

JS, thank you for your explicit comment!

I cannot envisage the present social norm is the result of the past history of China.

The City of Shanghai deployed an army of traffic assistances to guard the major intersections to prevent jay-walking and the result is encouraging.

I don’t see people smoking in a confined space when a ‘no-smoking’ sign is posted.

So don’t think the installation of contemporary norm and moral standard in China is a daunting task.

Posted by: stephen on March 13, 2009 1:08 AM

The traffic assistants example is very interesting. In case you don’t know what it is, in most cross road (where there are traffic lights) in downtown Shanghai, there is one to two, sometimes 4 people standing there all day, just to use their arm to stop people who insist to go at red light, and sometimes give signs to the right turning cars not to rush into the people on the pedestrian, or horn too long to people before them.

Yes. I do think the army of traffic assistance helped a lot, but considering the quick change of people in the city (there are more people coming to this city than any previous year ever), the task is a long-lasting task. Shanghai is not isolated. This is all I want to say. You cannot just improve the level of people’s behavior within just one city. With the massive urbanization in China, the generation of Chinese people need to face the challenge of living in a city, which is never been faced before. Living in a city not only means the density of people is high, the requirement for public service is higher, it also means people need to get used to live with strangers (city is all about strangers, especially larger cities). So new norms need to be setup v.s the lives in villages. US has spent the last century changing the norms, so this is what you see what it looks like today. China need to do the transform, but it is a much bigger topic than deploying traffic assistant. The change is deep, and it takes time. China has already been forced to complete part of the change in 30 years, instead of several centuries. The quick change obviously resulted in some chaos, in the economy orders, and more obviously, in the disorder of social norms. Spitting, pushing, yelling in public, and traffic rules are just some of the more obvious sample of the disorder. The root cause and symptoms are far beyond that. Read the BBS post in major portals, can you can get some idea.

Again, having said that, I am still more optimistic about China’s future than anybody else. By understand how the current situation came into being, we understand that time will cure this. “Installation of contemporary norm and moral standard in China is a daunting task.” I completely agree, but I won’t be surprised or disappointed, if this process lasts for more than two generations. If that happens within the next generations, it is already be faster than I expected.

Posted by: Jian Shuo Wang (external link) on March 13, 2009 7:26 AM

I’d like more comments about this issue. My thought is always inspired by comments, and even better, by debates.

Meetings Today

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Since talking with industry insiders have been my full time recently, I talked with many great people today. I met with Zhongwei Lee, president of Shopex over lunch. He is an expert on sales management, and business model. Then I talked with Carsten – we found out that we are in the same building (Hao Ran Hi-Tech Building), but we never met each other (even not in elevator), and in the afternoon, I met with John Chow (yes, the famous John from Johnchow.com). I finished my day with great conversation with Jack Gu, CEO of PPDAI.com, the C2C Lending platform in China. He mentioned that he has unsubscribed his broadband Internet plan at home and switched to dial-up. I think it is a fantastic idea to free up some time at night.

Weather

Today’s weather is terrible – heavy rain. Looking from the platform of our office to Pudong direction, you can hardly see anything further than 2 km. Terrible visibility. This winter of Shanghai is maybe the rainiest winter in Shanghai – I do miss the sunlight, but Shanghai has not officially entered raining season yet (it is around April to June).

Planting Trees

Today is the National Tree Planting Day. Many people go to plant trees. From twitter, I heard someone says: “Check out TV tonight. All the party and government leaders must be planting trees before camera tonight.” I smiled. Yes. Today, as in the last decade, you don’t really need to turn on TV to know that is on the news today. It is always the same format. You don’t miss too much if you don’t watch it…

Fengshui

Recently, I am started to pay attention to the Fengshui – it is a mystery for many people, including me. But I felt I have found some rules within it, and start to understand some of it. I just wrote a blog in Chinese titled: A Water Glass on the Left Hand. I may write about it in my English blog some day when I understand it more…

Beer Can by the Highway vs Spitting

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I guess one of the biggest “culture shock” on the first day for foreigners visiting Shanghai are two things: 1) Traffic Rules, 2) Spitting. At least this is what I heard from time to time from my friends, and this 10 Things You Love/Hate About Shanghai post comments. BTW, is there any others?

For this issue, I always take it easy and want to say:

1. It is embarrassing that the situation is still as it is, but there is a historical and reality reason behind it. It has nothing to do with culture, or morality.

2. I am more confident than anybody else that the situation will change. It takes time, but not as long as two generations.

Before I tell you more about what I thought, let me quote one interesting story I heard.

Beer Can by the Highway

Today, I had a nice conversation with Richard from Cornel University. When we talked about spitting in Shanghai, he mentioned a book called The beer can by the highway: essays on what’s “American” about America. The book basically researches on what makes American “American”. He studied the trends of ever-changing culture and behavior change, and found out a shocking reality: The coolest thing American think they can do is to have a can of beer on the highway, and throw the used can out of the window to the side of the highway. The book was published in 1961 by John Kuowenhoven, not far away from today.

The book talks about the two terrible behavior from today’s point of view: Drink and drive, and litter (not to mention about waste and environment protection).

Seat Belt?

Richard also told me another impressive story. When he was in Taiwan with his father, they rent a car without seat belt. His was very upset, and his father told him that “don’t worry. People don’t wear seat belt before 1960s.”. This also echos the fact that front seat belt was only introduced as standard configuration in 1964, and 1968 for back seats. The first legalization of mandatory seat belt only happens after 1970 in one state (src).

The point was, it was not that far away in the ages when people jay walk, spit, don’t wear seat belt, drink and drive, and litter in US. It takes time for the country to progress. Although it seems very slow from the perspective of a person (it takes a generation), but it is much quicker if you put it in the history perspective (just 20 to 30 years!)

China is the same.

Jay walking? It happens so often that my foreign friends joked “It is illegal to use pedestrian in Shanghai“. I also think when people learn to drive, they may obey traffic rules better – majority of people in China don’t drive.

Spitting? It is a normal process of urbanization. When more and more move into city, they cannot afford people spit around, but it is OK in villages, especially in most of villages where fresh water is not as easily accessible as in city. Imagine the situation where I was trapped into: A Jungle without a Toilet

Seat Belt? People just get used to cars, and it takes time to learn to use it right (unfortunately it takes time, and it is inevitable). Seat-Belt? Oh. No. Thanks!. This was people’s current reaction.

It is Not Culture Shock

After writing to this point, I realized that I shouldn’t have put all these bad behaviors too easily into culture difference bucket. It is not culture shock. It is just different stage shock – US has the same thing before, and China will be OK in the future. If someone was dropped to 30 years ago, either in US or in China, he/she will be shocked by his/her own country’s “culture”.

P.S. Jeremy told me that this favorite entry on this blog is My Boat Sunk in Dishui Lake. I didn’t realize that my little sotry can make him laugh for the day. :-) I am happy that the story makes people happy, although at the cost of a small lovely boat. I still didn’t buy another one yet. I really should.

Thoughts After Seeing Dubai Tower

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Anyone here ever visited Dubai? Saw the Dubai Tower?

Image in courtesy of Ammar Abd Rabbo

I saw an article about Dubai on the recent issue of Asia Business Leaders. I was very impressed by the Dubai Tower. It is so tall. When you see things as tall as this big, people may give up the idea of building a even taller building than that.

At least, I lost my interest in the future Shanghai Tower (632m when finished), which is taller than the current Shanghai World Financial Center, but much lower than this tower.

I admit that people sometimes get crazy about building really tall architect, and be very passionate about it, until you see some really really tall things, and ops… why bother doing that?

Living Cost in Shanghai (2009 Edition)

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I have published a series of articles on Living Cost of Shanghai (2002 Edition, and 2007 Edition). Let me continue to update this pure unofficial one-man effort index of the living cost of this city. It is not only a annual update, it is in the new background of global financial crisis, and I try to analyze its impact to living cost in Shanghai.

Please note: 1 USD = 6.80 RMB as this article is written. (It was 7.75 on January 22, 2007)

What is Not Changed

Since more of the information included in my Living Cost 2007 Edition didn’t change too much, please refer to the original article for most of the items. I will only update the changed items.

Transportation

On Transportation, the Living Cost 2007 Edition is still up to date: 2 RMB for most buses, 3-6 RMB for metro ride (3 is most possible), 2.1 RMB/km starting from 11 RMB (including 3 km), and 2 RMB single way ferry…

You may also check out the Daily Cost of a Tourist article for tourist specific transportation cost.

Drink

Coke:

A can of Coke now is 1.60 RMB, higher than 2007. For example, this online store sells 24 cans 355ml at 38.6 RMB. Most restaurants charges premium for serving coke – 5 RMB to 8 RMB is normal price.

Beer:

Let me also give you example. A can of Tsingtao Beer (355ml) costs 3.8 RMB

Food

Most of the items in my 2007 Edition is still valid today. The price range is from 10 RMB to 100 RMB per person.

There is something new today. There are more and more fast food chain appearing on the streets. Just like KFC, McDonald’s, they offer standard food, nice location, clean environment, but much more expensive than local noodle shop. Their food is at 20-30 RMB range.

House Rental

There is a big change since the 2007 Edition. You can safely add 50% to all the numbers I gave in that report.

The premium housing price has been up to something like 15,000 – 45,000 RMB per month (for nice places in Xujiahui area for a family).

The normal price also raises to 3000-5000 RMB.

Room sharing ranges from 800-1500 RMB in good areas. (Check Baixing.com Room Sharing to get a sense of room sharing. Disclaimer: I am the CEO of Baixing.com)

Others

Most of the other items are not changed since 2007 too much (where are the increase of CPI, Consumer Price Index?)