Congratulations to Ryun and Jenny

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Ryun and Jenny got married tonight. I just got back from their wedding ceremony in Shenyuexuan at Dingxiang Garden.

It is always nice to join the wedding ceremony of friends, especially when you know both the bride and groom. It keeps reminds us that there are much more than work in everyone’s life – to have some good friends, and to have a warm family (with husband, wife, and parents, and children) are so wonderful.

Ryun’s website at hejiachen.com seems went do, so let me just grasp a photo of him.

Photo credit: Ryun

Photo credit: Ryun

P.S Today is also the one year anniversary of Jia and Xiaojing. Congratulations for the wonderful achievement – to getting together for the first year means a lot! It is really a good day, even the raining seems so romantic.

A15 Expressway Shanghai

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Shanghai has pretty huge construction these days. Yesterday, Wendy and I drove to Minhang, and saw the construction of a brand-new long expressway was under construction: the A15 Expressway.

This new expressway is not well-known yet. It starts from the Pudong International airport, and go from there west-bound, and get cross the Huangpu River via a huge Minpu Bridge, and continue to go straightly west, cross current A4 road, and go to Zhejiang province. It was reported that the expressway will be completed this year (2009).

I just talked about the Shanghai Zizhu Science Park yesterday. I thought the park is just too far away from anywhere in Shanghai. With the construction of A15, and Minpu Bridge, I just realized the significance of the Zizhu Park – it is exactly at the conjunction of A15, and A4 (the other side of the conjunction is the Shanghai Jiaotong University Minhang Campus. This way, the Zizhu Campus is much more closer to the Pudong Airport, making it a good place to build factory and R&D facility.

I ever described the Zizhu Campus to be in the middle of no where (many people still thinks so), but it is just at the starting point to become a pretty good place to be. Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park is another example. From the Puxi Centric view point, it is too far away from the People’s Square, but on the other side, it is much closer to the Pudong Airport – an even more important criteria to determine the future of an area.

With the spreading of the road facility and all the plans became real, I started to think about the city planning. There are some key road that can significant change the dynamics of the landscape of an area. We are just not experienced enough to understand all these just from plans. Maybe only more experience can help us to predict the future of an area better.

Microsoft Shanghai Zizhu Campus

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It was a sunny afternoon (update: it quickly turns into thunderstorm tonight), and Yifan fall asleep. There is nothing for Wendy and I to do – pretty rare in the last two years, so we cherished the great opportunity to wander around. Wendy had a crazy idea, and I was even more crazier than her: I agreed.

The idea was, to drive 35 km away to Microsoft Shanghai’s new campus in Zizhu Science and Technology Center. The construction of this center is pretty important to us, since Microsoft is moving most of its technical people to that center, which, unfortunately, including Wendy.

Zizhu Science and Technology Park

Shanghai Zizhu Science and Technology Park 紫竹高科技园区 is located at the far south side of Minhang district. It is pretty far from the city. If you have some concepts of Shanghai Metro system, it is at the south end of the Metro Line #5 (to provide you some hits, Metro Line #1 is the north-south line in Shanghai. Metro Line #5 starts from the most south station of Metro Line #1. Got some idea about how far it is?).

The area became hot because Shanghai Jiao Tong University moved from it Xuhui Campus to the Minghang Campus in 1984, and continued to expand the area of the campus. I have spent 2 years studying on that campus, before I was relocated to the main Xuhui Campus. I left the campus in 1999, and got back to the Xuhui Campus in 2007, with a company setting up there.

The Change of Zizhu Park

The Zizhu Park was just a concept when I was there from 1995 to 1997. There are no buildings, and even more roads. If you check out Google Satellite map today, you still see almost nothing.

Later, some companies moved in, including Microsoft, Wicresoft (Microsoft’s joint venture, where I also spent about half a year), Intel. The area became a “real” science park. All of them was squeezed into several public buildings.

Image in courtesy of Zhou, Xiaohui

Image in courtesy of jeffwilcox

Recent few years ago, Intel built their campus there, and many people of Intel moved there. Then Wicresoft – a Wicresoft building and a campus. Then Omren…

Image in courtesy of jeffwilcox

Microsoft Zizhu Campus

The Microsoft Zizhu Campus was designed to be a huge project. The big complex consists of four buildings and a big cafeteria in the middle. The current project only includes the cafeteria and one building.

When finished, all Microsoft Shanghai technical resources will be moved there. To name a few: Microsoft Global Technical Center, Microsoft Advanced Technical Center, and many divisions of Microsoft Live Development Center. To be short, almost all the people I know in Microsoft moved there, except the Microsoft Shanghai Sales and Marketing Organization (they will move to the Grand Gateway).

Image in courtesy of jeffwilcox

Transportation is a Huge Problem

Zizhu Science Park is pretty nice. It is obviously not as popular in hi-tech companies as Zhang Jiang Hi-Tech Park. But it is catching up. The arrangement of the new Microsoft Zizhu campus is also very attractive – with VIP in-house health care, and sports facility, but the key problem of this campus is, it is too far away.

Wendy has tried every thing to find the best way to get to that campus. She tried to use normal route of A20 -> A4, or tried A20 -> Lianhua Road, or even tried to use Ferry at the Metro Line #8 station. The reason is discouraging. The campus is at least 35 km away from our home, and up to 60 km away from some of the engineers working there. That means, you need to prepare at least 2-3 hours on transportation to get there. Hmmm…. It is really to far away.

Let’s see how things evolves, when the moving day comes for the many different groups with nearly 1000 people.

Photos?

I hope I can upload the photo of the new building now, but it is still in Wendy’s mobile phone, and I am still looking for a connection cable. I will update when I have photos available.

Who is Chris Devonshire Ellis – Part II

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I have already decided leave this Chris Devonshire Ellis (a.k.a cde) alone after I briefly wrote this blog entry: Who is Chris Devonshire Ellis. As I said, I don’t care who he is – good or bad – it is just completely not my business. He was brought to my attention just because the three pretty silly threatening emails, and two phone calls. Well. I received a few of them because of some other people’s comment on my blog (and interestingly, more than half of the threatening letter comes because they want me to delete their own comment on this blog, like this).

But, things get more and more interesting these days, and I cannot help write something about this person, to provide some more information to help people understand some aspects of this “well-known” and “well-connected” guy.

Threatening Instead of Requesting

As I stated in my previous blog, he asked me to remove some comments about him on this blog entry: Second-Generation Identity Card. Then he wrote blog stating that it is about Chinese people libel about foreign people. I even don’t bother to argue that it is him who distinguish Chinese and foreign people in treating comments.

Now the problem is, it is not about requesting for something that is right (or wrong), it is all about threatening.

Recently, in his email to Lostlaowai.com, he threatened to report his website to Public Security Bureau to revoke his visa because Ryan wrote an article: Would the real Chris Devonshire-Ellis please stand up. Unfortunately, this entry was removed, and I fully understood that he actually does not deserve any attention. This CDE has done this to many bloggers, including myself. In all these letter, he not only stated that he asked certain content about him removed (which if he has the right evidence, it is pretty reasonable request), he *threaten* people of all kinds of terrible things.

The Threatening Emails I Got

Although he treated other bloggers and me terribly, I still want to play nicely to certain rules. Although I believe I have very reason to publish the threatening emails on this blog (I am not sure though, any legal advice from my readers?), I choose not to, and just quote indirectly about the pretty length emails.

The last email (the third similar emails) he sent to me, he mentioned that he will have meetings with the Minister of Industry, and he told me that he will bring this matter concerning me, and my employer to the minister’s personal attention. He also threatened to take legal steps for damages for defamation. I have no problem that he brings this matter to the court at all – follow the law, and I think that is the simplest way to do it, but it sounds so silly and even fool to threaten a blogger to bring his blog to the minister of the country. Wow. I will be flattered if you do so. In the end, he re-stated that I must face the consequences if I do not follow exactly what he told me to do.

The previous two are equally lengthy and “rude” (sorry but this was my feeling). Interestingly, after the three emails, I received phone call to my mobile from a girl who claimed to be his lawyer, and asked me to remove the comments, and my new blog article about him. I asked her to send me emails or fax and tell me which part of my article has problems, and she didn’t reply ever since. (I am not surprised to receive emails, but feel pretty funny that his employee also tried so hard to “protect” his boss’s already pretty bad image online – search the term Chris Devonshire Ellis on Google to see).

Old Stories in the New Background

When all these happened, I did a search in my own inbox, and found out this Chris Devonshire Ellis has already been the “old friend” of blogger, and expat community. My friends have ever been threatened by this guy back in 2007, and this person sent thousands of comments of the similar thing to his website. Pretty amazing, isn’t it?

Then I took some time to read the article about Chris Devonshire Ellis that I posted: Second-Generation Identity Card. If you read the comment carefully, you see many people stood up to express their support to Chris Devonshire Ellis. I promised not to reveal private information about commenters, but what I can tell you is, it is the same IP address, and same client behind all these supporting comments, and the IP address comes from Hong Kong SAR. There are more and more these comments coming before I was forced to close the comment section of that article. I am sure that many bloggers experienced the same thing – tell us if you are also one of the victim of this CDE.

Chris Devonshire Ellis on the News

The even more interesting movement recently was about the fake stories, and fake interview this Chris Devonshire Ellis claimed to conducted with Chinese officials. And China Bank Regulatory Committee (CBRC) put an announcement on their website to tell the truth. His false report even made big jump in the RMB to USD exchange rate. Check out some bloggers’ report on this issue:

#cde Became a Top 10 Trend in Twitter

You can check out Twitter now at channel #cde. It is pretty hot – I mean now, at 0:05 AM, February 21, 2009 (Shanghai Time). So many people annoyed by this single person #cde gathered there, and the channel #cde even became top 10 trends (hottest topic on Twitter worldwide) today. I even started to admire how powerful this person became to have so many die-hard enemies on the Internet – not an easy job to accomplish.

Finally, Let’s Stop Here after Learning the Lessons

There are some lessons to learn for #cde this time.

  • It is OK to send legal statement requesting something as long as there is a legitimate reason behind it, but it is NOT OK to threaten anyone, just like report to PBS, mention something to high officials, or promise a DDOS attack – bloggers typically won’t do something just because he/she is scared of this.
  • To post too many positive comments under different IDs is too simple and naive. People know that, and it is just a matter of time about when people discover it.
  • Don’t over-react – this is a typical case where a very small comment that no one will notice became a big event in blogsphere. It can be completely avoided if Chris Devonshire Ellis, and his employees didn’t over-react to a level that no one can tolerate.
  • A bonus tip: to have a phone call is even worse than threatening email – that makes people really angry.

Chris, you have my email and mobile phone – it has been listed on the homepage of this blog for 7 years. Feel free to write or call, but please be aware, as I started in my privacy statement, I reserve the right to publish content you sent to email address jianshuo @ hotmail.com, or call my mobile phone. If you don’t want your threatening email to be published, don’t send them, and you are encouraged to directly go to court to sue me, or even better, talk about this blog with your high-ranking official friends that you imagined by yourself. Peace. I just hope I can get back to my normal life of blogging (a much more fun work to do than dealing with #cde), and just let this ridiculous event disappear from everyone’s attention.

Meaning of 886 in Chinese

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I received email asking about what 886 means in Chinese. This is an interesting question.

886

Simply put it, 8 may generally means rich, because it has similar pronunciation of being rich. 6 means smooth, since the pronunciation of 6 is pretty smooth by itself.

886 is a pretty good number, in most Chinese people’s mind.

Meanwhile, it is also the international long distance area code number for Taiwan (mainland China is 86, and Hong Kong is 882).

Numbers and Its Related Characters

Since there are tens of thousands of Chinese characters (number 0 to 9 are just ten of them), and there are basically only 200 or something pronunciations, as you can imagine, many characters maps to exactly the same pronunciation.

Although there are characters with exactly the same pronunciation with the 10 numbers, like cloth to 1, dance to 5, wander to 6, wife to 7…, these numbers are not generally mapping to this meanings. There are some characters with pretty similar meanings, like 4 and die, 8 and rich, 5 and me, 1 with want, 2 with son, that are generally used to “translate” the numbers.

Impact of Numbers to People

People in China generally (although it may be too generally to say so) care about numbers and their meanings, to certain extend. A good number (with many 8 or 6 in it) is much more popular than others.

For office and residential buildings, people don’t like number of 4, 14, just like western people don’t like number of 13. So you may see some buildings with stair numbers like this:

16

15

12B

12A

12

11

10

9

8

7

6

5

3A

3

2

1

A Joke about Telephone Number

When I was in Shanghai Jiaotong University, I have a schoolmate who don’t want to tell others the telephone number of their dorm, and in early 1995, they all bought a pager, or mobile phone. Their phone number was:

54742484

(with 5 means I, 7 means wife, 2 means son, and 8 means dad, and 4 means die…)

Thanks to the Crisis

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This is the second entry about the Financial Crisis. As an Internet entrepreneur, I have some observations.

It Reminds us the Basics of Business

One of the key basic rule we noticed these days is: profit equals revenue minus cost.

This equation is obviously but was not paid attention to during booming times. When Internet investment is hot, people tend to think about revenue and cost this way:

Every dollar in revenue may result in 20 dollars in valuation of the company, and for that 1 dollar, many first-time-entrepreneurs and VCs are willing to spend 1.2 dollars to get, or even 18 dollars! That is the source of the crazy Internet bubble when people spend 18 dollars just to get 1 dollar – the sin of valuation.

Now, everyone gets back to basics. If you spend one dollar, and you cannot get 1.1 dollar back, why bother doing that?

Thanks for the Crisis

For the generation of China like myself, we were born in 1970s, and started to work in 1990s, we were lucky enough to get a job (pretty good one) after graduation. When we started to run business, we experienced the up turn and now the down turn. The contrast helped us to understand how to run business better. Without a down turn, an entrepreneur or a company does not grow up, and never becomes mature. It also provide golden time for profit making company to be stronger.

I’d like to see how this crisis change the world, and more interested to see what the world after the crisis looks like.

Financial Crisis and Shanghai

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It may be too late for me to write about the financial crisis, and its impact to Shanghai (I tried hard to avoid to use too big terms like China – basically, I only know a very small portion of the city of Shanghai, not to mention about China).

Shanghai IS Impacted

Despite of many claims that China is fine so far, I clearly feel the arrival of winter, or at least approaching of financial winter.

Taking Wendy and I as an example, although we are not directly impacted, the sentiment of being more conservative surely impacted us. We have canceled almost all the movie expense, and cut our dining out to once every week (before, it was once once every day or twice per day).

For layoffs, recently, I started to see signs like this. The winter has clearly impacted some higher risk companies, like Internet companies. It is not surprising to know friends leaving their company, and I feel very bad about it, and also, it is almost inevitable in this environment.

Role of Controlled Media

It is interesting to see the role of media in financial crisis. If you open all the major newspapers, and websites, the theme of all the news is: We face challenges, but everything is still fine, and at least it will be fine. For the majority of people who rely on the limited source of information, they are more optimistic than they should be, and ironically, this is a good thing in this era. The current economy is all about confidence. If majority of people are still confident (or blindly confident) about future, maybe the situation won’t go as worse as it should be. In the US crisis, I am sure Internet plays an important role, that everyone knows the bad news, almost at the same time.

I will still keep an eye about what is happening here in Shanghai, and if you have any specific questions about what the real situation is, feel free to ask me, and the questions help me to observe what is happening around me better.

Shanghai 2010 Expo Site

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Everyday, we drive along the Nanpu Bridge, and see the Shanghai Expo site spread out on the west side of the bridge – from pretty crowded Shanghai typical residential area, and factories, to a destroyed land with barely nothing, to a big construction site, and then become a new Lujiazui style cluster of high-raising buildings… The change just happens gradually without me even noticing it.

The other day, I took taxi and ran along the Lupu Bridge, and took the picture below:

Photograph by Jian Shuo Wang

From these photos, the shape of the China Pavilion is ready. More and more countries are joining – the pavilion of the Luxembourg has already started construction. The Australia Pavilion is on the way (they invited me to join their ground breaking event the next week).

Photograph by Jian Shuo Wang

Below is the China Pavilion:

Photograph by Jian Shuo Wang

The Area of the Site

Below is a site map of the area.

Image in courtesy of Expo 2010 China website

I would say, to choose to place an expo site into the city center is the best idea ever. Instead of arranging the site to a pre-booked site near the Pudong Airport, having an expo along the Huangpu River helps to bring the two sides of the city together.

I am happy that the site is just 5 km away from my home, and I am seeing new roads, and new viaduct built everyday. I have started to seek for some information about whether they off half-year ticket so I can bring Yifan (3 years old by then) there every weekend…

Xizhimen Viaduct is Too Confusing

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If you have a chance to visit Beijing, besides Tiananmen Square, you have to visit the Xizhimen Viaduct 西直门立交桥. I am quite amazed by how confusing it is. I always wanted to drive on that bridge, because it is a serious challenge for anyone’s IQ.

The big interchanged was built about 10 years ago to solve the complicated transportation problems. After 4 years of design, and 200 million RMB to build, the viaduct becomes a headache for drivers. News about drivers spent hours on the viaduct often appear on newspaper. Let me examine this wonderful viaduct.

The “Classical” Xizhimen Bridge Challenge

Imagine that if you are driving from the west to east to the viaduct, and you want to turn right to south bound (a typical right turn scenario), you would expect to directly turn right at the viaduct. The ridiculous thing is, there is no right turn lane. The correct answer is:

Turn right, turn right, turn right, turn right, turn right, turn right, turn right, turn right, turn right, turn right….

If you are lucky enough, and at every turn, you cleverly identify the correct lane, then you can get to the direction. The real situation is, very limited number of drivers can figure it out. They often find themselves driving toward a highway leaving Beijing. Drivers who ever found out the right road even cannot make sure the next time, he is as lucky as the previous time.

Below is the diagram of the viaduct. It is not the problem of Google. The calculated everything right.


Bigger Map

The route in the diagram only lead you to the south bound direction, not on the expressway. If you want to stay in the second ring road (the express way), below is how you can do it.


Bigger map

Amazing, isn’t it?

Transportation Options in Shanghai

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I am always happy to receive emails from my readers to tell me that my blog has helped them in some way. No matter how small the note is, I feel very happy about it. Here is another one, and with a quick question to get from one location to another.

Hi JianShuo,

greetings from Singapore!

I am going to Shanghai next month and chanced upon your blog.

I must say that it really offers great advice compared to the expatriate websites online. Your detailed and informative data has offer a perspective that is stereotypically more Asian-oriented. Kinda makes my life easier should my overseas counterparts ask me for directions during our upcoming seminar.

Thus, after utilizing your blog information, I just felt that I need to pen you a compliment and do keep up your good work! (Especially the pickpockets at XiangYang and also the new location. I will just send the links to my counterparts)

Ohya, if you able to answer my query out of your busy time, I need to get to 399 Lujiabang Road from Nanjing West Road train station. It is more realistic to get there by Taxi? I am a firm believer of train travel as it will escape unexpected traffic jams. That’s my lesson learned from my regional/international business travel. The Shanghai Metro map downloaded are either too simplistic without exact line exchanges.

And if you happen to want to visit S’pore, it will be my turn to offer my little advice. :)

Enjoy the cool weather.

Regarding the question from one location to another, like in this question, from Nanjing West Road to Lujiabang Road, my consistent answer was always: take a taxi.

Taxi v.s. Bus v.s Metro

The major realistic ways of traveling in Shanghai is either bus, metro and taxi.

For visitors (especially visitors who don’t know Chinese), Metro is definitely the best option. It is not only reliable, fast, cheap, and comfortable (plus some tourism value), it does not require the visitor to interact with anyone. For taxi, you need to tell the driver where you want to go, and there is pretty high risk that the driver cannot understand you, or even worse, misunderstand what you mean. For bus, you need to find the change first, or talk to an attendant. For metro, even if you need to buy tickets, the English interface ticket vendor machine can help you a lot, and you can take your time to study the route before you buy the ticket. The good thing is, there are more and more Metro, and lines are typically built around most visited places.

However, for most other vast areas, when Metro is not available, visitors need to face the choice of taxi or bus.

I would highly recommend my readers who are the first time visitor to Shanghai. Why? Bus can be better, only if you find out the right bus. If you have the destination printed out in Chinese, taking taxi is much easier. Shanghai is not a very large city in terms of area – the downtown area typically cost you 15-20 RMB (3 USD).

If you do want to take taxi, use Google Map. They provide bus transition tool to help you plan. I always use this tool myself. The route they suggested is very accurate, based on my personal experience in Shanghai so far. They only offer Chinese version.

My Answer to the Question

If you decided to take bus, check out Google Maps. There are many bus routes to get there – just one bus without transition, like bus No. 23. See picture below:


View Bigger Map

Received Gift from Media Temple

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It seems to me that anything with the name or abbr. of MT is a very good thing. First, MovableType (MT), then Media Temple (MT).

I have been 7 year fan of MovableType, and I am still using it. Most importantly, I got the opportunity to meet with so many great people in Six Apart and setup a deep relationship with them eve since. Remember the big 5 year of blogging party at Six Apart office in San Francisco they held for me? I am so flattered to get the honor, and the legendary story of Mena and Ben is very inspirational for me.

Then, recently, as you know, I moved my hosting from bluehost.com to Media Temple (to be fair, bluehost.com is still a very good hosting company, despite the fact that they forced me to leave). The experience of the last few days was wonderful: fast server response, more functionality, very kind and helpful telephone support (they know their systems very well), and finally, I started to setup some personal connections with the company, not just a customer and a service provider.

Quickly after I posted about Media Temple, Danialla from Media Temple shot me an email and mentioned that she/he may send out some gift from Media Temple to me. So, one week later, I got my nice Fedex package yesterday, with a nice MT T-shirt, 4 stickers with all kinds of MT logos, and a badge-holder.

I quickly pull out some sticker and stick it to my keyboard.

It seems to me Media Temple is a good company. My 5 years in Microsoft services organization told me, any company in the service industry (I think hosting can also be in this area along with customer service center, or financial services) can easily make a customer extremely happy or extremely dissatisfied. Unlike out-of-box software or other product, customers just touches the product, in service industry, customers have the human interaction with the company, its service, and its people. This can be very emotional.

I hope I am a happy Media Temple customer in the next few years, and if possible, I may be very interested to visit the company if I have a chance to visit the LA area. The office of Six Apart has been my fixed scheduled place to visit for my trips to SFO, since I have great friends there to see. I hope so for Media Temple.

Fireworks and Yifan

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Today is the Latten Festival – the festival for the family to get together and have Tangyuan together. Our office closes at 5:30 PM, so people has the extra 30 minutes to get back home to have a great dinner with their family.

Today is also the last chance, maybe, to fire some fireworks. I have kept our fireworks, and crackers to today, and we sent the beautiful fireworks to the sky to celebrate the finally end of the Spring Festival, and the arrival of the year of Ox.

Fireworks

The most amazing thing in China for many of my foreign friends is the experience of Chinese New Year. The fireworks of thousands of households in the new year eve is not weaker than a small scale war – imagine most of the families in the high-density residential area all go out and fire something big.

In Shanghai, the order of the fireworks is interesting. Although there is no strict rules about when you should fire some, here are the general rules.

There are three major events (all according to lunar calendar):

1. New Year Eve, that is on the last day of the last year. This is the tradition of fireworks across China. In most places, this is the time when most fireworks appear.

2. Welcoming the God of Fortune, which is the mid-night before the 5th day of the new year. This is pretty special in southern China, especially in Shanghai. The fireworks of that night is even much bigger than the New Year Eve. This seems strange to me and many other people in China, but this is the tradition in Shanghai. It seems there is only one God of Fortune, and he will only arrives to those who makes the biggest noise. At that night, the sound of fireworks started from 8:00 PM and never stops until passing mid-night.

3. Latten Festival, which is the 15th day of the New Year. This is typically the significant mark of end of the Spring Festival. Most people come back from their home town. For me, I observed significant increase in traffic this morning. I would assume more than 30% of cars on the road.

Yifan

Yifan is only 20 months old, and he is obviously very afraid of the huge sound of the fireworks. At the very beginning, whenever there are some large sounds, he cries, and jumps into Wendy’s arm. At the New Year Eve, the little poor boy cried for several hours. It IS horrible to see the whole sky is lit up by fire, and the sounds are so loud that Yifan could not even hear what his mom says to him. After few days, he started to get used to the "terrible" sound, and even dare to look up from Wendy’s shoulder, and carefully examine what happened. He is much more calm than the starting of this Spring Festival. Yifan grows up with the arrival of the new year.

The Help of a To-Do-List

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From the early of this month, I started to create a to-do-list for me. As an ENFP type of person, I hate any kind of to-do-list. The life is just a flow of passion, and my focus is where my passion is.

Recently, I discovered a page on zenhabits: How to actually execute your to-do-list. I think that is maybe the most helpful tips I ever had on this, and now my to-do-list is long and my completed tasks are longer. It is very good, and thanks Leo for sharing the great tips.

Car Towing Services in Shanghai

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During the Spring Festival, my car broken down on the road. It is the first time I called a towing service in Shanghai. With the popularity of cars, the demand for towing services may increase. Let me share what I learn from the experience.

The Tow Company

There are only two major towing companies in Shanghai: Anchang 安畅 and Jiuyuan 救援

Anchange’s phone number is 021-56995995

(995 in Chinese sounds like “Save Me”)

Jiuyuan’s Phone number is 021-54471005

My personal experience told me that Anchang seems to be much better than Jiuyuan from the customer service they provide over phone.

Fee Structure

Both of them use the following fomular:

100 RMB initial fee, with 10 KM included.

5 RMB for every additional KM.

You need to pay for any toll fees occured.

Distance is calculated based on the location of your car and the destination.

The Towing Car

The towing car is pretty professional. It is that kind of big car that put your car on top of it, which means it is pretty safe for the car being towed (compared to those smaller towing car as seen in the cartoon movie Cars).

Look, Goudaner is being towed!

I hope you don’t need this information. :-)

P.S. My RSS is OK now

My RSS didn’t work since I moved here, and I have just fixed. Let me know if there is any more problems.

I know the user’s comment page is not ready yet. I will do it the next week.

I had my Wisdom Teeth Extracted

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This afternoon, I went to a dentist my friends recommended, and had my right wisdom teeth extracted. It has some problem because of dental caries. It is very painful for me. These days, it started to affect my dining and sleeping. So I have to get it out.

I hesitate a lot before the operation, and it turned out to be painless – it is my first time to do anything with my teeth except daily brushing. Now, 3 hours after that, everything is OK. It is just as before the operation. Good. Now I have 31 teeth.

Preventional removal of Wisdom Teeth is not a very common practice in China yet (or to people like me). The dentist suggested to remove the other side, but I don’t want to do it before it causes any trouble. Your suggestions?

A Jungle without a Toilet

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I thought and talked a lot about the moral problems in China, and how and why people don’t follow rules, and why many times, rightousness fails. Here are some sample articles I wrote about.

What pullzed me was, why certain things worked like this (breaking of rules) and why it is not like that…

Let me tell my you my ineresting experience during the Spring Festival in Shanghai. This actually helps me to understand the gap between China and US on the understanding of morality, and rules.

In the Middle of No Where

During the Spring Festival, I drove my car (Goudaner) to west-most part of Shanghai. The car broke down on the road exactly near the Xicen Check-point. It is a policeman guarded check-point on the state road G318, which is a major road of Shanghai, all cars leaving Shanghai must pass this check-point, giving the police an opportunity to stop anyone who they don’t want him/her to leave Shanghai.

Since the car is completely broken, and I cannot start it, or move it, I asked my friends to pick up my family (yes, Yifan is with them) members who where are wanted to go, and I waited myself for the towing car to come. That was about 3 hours’ waiting time.

There are long roads connecting to the check point, nothing else. There is almost nothing along the road. You only see many cars running like crazy from and to the check-point.

Need to Find a Toilet

After 1 hour, I just feel that I need to use a toilet. I cannot see one, so I asked the policeman at the check-point:

Me: Excuse me. Do you have a toilet here?

Policeman: No.

Me: Hmmm… Do you kwow where is the nearest toilet?

Policeman: Go down west. There is one 5 km away in a factory, but I think they closes during Spring Festival.

Me: Hmmm… Is there any other places?

Policeman: No.

He saw me stood there, hesitating about whether I should try my luck to go there – it may take 1 hour to get there and back by walk, he came up and asked: “Do you just want to piss?” I said yes. He looked at me as if I were from Mars, and then said: “How come there are stupid people like you in this world.”, and left.

Me, left alone with my car in the middle of nowhere, realized what he meant. He, and everyone else just piss in the jungle. Embarrassed, I did the same.

Rules without a Facility Support

When people ask the question, why you do not follow the rules. There are many different situations, and many different answers. Among them, one of the situation is, there is no facility to help people keep the rule. In the situation where there is no way to keep a pretty high standard of rules, the rule itself is in doubt – it is maybe the wrong thing to have that rule in the first place, or people must make sure others CAN find a way to follow the rule.

It reminds me of my trip to Tibet. The first thing the tour guide taught us on the bus when we left Chengdu was, how to piss in the wild area – when car stops, all the men running to the left side, and women to the right. Sounds silly, right? The same behavior of pissing to the ground is not only neccessary in rural areas like Tibet, it is also moral to do it, isn’t it?

Taking another example of following rules: traffic rules. When you are presented in a situation that all the pedstrain sign are always red, will you just stops there for ever, or you walk at red lights. In this situation, it is no longer a moral issue to break the rule “no walk under red lights”, because we are talking about different thing.

In current China, the deeper problems are, there are so many situations that you cannot survive without breaking rules. There are definitely chance to fix it but we don’t have the political system to support it yet. What is your choice? Just like the red bag thta you have to give to doctors, or many other ugly things.

Understand First, Then Fix

So, my point is, I want to describe the environment we are living in and communicate it with my friends in other countries. Many times, the judgement standard is completely different (try to talk to someone who don’t have a toilet facility about do not piss on the street), and even it is the same standard, if there is no facility to support it, we should just talk about how to solve the facility problem, instead of pointing fingures to the person: “You are wrong. How can you do that!”.

At the end, let me quote the story of my favorite movie this year: Slumdog Millionare. You see a young man with integrity, with honor, with struggle and with hope – Jamal. I love the movie so much because the director put a good person into a tragic environment. He cheats, he steals, he is not professional at work, but meanwhile. he is still a good man. By changing the angle of how we see the world and from who eyes, we understand the world better. I would love to thank the director of Slumdog Millionare. At least, it taught me to love the beggar children on the street – they also have their love and hope. They are who they are today because of the lack of a better environment, just like lack of a toilet in the jungle.

Daily Cost of a Tourist in Shanghai

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Today, I am going to reply this reader’s email about how much does it cost as a normal budget tourist in Shanghai. Here was the email:

Hi Jian Shuo,

I can’t find anything on your blog about how much per day it would cost to enjoy a holiday on various budgets. Maybe you can only do it for Shanghai but it would be good to see how much to expect to pay per day when I am there in March/April this year. Obviously accommodation costs vary so that could be excluded (with a disclaimer). I am talking about food and travel fares and apporximate sightseeing costs in general. I was thinking about $40US per day would be more than enough for my low budget holiday expenses, again not including hostels and souvenirs.

Regards,

Luke

Here was my answer:

Hi Luke,

Thanks for your trust to ask me the question. It is obviously a FAQ – how much I need to plan to tour in Shanghai. Let me try to help.

As a normal tourist, you want to visit some places in Shanghai in a budget fashion. Let’s just try to describe what a day should look like for you, starting from breakfast.

Breakfast

If breakfast is included in your hotel plan, there are two possibility. Possibility #1: you stay in a five star hotel, like Shangri-la, or JW Marriott Shanghai… If it is the case, I don’t see any reason you continue reading this article. :-) Possibility #2: your hotel provide very cheap breakfast that they even don’t bother to charge, like a salt-egg plus some bread.

So, in most cases, let me assume that you need to buy yourself something to eat in the morning. You still have some options.

My suggestion for really curious visitor is to go to those eatery streets near where you stay, and eat as locals do. There are many places where vendors gather in the morning to sell breakfast – they normally share the same store-front with small local shops. When the shops open at around 10:00 AM, all the breakfast stores disappear. For example, my daily routine starts from the corner Tianping Road 天平路 and Guangyuan Road 广元路. If you are lucky enough to find them, 10 RMB (or 1.5 USD) can get you some nice delicious local food. You can buy some dupplings (Baozi 包子), or Toufu Milk (Duojiang 豆浆). You need to eat on the go – there is no place for you to sit down.

If you are not that adventous, find a local McDonald’s and the price for morning is also around 10-15 RMB. You know what you get. I would recommend KFC – the provide some varity from that you find in other countries in China.

In conclusion, budget 15 RMB for breakfast for budget travel. I bet that you can even save some money if you try.

Transportation

Then after you are full, and you start your day by looking at your first place to visit. If you want to save money, take bus. They are 2 RMB in average if your destination is in Shanghai (I mean within the outting ring – a very large area). If you want to go to nearby “cities”, or “town”, that is another story. Or you can take Metro – one way cost you 6 RMB at most if you do not go to places like Songjiang or Minhang, or even between them… Most of the attraction of Shanghai is along Metro: The Bund? Pearl Tower? Xintiandi? Xujiahui? Where do you want to go?

So, I would say 20 RMB per day for transportation is enough for you, if you want to explore the city of Shanghai, not surrounding areas – that means you can take 10 times of bus, or maybe 5-6 metro ride. (To tell you a secret, I walked at midnight from the north-east of Shanghai to southwest, it only took me 4 hours. You get the idea?

Tickets

Tickets are the major part of your day. Let me give you some example. To get to the top of Jinmao Tower, you need to pay 80 RMB. The higher WFC (Shanghai World Financial Center) cost you 150 RMB. Pearl Tower is 50 RMB. Most of the museums cost you 50 RMB (20 RMB is considered cheap).

So, let’s say, you want to visit two places in the morning, two in the afternoon, prepare 200 RMB in your pocket.

Lunch and Dinner

For lunch and dinner, you can try different styles. From the cheapest, visit any local noodle shop, and you can get a bowl of noodle at around 10 RMB. Be alerted that it is no way to the same service standard or cleaness standard of US. If you are adventous and want to try, please. That is a lot of fun.

If you want to be safe, and just want to have a cheap but nice lunch, visit the fast food stores. You already know McDonald’s, KFC, and almost all major brands in U.S (or international). They are likely to have an outlet in Shanghai. Or you visit the newer comers. My favorite is Ajisen Ramen. For all these fast food restaurants, their price is between 20-30 RMB.

There are of cause some decent restaurants that can easily charge you 150 RMB per lunch or 300 RMB per dinner (their entry level menu), but I think it is out of the scope of this article.

So, please 50 RMB for your lunch and dinner.

Anything else?

I don’t see any additional cost. You can always spend if you want, but besides food, and sometimes tickets, you don’t need to really pay too much.

Conclusion

A normal tour, as I described, cost you 265 RMB. For many people, I would just suggest you to take your time to walk on the Shanghai street. That is amazing, more engaging, and, free. I would not be surprised if a tourist tell me that he/she only spend 40 RMB per day for staying in Shanghai (excluding hotel). Believe me, the 40 RMB trip may be more rewarding than more expensive one.

Hope this helps, and I will publish my reply to my blog tonight.

Shoe Thowing

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I got an email from a reader of mine who wanted me to post this message from him:

Dear China,

We wish to express American solidarity with China in sharing our disgust at the Cambridge shoe incident involving Premier Wen Jiabao.

We in the United States know how it feels to have a shoe thrown at your leadership, if you recall the Iraq incident involving our Former U.S. President George Bush.

Regardless of the messages intended by such actions, they are disrespectful and can convey rude posturing toward that nation.

So, as a single voice trying to convey the thoughts of millions in the Americas, I say that in the least we know how it makes you feel.

Hang in there, China. All our love and prayers!

– America.

Only after that did I became aware of the Cambridge Show Throwing incident. Then I checked Chinese news site news.sina.com.cn, and video sharing site. The news is the top headline in Sina, and was mentioned by the CCTV News at 7:00 – 7:30 PM, according to the recorded video.

Hmm… It is not a big deal. I haven’t formed any oppinion yet. Just publish the message as my reader wished to first.

Hello! Hello! I am Back

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If you are a daily reader of my blog and you are the traditional reader (not using a RSS reader, like Google Reader), you may noticed short outage of Wangjianshuo’s blog.

Sorry for that. As I explained in my previous post, bluehost kicked me out of their server room (due to performance issue of my blog), and I have to look for another host.

Although I am not happy about it, it forced me to take the chance to move everything I have to a new host provider, Media Temple. I am still at the sweet moon time with this new hosting, and everything here is wonderful. Please give me feedback about how it feels: the site getter faster, slower, or is there any outage in the next few weeks.

Whenever hosting issue happens, I just feel I am like a young person renting someone’s house. There are always reasons for me to move, no matter it is because of I cannot bear the environment, or the landlord feels I scratched his wall. Anyway, at any time, I just need to accept it, pack everything I have, use a transportation service to move all my boxes to another place, unpack all the box, and spend quite some time to set everything up (bookshelf, flower, and bed….)

Finally, I am back. I cannot bear the time without blogging. My dear readers, I am back! Wow!

Short Pause of Service of Bluehost

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Bluehost is a pretty nice host provider. I am very happy with the service they provided. Although they generated many CPU Exceeded Errors for my account before, but I believe it is because of the low efficiency of my own script, not completely their fault. Actually, the ability to provide this threshold is a very good service to help keep others who share the same server with me from any problems the code causes. So, I am still happy about it.

However, to my greatest surprise, they disabled my account these days, and I have to contact the abuse department of bluehost to have my site restored. This may take some time since it happens on Saturday their time. Maybe I need to wait until their Monday to talk to someone. I just wrote an email to explain what happened.

Meanwhile, I just tried to transfer my files to my backup host, http://ipowerweb.com – pretty bad service, but a little bit better than nothing.

I am sorry that comment you post during these two days are not recorded, and have problems.

If you want me to compare ipower and bluehost, I think there is no any reason to use ipowerweb.

Hope my site gets back as soon as possible.