Recently, it seems to me that there are more chances for my visitors to see this “Exceeded CPU Quota” error:
This is because there are too much traffic on this site, and the bluehost are constraining the CPU usage. I am not sure how many of you have ever seen this error? Let me know if you also see it so I have a brief idea about how bad the situation is, and decide whether I should do something for it, or not.
Thanks.
According to this China Daily article, the controversial Starbucks store in the forbidden city was finally closed.
This echos the recent “Chinese sign enforcement” event in Shanghai.
I have my email published on my home page – on the right columns, so readers, or friends who lost my email address can contact me. I am open to emails, and welcome your feedbacks. Many people just send me a thank you note, or a compliment letter, which made me very happy. I receive several emails everyday about Shanghai questions, and I answer most of them – I do have to ignore some when the question is too technical (like help me to fix this webcam driver problem), or hard to answer.
I want to make it clear that although the hotmail address is also my MSN, please do not try to add it to your MSN Messenger. As you can imagine, there are too many people doing that, and I see several notification boxes to add someone everyday. My MSN Messenger has already been full for a long time – more than two years ago.
Just now I received email to complain that he/she never saw me on MSN Messenger. I want to make it clear now that please don’t expect me to accept every request. Email is still preferred way to reach me, or even mobile when it is really urgent, but not MSN. I don’t like to use MSN since if I do, my time is completely hooked up with MSN, especially with chat starting with “May I know you? What do you do? How old are you, can you tell me?”…
To set the clear expectation is at least better than disappointment.
Found an interesting article on Shanghaiist about the recent regulation to add Chinese signs to all stores, shops and restaurants in Xintiandi.
Xintiandi is a very unique place, where most of the shops and bars remains the same style as they were in their original country (many from U.S.) and it is a cultural showcase in the heart of Shanghai about the foreign cultures. One reflection about this is the names and signs of the stores. Many of them only have English names and only show English on their signs, like my favorite KABB. I don’t know whether they have a Chinese name.
The recent requirement is to put Chinese names on their store. I didn’t visit Xintiandi recently, but it is said all store complied with this regulation already. Hmmm.. This seems wired and the next time I am there, I will take pictures, and I am sure Xintiandi may look differently.
The other place very similar to Xintiandi is the Biyun International District. It is just an American Town in Shanghai.
How do I feel? Well. I have some concerns on this. I am afraid the consistency may overtake diversity in this city, and the government is trying to regulate everything, and may kill the energy of the new economic ecosystem. I love to see Chinese culture become more and more rich, however, it should base itself upon a very solid foundation – like more artist, more poetic, more great novelist, and more good Chinese restaurants and bars. By suppressing the other culture to make sure one culture is stronger is not the right way to do it.
How do you feel?
Olympics is closer. I didn’t feel too much difference yet, but the business men – or to be more exact, the marketing managers – has smelled the opportunity and started to move faster than average people.
When I watch TV today (very seldom recently), and I found many TV commericals are directly connected with Olympics or sports. For example, Coca-Cola is featuring the swimming team, and P&G is featuring the other team (I don’t know how to describe it – it is the movement or dance on the surface – 体操？)…
Olympics is closers…
P.S. The other day, I was asked whether I still listen to VOA (Voice of America). I said, I listened to the program frequently, 17 years ago…
This seems to be a silly question – “how to setup a website OUTSIDE China?” What to do with China when the website is outside China.
This is exactly the right answer. However, many (upt o 10) emails asked me about the procedure of setting up a website – in Chinese – outside China. The most recent inquiry comes from Santiago, Chile.
The major concern is the widely know (or infamous) Great Firewall, and the registration process in China. The short answer is, no. The registeration is only required for sites in China – nobody really explained what it means to be “in China”. Whether it is server in China or the owner in China? I don’t know and don’t have a law about it.
So if your site is out of China and you are out of China, don’t worry. Just go ahead to create your website according to the local regulations and laws.
However, there is a risk that your site is banned by the GFW, and people inside China cannot access the site. Please note: in this situation, people outside China can still access it, since the GFW is only placed on the major connection port between China and outside world. Your servers are outside the wall, and people in China are inside the wall.
What will tigger the ban? It is typically political or “sensitive” (according to a misterious standard). If you are commercial sites like B2B, or B2C, or informational about your product, don’t worry.
To future explain the situation, you still have the risk been banned if you host your website on the same server as other sites that the GFW don’t like. They ban sites based on IP address, and if you are not lucky, you are the victom. The solution is simple – change to another Internet provider, and you will be OK – as long as it is not your site that caused the ban.
That is the simple explaination of this urgly reality.
What is the most sticky topic on this site? Or to put the question the other way, what is the keyword that brings a visitor and the visitor stayed on this site for longest time?
Using the data from Google Analytics, I created a table here. Let me show you some of the top visiting keyword:
This morning, York has his new baby!
The whole team is very happy about him, and I, in particular, understand how exciting and sweet it is.
Congratulations, York.
People call the newly born baby York 2.0, or some calls him
NEW YORK
P.S. I had wonderful night with the third delegation Jan and I hosted: the U.S China Working Group of U.S. Congress Delegation – arranged by NCUCR… I also met Sean, founder of neocha.com.
Yesterday, I registered Wangyifan.com, as a gift for my newly born baby. The domain expired on June 30, 2007, and within seconds, it was registered by SnapNames.com, and finally, I spent 79 USD to get it back. Then I noticed that SnapNames.com did a good (well, only from business perspective) to have 10 million domain transaction per year. Pretty amazing.
After I wrote about Chinese Characters (which is an interesting topic), let me talk about the name of people in China. Just as the last article, I “intentionally” over-simplify it since 1) how can it be possible to tell the “complete” story with such a short answer 2) why people need to understand that details when they are first exposed to such topics.
What’s in the Name?
I chatted with Chris the other day about giving naming to my son – it was not an easy task. I asked: Do you have explicit meaning in English names? I assume there is no for most names, and the choice is just about pronunciation and because people who are named with this name. (Is this true?)
The Chinese name is different. There are only limited number of Chinese characters (you cannot create a new one, and it is always impossible to create a “typo” on computer since you cannot create one characters on computer), and there are just a small subsets that are often used (within 2000). That means, every single character has explicit meanings. It is either some physical objects (like mountain, rain, cloud, tree, gold), or some concept like happiness, good, wisdom…
Finding out the name is like write a very poem. Everything express some meaning so you need express something with the two or three characters.
So, ask what the meaning of their name when you meet a person from China, and you will be surprised by how deep the meaning of the names are.
Family Names
Unlike English names, people put family name in the first place, and the given name the second. It shows respect to the anscester.
There are not so many last names. The common saying is “100” last names in China, but actually, there is more than that. To recite all the 100 last names with the exact order is one of the must-do task for children in the past.
Common last names are:
Wang, Zhao, Zhang, Li, Yang, Sun, Zhou, Wu, Zheng…
The Middle Names
People in China actually don’t have middle names.
In tradition, all the names are three characters, with the first character as last name, and the rest two are the given name. However, in many families, the first character of the given name is a mark of the generation. (Let me name it as middle name, although people in China don’t call it so). Everyone in the same generation has exactly the same middle name.
For example, according to the Family History Booklet, my middle name should be Zhong 重. This has been determined hundreds of years ago already, so I know my son’s middle name, or my grandson, or his son, or grandson’s middle name.
The usage of this middle name is make sure when two person with the same last name meets, they can immediately tell what generation he is, and they know how they should address the other. It is not rare for a person of 70 to call a person of just 5 grandfather…
So, when the last name, and the middle name are determined, people typically only need to think of one name – the second character of the given name. The tradition is, you cannot use the same name as your ancestor, even names with similar pronunciation to show respect. There are thousands of characters, and there are only hundreds of pronunciation in China, so you can calculate how many characters with exactly the same pronunciation. So this further limit the options.
The Sense of Family History
When I read the history of my family, I realized I am the 20th generation of the family living in that small place. The first generation, according to the history, moved from Shanxi province to Henan Province in the year 1380. We know the name of this person, and how many children he has (and what is their names), and the all the way down to me – it is a very big family tree there. When I read about the person who record the relationship. They did the work in the 15th century, and once in the 18th century, and the latest work is in 1993. I was amazed by how long the history of my family is. I just discovered this when I am thinking about names for my son, who is the 21th generation of the family.
Current Situation
We finally turned out that we didn’t follow the naming standard recorded in the Booklet. However, I will tell Yifan what generation and what “middle name” he should have. In China, the recent two or three generations typically give up the old way of giving names, so people have two characters name or three, or even more. It is chaos. The long history of naming in China gradually got lost… It is a pity.
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This morning, I took one morning leave to go to hospital to inject the immune for my son. He is one month old now – exactly one month. Due to Chinese tradition, people often celebrate the date with a ceremony similar to the wedding ceremony – after one month, the month, and the children (and the father, of cause) should already recovered from the initial “disorder” to the normal life. This seems to be good timing. We didn’t do it. We went to hospital this morning. The second round of immune injection started from today.
To my surprise, it took us almost the whole morning to wait in the long line of crying babies. We left around 11:00 AM after the injection, and was not patient enough to wait in the long line to get the Vitamin B the doctor prescribed. If I should have waited, I guess I needed 40 minutes.
This reminded me the talk I had with Jim the other day. He said: “Before you have a baby, or you get sick, you may not understand how limited the social resource in this country is”.
This is true. Before, if there is only Wendy and I, there are not too much we need. Just go to restaurants, and we went to movies – there are plenty of them both in Shanghai.
However, when we have a baby, we suddenly found there are just so few hospitals, so few doctors, and so long you have to wait. Later, I believe we will continuously find out the educational system, the other medical care, the sport facility for children — it is still very rare resources – far from enough.
I am also aware that I am in Shanghai – the city in China with relatively better social security, and insurance system. If I feel the lack of resources (indicated by long waiting time), it must be so in other places.
I have to admit, that I only see part of China (before and now, and in the future). I just found out this with the arrival of my son.
Thank you for spending time on my “little blog”. I hope you enjoy reading the articles.
If you want to contact me, just send me an email at
jianshuo at hotmail dot com
I check my email daily, and your email will be read (if it does not mistakenly put into the Junk Mail folder of my Hotmail).
The best way to contact me is via email, but if it is important or urgent, you can also reach me via:
Phone
My mobile phone is +86-13916146826 (you need to add your own country’s prefix to dial out of your country)
Don’t forget that I am in Shanghai, at time zone +0800. Please check the current Shanghai time before dialing.
Anybody still uses postal mail? If you do, here it is:
Room 1808, 55 Guangyuan West Road, Shanghai, China 200030
Social Networking
If you’d like to connect with me via a social networking site, you can do so at:
Comment on this Blog
Finally, don’t forget that to leave a comment on this blog is also a great way to contact me. I read comments daily.
During our code review today at office, I suddenly realize there are many technical dreams I have once had but didn’t fulfill it.
When I demonstrate the data-aware controls, and the architect, I recalled the time I started to learn C#, and all kinds of other language. I always wanted to
1. Write a language – I mean, some really productive language like PHP, or C#.
I thought I am not interested it any longer after my shift from technical field to business field in 2003, but today, I am re-assured that I want to do it. It brings me a lot of happiness.
2. Write some really cool applications.
Like the Web based IDE idea I described in my Chinese blog
Hands on CEO?
I have many roles in life. I know majority of the blog reader (some are 5 year long readers! Amazing! It is even more amazing than keep writing it) knows my role as a blogger – a blogger in Shanghai and broadcast what is happening here.
I also have another role – CEO of Kijiji, the eBay’s subsidiary in China. The other day, Chris (the great intern from Stanford, who has been very valuable for us) asked me: “Jian Shuo, I am just confused about why you are so hands on? I didn’t see a CEO, especially in the multinational companies who really write code.”.
My answer was a long answer. To be sure, I think I am growing more and more mature, and found some good balance between strategy, and execution. Before May this year, I really looks like a CEO – a personal whose full time job is thinking (or use the more fancy word – planning, creating strategies, read reports). However, many companies succeeds not only because of a good strategy, it is because of the right strategy combined with the right execution. I found I can still be helpful to develop the technical team because of my (luckily) technical background. So I did it. I am happy about the result so far. So I am back to the technical world – as long as I can be of help.
This morning, when I drove from Pudong to Puxi on the Nanpu Bridge, I saw there is no car on the opposite of the Nanpu Bridge. This is very strange, since in rush hours, it is unbelievable there is no single car there, for that long.
When when I approach the Puxi side, I found policeman were there, and there are policemen to block the cars from all directions. In short, the Nanpu Bridge was closed for a short period of time this morning.
It is very common that for some “very important person”, police close a road or many to let them go. It is rare though for the whole bridge to be closed. I don’t know what happened, who are coming, and who the “VIP” is.
The policemen are using public resources, but without limitation of its power, currently, it seems it is their own resources. That is a problem.
This reminds me of my trip to Cambodia. From time to time – many times a day – our tour bus was stopped and pushed aside just for the VIPs to pass. This was very typical in China 10 years ago. Recently years, China has changed to be better. At least in terms of police guarded cars, China is better than Cambodia. We are often stopped, but not daily at least. However, there is still a long way to go – when the time will come when those VIP feel a little bit embarrassed to close the whole bridge in rush hours for several minutes they can save.
Please note: This is Cambodia, not China
Recently, I started to learn management and marketing. It seems to be another interesting field besides coding and technology. :-)
I am reading the book named Marketing Management and Drucker’s The Management Practices. Interesting books. It takes some time to get familiar with this field, but I am keep walking…
I blogged about China for 5 years but still didn’t mention the Chinese character. How can it be possible. Let me talk about the Chinese characters today.
It is Completely Different from English
I am not talking about the language itself, I am talking about the characters. Is there a difference?
The written language of many language, like English and German, are record of the pronunciation. You see the written language, and chances are, you can pronounce it.
Chinese charters are the record of meanings, or the object, and has separation between the oral language, or the pronunciation.
This major difference makes it possible for Chinese to survive in the last 2 thousands years, and, in my personal belief, to hold the country as a united country.
Examples
China is so large, and pronunciation of the same language changes dramatically. For example, in Southeast part of China, almost every village has their own variety of pronunciation, and it differs from each other every 10 km.
I could not understand the language Shanghainese say, and now I can understand but still cannot say the language after I am in this city for 12 years. It is not just accent – it is completely another language!
However, the written language of the whole China is the same. No matter how different people pronounce, when they write it down, it is the same language! That is the amazing thing about Chinese.
The Written Language
How does it work? You may ask.
Look at this picture I draw.
On the first line is the original Chinese characters.
A circle with a dot in it means the Sun. A moon shape with cloud around it is the Moon. What people mean by putting the Sun and the Moon together? It means light, bright…
On the right, there are two characters, one is pointing to top, and one is pointing down. So the left one means “up” and the right one means “down”.
At the bottom, there are one line, meaning 1, two lines = 2, and three lines = 3.
Then with the mountain shape – a horizontal line with three vertical lines above it (with the middle one higher), people are expressing “mountain”, and for water, they draw it like water.
That is the origin of the Chinese characters.
In the several thousands characters (two thousands are commonly used), the most basic characters are either the same of the nature, or has some meaning like 1, 2, 3…
Pronunciation and Characters
I just imagine. If someone pronounce 山 (or Mountain) as Mountain, and pronounce 一 (or one) as one, as long as they write it the same way, they are still speaking Chinese!
From the middle of the last century, a general pronounciation was enforced to make it easy for people to communicate. This is called Putonghua 普通话 or Mandarin. Many people say basically two languages, with Putonghua and the local language.
I am convinced because of people share the same written language, China is always a united nation while empire like its size already broke into smaller countries. If China should have used a language the record the pronunciation, it should have already be the same situation as Europe – German, French, English… many very similar but different languages, thus became different countries.
Just because it is the shape of the nature, I still can directly read all the books written thousands of years ago without too much difficulty (a little bit). This is a miracle that I enjoy.
Hope this helps to bring some interest about Chinese to you.
Let me break down the article into several parts to avoid being too long in one entry.
Elected Officials
If you ask me about a new word or new concept I learnt from the dinner, it will be a very normal and not-noticeable phrase – elected officials. I know this seems strange for people in U.S. Let me tell you why.
The dinner was of a lot of fun. We chatted many topics, and I didn’t notice significant difference from my chat with people from business world. People in the business world (I mean from U.S) talked a lot about politics, and people in the politics world talked a lot about business. :-)
I did the comparison between the “elected officials” and officials in China. We talked about democracy processes and how can it be, or is it feasible in China at all. The first step of democracy, as many people believe, is election.
I shared my experience about the only meaningful election I attended in China – the election of the Property Owner’s Committee in my residential area. (I did vote for some time, but it was a joke since I never heard about the names on the list, and it seemed every one didn’t know them, so the voting is a random vote).
In my residential area, like many others in Shanghai, we have residential committee who represent the resident to govern the affairs of the area. This seems a start of the democracy process in China. For me, this start is quite significant. Only after people learnt to exercise their democracy right within a small area (like a residential area of 10 thousand people) well, can we manage bigger elections. Let me tell you how did that go.
In my post named Democracy in Residential Area in April 2006, I described the election committee. Sounds good, isn’t it?
Later, whenever they have a community meeting, I will make sure I attend – just to witness how democracy practice in the area really goes, and form some basic idea about the direction of China’s future.
To my disappointment, I found there is still a long road to go for people to really understand, appreciate, and practice democracy well, even in an area as small as a residential area.
Fighting instead of Talking
The biggest issue people face in the committee was, There are two or three groups of people who both insist that the other one or two groups of people have to left the committee before they could move on.
There are people who represents people who refused to pay the management fee due to dissatisfaction about the management company. There are people who insisted to pay because they believe those who didn’t pay hurt their interest. There are people to believe the right approach is giving more clear standard to the management company for them to perform and keep the current company for the stability of the service, and the other group believe by getting rid of the current company is the only choice.
The form is a democratic format, but the problem is, after being educated in a non-democratic system that there must be only one correct answer to anything, not so many people really appreciate the different point of view, and they put their energy in fighting. In the last meeting I attended, they fight with each other – I mean physically fighting – hit people on the nose or head – just like this.
When I heard their talking, I found there are some representative’s mind is still as old as in culture revolution – they believe class fighting is still the most important thing. Not many people – I just saw one person, but I was astonished. I realized the physical world can change dramatically, but people’s mind, especially for massive audience as big as China, it takes not years, instead, many generations to change. I predict the change will eventually happen – just like it took me three years (since my trip in U.S. in 2004) to start to think about it – not fully understand yet. I know it really takes time.
Back to the elected official topic. For the whole government to be elected, there is a long way to go. The problem is, there are not enough research about whether it is feasible and what is the time table. “Election” is not as simple as election. It needs education, awareness, knowledge, experience, and tolerance – a lot of things to make it really work. How to archive it? I believe the democratic practice in a residential area is a good start. Maybe the only way to learn to follow a democratic process is to really do it. Although there is chaos at the very beginning, it seems the only way people learn about it.
What do you think?
First, the name of my baby is finally determined. We decided to call him Wang Yifan 王逸凡. Out of all the name, we like this name best and there is no bad similiar meaning related to it. We are happy to announce his name. The english name is Yifan Wang…
Second, he got his Hukou today.
In China, everyone must have a Hukou (refer to Hukou System in China). It is a residential permit that bind someone to a piece of land and restrict free move from one location to another. As I decribed in my previous article, this stupid system is not as powerful as 20 years ago, but it is still in effect, so my darling has to register with the police to get his Hukou. I did it today.
With the Hukou Booklet, the marriage certificate, national id and new-born baby certificate, I added Yifan’s name on our Hukou booklet. Officially, Yifan is now part of our family.
Something interesting for Yifan’s Hukou.
1. There is a column saying: When and why you moved into this family?
The answer was: June 2, 2007, because of newly born.
2. The Origination 籍贯
This is wired. It said: Mingjin County, Henan Province.
I asked the police why, and they said it is by regulation that every person’s origination must follow his father (not mother) and has nothing to do with where he was born or raised.
My origination was also given according to my father, so does Yifan. That means, he is legally bound to a land that he has never been and maybe only visit several times in his life time.
According to this law, his son or daughter will also be treated as a person coming from the county 1800 km away. I firmly believe Hukou system won’t last that long.
3. He has has national identification card number already.
Although it will be at least 18 years for him to claim his id card, he already has a number that is uniquely assigned to him. Isn’t it interesting?
4. The other things like education. Wendy has ‘Graduate’ in the field, and I have ‘B.S.’ and guess what’s in Yifan’s field? It says: ‘pre-school child’. There are also some fields I feel funny, like “Marriage status: not-married”…
Anyway, Yifan has Hukou today.
This is the part III of my dinner last night with mayors, city councils, and executives from city league and NCUCR…
During our talk, we realized when people tried to understand the politics in China, the major problem or source of confusion is about the structure of government, party, and legalization system.
People use the “government” to refer to anything that seems from the “government” – such as the government setup the great firewall, or the government issued this rule. The reality is, there is a distinct difference between the “government” and the “party”. Typically, the people holding government positions also holds party positions, and the two organization share similar people but they are still different.
Manuela analysed the constitution of China – I even really didn’t read it thoroughly yet, and pointed out that 2/3 of the representative in the People’s Congress can change the government head and appoint new people. There are two facts: 1. Do not follow the written rule is the real rule in China. 2. It only mentioned about the government, not party.
To understand this difference is the key to understand the different of government behavior and the differences U.S. and Chinese politics systems, I personally believe so.