Nice Hotel in Tongli

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I didn’t write about it. Wendy and I went to Tongli for a night during Saturday – arrive at late night, and stayed in a very nice small hotel there, and left early in the morning (at 8:30 AM, we are already on the high way to Shanghai).

This is my second time (and Wendy’s first time) to Tongli. As I said in my last post, Tongli is a beauty at night. I highly recommend people to stay in Tongli for the night only, and it is so beautiful when there is nobody walking in the town and all shops close.

Zheng Fu Cao Tang

This time, we stayed in Zheng Fu Cao Tang 正福草堂, maybe the best hotel in the town. Last time I was there, I don’t have any money with me, so I stayed in the Fan Rong Hostel – 30 RMB per night. Last time, when I pasted by this hotel, I said, next time, I will stay here.

Website: http://www.zfct.net/

Reservation; +86-512-6320576

We stayed in a room for 220 RMB per night.

Here are some picture of this Chinese accident style hotel. I will stay here next time. They said you need to reserve at least one week in advance. (we were lucky that one person just cancelled the reservation, so we walked in and stayed).

The bed:

I wonder why people don’t use this kind of Chinese traditional bed any more – the bed with a frame and curtain, and it seems like a room.

Below is the nice flower on curtain before the door.

The bed – red Chinese style.

The small area before the room, on the second floor.

Red Big Lanterns.

They have an ancient instrument outside the door.

This is the entrance of the hotel.

In the garden:

Outside the hotel:

Early morning, looking down to the garden from the second floor where we stayed

Tongli at Night

River of Tong Li

My Photo

Wendy took a photo of me. Did work so well.

This one is much better:

Added Comments RSS Feed

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Inspired by this post, I added the comment feeds in RSS 2.0 format to this blog.

If you want to subscribe the latest comments, use this feed: https://home.wangjianshuo.com/comments.xml

I created a new index file with “Comments RSS” as name, and comments.xml as filename. This is the content of this template.

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”<$MTPublishCharset$>”?>

<rss version=”2.0″>

<channel>

<title><$MTBlogName remove_html=”1″ encode_html=”1″$>: Comments</title>

<link><$MTBlogURL$></link>

<description>Latest comments for <$MTBlogName remove_html=”1″ encode_html=”1″$></description>

<language>en-us</language>

<lastBuildDate><MTComments lastn=”1″><$MTCommentDate language=”en” format=”%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S”$> <$MTBlogTimezone no_colon=”1″$></MTComments></lastBuildDate>

<generator>http://www.movabletype.org/?v=<$MTVersion$></generator>

<docs>http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss</docs>

<MTComments lastn=”20″ sort_order=”descend”>

<item>

<title>Comment on “<MTCommentEntry><$MTEntryTitle remove_html=”1″ encode_html=”1″$></MTCommentEntry>”</title>

<link><MTCommentEntry><$MTEntryPermalink$>#comments</MTCommentEntry></link>

<description><$MTCommentBody encode_html=”1″$> <p>- <$MTCommentAuthorLink show_email=”0″ encode_html=”1″$></p></description>

<guid isPermaLink=”false”>comment<$MTCommentID pad=”1″$>@<$MTBlogURL$></guid>

<pubDate><$MTCommentDate language=”en” format=”%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S”$> <$MTBlogTimezone no_colon=”1″$></pubDate>

</item>

</MTComments>

</channel>

</rss>

Welcome Jack to Visit my Home

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Jack don’t need privacy protection. I know it, and that is the reason I used his name in title – correct me if I am wrong, Jack. :-)

Just kidding. But I had wonderful conversation and dinner with Jack Gu in my house, and we talked a lot. Let me record just a few so it reminds me to write something about it (maybe on my Chinese blog)

  • Internet industry analysis starts from eCommerce – according to Richard
  • Online and offline are two worlds – to promote offline business in pure online site is as ineffective as promoting websites on offline media
  • We need some way to manage relationship – when you reach the stage that relationship are your most important assert, and source of happiness
  • Google AdSense in China does not help bloggers and web 2.0 companies as much as it does in U.S – less than $0.01 eCPM is not rare
  • Connection and training are two most important thing when someone is still in a big company
  • De-attachment is key for releasing pressure
  • Sometimes to go along a circle and getting back to where I seemed to be does not mean it is the same – the mood and feeling changes dramatically – just as the fishman’s story told us

Just list a few of them. Sorry that I don’t have time to explain every single item here, but I hope I can write more about these interesting topics.

Thanks Jack for sharing with me or listen to what I want to share.

Why I didn’t Use Twitter.com Yet

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I know twitter.com came. I know it is getting traction. I know it is a hot topic. And I have tried it months before. But I don’t plan to use it.

We have to agree that not every tool is right for every person, right? We have to agree that if I don’t use some service, it does not mean that this service is not useful, right?

There are many new things on the Internet, from RSS, SNS, Podcast, etc. You name it. But, I do believe in blog. In my “Internet History Book”, there are several big steps in Internet.

Step 1: Email (with FTP, and all such command based Internet applications). For the first time in the history of human, people can communicate so easily.

Step 2: Browser. For the first time in history, getting information became so easy.

Step 3: Blogging. Blogging makes it so simple to publish something on the Internet. I didn’t made something impossible possible, it just made thing so simple – simple enough for everyone to use.

That is Communication to Read-only Web to Writable Web.

Among the three big trends, there are many smaller trends, like push technology, like BT, like RSS, like Twitter, like Wiki… But they are just smaller trends, and does not affect big scale of people.

Twitter is the small step. I am a strong believer of “long term”, and keep doing something to accumulate what I did. I don’t plan to do twitter for long term – I know how hard it is to update a blog once per day (I even didn’t find out any time in the last three days), so I know it is almost impossible for me to write hourly (although it is just one sentence) on twitter for long time.

111 Anniversary of Jiao Tong University

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Today is the 111th anniversary of Jiao Tong University. Congratulations!

Design Change (Error) of the 100 Anniversary Monument

Talking about the anniversary, it reminds me of the 100th Anniversary Monument. Look at the monument in the middle of this picture:

Photo by Jian Shuo Wang. First published under View of SJTU

If you look closely enough (well, not on this picture), on the surface of the monument, there are a lot of small stairs around it. On the back, the introduction on the stone said: “The 100 stairs reflects the 100 year history of the university”.

Well. Next time, if you want to, count how many stairs yourself. The reality is, there are only 75 stairs on the monument!

What a major bug of this monument! I suspect at the very beginning, the design was a monument like a square. Then the shape changed to triangle, but the design change was not reflected to the stairs, so….

Anyway, happy anniversary.

Justin.TV

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Interesting. Look at this http://www.justin.tv/。 Richard sent me the link.

This is exactly what I am looking for. This is what exactly what I think the future blogging will be.

There is a Microsoft Research project to record everything (including sound and picture) of your life. I like this idea. I know it is not possible to process the 2G of data (daily!) with the current technology, but there must be some time it is possible.

Justin made a further step by broadcasting it in real time. I am not sure if I want to do it as Justin (well. I am sure I won’t do it), but I am pretty comfortable to record everything like Justin for my personal record. After 20 years, it must be very funny to rewind and see what happened when I am still young.

Kijiji SJTU Office

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Yesterday, I posted some picture of the view from my window in my Kijiji. It seems many people from SJTU (Shanghai Jiao Tong University) are interested in the view of the old campus. So today, let me post some pictures about our lovely office of Kijiji. I enjoy working in this office very much. These pictures were taken in Jan before we moved into the Kijiji office.

Today during a conversation with someone in the industry, we agreed there is not too much secret for a startup (like Kijiji), because it is rarely about a secret, it is all about the execution. So this is the secret place we work at. So I proudly presents the Kijiji SJTU office!

Before we Moved in

© Jian Shuo Wang, in Kijiij SJTU office

© Jian Shuo Wang, in Kijiij SJTU office

© Jian Shuo Wang, in Kijiij SJTU office

© Jian Shuo Wang, in Kijiij SJTU office

The First Day

© Jian Shuo Wang, in Kijiij SJTU office

© Jian Shuo Wang, in Kijiij SJTU office

© Jian Shuo Wang, in Kijiij SJTU office

© Jian Shuo Wang, in Kijiij SJTU office

© Jian Shuo Wang, in Kijiij SJTU office

© Jian Shuo Wang, in Kijiij SJTU office

P.S. After we moved into that building, so many people asked me how to get into it. It is not impossible, but it is hard.

View of SJTU

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SJTU = Shanghai Jiao Tong University

This is the view outside my office – the window is immediately at my left.

Sping comes, and the great grassland was full of people – in twos or threes. I believe they will be very happy about the sunshine.

1:22

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Just sent out a PPT, and it is 1:22 AM. I usually do not stay so late – this is the rare occasion. To keep life and work balance is still my key philosophy. Going back to sleep now. There is no (actual) blog today.

GPRS Package from China Mobile

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When Internet is shifting from computer, laptop to mobile, it is critical to find out exactly how China Mobile charges you for GPRS. Here is the guide (sorry for posting it late, since I know many people have asked for this information)

Level 1: No Package

If you have a mobile and you haven’t call China Mobile to subscribe to any GPRS package, you are customer of this package. It is the unified fee:

0.03 RMB per 1K of traffic

This is very expensive, as you may calculate. A typical web page is 10K – 100K. That means the shortest page is equal to 1 minute of phone call.

Don’t be silly to use this package, but the majority of visitors are using this package.

Level 2: 5 RMB for 10 Megabytes of CMWAP Traffic

This is much better, 1/60 of the first level (or 0.0005 RMB per 1K traffic).

Before I continue, I have to explain about the difference between CMWAP, and CMNET.

For more carriers, there are only one GPRS network – all mobiles access the Internet as if it is a terminal computer on Internet – they have their own public IP addresses. This is what CMNET exactly means (CMNET = China Mobile Internet)

For CMWAP, you cannot access the Internet. You can only access a very small part of it – those WAP sites directly connected with China Mobile. For example, you cannot use MSN Messenger on your Windows Mobile, and cannot access your email at home.

Of cause, there are many ways to workaround this limitation.

Level 3: 20 RMB for Unlimited CMWAP

If you understand the limitation of CMWAP, this is the package for you:

20 RMB for Unlimited CMWAP

Level 4: 20 RMB for 50M of CMWAP or CMNET

This is the package I am using.

20 RMB for 50M of CMWAP or CMNET

If you exceed 50M of traffic, you pay 0.01 RMB per Kilobytes

To give you some ideas of how much 50 M is, let me share my data.

In March, I used 19M of traffic (40% of the allowrance). This is the application I used:

Gmail (http://gmail.com)

ActiveSync, I have every email in my Exchange email box (and I typically read on my mobile first)

Web pages (Google Reader Mobile Edition, and My Comment RSS) – daily

Other web application.

So I believe it is good for most people.

Level 5: 100 RMB for 800 M

Level 6: 200 RMB for 2000M

Level 7: 500 RMB for Unlimited CMNET and CMWAP

I don’t have idea about who should use this level.

Summary

In summary, I suggest 20 RMB for 50 M CMNET and CMWAP access is good for most of GPRS users.

Mac Cannot Access Internet in China

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RC has a problem related to Mac. He just got a new Mac and bring it to China. He could not connect the Mac to Internet no matter using LAN, Wireless… It is weird that he can use Skype, but cannot browse any websites.

Livid has a quick response: try to set the DNS to

208.67.222.222

or

208.67.220.220

(This is the OpenDNS)

RC tried, and it works!

Well. It sounds like a miracle.

So if you encounter the same problem, you may try this solution, since it seems not a solution that you can find out yourself.

Why this happens? I don’t know exactly why. I just know the DNS setting of China Telecom is completely massed up.

Serious Ill caused by Serious Mistake

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I have some friends in Hangzhou, and Yezi was among the most familiar one. When she was a reporter in eTime Weekly in Hangzhou, we had wonderful gather in Shanghai with other editing stuff. It was a night before typhoon hit Shanghai. Everyone got drunk that day. She is that kind of strong and sunny girl. She was the active in blogging events like China Blogger Conference – two girls (the other is Yuanzi) took all the logistic work.

She is going to have a baby in two months. But one day she sent a mail to our group and asked for help. She went to the Zhejiang Women’s Hospital to do regular physical examination. The lab report shows she got a disease called thrombocytopenia – a blood disease for lack of blood platelet.

The first test shows the normal metrics is 100 – 300, and she only got 34. That means it is very dangerous and there is no way she can give birth to a baby (60 is the minimum requirement). The doctor gave her a lot of medicines.

She was so concerned to eat any medicine when she is pregnant. So she try to use all kinds of food that was said to be useful. 10 days later, she wen there for the second time, the lab test result shows 24, even lower.

The doctor complained that why she didn’t take any medicine. With tears, she took them for one week. Then they went to the hospital for the third time. The result for this time is 19.

For this disease, if it is under 20, it means terminally ill, and the doctor said they are going to claim “close to death”. They warned that there will be bleeding in brain or inside body for both the baby and Yezi at any time. When it happens, she will be very dangerous.

When she sent the news to Ideafactorychina (an email alias we are both in), I was shocked. Why this happens to a girl like her.

Then the doctor suggested to either use hormone or Immunoglobulin (It was not easy to for me to find these terms in English). Of cause either of them have negative impact for people, especially for baby. They decided to take Immunoglobulin.

Before of the Zhejiang Hospital did the operation, they found out they don’t have the Immunoglobulin in stock. So she was transferred to another hospital.

She finally prepared to move the patient room full of blood cancer patients – the deadly disease.

In her diary, she said she sent SMS to her friends to say good bye, because she don’t know whether she can walk out of the room. and prepared everything a person may do before death. What a heart breaking feeling it is!

In that hospital, everything changes. The lab test result shows her blood platelet level is 140. Everything is fine. The double check shows 210. She cannot be more healthier with this metrics.

So she get back to the Zhejiang Women’s Hospital. The result there on the same day shows 59.

Yezi was so angry, and talked with the hospital. Finally, the hospital admit that they made a mistake. Well. To be more exact, they made the mistake 4 times and forced a health pregnant woman to take 4 different kinds of medicine, sentenced her to death, and was almost injected something everyone knows harmful into her body.

Happy is Yezi, and angry is Yezi. She wrote her experience in an article and posted Here (English Translation)

I was shocked. However, the sad thing is, this happens so frequently, that I can hardly believe in a hospital. What a terrible world!

I hope Yezi recover soon, not from the so-called deadly blood cancer, she really need to recover the mental hurt, and be back to normal life. Hope she deliver the baby smoothly.

P.S. One detail in Yezi’s story was, when the family members talked about blood transfusion, they were so concerned with the blood in any hospital and decided to accept blood only within family members. This mindset is so normal in current sociaty. Personally, I don’t trust any blood in hospital. News comes after news about AIDS patient donating blood to hospitals, and the blood smoothly pass all the unresponsible checks and then enters hospital, so transfused into healthy people’s body. That is a serious problem

P.S. 2 This just echo another thing I witnessed at the gate of my residential area. Someone was angry, and shouted to several guy who offers service to fix flat tier. I stood there and understood what happend. Many of bicycles or motorcycles passed by got flat tiers. They suspect that these guys are putting nails 200 meters ahead so they can charge high for that. What can I do for that? Last time my car was scratched by a drunk driver. I called police, and police came, but said there is nothing they can do since the driver has run away. I said his car is here, he is working inside the building, and there are 10+ witness there. I said what I wanted to say. They heard everything, then quitely left.

Shopping Malls in Shanghai

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This is a short guide for visitors who love shopping. There are many places you can go in Shanghai to buy stuff, from small fashion stores on some hidden streets, to large shopping malls. This article only focus on the later.

Raffles City

268 Xi Zhang Middle Road

I used to work there (the office building behind the Raffles City). It has Singapore flavor (as implied from the name and Capital Land, the developer).

Shanghai Centre

1376 Nanjing West Road

This is maybe the headquarter building for American companies. The Portman Ritz-Carlton Hotel is in the middle tower, and office buildings on the west and east wings, and many shops and airlines on the lower shopping mall. Australia visa office is also there. They have nice acrobatic show in the Theater.

Super Brand Mall

168 Lujiazui West Road

One of the few big shopping malls in Pudong Area. There are many super market centric shopping areas – like those around Carefour, or Lotus, but not too much complex like the Super Brand Mall – with a lot of restaurants, theater, and shops.

Times Square – Pudong

500 Zhangyang Road

Times Square – Puxi

149 Huaihai Road

Xin Tian Di

123 Xing Ye Road

Besides the bar area, they also have a shopping mall on the south side of it, featuring post-modern small gifts, and toys.

Isetan

1038 Nanjing West Road

Massion Mode

1312 Huaihai Middle Road

The flagship for fashion cloths. It has the reputation to be one of the most expensive cloth shopping malls in Shanghai.

Plaza 66

1266 Nanjing West Road

The party place for big names like LV.

CITIC Square

1168 Nanjing West Road

City Centre

100 Zunyi Road

Grand Gateway

No 1, Hongqiao Road

This is huge!

Parkson Shopping Mall

Huaihai Road

Something in Common?

There are something in common in all these shopping malls – expensive. Be prepared.

My Favorite Food in the World

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Let me show you my little secret: my favorite food in the world. It is called Mipi (米皮), or Rice Noodle?

I love it since I was in middle school, and it is one of the major attraction for me from my home town, Luoyang.

Image taken by my primary school and high school class mate, Nie Xiang Feng

Image taken by my primary school and high school class mate, Nie Xiang Feng

Xiang Feng posted in the BBS of my high-school classmate. It was so “angry”! How can you put on the image that made me feel so…. so… tempted… I feel I am even like Mipi-addictoin.

It is spicy and salty.

There is only one small shop at Qilihe 七里河 that I like. I can tell the difference. I have a little dream to buy out the shop one day and bring it to Shanghai.

I don’t see this kind of food anywhere outside Luoyang. In Shanghai, I didn’t find anything similar. If you ever see something like this, do tell me.

Reading of Today

I read Feld’s article: Discovering Work Life Balance. It is so true. I like it. The good thing is, I am only 30 (well, several months from that), and I am lucky enough to understand it before it is too late.

I found Feld also reads Alan de Botton’s book.

Lulu.com to Turn Blog into Book

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lulu.com is a great service. They offer personal publishing. Just like MovableType offers online personal publishing, they actually publish the book!

Some interesting features I like:

ISBN

With 99 USD, they can assign a ISBN to your new book! This is valid ISBN that you can even sell your book in Amazon.com or bookstores. They (lulu.com) act as the publishing house for you.

Publishing House

With 149 USD, they even can list you as the publisher, that you own the ISBN…

Free PDF Creator

They can convert the Word document into PDF that allows your users to download (free or at a fee).

Binding and Shipping, and Print (just in time)

They cover almost everything about publishing. That makes printing a book as easy as creating a Word document or write a blog.

I am Going to Try It

How about I publish some books? Something like this:

Wangjianshuo’s Blog (2002 – 2006)

Living in Shanghai – From the Eyes of a Blogger

Discover Shanghai

….

I can put the related topic (categories in this blog) into a book.

Then I can print the book. Anyone interested to get one?

How to Start a Blog?

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This is my answer to my friend who is going to start a blog, and asked me how to get started. He is thinking about WorldPress but concerned that it may be banned from China.

It is great news that you finally started blogging. That can be very interesting. You asked the right person. :-) Let me tell you everything, if you want to know such details.

In case you didn’t find an answer to some of your questions (even future questions), you may want to check my articles on blogging at:

https://home.wangjianshuo.com/archives/backstage.htm Backstage of my site (42 articles)

https://home.wangjianshuo.com/archives/blog_tips.htm Tips for Bloggers (15 articles)

https://home.wangjianshuo.com/archives/hosting.htm All About Hosting (30 articles)

https://home.wangjianshuo.com/archives/blogging.htm My Own Blogging Experience (30 articles)

You can start with WordPress, but I strongly recommend you to host it with your own hosting plan and software, if you take it seriously. I am so happy that I started from the day one to use my own domain (you already got one), and my own system. WordPress is sometimes banned (most of the time is OK), and so does all major blog providers in U.S. (blogger.com, typepad.com). Even if you map your domain to wordpress, it will still be blocked. They block IP and domain.

I’d like to recommend MovableType. I am a happy customer for 5 years, and never doubted about my choice. ( movabletype.org). You can get a hosting plan (like bluehost.com, which is good) at 84 USD per year, and setup your own software. Since you don’t want to spend too much time on setup and maintenance, I am happy to ask my friend to help you out if you want. I even have some hosting package that you can leverage immediately. Anyway, I think it is better to have it on WordPress – one) it is hard to ban (your destiny is controlled by yourself, not others who share the same server) two) it allows you to do more things than blog, like BBS, photo sharing and even some small applications (all under same domain).

On blogging topics, your experience is definitely valuable, and you should share them. Just one tip for you – don’t try to write too much at the very begining. There is something different between writing blog and writing a book. It is all about writing frequently instead of writing in depth (of cause depths is also important but not the No. 1 factor). Frequent blogs get audience (like feld.com).

I think the topic may also include something about yourself, and companies, people you meet everyday, because this garentees that you have something to write, to share, and readers have some reasons to come. I do have too many friends who started, and write two or three articles, and then pause, or completely stop. Non-bloggers cannot imagine how hard it is to keep writing a blog at fixed frequency, even one article per week or per month is hard.

So, happy blogging

What Matters to Me Most Today?

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When I write a blog, I often ask the question: What matters to me most today? No matter how big or small, it is something that matters. A good blogger does not only describe something, but also describes why it matters, and tell people the details. (I think I read about this tip from a article about how to write better blog 4 years ago).

Flowers

The spring comes, and flowers blooms. White magnolia (白玉兰) was full of flowers – one window in my dining room is full of the whitish and reddish flowers. That is so good.

5G on Internet Expo

Spent the afternoon in 5G. Struggled a lot about whether to stay at home and be with Wendy or attend 5G. Finally, I decided to have a quick attendance to 5G. The topic for this 5G Review is “China International Internet Culture Expo”, which will be held this Oct in Beijing. People shared a lot of suggestions about how to revolutionalize the expo to the next level.

Running in my Garden

Exercise does need a big playground. I found a route – short but decent in my garden – that I can even run for 10 minutes. This made me very happy. No excuse to lack of resources or time to exercise. The perfect place is exactly in my garden

Ping Pong Tonight

I paid for a Ping Pong mentor to play Ping Pong with me tonight in the primary school nearby. I didn’t play Ping Pong for a long time. I think it is a good idea to find a mentor to help me to play professionally. My mentor Ni is good. I paid 50 RMB per hour for the service, including the venue. I will be there every Saturday night and Monday night.