Shanghai China Snippets

Bon Jovi, Justin Bieber and ICS

For more than a half year now, whenever there’s a gap between two programmes ICS (International Channel Shanghai) plays a music video of Bon Jovi, then followed by an attractive lady in a car whose name I don’t know and to finish it off there’s Justin Bieber. Bon Jovi I still remember from their first iteration when they were still wild and Livin’ on a Prayer. Now they are so accepted that Chinese tv couples them with Justin Bieber. What’s next, the Sex Pistols.

As an aside, the days that the commercials were in English, mostly proclaiming a city the Most “Beautiful, Exciting, etc” in China, seem to be over. One more sign that ICS is probably the most expensive English corner in China.

Stop Quoting the BMW Woman

99% of the articles about the divide between rich and poor in China and materialism in Chinese Society mention the woman that would rather cry in the back of a BMW than laugh on the back of a bicycle. The latest in an article by Jonathan Fenby (who writes great books by the way).

Time to come up with a new example as this one is getting old (it’s from 2010), it even has its own Wikipedia page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_would_rather_cry_in_a_BMW

And here you can find the search results of “I’d rather weep in a BMW than laugh on a bicycle“

Zero-sum Walking

More on this next week

Tuangou, or Group buying, is hot at the moment. The whole internet seems to be destined to become one Tuangou.

In the end though, whatever you buy now, you only need to join one Tuangou and you’ll sail away in 2012 on Noah’s Ark leaving behind all those Tuangou’ers that were happy with getting a 10 Rmb discount on their next meal.

Sure, it’s not cheap, but it’s real ticket.

Hurry up, only a bit more than 5 days left.

Boarding time is 12 ‘o Clock December 21. 2012, see you then.

Spot the missing letter

Crossposted on Shanghai Daily Photos

Test Test

Test Test

It’s time for a backup of your Gmail account(s) if you live in China.

Google has announced it’s contemplating leaving China and the ramifications might well be that in doing so their Gmail service will become unavailable as well. There’s no certainty but don’t be naive and think it could not happen. Stranger things happened in China regarding the Internet.
How to backup Gmail with Gmail Backup

Program: Gmail Backup
URL: http://www.gmail-backup.com/download
Platform: (Windows & Linux)

Simple program that stores all your emails in a folder of choice on your hard disk
Includes option to set the date from where to start backing up

How to backup Gmail with Imap

On the help pages Google provides info on how to configure several email clients to back up your mail using IMAP

Among the email clients are:

Thunderbird 2.0
Apple Mail 2.0
Outlook Express
Outlook 2007
Windows Mail

See for an overview of all email clients here. For the Chinese version see here

How to backup Gmail with Pop

On the help pages Google provides info on how to configure several email clients to back up your mail using POP

Among the email clients are:

Thunderbird 2.0
Apple Mail 2.0
Outlook 2007
Outlook Express
Windows Mail

See for an overview of all email clients here. For the Chinese version see here

Better do it now, VPN connections will get slower once we all have to start using them.

If anyone knows better ways, please add them in the comments.

The Chinese firewall had an active day. Twitter blocked, Flickr blocked, Microsoft’s new search engine Bing.com blocked.

In general the average Chinese user won’t give a a hoot. Twitter….. Flickr….. and that pancake search engine.

It’s mostly the foreigners here that will have to find other ways to express themselves. Should be good for productivity, although there’s still facebook.., at least for now.

But blocking Hotmail…, that does affect the average Chinese user if not many Chinese business that still use Hotmail.

How for example will Mr. Hou cope with the fact that he won’t be able to read all inquiries about becoming an urban farmer.

No surprise then that today the hottest searches on Google.cn are all about “logging in to Hotmail.

and for some strange reason all those people seem to search only for it on Google.cn as Baidu’s visitors have other things on their mind or maybe they don’t use email.

Let’s see which one of the above will be the first one to make it back. My bet is Hotmail.

Clicking an ad I ended up at the website of the Osteria restaurant

I’m a bit puzzled by the fact that if I bring 7 or more friends I’ll be charged 10% more.

Still, I may try out the place one day, just with a small group though.
It seems from the pictures like an enjoyable place and the reviews seem ok as well.

Osteria Restaurant
226 Jinxian Lu / Shaanxi Nan Lu
Website: http://www.osteriaspirit.com/connect.html

I just asked her if she felt less happy after US bank Lehman Brother’s went bankrupt in september 2008.

Yes, of course, was her answer. Since that moment my happiness index plummeted to very low levels. Before all was ok, also thanks to Lehman Brothers but now….

“What’s the exact score now”, I asked. Well, at most 45. And before? “Well, at minimum 78″.

I followed up with, “Would you still marry me now, you know, considering the financial crisis and so..?”

“No, of course not. Don’t you know, foreigners don’t care about saving. They just spend it, they’re not responsible, they don’t want long term wealth”

“So what now”, I asked. “Well, better to divorce”, she said. “A score of 45 is less than 50 so no good.”

Yes, it’s hard but luckily fiction based on a brilliant article in the local waste paper aka Shanghai Daily that quotes research from the website Hongniang.com.

And so life in China continues to be lived in stereo types. Better think twice before marrying that foreigner!! (unspecified if he’s Asian, European, North/South American, African or god forbid Oceanic)

By the way, We’re still happy.

—-
Thanks to a tweet of http://twitter.com/fonstuinstra retweeting http://twitter.com/niubi
(Next article will be based on a tweet of a retweet of a retweet)

If you want to read the full article, proceed hereafter.

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