Shanghai China Snippets Observations about living in Shanghai and China in general

January 17, 2007

China Sounds

Filed under: China Culture — Shanghai @ 11:30 pm

Just ran into a sound board for China. You can click the map and hear the sounds of different parts of China. Ranging from industrial noise in Chongqing to the construction of the Olympic swimming pool in Beijing.
The Sounds of China

Start listening

January 16, 2007

Upgrading WordPress Do not Wait

Filed under: Whatever — Shanghai @ 10:22 pm

I just upgraded WordPress to version 2.0.7 and if you haven’t done so, don’t wait too long as you don’t want to be hacked.

You can download it here.

January 12, 2007

Reply ASAP Emails

Filed under: China Business — Shanghai @ 6:01 am

I got a couple of emails today and I suddenly noticed a trend. They were all written by Chinese in English, all very polite but they all ended with ‘Please reply ASAP’

It maybe a cultural difference and likely not intentional but shouting ‘Please reply ASAP‘ to me, is a sure way I’ll take my time before I reply.

January 11, 2007

China Internet Still Terribly Slow

Filed under: China News — Shanghai @ 5:53 am

The Internet in China is still at snail speed and for some weird reason it gets worse in the evening.

Is everybody trying to play games after 18:00? Is the available bandwidth less in the evening to cut cost for China Telecom’s use of satellite back ups or is there another explanation for this?

The news is that it will take until the end of the month to make the great leap back to 2007 but it wouldn’t surprise me if we may linger a bit longer in 1997.

It’s not an important medium anyway, I can’t recall any business, let alone individuals that actually rely on it and China is scientifically & technologically advanced enough to do without.

January 5, 2007

Jobs in China – Looking for a Blackman

Filed under: China Culture — Shanghai @ 1:28 am

Recruiting staff in China is not hindered by “weird” laws that tell you not to discriminate on age, sex etc. And if these laws exist, if so, fill me in, companies don’t seem to really care.

You want to hire a hot, Shanghainese, single employee between 20 and 21, light skin color, minimum height 1.65 and a max weight 50 kg, go ahead.

You want to hire a blackman that can dance? No problem.
shanghai dancer ad Just advertise in one of many online and off line classifieds magazines

Ad scanned from the print version of Enjoy Classifieds

.

January 3, 2007

8 Things I Wish I Had Missed During The China Internet Blackout

Filed under: Shanghai Life — Shanghai @ 11:03 am

Positive solutions did a post on the things he missed when the Internet in China went back to the dark ages. A nice angle and I will blatantly copy his idea and spin it into telling you what I wish I had missed in this period.

1. Staring at my browser for ages hoping that the other half of the page will make it through

2. Being punished daily by having to read the China Daily and the Shanghai Daily as my sole information source. This gave me also the insight what it must be like to be condemned to only Chinese language mainland websites.

3. Clicking a banner on the People’s Daily about the 100-days campaign against piracy and finding out it ended in October 2006. I wondered what happened on day 101

4. Reading the relationship section of the Shanghai Expat forum out of utter boredom and for the entertainment value of course.

5. Re-organizing my files on the computer until even the last byte was put in the right place

6. Watching the 3d season of Desperate Housewives, probably released in China on aformentioned day 101. Well, actually that was kind of fun.

7. Watching CCTV 9 and being bombared with an item on burning European made shoes that didn’t pass the quality control. I chekced on the available China Daily website they burned a whoopie 200 pairs. Something to do with the 16.5 per cent anti-dumping tariff on Chinese manufactured leather shoes the European Union has imposed maybe…

8. Having to explain to people abroad that China may be an emerging power but that doesn’t mean the concept of back up cables has made inroads here yet

There you have it, the lucky 8 things I wish I had missed and now go on and read the 10 things Positive Solutions missed.

January 1, 2007

Internet China Slowly Back Up

Filed under: China Business — Shanghai @ 2:16 am

The internet is slowly getting back up to speed in China. It will take at least until the 15th of January 2007 to have things back to normal according to the state media. A internet black out like the one that happened this past week made me realize how it must be when the only information resources are mainland papers.

It’s a very limited, scary world I must say. It took the China Daily and the People’s Daily more than a day to even mention the fact that the Internet was down. In that sense the Shanghai Daily was more informative.

The fact that Chinese Telecom companies were slow in re-routing traffic and apparently having no apparent back up plans available worries me even more. China thinks it’s advanced but this quake showed there is still some way to go, a long way.

Wish you all a great 2007 and even more, uninterrupted internet access…

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