I recently talked with Jean Wu from China Help Line that offers telephone-based interpretation service to foreigners.
You can read the interview on the My China Start blog.
April 27, 2007
Interview with China Help Line
April 26, 2007
C & A China Starts Advertising
Sitting next to the Super Brand Mall in Pudong drinking an Australian made coffee, I noticed a huge ad of C&A.
Fons wrote already about the entrance of this Dutch fashion chain in China but he mentioned they were still preparing. I haven’t gone inside the Mall to check whether they had set up shop yet but according to Reuters they will open the first outlet by the end of September.
Given that the whole road is plastered with C & A advertisments they have started their campaign already. (more…)
April 25, 2007
China’s Environmental Car Future
Just before the opening of the Olympics China will make an important announcement to the world on how they will start tackling the environmental problems that China faces. That’s at least what Wolfgang Grulke said (I hope I’ve quoted him correctly) during his talk about the Future last week here in Shanghai.
Wolfgang is a futurist and as such talked about, as he calls it, lessons from the future and helps companies to apply this to the present in order to survive and keep on growing.
I had to think about his words when Gordon sent me an article about Chinese car companies starting to focus on future technology. (more…)
April 24, 2007
Internet Culture with Chinese characteristics
Yet again an announcement to control the internet in China more.
It can be summed up with one phrase. An Internet Culture with Chinese characteristics
I guess it’s about time each and any country will start doing the same.
I like to see an Internet culture with:
French characteristics,
one with Indian characteristics,
a Fiji version and ok, also a North Pole characterized internet.
Once these are all in place, each will have their own Countrynet and we can stop being distracted with what happens elsewhere. It takes up too much time anyway. Back to work.
April 23, 2007
Shanghai Foreign English Teachers Test
A long time ago, I taught a bit of English. Being Dutch and having an accent I’m happy to say there are now 3 Chinese women in Kunming that pronounce words like “Go”, with a hard G. It sounds a bit like Ghhhhrrrooo. It was a short lived career for many reasons.
Having known my fair deal of foreign teachers in China I can honestly say that most of them, accents aside, where genuinely trying to teach their pupils proper English. Teaching classes of 50 uninterested students is challenging, making 20 year olds behave their age at times is rather hard but they did/do their best. I haven’t mentioned the low pay, dealings with foreign affairs offices and whatever other crap that seems to part of a teachers life in China.
Now Shanghai, in its infinite wisdom has decided that they plan to “weed out unqualified foreign English teachers with a language and teaching test” (source: Shanghai Daily, no link as they are thrown behind a paywall after a couple of days)
(more…)
April 1, 2007
China Daily and Fun
The Humanaught has a nice find. He quotes an article from the China Daily that Baseball is a Chinese invention
Baseball a Chinese invention
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2007-04-01 08:35Though long thought to have evolved from the UK-created rounders, new evidence suggests that the sport of baseball’s origins extend back nearly 500 years to China’s Ming Dynasty (c1368-1644).
Li Gang, of the National Council of History and Culture (NCHC), recently announced findings from a year-long study into the origins of various sporting events thought to have Chinese roots. (more…)