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

The irony. That was my first thought. (more…)

I spotted this advertisement of China Telecom in one of the expat magazines.

Grace must be a lovely girl and I’m sure if I would have met up with here the first time I entered China life would have been very different.

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Over the last weeks I got several calls from so called Western managed and quality services like my hospital and my dentist. The conversation invariably started with, “Am I speaking to mister “Van”. (Mister “From”, a common part of a Dutch surname)

Before the The Dell china customer rep was convinced I was called mr. Van as well.

As apparently these Western managed and mostly overpriced services don’t bother to train their staff how foreign names work, I have decided I’ll change my name to mister Van.

Let’s see how that works out in their administration.

In September 2005 there was a lot of press about the test results for the SUV Jiangling Landwind. It didn’t pass the crash test. In other words, the Dutch (ANWB) and German (ADAC) Car Consumer Associations couldn’t vouch for the safety.

They have tested another Chinese car, the Brilliance BS6 sedan, and it seems this one needs some attention as well. It failed to pass a benchmark German crash test.

[youtube width=”405″ height=”360″]-9RbZyrJQ4g[/youtube]

It won a whoopy 1 star out of a possible 5 stars. The car retails for about 17.500 euro in Belgium.

After the Landwind test results, it stopped being sold. It isn’t unlikely the same will happen to the Brilliance unless it will be made safer.

Go here to see the video of the car in better circumstances.

If you think about investing the Chinese stock market, this cartoon (published July 7, 2007) from the SMCP may help you.

I’m no investor and I can still get confused between put and call so the following is definitely not based on any knowledge nor take it as an advice.

The stock market in Shanghai is going down a bit as investors seem to think new measures will be taken by the government.

When I read papers, blogs an other sources a couple of things stand out.

Investors don’t want to believe it can go down. Alan Greenspan warned for overheating but his views are discarded. What does he know about China, some get quick rich wannabes proclaim. Well maybe not much about China, but I heard he does know a little about economics. (more…)

A reader commented on one my articles about Dell and their service and likes to know how to get some.

In general their service is pretty ok, especially if you speak Chinese. Dell’s Chinese operations offers a website in Chinese and English. Ordering something through the English interface is therefore fairly easy. The challenge comes once you have a question and you try to contact them.

You can call from within China the free number 800-858-0888

You’ll hear Chinese and unfortunately they won’t make live easy for you if you like to hear some English.

Your best bet is calling the number and push 2 after which you get a operator who hopefully speaks English and help you further.

I called them whether they have a direct number/extension to get English service and they haven’t. It puzzles me a bit that they let you buy in English and then expect you to understand a Chinese interactive voice menu. Like I said, push 2 and take it from there.