Shanghai China Snippets

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.

Comments (3)

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…

Comments (6)

December 19, 2006

Make Shanghai Citizens Smile

Filed under: Shanghai Survival Tips — Shanghai @ 6:59 am

smiling old chinese woman How many smiles do you see on a typical Shanghai day.

Does the 24 hours shop assistant smile at you when you buy your late night milk. Does your apartment complex guard curl his lips when you greet him in the morning.

(One of the 3 guards in our building actually always smiles and waves friendly, the other two have mastered the “You nod at me but I can stare through you anytime as you are completely non-existent to me” skill.)

In general smiling is not a standard practice but it’s about to change, at least if you can believe the [tag]China[/tag] Daily.

China seems to be in the middle of a smiling deficit, but one group in [tag]Shanghai [/tag]is doing what it can to turn those frowns upside down.

According to a recent online survey by Extrawhite, a maker of chewing gum, a quarter of the people in China never smile or smile less than five times a day. The survey found that only 2 per cent of Chinese people are willing to smile at strangers.

To reverse this situation, a group of 40 students from the Humanities and Communications College of Shanghai Normal University launched a team of “smiling volunteers” last month. Their technique is simple enough: they smile at people.

Triggered by a chewing gum maker….we’ll all smile in the near future when we fight our way into the subway, handle elevators that are closed in front of us, bump into cyclists that are color blind and pick up the small change from the counter when your hand is still hanging in the air to collect the money.

If you like to become a volunteer, it’s not that hard,

The only requirement is that they have sincere smiles and helping hearts, and are always ready to assist other people.

All you have to do actually is being a human being. And now go outside and just do it, SMILE.

From the Daily Prop.

Comments (5)

December 18, 2006

Dutch Journalist Doesn’t Do Research and Deletes Own Post

Filed under: China News — Shanghai @ 10:01 am

I was rather surprised to read recently, to be more specific, a couple of days ago, that a Dutch journalist wrote on her blog for the NRC Handelsblad (a Dutch quality newspaper) that Wikipedia was available again in China. I was even more surprised that she quoted an article from the BBC that was a month old. I commented that the wise minds in charge of the censor switch had deemed it necessary to block their citizens again from the encyclopedian knowledge of Wikipedia.

A couple of days later I checked whether the comment was published. Well, it wasn’t. in fact the whole article had disappeared in oblivion, erased from the website so no one will ever know there was once an article that used outdated data and wasn’t fact checked before publishing. Thank god there is Google and their cache, nothing is lost on the Internet, even if you want it to be…
NRC Wikipedia
Mistakes happen, I know, I make them daily. I just wonder why she didn’t just adjust her post instead of deleting it.
You can find her current China articles minus 1, all in Dutch

Comments (3)

December 17, 2006

China Travel Statistics

Filed under: China Travel — Shanghai @ 3:38 am

The number of Chinese going abroad pales compared to the numbers of tourists visiting China but that will increase in the future as more and more Chinese will have the money and the interest to have a look beyond the border.

Some China Travel statistics

Visitors to China in 2005 – 120.3 million
[tag]Chinese citizens[/tag] who traveled abroad in 2005 – 31 million
Year in which China is predicted to become the world’s number one tourist destination – 2020
Permitted overseas destinations for [tag]Chinese[/tag] citizens – 117
Revenues from travel industry in 2005 in [tag]China[/tag] – 528.6 billion Rmb
Number of visitors to [tag]Shanghai[/tag] in 2005 – 5.7 million.

Comments (4)

December 15, 2006

Plaza 66 Shanghai Pick Up Spot

Filed under: Shanghai Life — Shanghai @ 12:19 pm

In Shanghai there are several landmarks and one of them is the ultra luxurious Plaza 66. It’s a high end shopping mall with an office tower attached. It’s great place, you can walk there in Summer to enjoy the airco and in Winter to get some warmth. Nobody seems to buy anything as all the Gucci, Cartier and several brand shops I never heard of before I came to [tag]Shanghai[/tag], consist of some bored shop assistants looking through their windows. It’s upscale at it’s best and part of the Shanghai show for the outside world.

I recently walked in and then out to do some shopping in a more affordable place when from the corner of my eye I saw a pretty woman waiting near the exit. There are always touts around that try to convince me that I need fake rolexes or try to hand me a card with the promise of some relaxation. I brush them off with the first words a newcomer should learn, Bu Yao (I don’t want).

working girl shanghai She was not there to sell rolexes though, she tried to get eye contact and I knew what was coming. “You want massage”.

I declined but it struck me that if the massage ladies are now posting these days at plaza 66 either their numbers are increasing and business is scarce or maybe it’s a just a good spot to pick up clients.

[tag]Plaza 66[/tag] or soon Plaza 69 (I know it’s lame but couldn’t stop writing)

Comments (1)

Hotelreservations but not in China

Filed under: Whatever — Shanghai @ 5:57 am

Disclaimer: This is a sponsored post. The first request received and per the guidelines I have to disclose this. It’s also test to see how this works out. The review is as it is, a review and an honest one I hope. I do get paid though for writing this:) And please comment…

Hotelreservations.com is, as you can conclude from the domain name a hotel reservation website. A great domain name, and that about sums it up. The website gives you the option to book hotels, motels, resorts, vacations rentals etc. Nothing really exciting given that there are already thousands of similar sites that provide this. When I received the mail, asking me to write a review I really wanted it to be something interesting to write about. I’m afraid it isn’t and in reviewing the website I’ll be frank.

The website is way too 1999. It has an ugly minimalistic design, cramped together for the 800 x 600 resolution. It has of course the necessary search boxes for finding hotels in mainly North American and European countries but it lacks anything appealing. It has no hotels in China available for the moment.

It may be that designing hotel websites like this, is a proven formula for success but if you’ve already the great domain name, why not spend some time on design and make the whole user experience fresher and clearer and more importantly make it 2006.

I noticed there is link, “write a review”, but there’s no page behind it yet. Hotel reviews are the first things I look for before booking a hotel. I want to read experiences from other hotel guests, did they like the room, was the staff professional, how was the restaurant. Hopefully that feature will be activated in the future and be open for honest reviews.

Hotel prices are said to be discounted to up to 70%, and a quick comparison with some of the competitors shows that they are not too much off from other hotel websites which is a good thing.