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

April 18, 2005

Dutch Prefer China over Holland

Filed under: Whatever — Shanghai @ 10:35 pm

Now and then some amazing survey results surface. A Dutch Psychological Market Research Company needed some attention and researched how Dutch people view China. Pretty smart. Mentioning “China” in your press release these days gets you a lot of attention. Combined with the Dutch, sometimes called the Chinese of the West, gets you a winner. Some conclusions of the survey that is supposed to be representative. 443 Dutch participated and the biggest news is.

“Nederlanders denken positiever over China dan over eigen land. Bij Nederland zijn de helft (46%) van de gedachten negatief, bij China een derde (35%) van de gedachten.” (source: in Dutch : Mindworld)

What, well Dutch people are more positive about China than about Holland. 46 % thinks negative about Holland and only 33% thinks negative about China. Don’t be surprised if there will be some more migration from that small country to China in the future.

Shanghai Lemon Prices

Filed under: Shanghai Prices — Shanghai @ 6:57 pm

18 April

I am starting a new continuing post about prices. Later I will organize them

yesterday we bought lemons. There are two kind of lemons here, local and foreign. It seems most fruits stands sell foreign lemons.

  • Local lemons – 3.5 -4.5 Kuai – 500 Grams
  • Foreign Lemons – 10 – 12 Kuai – 500 Grams

You may wonder why I start of with lemons or why I buy lemons. Well, a few lemon slices make the hot water taste a lot nicer.

April 14, 2005

Humorous Chinese Comments

Filed under: China Business — Shanghai @ 3:32 pm

Whenever I start laughing out loud in front of my screen I might as well share it with the rest of the world. I do understand though if my humour is not the same as yours. Greenpeace just released a report about genetically modified rice in China and says “The GE industry is out of control.” (source: Xinhua) I don’t know much about GM so I won’t go into that. I like the reactions from the Chinese side.

Zhu Xinquan, chairman of the Chinese Society of Agro-Biotechnology, said: “I cannot agree with the findings of the report by Greenpeace and I am wondering if the tests conducted by the organization are scientific or not.”

Scientific or not….. followed by this even more profound remark from an official with the Office of Genetically Modified Organism Safety under the ministry of Agriculture.

“We have not seen the concrete testing reports. Moreover, the testing of GM rice seeds should be based on China’s technical standards.”

Then I started laughing.

The Origin of Chinese Gambling

Filed under: China Culture — Shanghai @ 2:29 pm

Chinese love to gamble. The Chinese government is less happy with this so they are clamping down on gambling in the mainland. On the other hand they endorse gambling in Macao. It’s a strange world. Read more in this article from the LA Times . The most intriguing and telling quote about gambling but at the same time about the psyche of the average Chinese is the one made by Hu Xingdou, economics professor at the Beijing Institute of Technology.

“Chinese are the biggest gamblers in the world,” said Hu, the economics professor. “Thousands of years under an imperial system that tries to keep people down leads to a mentality of trying to become super-rich overnight, preferably without the hard work.”

April 12, 2005

No flu, slow internet and PDF

Filed under: Whatever — Shanghai @ 5:01 pm

Right, having spent the last days in bed because of the flu I am happy to be back again in the land of the sane. My own sanity, I should add. The good thing of being beaten by a virus is that it gives you a chance to realize your Internet addiction. How bad do I have to feel to not log on? Pretty bad. I have missed a lot of news, which is another plus. Less to worry about. Back online, I notice that in High Tech, Advanced and Scientific country China they are still unable to deliver high-speed ADSL. It actually seems the speed and reliability is decreasing by the day. At times it is so slow that I contemplate reading the China Daily again. An effective and natural way of stopping the free flow of information. Another thing that got me started today is the use of .pdf by websites. And then the special form… you click and surprise… the browser starts to open acrobat reader because it’s a .pdf file. Then my browser crashes etc, etc. How darn user unfriendly can you be not to tell people that clicking this link be presented with a .pdf file. The site of the bar Number 5 is an example. I just wanted to see their menu.. Wow.. It got me crashed, it took 5 minutes of my life so no, I won’t check out their drinks. At least not online.

April 4, 2005

One in 20 Employees of Bank of Communications got Punished

Filed under: China Business — Shanghai @ 11:20 pm

I guess Monday is China business day. As the Bank of Communications is on a mission to get investor’s money (they want to IPO) they are in the process of doing a “Window dressing” operation. Today there is the news that they “punished one in 20 of its employees last year for corruption and making bad loans”.(source: Bloomberg). They don’t exactly say what kind of punishments and I am sure they won’t put their hand in the fire to prove the other 19 are totally clean.

Chinese Stockmarkets Fooled

Filed under: China Business — Shanghai @ 5:48 pm

The Stockmarkets in China, respectively in Shenzhen and Shanghai, have never been a safe bet for a reliable retirement plan as they prefer to dive. Last Friday the market was on the up as it was rumoured that the Government was to postpone sales of state shares for up to 30 years. Even in a communist country that is incorporating capitalism, 30 years seems kind of a strong commitment. Well, what day was Friday again, oh right, April Fools Day. So now it’s back to normal, back to going down.

see for more the articles in Forbes and the China Daily.

To quote the last “To the surprise of many, China’s shares bounced back on April Fool’s Day, April 1, after hitting a six-year-low just the day before.”

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