Day: September 21, 2006

Last Updated on February 24, 2025 by stlplace

In order to stay connected in China, cell phone is a must. For short stay visitors, I believe “pre-paid minutes” or “pay as you go” card is good. There are a few minor things I found out by using China Mobile:

1) Text messaging: it’s much popular here and it’s less expensive compared to phone call. I started to love this thing after using that while. I found the “iTap English” and “Pinyin Chinese” input methods have suggestions and that saved me some typing. After all I am a guy knows how to use “vi”, the UNIX editor many people think it’s not user friendly. I think the design philosophy of them to be similar: use your imagination, if you know one, you should know two and three 举一反三.

2) No voice message: I have not encountered anyone set up voice message. So “do as Romans do when in Rome”, use the text message.

3) Roaming charge: China mobile charges RMB 7 cents (per 6 seconds) for the roaming. Unfortunately, there is no way to get around it. So keep the fee in mind if you are out of home-service area (for instance, when you have the Shanghai mobile number and you travel in Beijing).

4) Long distance: you can save some money if you dial 17951 followed by the long distance number (don’t forget area code for the land line).

On the other hand, I found my IP phone (iTalkBB) is handy from time to time. I bring the IP phone adapter this time. Once I plug it into the broadband internet and the regular phone, I could call my friends in the US using the IP phone. The only downside is once I got tele-marketing call early in the morning (late afternoon in the Midwest US): the tele-marketers think I am at home.

(Update 02-25-2025) After about 16 years from this post, I decided to cancel the iTalkBB phone service. I haven’t used it much, also, most recently I found out it stopped working (don’t know why exactly). Nowadays most incoming phone calls are spams. And we have mobile phones for real phone calls. So, I just went ahead to cancel it. Next, I will sell my phones – those traditional cordless phones.

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Last Updated on September 21, 2006 by stlplace

Not that I don’t like Shanghai. Not just because Hangzhou has the world famous West Lake. Hangzhou’s size is about right, it has the convenience of the big city and the friendliness of a small city. I think St. Louis is similar in this aspect. There are fewer cars on the street,  and people spend less time on commuting.

I also visited two web 2.0 startup companies. They are found by people much younger than me yet they are very humble and practical. I think in a way they are similar to Hangzhou the city itself. It’s much harder to have this attitude in big cities. I remember once my friend told me the famous investor Warren Buffet stayed at Omaha (instead of New York) because he wanted to stay away from the daily noises in the Wall Street.

If I had to pick between Hangzhou and Omaha, I will pick Hangzhou without doubt.