Category: China

I saw some of the newest USA exports to China today: SAT (the US college admission test) and NFL (National Football league). At Chicago O’Hale airport, I met a girl who just graduate from high school (middle school in China) and will attend a college in the Mid-west US. She told me she has some friends coming to other colleges this year. This is not the first time I met Chinese High school students coming to the States. The thing surprised me is that the New Oriental (recently did IPO on NYSE, ticker symbol EDU) and many others have already offered SAT/ACT (another US college admission test) in China. In another word, there are many Chinese high school students are going to take the SAT or ACT and attend US colleges. When I came to the US for graduate school in 1997 I remember seeing undergraduate students from southeast Asia and Taiwan/Hongkong. Now a new wave of students are coming from mainland. This is obviously attributed to the growth of China’s economy. I admire the vision and determination of those students and their parents as I believe their oversea education experience will be helpful for their future.

This reminded me of another thing. I was always thinking that the kids will be better off raised in the US than in China: less homework and competition, better facilities, and the atmosphere to foster creativity. I always think China’s education system produces more “testing machines” than “creative and open minded students”. This is probablly a little biased. I believe Chinese students get more rigorous training on Math and Sciences. By taking SAT/ACT, if a Chinese high school student is real good, he/she can come to the US for undergradute study. Tom Freeman wrote a book titled “the World is Flat” a year or two ago. While we all know the students in China and US won’t in the same level of playing field for a long time to come, it seems to me the gap is narrowed down a little (due to China’s economy growth).

On another news, NFL (national football league) will host a game “China Bowl” on August 8 2007 in Beijing. To be honest I was curious why NFL has not done anything substantial in China as I know NBA has already promoting basketball and being very successful in China. I remember this Feb. when I happened to be in Shanghai, nobody in my office cared about the No. 1 show in the America “Superbowl”, the championship game of NFL. Note Superbowl is also the showcase of many innovative adverstisements of US business giants (or dot com upstarts). Many people here watched superbowl just for the ad. The half-time musical performance is also usually good, except the infamous Janet Jackon’s “wardrobe malfunction” incident couple years ago. I am sure it won’t happen again because the broadcast will be delayed from now on (used to be real time).

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 minuteNot 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.   

Reading Time: < 1 minuteI visited my childhood home yesterday. There are lots of change because of economy development. The old gravois road is wider and paved, with side walks and lights. 

There are no rice field any more. Almost all the lands are used for manufacturing companies or sold to developers. Even the brook by my house is also reconstructed; I remember I used to catch small fish there when I was a little kid. Now the water is not as clean as it used to be. The plan to construct highway and railway is also on the schedule. Last but not least, the elementary school I went during 1st to 4th grade is combined with another large school in town (I went there for 5th grade), now the kids have to take shuttles (15-20 minutes) to school.

While I cherish the economy development and the opportunities it bring to the young people, I am also very concerned on the environment and its impact on older people. I think the development of my hometown is very typical “China growth” story in past 10 years. I hope the growth can be sustained and people can all benefit from it.  

Reading Time: 2 minutesI used to think Shanghai is very big, until a few days ago I took the taxi from Lu Jia Zhui (the financial district in Pudong) to Jing An Temple in West Nanjing Rd. It’s only 5 km (3 miles) and 15-20 minutes drive during non-rush hour. I remember in mid 90s I walked half that distance on East Nanjing Rd (from YiBai to Bund), and I felt tired. 

Automobiles dramatically changed our perspectives about the distance and our life styles. Shanghai is definitely growing, same as my hometown. While I am glad to see people have more spaces to live (I remember in 90s I shared a room with 3 co-workers in my company’s dorm), more and more people got cars; I also see a few new things from car ownership.

First the parking. I don’t know if I can park my car in those apartment complex or on the street. One has to be very good at “Parallel parking” to do that. A smaller car may make the parking easier. But when I asked one taxi driver what car he like, he said “Buick”. Come on, a few years ago the average Buick drivers’ age is 66 in the States; while here Buick is doing very well because its size and (dare I say), its marketing. On the other hand, the smaller and more efficient VW Bora (Jetta), Golf, and Polo are not selling well.

Cars also helped the spending. When I was in graduate school and got my first car in the States, my friend told me “you will spend money more quickly”. That’s very much true, because you can get to the shopping place whenever you want. The spending is more spontaneous. I remember at one time I got an habbit of driving to Wal-mart after 12am, just to get a few things (BTW, at that time, the gas is about $0.80 per gallon, or RMB 1.6 per liter). Today I am seeing similar behavior from people in my hometown, with the opening of super-market, and shopping malls.

Reading Time: < 1 minuteI am at Ningbo Beilun, the forefront of opening and economy development of Zhejiang Province, argubally the most dynamic province in China these days. “Zhe Shang”, the business people from Zhejiang province, makes and sells many things you see in Wal-mart: underwear, stationary, toys, small applicance, etc. The scale of economy is enormous: I heard one time on NPR that in one villiage there are 26 plants which supplied 60% buttons of the world.

Of course I can not talk about Zhe Shang without mentioning the group of people from Wenzhou, “the Wenzhou house flippers”. A few years ago some people from Wenzhou saw the potential in Shanghai’s real estate, and they bought lots of apartment buildings and bet the price will go up. Now they all made a fortune. Last I heard some of them already bought some land in Hai’an and Haimeng (near Nantong) because there is a plan to build a bridge (over the sea) connecting Shanghai and Haimeng.

These are shrewd business people. Interestingly, on Shanghai Dragon  TV (Oriental TV), I saw a show about Zhe Shang and Su Shang (business people from Jiangsu province). In US terms, Zhe Shang has the “street smarts”, Su Shang has the “book smarts”; Zhe Shang speculates, while Su Shang invests for long term. Certainlly all these are in relative terms. BTW, I am not a typical Zhejiang Native 🙂

Reading Time: < 1 minuteI did not take too much taxi this time, I used the Metro (subway) a lot: more convenient, no traffic jam, besides it’s only 2 minutes ride from where I stay to where I work (more than 15 minutes walk though, good for me).

I like to talk to taxi drivers from time to time; I feel I can learn new things from them. The taxi driver who took me from Pudong airport (PVG) is a lucky guy, he bought a truck license for RMB 20,000 five years ago. One year ago he exhange that license for the taxi license and it’s worth RMB 400,000 now. He told me he also bought an apartment in Minghang for RMB 110,000, and you can imagine its value increased several fold as the real estate price in Shanghai went through the roof. I admire his risk taking, execution ability and congradulate his success. A lot things are easy when we look back. But not so before the facts.

Another taxi driver, a guy who is 54, told me an interesting story: a young professional (maybe businese person) took his taxi from work to home, for about RMB 84. The driver asked the young guy why he took taxi because he could take the bus from starting point to end (and he could have seats on the bus). The young guy told the driver he can got home one hour early (than taking bus), get better rest and make more money the next day. The driver strongly disagrees and I believe this is very common between generations.

Last but not least, I saw the famous “Shanghai taxi driver” on CCTV, the DaZhong taxi driver knows how to make most money while using least effort (resource). I believe he gave lectures to many companies about management, resource planning and business.

Reading Time: < 1 minuteI mentioned some differences (between Starbucks in Shanghai and the States) a while ago during my last Shanghai trip: more crowded, less sweet in taste. I found another difference today: the cup size is smaller here. So a “Venti” (large) here is really a “Grande” (medium) in the States! Maybe Starbucks thinks that Chinese are not as addicted to caffeine as American? Or they think Chinese should not drink as much coffee as American do. Don’t they save material cost (and make more money) by doing this? Despite all these, my friend told me Starbucks is the most popular coffee shop in town. One has to be both wealthy and well connected to open a store here.

Tip: if you bring your own cup, you could save RMB 2 for the drink. Don’t know if this works in the States. I am going to try it next time…

Update: I wrote yet another Starbucks post after quite a few years.