Archive for November, 2006

What's your marriage worth?

The value of a marriage in the suburbs of Shanghai seems not to be worth more than USD 7000. At least, that is my conclusion after a funny story in today's Shanghai Daily. In Luchao Harbour (in Shanghai's Nanhui District) the authorities noted that in 2006 already more than 400 people had gotten divorced, although in 2005 the total was only about 100.After some investigations they found that most people got married to someone from outside Shanghai right after their divorce. And these marriages...
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Blackmailing government officials

A not-so-smart Chinese man read about the corruption scandal around Shanghai's Party Secretary Chen Liangyu, and saw an opportunity to make some easy money. Many of the people around Chen have been detained because of financial malversations, and he (probably rightfully) assumed that many more would be involved. He decided to blackmail more than 100 Shanghai government officials, saying that he was part of the Party's discipline commission and was going to investigate them. He wrote a letter...
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Getting rich quickly with games

A Chinese student living in Japan managed to make 1.3 million USD over the past 9 months - with games. Not by participating in high-paying tournaments, but simply by selling in-game items (virtual products that can be used in games) on an auction site. According to this article he was not able to enjoy his riches long though: his student visa did not allow him to earn money in Japan so he ended up in jail... The good news is that once released he will be able to continue his work from China,...
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Spill Group Game Award 2006

This week the winner of the Spill Group Game Award 2006 was announced during the Dutch Gaming Days. This year Pieter Visser and Nienke Veenendaal won the prize for the best flash game. They received EUR 20,000 for the webgame 'Doordraaien' (literally translated as 'Keep on turning') that they created especially for this competition. In the picture the very happy winners right after they received the award during the party in Utrecht's Centraal Museum.If you want to play the game you can find it...
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Are Dutch game developers naive?

During the past days I was among others in the Dutch city of Utrecht to attend the Nederlandse Gamedagen (Dutch Gaming Days), a two-day conference about gaming. Although most of what was discussed there is not relevant for this blog, I noted a few things that I would like to mention. One of the themes that was discussed during the conference was internationalization, something that really interests me. But the panel discussion was not what I expected from it.Two Dutch game developers, a...
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Running in the rain

Last night I arrived in Holland for some business meetings. This time I went with two colleagues from Spill Group Asia, Demi (marketing director) and Han Bing (GM of Zlong Games). We had a quick dinner upon arrival in Hilversum (dim sum in a Chinese restaurant), and after that I wanted to do some work. However, I was suddenly so tired that I decided to get some sleep and get up early. That was probably a good idea, because when I watched the 10 PM news in bed instead, I fell asleep during the...
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Autumn

Suddenly it's getting cold in Shanghai, yesterday a cold front arrived and the weather has changed completely. Today's high should be 17 degrees, but to me it feels more like 10 degrees Celcius. It seems autumn has finally started, with continuous rain since early this morning and a dark grey sky. It's just past 4 PM and it's already getting a bit dark outside. In a way I like it, it has been warm too long already, and I can finally start wearing winter clothes again. But I don't envy all the...
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007's first time in China

"Casino Royale", the latest James Bond movie will open in China on January 30 according to the Shanghai Daily. Nothing special you might say. Except for the fact that this is the first time a James Bond movie is allowed to be shown in Chinese theatres. According to the Chinese film authority the reason is that the film's content is clean: "no playboy Bond and no bikini clad leading actresses". This seems like a boring 007 movie to me.But whether the film is allowed or not allowed in theatres,...
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Postal inflation

Mailing a letter is still very cheap in China. Until today mailing a local letter set you back only RMB 0.6 RMB (EUR 0.06) and a nationwide letter just RMB 0.8. But it seems China Post is not making enough money, because as of today they have increased their prices. And not just by 1 or 2%: local mails go up 33% and the price for nationwide letters increasing by a whopping 50%!I hope China Post's service will also get a bit better, but I fear this is wishful thinking. Anyway, I never use the...
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Chinese IT venture capital booming

According to today's paper version of the Shanghai Daily venture capital investments in mainland China are booming. The newspaper refers to a recent report by Dow Jones VentureOne and Ernst & Young. The total investment in the first 3 quarters of 2006 is almost as much as last year's total of US$ 1.2 billion. In the 3rd quarter the year on year growth was close to 50%.Most investments are early-stage investments (about 60%), but the article notes that these start-ups have already achieved a...
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Mobile Monday Shanghai

Tonight I went to the second Mobile Monday event in Shanghai. During the first Mobile Monday I was in Europe so I could not join, but this time I made sure I could attend. The event was held in Kathleen's 5, actually a bit of an upclass location for an IT event, but it also gives it some style. For those who don't know the place, Kathleen's is an excellent restaurant on the top floor of the Shanghai Art Museum, overlooking People's Park. I suggested to Bruno Bensaid (one of the organizers) to...
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Spill Group Asia weekend in Anji

This weekend Spill Group Asia and our new colleagues from Zlong Games went on a company outing. We left on Friday afternoon by bus to Anji, a city in the mountains of Zhejiang. The place is famous for its nature, especially for its huge bamboo forests. It actually turned out to be close to Moganshan, where I spent last weekend. The trip by bus was about 3-4 hours, but it seemed a lot longer: the tour guide that was provided to us kept on talking and talked so loud that my left ear (that was...
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Flu shot

Yesterday afternoon we had internet problems in our office, several hours without internet thanks to China Telecom. This really hinders my work (an understatement), therefore I decided to do something else, and work from home at night. So I drove to the hospital to get a flu shot, something I had planned to do for two weeks already, but never found the time to do.Last February I came down with a pretty nasty flu, and had to spend most of Chinese New Year week in bed. I don't like laying in bed,...
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Party on the Moganshan

On Saturday Mark Kitto celebrated his 40th birthday with a party in his house on Moganshan, a mountain in Zheijiang province about 220 km from Shanghai. We left the city around 2 PM, and although it was busy on the expressway to Hangzhou we managed to get there by 4:30 PM. The weather was amazingly good, a clear blue sky and on the Hangzhou ring road our car showed a maximum temperature of 29 degrees. Is this accelaterated global warming or just a coincidence? I hope the latter... Driving into...
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The World of Calvin Klein

Last night we were invited to 'The World of Calvin Klein', a cool party for CK's new collection. When we got the invitation earlier this week (I seem to be one of their better customers), we thought it would be some sort of fashion show and at first I was not too excited. But when Friday's Shanghai Daily had a glossy Calvin Klein cover and a full page pre-event coverage, I realized it would be a bit bigger than a catwalk with some models. Shanghai's newspaper even called it Calvin Klein's...
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Christmas trees

It's only early November and outside it's still warm (tomorrow it will be 26 degrees), but I have spotted the first Christmas trees decorated with lights already. Two trees actually, standing outside the "Ye Olde Station" restaurant in Xujiahui (the old white building on Caoxi Bei Lu, this used to be Shanghai's train station many decades ago - there are still train carriages in the garden). I can actually see the trees from my apartment window, but it's way too early for me to get into...
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Blogspot: blocked or unblocked – that's the question

If you blog with Google's Blogger and don't have your own hosting, you get a blogspot.com account name. This domain used to be blocked in China until this summer, but then the government suddenly unblocked it. I was happy because before that I often would get the 'page not loading' error message, when weblinks pointed to a blogspot weblog. This would now finally be over.Until about a week ago that is, when blogspot stopped working again. I was thinking about calling the domain blockedspot, but...
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London cabs in Shanghai?

Last week MBH, the manufacturer of the famous London taxis, signed an agreement with Chinese car manufacturer Geely to produce their cabs in Shanghai. Geely will hold 51% of the shares in the new joint venture. According to the press release, the cars will mainly be exported to England, but will also be sold in China.Does this mean that now the Mercedes-Benz taxi's in Shanghai are faded out, they will be replaced by London cabs? They would look good in Thamestown, that's for...
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No internet censorship in China

Yesterday I was following Joi Ito's observations during the Internet Governance Forum through my RSS reader. He was there on a panel about openness on the internet. During the panel China was discussed as well, and at that point a Chinese UN delegation member stood up and bluntly said: "China does not restrict any access to any content".Because everybody knows this is complete bullsh*t, the sympathy that the crowd had for the Chinese delegation was gone right away. Why does an official say...
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