Archive for February, 2007

FAW interested in buying Chrysler

China's number 1 car manufacturer FAW (First Automotive Works) has shown interest in buying Chrysler, according to this article in Forbes. Last week I already heard this story from a friend in the automotive industry in Beijing, but I sort of dismissed it as a rumour (there had been stories before that FAW would like to buy Chrysler, even when it was not for sale yet).It would be another major take-over for a Chinese company, after Lenovo's take-over of IBM computer division. For Chrysler it...
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Ayi issues

To our surprise our maid was already back in Shanghai when we returned this weekend, because we had not expected her back for at least the next couple of days. We were lucky, but many Shanghai families are still waiting for their ayi's return. A lot of household staff won't come back before the Lantern Festival (the 15th day of the Chinese New Year), even though families made arrangements with them to come back earlier. The Shanghai Daily printed a short article about this problem today....
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Chinese traffic accidents during New Year

One of my readers just left a link to an article in a Dutch newspaper about traffic accidents around Chinese New Year in China. It appears that over the past week 1100 people died in traffic accidents. Over the past week 227 million Chinese (including me) took either a bus or car to visit their relatives somewhere else in China. According to the short report the fatal accidents went down by 33% due to more police patrols (I did not see them on my 1300 km trip) and a publicity campaign in the...
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Job opportunity: i-merge China CEO

i-merge China is looking for a CEO. A Chinese CEO – since a Chinese agency in China, for Chinese clients targeting Chinese consumers has to be managed by a Chinese. In my opinion a great opportunity for the right person, that's why I decided to help spread the word and put it on my blog (and no, I am not getting any commission). The current CEO, Jan van den Bergh, has built a nice organization with some good clients over the past year or so, and is now starting to look for the Mr. or Mrs....
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Tudou.com in top 25 Chinese websites

During the past weeks not only game.com.cn kept on growing fast, but Tudou as well. I just checked the latest Alexa stats for the website and saw that Tudou is now in the top 25 of biggest Chinese sites (to be exact, Tudou is number 24 today). Worldwide Tudou.com is now number 127, and the site keeps on bigger and bigger!The graph shows the growth in pageviews for the site over the past 6...
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Back in Shanghai – by plane

After spending a week in Beijing, we are back home again in Shanghai. We did not drive back after our experience of driving to Beijing, but instead took the plane. We arranged a driver to fly in from Shanghai to drive back our car from Beijing. It costs some money, but it saved me lots of time and I don't have the risk of being involved in an accident. After we had arranged this I met up with an old friend working at a car multinational, who told me he could have arranged shipping of our car...
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Bomb It – one billion times played!

One of the things that Spill Group Asia does is the production of flash games for the Spill Group gaming portals worldwide. These games can easily be copied (we even encourage that), so people can put them on their own websites. This is good for us, because every game contains our logo and a link to our site. We can monitor where traffic comes from on our portals, and based on that we can estimate how often a game has been played.I always thought our flash games would be played a few million...
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North Korea documentary

In 2001 I visited the DPRK (North-Korea) for a week, which was a very strange experience. Although it was a vacation, I was glad to be back in China afterwards, and I felt like I needed another holiday in order to get back to reality. On this trip I met among others Dan Gordon and Nick Bonner (Nick's company Koryo Tours had organized the trip). It later turned out that Dan was preparing a film about the DPRK during the week we were there. He had a DV camera with him all the time and was...
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New record for game.com.cn

Last month I proudly wrote that game.com.cn had achieved 1 million page views. But the site has kept on growing at an unbelievable pace over the past 6 weeks and reached another milestone this weekend. Sunday, the first day of the Lunar new year, we managed to get more than 2.5 million page views in 24 hours!Demi & the team: one again fantastic work over the past weeks. You really deserve your New Year holiday, so enjoy it with your families and friends. I owe all of you a nice lunch or...
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Fireworks interview

Something funny happened just now. A Dutch radio station wanted to interview me about Chinese New Year, and told me they would call me at 8:10 PM. However, their program schedule changed a bit, and they called me already 20 minutes earlier. At that time I was in a store in Oriental Plaza, where the music and the people were very loud. Because the interview was live I literally sprinted outside to be able to hear the presenter. But that was not a good idea either, because I ended up at...
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Arrived safely in Beijing

On Friday I drove from Shanghai to Beijing. It was a great experience to do this once, but I will think twice before doing it again. I have often said that in general Chinese are not the best drivers in the world, mainly because the drivers education is terrible (no practicing on the road, low test-passing standards, and even the possibility to buy drivers licenses in smaller cities), many don't have a lot of experience, and nobody follows the rules. And the trip to Beijing proved this: I have...
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Driving to Beijing

Today I am planning to go to Beijing. Not by train, as most Chinese would do, nor by plane, which is the fastest option. No, for the first time I am going to drive my car the 1200+ kilometers from Shanghai to Beijing. Why? Because I have never done it before, and it seemed like a good idea a few weeks ago while having a couple of beers. But now I am not so sure anymore. First of all the weather seems to be rainy for most of the ride (Jiangsu and Shandong province both report heavy rain), and...
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Beijing blog

Tomorrow I am going to Beijing. Finally, because I have not been there in many months. I miss the city, it is so much more authentic than Shanghai. Even though Beijing has lost most of its charm over the past 10 years, because of the demolishing of most old neighborhoods, it still has that old-China feeling to it. I miss living there. I like living in Shanghai, but residing in Beijing is still much better in my opinion. A better climate (colder in winter, warmer in summer, but not so humid as...
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Holiday mood

After a very good Valentine's dinner last night, followed by a short stint in the Attica nightclub next door, I decided to sleep a bit longer this morning (I got up at 8:30 AM, so still not too bad). When I arrived in the office it was very silent. Half the people had left for their hometowns already, and the other half seemed to be in holiday mood. Two more days before Chinese New Year eve, so that's logical. Most people did not take a single day vacation during the past year, so they deserve...
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Love story

An unusual love story, two streakers falling in love and meeting for the first time while streaking at a soccer match - it has nothing to do with China, but it's a nice story for Valentines Day.Love Story 07Source:...
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Valentine's Day

Today is Valentine's Day, which also in China is gaining more importance. Many couples send each other cards, flowers and chocolates (I just finished a small of box of Belgian chocolates, thanks Qi!), and of course many restaurants will be fully booked today. My wife and I plan to go to Finestre tonight for a romantic dinner. It will be so busy there that we had to choose to either dine at 6:30 PM or at 9 PM. Of course we chose the latter time, which allows us to have a drink somewhere in...
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Jetlagged

I arrived in Shanghai this morning, and still feel a bit jetlagged. Because this is the last week before Chinese New Year there is quite a lot of things to do, and I went from the plane almost straight to the office. Normally that's the best way to overcome jetlag (in my experience), but today it's not working. I have a splitting headache, and it's hard to keep my eyes open. Maybe the fact that I only slept 4-5 hours per night during my trip also plays a role.I just did a TV interview, and I...
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Snow in Amsterdam

After the warm weather in Shanghai earlier this week, I had to adjust a bit to the cold Dutch weather. Yesterday it even started snowing heavily. The authorities issued a weather alarm because of heavy snowfall, and half of all trains in the Netherlands were cancelled. Typical Dutch, it seems the country can not handle extreme weather anymore.I just read an article in De Telegraaf that said that the weather alarm is actually announced to avoid that people can issue claims to amongst others...
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Chinese New Year travel and ayi's

Chinese New Year is rapidly approaching, and people start preparing for the trip back home. Yesterday morning I saw a huge line for a travel agent close to my office, at least 40 people were waiting to get in. Especially train tickets are hard to get, but plane tickets are still widely available. You can even get discounts on some of the major routes like Shanghai-Beijing, also for the days right before Chinese New Year. Flights to smaller cities are full-price, however, according to my...
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Pudong airport

Sitting in the lounge at Pudong airport now, with free wifi. Just find the tp-link wifi connection and enter password tp-link. Always a good feeling when you can check an reply all your mails before boarding.I am going to Amsterdam for a short business trip, so it will be a long day again today. When I drove out of the city the weather was sunny, but close to the airport it suddenly got very foggy. You cannot even see the runway from here (which is less than 200 meter away), and I hope this...
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