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Only in China: Royal wedding dress copied 2 hours after wedding

Copy of royal wedding gown available in China 2 hours after the wedding

A couple of weeks ago one of the investors in Lightinabox told me that the site was able to copy fashion within a few hours, and yesterday’s Royal Wedding of Kate and William proved him right. Kate’s dress was available online within 2 hours after she first showed it to the world. If you’re interested in getting your hands on one you can order one here for just USD 399 (they ship worldwide). Somehow I have the feeling that the original dress was a bit more expensive!

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Huge lines at Beijing Apple store for white iPhone4 launch

Huge lines for the Beijing Apple store for the white iPhone 4 launch

This morning I was in Sanlitun in Beijing for several meetings at Element Fresh. While walking there I saw a huge crowd of people at the Apple store. It turns out that they were there for the launch of the white version of the iPhone4.

Crowds are normal at Apple product launches these days (even I waited in line to buy an iPad 2 a couple of weeks ago), but to wait in line for a white version of a product that has been available for about 9 months already is something even I have difficulty understanding.

The interesting thing is that most people in line were not there to buy a phone for themselves, but only wanted to buy it to resell the gadget on Taobao.com or other Chinese e-commerce websites. When I walked by a couple of hours later the line was still about the same length, but now the crowd was harassed constantly by people who managed to buy a white iPhone already and tried to resell it to the people in line.

All around the Sanlitun area I saw people waving with white iPhone boxes and the official receipts for them, trying to resell them to other people! And there were many takers. To be honest, if I had wanted to buy the phone (which I don’t want, I just bought a black one which I prefer to the white version) I would rather pay EUR 50 extra for a new phone than to wait in line for a few hours.

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Take out sushi attracts no lunch crowds anymore

Today's sushi lunchbox (price: about EUR 5)

About once a week I pick up some sushi from the take-out place in the basement of the Raffles shopping mall on People’s Square (the place is called Sushi Take-Out, right next to my other favorite Beard Papa’s). Tasty sushi for a decent price, most pieces are RMB 2 to RMB 3 per piece. The box above cost me RMB 43, less than EUR 5. So far I never got sick, so despite the low price they seem to use good fish and have decent hygiene standards.

The take out restaurant used to be packed at lunch time and you normally had to wait in order to make your choice of sushi. But since the Japanese nuclear disaster it looks like the lunch crowd is avoiding the place. I am sure they don’t import the fish from Japan at these prices, so I wonder why people are so worried. But I now have all the time I need to choose my favorite kinds of sushi and the staff even packs and carries it for me. I hope the place will survive, with the current number of clients I am afraid they won’t be able to keep up their business much longer…

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Never a boring moment on Shanghai’s roads

Hard to believe what I just saw on the highway while driving home tonight. There had been a small accident on the right lane of Yan’an Lu (a 6-lane elevated expressway) in the direction of Hongqiao airport. Three cars hit each other, but there were just some scratches and some glass on the ground from the headlights of the middle car. Nothing special, but of course traffic slowed down quickly and when we were close to the accident I heard the siren of an approaching police car. It sounded very close by, but I did not see it anywhere behind our car.

Suddenly I noticed it was on the opposite side of the highway, where it had stopped in the fast lane, the lane closest to our side of the highway. Traffic was speeding around it and I hoped no accident would occur because you don’t expect a parked car in the fast lane (although on China’s roads you should expect anything). Right at the moment I looked at the police car I saw a cop get out of it, jump over the divider between the two sides of the road onto the fast lane of our road, and swerve through the cars that had just started to accelerate again… The police guy seemed oblivious to the risk of either parking his car in the fast lane in the dark or of running through traffic oncoming traffic. He made it safely, but I couldn’t believe my eyes. Crazy…

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Home Alone

Working in the living roomIt’s late Sunday night and I am sitting at home doing some mails on my laptop. Nothing unusual, except for the fact that I am the only one at home. I just realized that that hasn’t happened since Scott was born in late 2007! I love it, there is nobody to disturb me while working and I can do whatever I want without disturbing others. I am streaming Spotify to the stereo for example, without the risk of waking up sleeping ayis or kids.

But it also has a downside. Because there is always staff at home to help me with everything I can’t find anything right now. I just never use any household appliance in this house. A couple of hours ago I boiled some eggs, but it took me 5 minutes to just find the egg cooker. After I made a small meal (yes, I can still cook a bit despite not having done it for years) I decided to put the plates in the dishwasher. Then I realized I have no clue how the thing works (I could look that up online) nor where the detergent powder is (that information is not online). I ended up doing the dishes by hand.

Another thing that’s starting to worry me is that I have no idea how to take care of our goldfish. Scott won this fish a couple of months ago, and since then it has become a new family member (the kids like it a lot). But I have no idea where the fish food is or even when and how to clean the fish bowl. I can look all of that up online, and I will do so, but the fact remains that I suddenly realize how dependent I have become on the staff.

Having people do everything for you is a luxury and I am very happy with that. It allows me to fully focus on my work and on spending more quality time with my family, but it’s not a good thing that I am so dependent on the staff (and on my wife, she basically runs the household and the staff). I am not particularly proud of it, and I am going to use the next couple of days to make sure I don’t need the staff anymore (but I will still keep them of course!). It just can’t be that I don’t even know where the light switch is for the front porch, or that I had actually never been in our laundry room.

So it’s good to be alone for a few days, even if just to learn to live on my own again. In my early career while living in Germany I did everything by myself (cooking, washing clothes, cleaning the house, groceries), and now I don’t even know how most of our appliances work. Maybe I should send my wife and kids on holiday more often!

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Yangzhou Half Marathon 2011

We finished the Yangzhou Half Marathon! Great race: perfect atmosphere and a nice, fast race course. My time 1:39:55

When I was working at DaimlerChrysler Northeast Asia in my early days in China, the company had a bus factory (Yaxing-Benz) in Yangzhou, Jiangsu province. I went there regularly, but did not like the city at all. There was nothing to do in those days, the city literally pulled up the sidewalks at 8 pm and turned off all the lights. The factory was old and dirty and there was a lot of joint-venture politics going on that I don’t even want to think of anymore. When at a certain point the German CFO of the company (Juergen Pfrang), who I worked with closely, was murdered in Nanjing I sort of decided I would never go back to Yangzhou anymore.

Anyway, I had not been to Yangzhou in over 10 years, but when I saw that there would be a half marathon there I thought it would be interesting to see what had become of the city. My plan was to train hard to run a good time, but too much travel and work hindered that plan a bit. I am generally in good shape, so even without training specifically for this I felt I should be able to run a decent time.

On Saturday afternoon my colleague Joop Dorresteijing and my dad took the car to Yangzhou, about a 3.5-4 hour ride. In the old days the ride took us about the same amount of time, even though we still had to take a ferry across the Yangtze river (now there are several new bridges). But there is so much more traffic than 10 years ago that you can’t drive fast anymore.

Registration at the Yangzhou Half Marathon 2011

We arrived in Yangzhou around 6 pm, checked into our hotel (the same as I used to stay in 10 years ago, luckily it was completely renovated now) and went to pick up our numbers at the marathon office. That went quite smooth and 15 minutes later we were walking around Yangzhou’s city center. I could hardly recognize the place anymore, it had been completely transformed in 10 years. I guess this was to be expected, but somehow I disliked Yangzhou so much that I thought it would still be stuck in the old days of no bars and restaurants and bikes instead of cars. It was actually a quite pleasant city, not as busy as Shanghai but with all the modern conveniences. A bit like Shanghai 10 years ago I guess.

Yangzhou at night

The half marathon started at 8 AM, but we had to be there before 7 AM already so I got up at 5:40 to eat a small breakfast (half banana, small piece of banana bread, some yoghurt and a cup of coffee) before driving to the start of the race. We got there on time and found that we were in the 2nd starting grid behind the professionals. Pretty good, because that means you don’t need a lot of time passing slower runners in the first kilometers of the run. However, we quickly found that this is China and many people went into starting grids closer to the starting line. At a certain point hundreds of runners even entered the starting area for the professionals!

So what do you do in that case? Just do like they do and also move to a better start position. So 20 minutes before the start we managed to get right behind the professional athletes and we could watch them do their preparations. The race was also the Chinese national championship, so a lot of top Chinese runners were at the start. Of course the usual Kenyans were there as well, you see them at all marathons in the world these days.

Park North of Yangzhou

The start was supposed to be at 8 AM, but because it was broadcast live on TV as well and the program started at 8 we had to wait a couple of more minutes before we were allowed to go. But then at 8:05 the gun was fired and we were off. As usual the professional runners were out of sight within a couple of minutes, I’m always amazed at how fast they run. My dad and I decided to run together and we quickly settled into a speed of just over 12 km/h. Because the course was broad and mainly flat (except for a few bridges and a hill in a park north of Yangzhou) that was an easy pace to run. The first 10 km we ran in 46 minutes, an excellent speed for me.

The number of spectators was amazing, many more than during for example the Shanghai marathon. They were all screaming Jia You as loud as they could and some groups even had drums. At some parts along the course there were so many people watching that the people in the back of the crowds could hardly see the runners. As a participant it’s great to see this and it makes running a lot easier.

The scenery along the race course was beautiful. 8-lane roads in the city and smaller paved roads in the parks north of Yangzhou. The organization was good (except for the problems at the start line) and there were refreshments and water every 5 kilometers. I know I dehydrate quickly when it’s sunny (which it was during the run), so I drank some water while running at almost every stop.

My dad and I kept on running together, but I noticed he was having a hard time in the final kilometers. I slowed down a bit to stay with him and used my extra energy to wave at the public and clap my hands above my head, which led to the spectators doing the same. Too bad I could not film it, is was really cool.

Around kilometer 20 my dad told me I didn’t have to stay with him and that I should pick up my own speed. I had calculated I could still run within 1:40 if I would really go for it. I still felt great, so I sped off. In the final kilometer I passed a lot of people and eventually crossed the finish line in 1:39:55. A record time for me! My dad finished about a minute later and we had some water while waiting for Joop to finish as well (he came in at 1:49, also an excellent time). We all felt pretty good and were very happy with the race course and organization. If you are into running and live in China this is a race you should check out!