Our marriage last weekend was a fantastic event. The whole thing actually lasted several days. My family and I arrived in Beijing on Wednesday and we left on Monday morning. In between we had numerous dinners, parties and of course the big wedding on Saturday. In total almost 130 were present during the wedding ceremony and dinner party. Almost half of them had flown in from all over the world (USA, Germany, Holland, Japan, HK, Singapore) to be with us on this special day, and we were very happy with that.

The wedding took place in the park at Purple Jade Resort in Beijing. A very nice location, with lots of grassland, lakes, and even deer that walk around freely (they are pretty tame). We looked at many locations in Beijing, but this is absolutely the best one if you want to have an outside weddintg. The ceremony started with a cocktail reception next to the lake during which we took pictures with all the guests. This was followed by the official western ceremony. I walked the aisle with Sierk (my best man), Qi walked in with the bridal march played in the background. Dunja (Sierk’s 2 year old daughter) walked in front of them, which was very cute. The ceremony was in English and Chinese, and was led by Weiming Soh. Qi and I both worked with Weiming while we were working at DaimlerChrylser. Qi reported to him while in strategic planning and l I worked with him for a while doing the financial side of the restructuring project of Beijing Jeep. Weiming is now a board member for Volkswagen China (in charge of marketing and sales). He also did a great job as ‘minister’, although he said the Chinese vows so quickly that I had some difficulty repeating them.

After the Western ceremony we had to change to Chinese clothes for the Chinese ceremony. This involved leading the bride (whose face was covered by a veil) to the podium, and then taking off her veil to reveal her to the audience. Then we had to kowtow to the heaven, our parents and each other. A tea ceremony followed, and this was ended by speeches of both fathers.

Then the dinner with several speeches, and a great 30 minute presentation by Sierk. He made a story board presentation about both our lives, it was excellent. After the dinner we had a party in the Sky Lounge at Purple Jade that lasted until the early hours. Some people even ended up at the swimming pool at 5:30 AM (including my sister and her boyfriend who had an early morning flight, and almost missed it because they slept through their alarm clock). Looking back a great event that I will long remember.

Off to Beijing early this morning for my wedding. The ceremonies (Chinese & European), dinner and party will take place this Saturday. Many of my friends have arrived already, so I am looking forward to meeting them later today. Likely there will be light blogging in the next couple of days.

(for non-Chinese readers: the Chinese character next to this post is the ‘double happiness’ character that is used for weddings in China. There is even a cigarette brand using it as their name and logo, so most Chinese use that brand during weddings. Smart marketing!)

A few days ago I wrote about the new regulation that would become effective on September 1 that says that you have to identify yourself when buying a mobile number (either pre-paid or subscription). Yesterday my sister arrived in China for my wedding, and I bought her a pre-paid SIM card at one of the roadside stalls. And guess what? We just paid the fee and got the number. No questions asked about identity. I asked the sales person, but he did not seem to understand what I was talking about. Maybe because of my Chinese, or possibly because he was not aware of any changes in the law. Was it just an announcement that was not implemented?

(from the Shanghai Daily)
China announced plans Friday to lift a seven-year-old ban on door-to-door sales and issued new regulations for the direct sales market in an effort to meet commitments made during its bid to join the World Trade Organization.

China had promised to open the direct sales market by the end or last year prior to joining the WTO. The ban will end on December 1.

Direct sales were banned in 1998 amid reports of rampant fraud and pyramid sales schemes. The ban came as a major blow to some of the world’s largest direct sales companies, such as Avon and Amway, which had only started to build up sales networks in the country.

However, the new law does not allow pyramid schemes in which sellers earn a small commission from all the people behind them. Also sales commission cannot exceed 30% of total income. Furthermore, foreigners like myself cannot be involved. This might hamper growth inititially, but because Chinese like to work hard to earn money I think it will take off very quickly after that. It is a good business model for huge countries like China where it is difficult to sell your goods everywhere.

My father arrived in Shanghai last Friday and we had dinner together at Sens and Bund. An exceptionally good restaurant: great location, beautiful interior, fantastic service, and the best Western food in Shanghai – but also one of the highest prices in Shanghai (3 courses plus wine cost us over 1500 RMB/person). As he stayed in the Grand Hyatt we decided to first have a drink at the river front in Pudong before heading to the Bund. To get from Pudong to Puxi you can either get a taxi (impossible on Friday night at 8 PM), take a ferry or go through the Bund pedestrian tourist tunnel. We opted for the last one.

I had taken this tunnel a few years ago when it just opened, and remembered it was different from any tunnel I had ever taken. You go through the tunnel in a small cabin-like train. The tunnel itself is lighted in different moving colors, there are sounds and even two inflatable dolls that are in the middle of the tracks and that are hit by the train. This combined with a dark cabin and some smoke creates a very strange experience. A bit like Walt Disney, but then with a purpose to go from A to B. Tacky? Yes, but it somehow fits to the fast-growing modern Shanghai. I actually like it, it’ s a nice and fast way to go from the new Pudong to the old Puxi.

Peking University Hospital
Originally uploaded by jiulong.

Last Frday Qi woke up with a severe pain in her upper back. Because she has broken her back last year we were a bit concerned, but she decided to go to work anyway. This was not a very good idea, and after a few hours she went to a hospital to get checked by an expert doctor. It turned out that she had dislocated a bone in her upper back (I did not even know you could do that). After the doctor treated her, she hoped the pain would go away, but it didn’t. Friday night she could hardly lay down, so on Saturday we went to another hospital for a second opinion. Chinese hospitals are still super inefficient, but going there is an interesting (but time consuming) event.

How does it work? First you go to a counter to ask where you can get a number. At the number counter you have to make sure that other people don’t jump the queue, and once you have a number you can go to yet another queue to pay for the consult that you will get. Luckily in China that is never very expensive. The total price was EUR 1,60, of which we only had to pay 60 Euro cents ourselves, the rest was picked up by the insurance company. Then to the floor where the doctors sit. You have to pass corridors full of patients laying on stretchers, some looked more dead than alive. Terrible sight. At the floor where the doctors sit you get another number, at least if a nurse is available. Our nurse was not there, but preparing medicine, so we had to wait for her. When she finally came back we got a new number and then had to wait until a doctor became available. At the same time we could look at some very encouraging pictures from broken bones and how they fix them. Very bloody. When we finally were admitted to the doctor it only took a few minutes. The main thing he said is that he did not know what was wrong until we would make X-rays.

So off we went to the X-ray room. First you have to get a number, then you pay, and then you can go to the X-ray room. In order to get there we had to walk through the corridor next to the chemotherapy room. This was almost completely blocked by patients for whom there was no room in regular rooms. Image a dirty, noisy corridor without airco when it is over 30 degrees outside. Not a nice way to be dying I thought. At the X-ray room there was nobody, but luckily when a doctor arrived he helped Qi right away. Normally you can get the pictures within about 90 minutes, but because it was quite late already we had to come back the next day.

So Sunday we went back again. Again first going to a counter to pick up the pictures, and then to the room to see the doctor. We were lucky, it was almost lunchtime, but he helped us just before going out for lunch. Nothing was broken luckily, and everything seemed fine. But Qi still had lots of pain… He said she had to stay out of airoconditioned environnments (great wit the hot summer weather…), stay really calm during the next days and don’t lift anything heavy. Also she got some medicine prescribed. So first you find out where you pay (stand in line etc.), the pay (stand in line again), then go to the pharmacy (stand in line), find out that this is the western medicine pharmacy and we have to be at the Chinese medicine pharmacy… Anyway, we made it, but I was very glad I could leave this place. Hospitals still have a lot to improve!

(note: this happened about 6 weeks ago, at that time my weblog had problems so this was never posted. Qi is doing fine again.)

Just noticed that my favourite proxy Anonymouse is suddenly working again. Great, so I can read the blogspot and other China-blocked weblogs again without going to Bloglines. In case you are not familiar with anonymouse, you can read most website that are blocked in China by typing: http://anonymouse.ws/cgi-bin/anon-www.cgi/http:// followed by the address of the site that you want to see. The service was down (or blocked?) for the past two weeks or so, and during the past couple of hours it came back again.

I subscribe to the online version of the Shanghai Daily, an English language newspaper that is a lot more interesting to read than the China Daily. I used to read the China Daily in Beijing because there was nothing better available, but since I moved to Shanghai I have not touched it again, except when I get one on an Air China plane. I actually did not read the online Shanghai Daily that often, because the format was hard to read on a computer screen. I hoped they would change to a different way of presenting the paper, and this morning my wish was fulfilled! The Shanghai Daily now has a decent website, that is free to browse and a searchable archive that goes back at least until early 2003.

The site even has RSS feeds for all kinds of news (metro, national, headlines etc.), and explains to the readers what RSS is. They also explain what a podcast is, although I could not find any podcasts on their site yet. So maybe they will start with this soon as well. Or they just copy/pasted the RSS description from another site and by mistake also copied the podcast part? The editor even has his own blog and there is a blog for all Shanghai events (both powered by WordPress).

Anther interesting feature is the listings of all bars, restaurants and hotels in the city. A quick check of the bars (217 in total) revealed that all my favorites are in there, so it seems they did a decent job.

And how do they make money from this? It seems likely that many subscribers will not continue their subscription. The only added value is downloading a pdf version of the current newspaper, that it hard to read. But they (intentionally?) put Google Ads on all their pages, maybe that will compensate the loss in online subscriptions a bit.

This morning while driving to work, my taxi driver was watching me work on my computer. That is not unusual, it happens almost every day, and some are looking like they have never seen a laptop before. But this one said: “Ah, pingguo diannao, hen hao!”. For the non-mandarin speakers, he liked it that I was using an Apple computer. So I started chatting a bit with him. In his free time (not much, he works 12 hours per day driving his cab) he likes to program and surf the internet. And he uses an Apple computer as well. He thinks they are the best computers, but very expensive. He paid over 20,000 RMB for his laptop, for which he could have bought 3 local computers. I was surprised how he would be able to afford a laptop that is more expensive than his annual income, but decided not to ask him that question. When he asked me what I do and I told him about Toodou.com, he told me he knew the website.

I had many, normally short, chats with taxi drivers, but this one was the first that was actually interesting. Most of them are about where I am from, how good my Chinese is (which it is absolutely not, I am ashamed that I am still at a very basic level after all these years in China), and about Marco van Basten and Ruud Gullit (two long-retired Dutch soccer players, who are still on everybodies mind). But this conversation was fun and he did not even ask me where I was from. If you ever happen to be in Dazhong taxi no. 246357, send him my best regards.

Sometimes you really wonder why Chinese companies cannot not peform a spelling check before printing signs or ads in English. These three I found in the luxurious Grand Gateway mall in Shanghai.

Some pictures I took this morning while walking to the bakery to get some fresh bread for breakfast.

Friday night after finishing work Gary, Qi and I had a dinner at La Gondola (great Italian restaurant by the way, check it out. Next to Westin Hotel, corner of Henan Lu and Yan’an Lu). Instead of hitting Shanghai nightlife, we decided to hit some golf balls at the driving range next to JinMao. It was still quite busy at 11 PM, and also still quite warm. Nice way to end a busy week, and not too expensive (total RMB 80 including a beer and two cokes).

(BTW, photos were taken with my phone, that explains the low quality)

The Dark Plumber of Doom
Originally uploaded by Wakiyamani.

The Chinese government has announced plans to limit the time that gamers can spend online. After 3 hours their characters abilities will be halved and after 5 hours almost all strenght of its characters will be gone. Most big Chinese online game companies have already agreed to include these measures into their games. Of course they have to, otherwise their business licenses will be cancelled.

Will hackers be able to break the code so players can play as long as they want? Very likely, but because most players in China are young people who can only play in internet bars, there will be probably be monitoring systems there as well.

Toodou.com logo
Originally uploaded by Marc van der Chijs.

Yesterday Oriental TV came to the Toodou.com office to produce a program about us. They will produce a 25-minute program that will be aired later this week at 7:00 PM. According to the producer, the program has the second highest rating in Shanghai, so lots of viewers probably.

Also the Toodou team was featured yesterday in a 4-page special in the Wai Tan Hua Bao (you won’t see me in the pictures, I was not there when the reporters came to visit), and the front page has a huge full-color picture of some of our team members.

This morning I watched the program that Dragon TV produced last Monday. I felt they did not clearly bring accross the message about what we are doing. One reason is that the item was only five minutes, and they also profiled one of our users during that time. I hope the other program they will produce with this material for CCTV will be better (at least it is longer, I think 15 minutes or so).

Many reviews on the web as well, but most are in Chinese. I came accross this one in English yesterday on techcrunch.com.

The site keeps growing. Lots of good new video’s and podcasts were uploaded again, and the amount of users keeps increasing. It’s great to see that when some people have an idea and manage to implement that in the right way, that it can be so successful so quickly – and all of that without spending one penny for marketing!

Interfax reports that from September 1 onwards all Shanghai mobile phone users will need to register with their ID card:

All mobile phone and Xiaolingtong (PHS) subscribers in Shanghai, new and old, will have to register their legal names with city authorities beginning September 1, the Shanghai Communications Administration and the Shanghai Public Security Bureau (PSB) said on Friday.

“We have tightened control in order to protect mobile phone users from malicious and fraudulent SMS (short messaging service) messages,” Hu Yonglong, Vice Director of the Shanghai Communications Administration, told Interfax.

Mobile phone and Xiaolingtong subscribers will now need to show their Citizen Identity cards and register their legal names when buying a new SIM card. Telecom operators will be required to confirm and register the legal names of new subscribers in a database.

Existing mobile phone and Xiaolingtong subscribers must registered their legal names with authorities at designated locations across the city within three months from September 1.

Let’s wait and see if it is just an announcement or if it will be really enforced. If it should be enforced I expect that people who use mobile phones for illegal activities will buy their numbers outside Shanghai, or will give poor unemployed workers a few kuai to register in their names. And also I do not expect the amount of spam SMS to reduce: I get about 3-5 per day, and most are from China Mobile anyway!

Chateau Haut Dina
Originally uploaded by Marc van der Chijs.

After lunch I had a wine tasting session to determine which wines to serve during my wedding. This is one of the nicest parts of organizing a wedding. We decided on two nice Bordeaux wines, a red 2000 Chateau Haut Dina and a white 2001 Chateau Bauvallon. During the tasting we discussed a few things about foreigners doing business in China, and the way they often look at the market (if every Chinese would buy one of my products etc.). Thomas Kaeppelin (manager of DT Asia, the wine supplier) then made a good remark: “If every second Chinese would drink a bottle of wine per day (like in France), there would not be enough wine in the whole world!”

Interfax posted this story this morning:

PowerNet Technology, a Chinese online gaming firm, has developed a new online game in cooperation with the China Communist Youth League (CCYL) named “Anti-Japan War Online,” which will begin commercial operation by the end of 2005, a PowerNet official said Tuesday.

“The game will allow players, especially younger players, to learn from history. They will get a patriotic feeling when fighting invaders to safeguard their motherland,” a PowerNet Project Manager, surnamed Liu, told Interfax.

The background for “Anti-Japan War Online” is the Japanese invasion of China during World War II, from 1937 through 1945. Players are able to play simulations of key battles, but will only be able to play as the Chinese side. Players will also not be allowed to kill other players in the game. In addition, fighting in the game between Japanese and Chinese soldiers will be shown only in miniature, so as to reduce the violence level of the game, Liu said.

The new massive multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) will begin internal testing later this August, with commercial launch of the game expected in 2005. The online game is based on PowerNet’s self-developed game engine.

The CCLY said in statement that few games on the Chinese market today generate a “national spirit” that can educate young players. As a result, the CCYL will actively partner with online gaming companies to jointly develop “patriotic” online games.

“‘Anti-Japan War Online’ is a patriotic online game that is both interesting and instructive, and can attract and guide young players,” Chen Xiao, the CCLY official in charge of partnerships with online gaming firms, told Interfax. “We will pay close attention to the authenticity of historical facts in the game.”

Interesting, anti-Japanese protests are not allowed anymore, but a game like this is sponsored by the government! I wonder how many people will play this game. Would they play it because they are patriotic? Or only if the game is as good as they other online games they normallly play? I guess the last reason is more important for the younger generation.

The first thing I normally do when arriving at the office is to make a big cup of coffee. Normally Sophie has already turned on the machine before I arrive, so the only thing I have to do is push a button and a minute later I have a large cup of steaming hot Italian coffee.

This morning I noticed that the coffee machine was still off. I turned it on, but nothing happened. I tried the computer nex to it, also not working. Ergo, a power failure in that part of the building. The office is located in an old villa (a sign over the entrance gate says 1903, but the National Heritage sign on the building says 1920), and this is the first time in 6 months that this has happened, so that’s not too bad.

I needed to make some copies, so turned on the copy machine, which is in a different part of the building. But instead of the ‘warming up’ message a huge amount of white smoke came out of the machine. Well, that was the end of the machine, 3 months old and ready to be scrapped. And it wasn’t even a cheap Chinese one. Definitively not a good start of the day.

Five minutes later two repairman came. Lots of loud talking as usual, but in the end they had no clue about what had happened, and blamed workers that had been redecorating our neighbour’s office the day before. So still no electricity, and because of that also no internet. So now I am writing this post at a Coffee Beanery outlet having a XL coffee and free wireless internet. My secretary will call me once the problem is solved, which I hope is within 2 hours, because then my laptop battery will be empty.

Shanghai by Night – August 22, ’05 – taken from New Heights (3 on the Bund)
Originally uploaded by Marc van der Chijs.

Sometimes it seems the world is really small. Look at what happened yesterday for example: I was riding in a cab with Gary, my biz partner for Toodou.com, when he got a call from a guy from the US that he would meet later that afternoon. Turns out I also met this guy a couple of weeks ago through an online business forum, and when he arrived in Shanghai the week before I had lunch with him and his wife. This was a total coincidence.

In the evening I went out for a couple of beers with Hugo Verkuil. Hugo arrived from Europe that morning for a short biz trip, but has so much energy that even though he did not sleep on the plane, he still was ready to go out. He is a friend from university who used to be with BCG, but just started a high-level job with Unilever. I picked him up from a biz dinner that he had to attend, and there I see a guy who I know from several years before in Beijing. This guy, Peter, used to be Chairman of Wall’s ice cream in China. Turns out he is now Hugo’s boss (head of worldwide ice cream activities for Unilever), who ‘lured’ him away from BCG.

Over a beer at New Heights I am talking with Hugo about Toodou.com and about Gary Wang. And yes, you might have guessed it, Hugo knows Gary. They were classmates at INSEAD 3 years ago. The world seems to be really small. Or is the international business circle so small?

Shanghai, China – TV shooting for Toodou.com
Originally uploaded by Marc van der Chijs.

The podcasting multimedia website that I co-founded last year is becoming extremely popular. With up to 700,000 page hits per day, and over 50,000 registered users (15 days ago it was only 30,000 registered users!) Toodou.com is exceeding the figures from its business plan. Lots of media attention, not only from blogs, but also interviews with magazines and newspapers. This morning we had a TV crew in our office that interviewed us and followed our work during a couple of hours. They will make two programs, one will be aired on Dragon TV as a part of City Beat next Sunday, the other one will be broadcasted on CCTV next month during TechMax. If I don’t forget about it I will put the exact times here later.