On November 25, a farmer in Jiangxi province was carrying RMB 10,000 (a huge sum of money for a farmer in this remote area) with him while waiting for a train in Guixi. Suddenly he noticed that several men were following him, and he thought they might be planning to rob him. So he ran away to avoid them. While running a police car drove by and stopped it to ask the police men for help. They took him to the police station, where the farmer was still so afraid that he did not want to let go of one of the three officers.

So what do you do then? Simple, you send the farmer to a mental institution, and leave him there without an address or contact number. His money was put into the a patient account to pay for the cost of treating the ‘patient’. Likely because he was upset of being put in an asylum, the farmer refused to take any medicine or food during the first days. But after 10 days he gave up and he started to receive treatment. But the farmer got angry often, because he knew he did not belong here. The staff did not listen to him, however, and gave him an injection each time he complained, so he would fall asleep. Finally last week the farmer managed to bribe a nurse to call his relatives, who came to free him right away. The paper version of the Shanghai Daily that reported this story does not mention anything about the patient getting his money back, or the police being reprimanded. Likely this happens more often, and the farmer was actually lucky to get out.

I was reading an article in the Dutch press just now about a new form of advertising through bluetooth, where people can receive a short video about a product (in this case the product was a TV program) when they are within 15 meters of a billboard. This was seen as a new idea, but this is kind of advertising has been around for at least a year in China. The Shanghai based company Pioco is doing this, and is even taking it to a much higher level.

Last week Thursday I was invited to the opening of a creative advertising festival in the new Shanghai Stadium subway stadium. This event, organized by JC Decaux and JWT, showcases some of the latest ideas in outdoor advertising in China. Pioco was involved in two of the ads here. One relatively simple one, for the clothing brand Metersbonwe, where people who pass by a billboard can receive pictures of the clothes that are shown on the billboard through bluetooth (just by standing within a certain range of the billboard).

The second one is a much more advanced way of advertising for the Ford Focus. Here a Ford Focus is projected on a wall, and next to it is a small camera. If you stand in front of this camera, the image is projected onto the screen, so it looks as if you are driving the car. What happens then, is that a picture is taken of you in the car, and sent to your phone by bluetooth. A very cool idea, and one that works well because Pioco has developed a technique so that only the person standing in the spot where the picture was taken does receive the photo (see the picture below for the result).

During the event I talked to Pioco’s CEO, Steve Chao, and he told me that his company has exclusive deals in China with several multinationals (among others JC Decaux, Coca-Cola and Nike) on new advertising concepts through bluetooth. Among others they developed a technique to broadcast through bluetooth over distances up to 300 meters (imagine what you can do in a sports stadium with bluetooth), and they have designed their own trendy looking and weather-resistant servers. During recent events up to 70% of all people within the bluetooth range downloaded commercial video’s. Sure, not everybody uses bluetooth yet, and you will have to ask people to turn it on, but I think we could hear a lot more from this company in the near future. And not only in China!

The new Chinese New Year that starts on February 18 will be the Year of the Pig. And this year will be a special one, the Year of the Golden Pig, that only happens every 60 years (there are 12 animal signs and 5 different cycles of these signs). According to Chinese tradition, babies born in the Year of the Golden Pig will have an especially happy and fortunate life. Therefore a baby boom is expected this year, and related to that also a maternity leave boom.

One of China’s biggest job hunting sites, ChinaHR.com, did a survey among HR managers in China about the consequences of this boom. The Shanghai Daily reports about this today, and writes that almost half of the HR managers are worried about a shortage of personnel because of the maternity boom. In China women get a minimum of 90 days off around the time the baby is born, and they are not allowed to do overtime work or night shifts during the pregnancy. Extra personnel will have to be hired, which will increase the companies’ cost.

But will there really be such a big impact on companies? I personally doubt it. I remember that the year I got married was not a good year to tie the knot according to Chinese tradition. But wedding venues and wedding planners were booked out months in advance anyway, and I did not have the feeling people were postponing their wedding because of this. Maybe the countryside is different, but in the cities (where the maternity leave effect will be the biggest) I feel people are paying less attention to this kind of traditions than before, especially young people with good educations. And taking into account that planning the birth date of a baby is more difficult than planning a wedding date, the effect there will likely be even smaller. Of course media like to write about a baby boom, but I am not so sure if there will really be a big impact.

A couple of weeks ago I was interviewed by Shanghaiexpat, the podcast site with the interesting tag line ‘the foolish chatter while the wise listen. U’d better start listening!’. In the podcast I talk about my career and my life in China. I noticed that the podcast is up now, and the direct link can be found here.

The website has a lot of interesting podcasts with (mainly) foreigners working in Shanghai. Right now the site is very slow in China, but that’s likely still because of the earthquake, so outside China things should be better.

Shanghai, China – Jan. 15, 2007 – Tudou.com, the leading video sharing web site in China, announced that it has reached a content partnership agreement with Southeast Satellite Television, a leading entertainment-oriented national TV channel in China.

Tudou.com and Southeast Satellite Television will co-create a daily segment of user-generated video content on the national Southeast Channel’s most popular prime-time show, Yu Le Le Fan Tian (Entertainment Roll-Over). The cooperation between a major television channel and a leading video sharing site is the first such attempt in China.

By bringing the most interesting user-generated video content to television screen, the show aims to create a mainstream television outlet for grass-root content creators who have previously been limited to the Internet, and at the same time, attract young audience back to television.

“The new show will be the first step of a series of future cooperation projects between us. We will form a deep and strong strategic partnership with Tudou,” says Liang Zhanglin, Managing Director of Southeast Satellite Television.

“We love this opportunity to work with Southeast. They are very dynamic and forward-thinking. Couch potatoes can now be part of the show,” says Gary Wang, founder and CEO of Tudou.com.

About Tudou.com: Tudou.com (Potato in Chinese) is the leading video sharing web site in China, currently funded by IDG, Granite, and Jafco. It was selected among the 100 Hottest Start-ups in Asia by Red Herring, and The World’s Hottest Start-up Business 2.0 by CNN in 2006. According to the latest 2006 Internet Survey Report, Tudou.com is No. 1 with nearly 10% reach of all Chinese Internet users. Per day, Tudou.com streamed over 10 million video clips, the equivalent of 95 years of programming.

About Southeast Satellite Television: Based in Fujian, one of the most economically dynamic provinces of China, Southeast was recently named the top 10 national channels in China, and its entertainment shows are among the top-rated in China, with strong coverage of young audience.

Media Contact:
Vega Chen (Tudou.com)
Tel: +86-13818291212
Email: vchen@tudou.com

Ye Qinlin (Southeast Satellite Television)
Tel: +86-13811929294

(Joint press release Tudou.com / Southeast Satellite Television)

This weekend Gary and I went to La Bici, the bike shop on Wanping Lu (close to Jianguo Lu), to decide on which bikes to buy for our upcoming ride through the Himalaya. After looking at several model we went for two Sunn mountain bikes. Not very cheap, but it’s better to spend a bit more on good bikes, than to end up with a broken bike in a snowstorm at 5000 meters altitude. The bikes will be delivered later today, and I am looking forward to taking my first ride on them!

We need to start doing some serious training soon, because we only have about 3 months left before our planned departure to Tibet. My running shape is not too bad, but I need to start focusing more on bike riding now. I already put my stationary spinning bike in front of the TV at home, so that I can start training a bit there as well. On weekends we plan to put the bikes in the car and do some training in the hills (if we can find any close to Shanghai!).

If anybody else still wants to join let me know. We plan to leave around April 22, the trip from Lhasa to Kathmandu will be just over 3 weeks (including acclimatization).

The other major announcement that was made during the party, is that starting on January 22 Tudou.com will have its own daily TV program on Chinese TV. In partnership with the leading entertainment oriented TV station Southeast Satellite Television, Tudou will get a 5 minute segment in the most popular prime time program Yu Le Le Fan Tian. Tudou is the first leading video website in China to cooperate with a major TV station.

An English press release will be sent out tomorrow, and I will put a copy on my blog.

Friday night the Tudou New Year Party was held at The Melting Pot, one of the better bars on Taikang Lu (Shanghai’s art street). The staff from Spill Group Asia had rented a small bus to drive there, but I decided to take a cab from my apartment because I had to wait for my wife to come home first. Of course we then could not find a cab (rain on a friday night equals no taxis), so I drove there myself. So we were a bit too late, but just in time for the announcements. Yang Lei was the presenter of the evening, and after her Gary gave a speech. During his speech Gary announced that Tudou is growing very fast, and this week managed to break through the 10 million films per day! Especially the past weeks the growth has been stellar, and it seems none of our competitors is able to keep up with us.

The Tudou staff had made a video, showing all our ‘records’ plus the dates they occurred (50K views/day, 100K, 500K, 1 million, 2 million, 5 million, 10 million) and some of the clips that were submitted around that time. Interesting to see was that the time between the dates of the records got shorter and shorter. Some of the clips in the video were quite funny and I had not seen most of them. After the video was shown we made a human 10,000,000 sign ( Gary was the 1, and 2 people each made a 0).

Lots of friends attended the party, and I talked the whole evening with all kinds of people. Gary and Qi were sitting at the table with some VIP guests, but I mainly walked around. Got to know some interesting new people, and for the rest just had a relaxed evening with a couple of beers. After 10 PM the official party ended, but it actually got even better after that. The live band continued to play great songs (although a bit too loud at times). Only downside was that we managed to drink all the Tudou-sponsored beer and had to start paying for it ourselves 🙂

The next party will likely be a rooftop party again in the Tudou office, but that has to wait until spring will arrive in Shanghai.