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 people that try to hail a cab on the streets. If it rains in Shanghai everybody all of a sudden wants to take a taxi, and as a consequence none are available. While driving to work this morning a taxi stopped in front of my car to let a person out. Right away a young guy and a middle-aged woman came running to the cab and started to fight who could take it. The young guy won, because he just jumped in and slammed the door shut. The taxi took off right away, leaving the woman standing in the rain. I felt bad for her.

“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, it does not really matter. If the movie will only be screened in 9 or 10 weeks from now, everybody will have seen it on DVD already. I have not seen the movie yet on the shelves, but I am sure it will be at my favorite shop very soon. Next to the special box with all other 21 James Bond movies that never made it to the local cinemas.

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 quite unreliable mail service, except for receiving letters and packages from abroad that have been opened. When I need to send something I either use a courier, so you know for sure your letter or package will arrive (without being opened), or otherwise I use good old free email.

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 level of business maturity that surpasses their US venture-backed counterparts, according to a spokesman of Ernst & Young. 22% is already profitable, compared with only 7% in the US.

IT investments (excl. internet) add up to a little less than 2/3rd of all VC investments, and internet-related companies are about 1/3rd of the total. There were also a few investments in the energy sector. The average investment size also increased, to about US$ 5 million (median figure).

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 use the Tudou office for one of the next events, that saves them some money and it’s more Mobile Monday-like.

There were three presentations, all related to user generated content (USG). Fred Yu, CEO of Waptx.com (Wap Tianxia) kicked off. His company is a mobile portal, where people can upload their own content and others can comment on it. According to his presentation, his site has 70 million page views per day, which seems a bit too much considering that he ‘only’ has 400K unique IP’s. Anyway, maybe a typo. A very interesting company, that seems to know how to do things right in the Chinese market.

Then Mu Rong took the stage, the CEO of PepTalk. This is a mobile IM service, based on an IP based network. For non-techies, you can do a lot of things with your phone, and you can do it virtually for free over a wireless network. Some of the examples he gave seemed a bit farfetched to me, such as a user who reads all her news on PepTalk while on the bus to school. Since when do buses in China have wifi? Or does she first download it all before leaving home. Or maybe I just misunderstood his concept. Anyway, if it works like he says it works it can be big as well, especially after 3G will be launched.

The last person to present was Sam Flemming, CEO of CIC Data. His company is not directly mobile related, because it does data mining of China’s BBS and blogs for corporate clients. So if you are Motorola for example, CIC Data can tell you exactly what is being said and written about your brand on the Chinese internet. Not a typical dot com start-up, but one that builds on the USG on the Chinese internet. A fast-growing company with a lot of potential.

After the presentations there was a panel discussion. Because Fred Yu had to leave early, I was asked to take his place in the panel and tell a bit about Tudou’s experiences with USG. We had some good questions from the audience, and the concensus was that mobile internet will have a very interesting future, with lots of new applications. If you plan to do a start-up in China, this is an area you should look at in my opinion.

The evening was concluded with some drinks and a bit of networking. Because I was on the panel, several people came to me to introduce their start-ups. I heard some interesting ideas, and will check their sites over the next couple of days. A well-organized event, glad I took the time to go here tonight.

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 right below the loudspeaker – which was not functioning well) was literally hurting – I can still feell it now! Luckily he did not talk the whole way, but it certainly seemed like it.

We arrived in Anji just before it got dark, and made a short trip to the set of the movie The Banquet. From there we hiked up to a viewing point, from where we overlooked a sea of bamboo trees. As far a you could see only mountains full of bamboo forests. A beautiful sight, but we could not enjoy it long because it got dark and we had to leave the woods.

When we got back to the entrance of the park, dinner was ready. Some nice local dishes with lots and lots of local beer. The beer was called bamboo beer, but I am still not sure if bamboo is one of the ingredients (anybody knows?). It tasted a bit sweeter than my usual Tsingtao or Heineken, but was not bad. During the dinner many colleagues decided to toast with the management, and I was one of the victims. I had to drink several glasses of beer ganbei (drinking it empty at once), but because the bamboo beer was quite light it was not a very difficult task.

The dinner was followed by a bonfire (the second in a week for me), in an open area in the woods. We did some games, and the losers had to perform for the group. During the bonfire I received an email that Peter Driessen just got a new son, so I could annnounce that to the whole group. Peter, if you read this, congrats from all of us!

The night we spent in a hotel in Anji, which turned out to be much better than expected. Even the breakfast the next morning was quite OK (I had a bit of a hangover from the bamboo beer, but the greasy fried noodles made me feel much better). The only thing I did not understand is why they served hot orange juice. When we asked if they had cold orange juice the waitress brought us some ice cubes!

We spent the whole next day enjoying the nature outside Anji. First we hiked up a mountain, which was much higher than I expected. But the view from the top was fantastic, and the walk was a good opportunity to talk to some colleagues that I did not know very well yet. After the hike (almost 2 hours up and 1 hour downhill) we had lunch at a local restaurant, before we drove to a river close to Hangzhou. Here we went rafting on bamboo (what other material can you expect here?) boats. It was a nice ride, especially because the weather had cleared up completely and it had become nice and sunny with a blue sky. The water was quite calm due to a lack of rain, but the water pistols that many colleagues had brought ensured that we all got soaked anyway.
The day ended with the drive back to Shanghai. The whole bus was watching The Banquet and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon on the internal TV, but I decided to catch up on some sleep. All in all a nice weekend in a beautiful scenery. I had not been to Anji before, and it’s definitely a good place to visit for a weekend trip from Shanghai. The hotels are decent (much better than Moganshan), and the nature is stunning. Some valleys that we drove through reminded me even of the European Alps, although the mountains are much older here (=less steep). There are even one-day organized trips from Shanghai, but considering the distance you will likely spend more time on the road than in nature. If you want to go by car, the quickest way is to take the expressway to Hangzhou and then take the ring road (at exit 18) until you hit the expressway to Nanjing. From there you should see signs to Anji.

More pictures from the trip you can find here

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, because it’s a total waste of time. But I was so sick that I did not even realize I was in bed most of the time. Kind of scary, I cannot remember I had ever been so sick before. At least I was lucky that it happened during my vacation, instead of during a normal working week (although now I could not go skiing, which is also a pity of course). But in order to avoid the flu this year I decided to get the flu shot.

The nice thing of living in Shanghai, is that there are private clinics that you can go to. You just call them and you can come right away. No waiting time, friendly staff and good English speaking doctors. Not cheap of course, but I don’t mind paying for good service (and my insurance normally pays most of it anyway). I normally go to WorldLink, they have several clinics in Shanghai, and I am quite happy with them.

The flu shot itself was a two-minute thing, but I am having some side effects now. My shoulder is sour, and I am feeling a bit lousy. But this should go away within 24-36 hours, and then I’ll hopefully be protected from flu for the rest of winter (knock wood!). Well, as long as bird flu does not reappear of course. But I am not too afraid of that: that was a typical media scare, and the journalists are too busy writing about global warming right now (finally).

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 the mountains it cooled off a bit, but upon arrival it was still 24 degrees. Lots of friends were already sitting in front of Mark’s bar/restaurant The Lodge, enjoying cocktails in the November sunshine and enjoying the autumn colors of the trees on the mountain.

Many of Kitto’s guests were long-term China residents (like Mark himself of course) and a lot of them had set up their own businesses here. But the main thing they had in common was that they all like living in China. People had driven over or flown in from all over the country, and three of his friends had actually arrived that morning from Great-Britain just for the party! A couple of the guests I knew already, and some of them I had not seen in years. Nick Bonner for example, who is running Koryo Tours (trips to North-Korea, check out his website if you’re interested). The last time I saw him was when I was still living in Beijing, over 3 years ago, but he had not changed a bit.

After the pre-dinner drinks we went over to a local restaurant where we had a nice local meal with lots of beer and baijiu (I skipped the Chinese liquor though). Many people had brought their kids, and they had the time of their lives running around the restaurant. After dinner we went back to The Lodge for a drink and a good speech by Mark, before we all hiked up the mountain to Mark & Joanne’s two houses on the top. The location is fantastic, high up in the woods with a view far into the valley and no close neighbours. They also have a nice, half-wild garden where we spend most of the night chatting, dancing and listening to music. The temperature was still quite nice, and because of the full moon we did not really need the fire torches that they had set up all around the garden. When it cooled off a bit more, Mark made a bonfire in the back of the garden with all kinds of bushes and wood that he had collected. And around midnight he fired up the BBQ, for the guests that had gotten a bit hungry again. Very nice to have some barbecued meat after a night filled with beer and wine.

Sunday morning Mark was up early again, preparing an English breakfast for all the guests in The Lodge (he’s a good host!). When we turned up there around 10:30 AM most people had already gathered there for bloody mary’s (or in Mark’s case a Tsingtao beer to wake up). The breakfast made me feel more stable again, and after it Qi and I went for a short walk around the village. Most people planned to spend a few more hours on the mountain, but we decided to go back to Shanghai in the early afternoon already, because we both still wanted to do some work. The drive back went quite smoothly, although we probably should have mounted a video camera in our car: we saw several almost-accidents by people who seemed to have learned to drive in a computer game, swerving from left to right to left to right at speeds over 160 km/h. Most people just don’t know how to drive safely (thanks to China’s driving schools), and thereby not only endanger themselves, but also others. Would have been nice video material for Tudou though.