Gamasutra, the US based website about games and game development, will publish a regular column about gaming in China. Gaming specialist Shang Koo from Pacific Epoch will write the articles, and his first column ‘From Kingsoft With Love’ is now online. I did not find an RSS feed on the site (shame on you Gamasutra!), so I suppose you will have to go back regularly to the site to find out if a new column is online.

At the online gaming conference in Shanghai last month I met Simon Carless, one of the editors of Gamasutra. He spent a week in Shanghai during ChinaJoy 2006, and submitted several articles about the state of Chinese game market. A good read if you are into gaming and want to know what’s happening here.

Brands like McDonald’s, KFC and Starbucks are truly global brands. Even in China you can find McD’s and KFC’s in secondary and even third-tier cities, and also Starbucks is growing rapidly. This weekend, for example, I had coffee and a brownie in a Starbucks in Nanjing. OK, the staff at the Sofitel Nanjing had never heard of XinBaKe (is this actually the right pinyin for the Chinese name of Starbucks?), but while driving through the city center I spotted the coffee chain right away.

On the internet I came accross a nice chart that compares the internationalization of Starbucks and McDonalds. Comparing the two brands it immediately struck me that Africa is still mainly virgin territory for both companies. But in Asia both are quite well represented. Japan is not surprisingly still the biggest market for both brands, but China is up-and-coming. Note that this map is based on data for 2003; with data for 2006 both Starbucks and McD would be a lot bigger in China, overtaking most other Asian countries. I wonder when the first Chinese fastfood chain will expand internationally.

The speed of construction work in China never ceases to amaze me. 20 story buildings are constructed in just several months, roads can be built almost overnight, and new subway lines are announced every few months. But also demolishing a building goes really fast. Most of the time old buildings are not blown up, but they are ‘de-constucted’ manually.

A nice example happened right outside my office window. The pictures were all taken within 24 hours. In the morning there was still a 6-story apartment building. Then the bulldozers came in and started hacking and pulling the building apart. At night all there was left was just a big pile of stones. And by the end of the next day even these stones were all gone, thanks to big old blue FAW trucks continuously driving on and off with the left-over material. In Holland this process would likely take weeks.

This morning I walked by the site, and construction for a new building has already started. No idea what they will be building there yet, but I will know in a few months when the new structure will be finished.

A short post to help people who are having problems to log into Hotmail in China. As many tourists have probably noted, the domain hotmail.com is not accessible in China anymore (at least in Shanghai, I have not tested it in other cities). It seems the DNS is blocked, but that does not mean that you cannot check your mail of course.

If you know a bit about the internet, solutions for this will be old news for you, but I think many people just give up if the site does not load. There are several ways around this problem, but the easiest solution is to go to http://login.live.com and enter there your MSN (=hotmail) username and password. Then click on the Hotmail button on the top of the page, and you will end up in your mailbox. Happy mailing!

A few days ago I was looking out of the window in my study, and noticed the top of a crane (or something that looked like it) next to the Grand Hyatt (Jinmao Tower). I took out my binoculars, because this is at least 7-8 km from my house. It was difficult to see, but two days later I noticed that the crane was a bit higher, and the top of a building had appeared. It turned out that this it the top of the new Shanghai World Financial Center, which at 101 stories (491 meters) will be China’s tallest building.

(The new structure can be seen at the far right of the picture, with 3 cranes on top of it. Zoom in for a better view)
It is currently growing at about 2-3 stories per week, and it should get to its highest point early next year. It will change Pudong’s skyline, because the Grand Hyatt will suddenly appear small next to this giant. Too bad the original design was changed, the old design (a round hole) was much nicer, but it changed to a new design (a rectangle), because the Chinese thought it resembled the Japanese flag too much (the building was designed and financed by Japanese).

The construction of this building already started in 1997, but was halted several times because of financial problems. But earlier this year (or was it late last year?) the construction suddenly started again, and now it seems nothing can stop it anymore. I will keep on following the construction from behind my desk while writing my weblog entries.

Ho-Pin Tung is a very succesful Dutch-Chinese race car driver. I know him a couple of years already, from the time I just turned entrepreneur. At that time he was racing in the Formula BMW-Asia championship (that he won in 2003). Ho-Pin now races in the Recaro Formula 3 championship that he is currently leading. The picture was taken yesterday during the Rizla Racing Days in Assen, and if you take a closer look here and here you will see that Ho-Pin’s car has among others ads for our online gaming websites Youxi.cn (above the front wheel) and game.com.cn (just visible behind back wheel).

Spill Group Asia and Spill Group Holding wish Ho-Pin all the best in the remaining races this season!

My wife told me an interesting story today about delivery of a registered mail. She went to the post office to pick up a registered letter, and when she was there she asked why we always have to go there to pick these letters up ourselves. I had always assumed the answer would be that nobody was home when they had come to deliver, but that was not the case.

The reason, the post office clerk told her, is that they only deliver registered mail until the 3rd floor, and we live on the 37th floor. My wife replied that there is an elevator, so it should not make any difference. No, the clerk said, the post office rule has to do with the fact that the postman normally calls out below your window when he has a letter, and above the 3rd floor you won’t hear him…. Her argument that our building (like most high-rises here) has an intercom, did not make any difference to the clerk. A rule is a rule in China.

The weekend promises to be warm again in Shanghai. The forecast is similar to the past couple of weeks, with a mixture of clouds and sunshine and temperatures around 35 degrees. Great weather to spend a day on the beach – if Shanghai would have a decent beach, that is. But now there is a good alternative, the new Le Meridien hotel in Sheshan.

Sheshan is the only place close to Shanghai that is not totally flat. There are several hills covered with woods, and there is even one hill that was turned into a national park complete with several hiking trails. There is a (man-made?) lake, and driving around the area gives the impression of being in a holiday resort. Sheshan also has a nice but expensive golf course (this is actually the course where we developed the idea for Toodou during an 18-hole round in October 2004). And this all within 30 minutes of downtown Shanghai!

The Le Meridien hotel is built between one of the hills and the lake, a beautiful location that gives the impression of being in the middle of nature. A rare occasion when you live in this metropolis. The hotel is among the very best in Shanghai: fantastic large rooms (42 inch plasma TV’s with DVD player, a balcony, a king-size bed plus a round sofa the size of a bed, a very nicely designed bathroom with bathtub and separate two-head rainshower), a beautiful outside inifinity pool plus an indoor pool, several bars and restaurants, and even a beach (where the hotel provides a BBQ at night).

The only downside is the rather mediocre service. But that can be excused, because the 5-star hotel is still in its soft opening. You may have to wait a bit longer for your drinks, or staff do not know how to make decisions. Not a very big deal if you have a relaxed weekend, and not much different from many other places in Shanghai anyway. I spent a weekend in Sheshan two weeks ago, and then there were not enough umbrella’s to provide shade at the pool. The reason was that a typhoon had destroyed most of them a few days before that, but I think they should have purchased new umbrella’s by now.

If you plan to go this weekend the resort still has a special RMB 888 package (I called them and they informed me that the action would end next week). This includes not only a room for two people, but also a discount of RMB 460 (incl. service charge) on food and beverages. For this price you can spend two days at the poolside. If you just want to enjoy the pool for one day, you will have to pay RMB 300 per person, so this package is absolutely worth it. Another option is to go there for the Sunday brunch (RMB 298/person) that also allows you to spend the rest of the day on the beach or at the pool. If you go there this Sunday afternoon there is a good chance you will meet me there.