Last week Tuesday my wife and I went to see the musical Mama Mia! in the Shanghai Grand Theater. A few years ago you had to fly to Hong Kong or even Europe to see a decent stage performance, but things are changing. In the past 2 years we have seen among others the Phantom of the Opera and the Lion King in Shanghai, both performed by the similar casts that also do the West End or Broadway shows.

It turned out that we were lucky, because the next day’s show was cancelled due to an illness of one of the leading actresses and both of her substitutes. They even had to fly in somebody from London in order to ensure the performance of the show on Thursday. According to the Shanghai Daily this was the first time ever that they had to cancel a show!

Mama Mia! tells the story of a young woman who is getting married on a Greek island, where her British mother runs a small hotel. She does not know who her father is, and finds out through her mother’s diary that there are 3 possible fathers. She decides to invite them all to the wedding, hoping to find out which one is the real one. I won’t tell you the result, but the story has an interesting twist.

The musical is based only on ABBA hits, and they have been used in the story in interesting ways. Only occasionally part of the song texts were changed, but most of the time the writers were able to fit the songs in quite well with the story line. Because of the music and the love stories, it is a typical ‘feel good’ musical. I really enjoyed it, which has the side effect that I always start to get new business ideas (but I cannot write them down during the show). This always happens to me when I watch a good concert or show (or when I run on the treadmill for a long period of time), and it’s a good measure of whether I enjoyed the performance it or not.

I had the idea that the Chinese audience did not know most of the songs, but they still seemed to like it. As usual there were Chinese ‘subtitles’ on both sides of the stage, so non-English speakers were able to comprehend the story as well. Only during the 3 extra songs after the show was over, people started to clap along. A few foreigners even started dancing on their seats, but nobody else dared to follow.

The show will run daily until August 2. Tickets are available online and range from RMB 200 to RMB 2000. Most of the cheaper tickets are sold out long ago already, however. After Shanghai the show will move to Beijing, where they will play at the Poly Theatre.

The rainy season is officially over in Shanghai, and it’s now becoming seriously warm. Today’s temperatures should reach 38 degrees (>100 degrees F), and overnight it will not go below 30 degrees (86 F). Luckily we have air conditioning everywhere, and except for the 10 meter between my parking space and the office entrance I should be cool the whole day. At least that’s what would be the case outside China. Because yesterday the building management came to our office to check our air conditioners. Not to check if they were working properly, but to make sure the temperature was set to at least 28 degrees (82.4 F). It seems they decided that 28 degrees is cool enough to work, and that putting it lower only costs more expensive energy. He also told us that for our game.com.cn office space (200 sqm+) one airconditioner should be sufficient (we now have 4 or 5 to cover the whole space), but that he could not enforce that.

So now we working in a 28 degree office, a lot better than the hot and humid air outside, but a bit too warm for me. Problem is that we cannot say no to this, because our office is located in an incubator center and the rent is heavily subsidized by the government. What I do now is that when it gets too hot I close my door, put the air conditioner at 22 degrees and the highest wind speed and leave it on for 10 minutes. Then it’s OK again for at least 1-2 hours.

I am not sure where the 28 degrees limit came from, as far as I know the official lowest temperature for hotels and shopping malls is 26 degrees. And Marcel Ekkel told me yesterday on Twitter that for Hong Kong the official inside temperature is 25.5 degrees. That seems more reasonable to me.

A few days ago we took a picture of all the staff of Spill Group Asia and our game development company Zlong Games. The company has grown tremendously in the past 18 months (I started Spill Group Asia in January 2006). It’s fascinating to be in the internet industry in China right now, and experience hands-on what it means to be in an exploding business in the most booming economy on earth. Hard work, but lots of fun in a very dynamic business environment.

The Pew Internet & American Life Project just published a report about the fast growth of the internet in China. The study describes who the new users are, and what the consequences are for China in general and its relations with the outside world.

The research project also raises the question whether Chinese will be the lingua franca on the internet in the future. Something I do not believe in, I believe there will be a Chinese language internet and a non-Chinese one that are not very much integrated (quite similar to the current situation). If you are interested, the report can be downloaded here.

I also wrote an article about the research with my personal views on several of the points that the report focuses on. I posted it early this morning on Marketingfacts.nl (note: the article is in Dutch). Ogilvy’s Kaiser Kuo put his thoughts about the report in a blog post as well, his ideas can be read here.

Yesterday I was on a China Eastern plane from Beijing to Shanghai. When the captain made his usual announcements he made them in English first, instead of in Chinese. When I listened to him I realized he was not a Chinese but a foreigner (judging from the accent from a Middle-Eastern country). That was a first for me, I did not know that Chinese airlines started to hire foreign pilots.

Coincidentally, this afternoon I was having lunch with a business friend when he told me that he was on a plane from Changsha recently, and that he was very surprised to find out that the captain was a foreigner as well (from South-East Asia). It seems China Eastern started to do some serious recruitment overseas.

I hope for the pilots that they carefully read their contracts before signing them, because the contracts of Chinese pilots often contain clauses that make it almost impossible to quit. Originally these contracts were meant to protect the pilots from unemployment (they get a job for life), but now this is used against them: they cannot be fired, but they can also not leave the job for private reasons.

Last year there was a case where a pilot tried to resign from China Eastern to start working for one of the new private airlines. He was sued by his former employer and asked to pay 1.5 million USD. The court finally ruled that he should pay around USD 200,000 in compensation to the airline – effectively 3 times his yearly salary in his new job.

The reason that airlines do not want to let pilots go is simply because there is a major shortage of aviators in China. The aviation industry is booming, but the flight schools and the military (where many pilots traditionally come from) are not able to supply enough young pilots to fulfill the demand. It seems that they have now finally decided to let foreign pilots in. A smart move, but potentially a dangerous one as well: I am sure the pilots do not speak good Chinese (the Chinese announcement on the plane was made by someone else for example), and I am also quite sure that at least some of the air traffic control staff is not fluent in English.

Spill Group Asia, the online gaming and game development company that I set up last year Spill Group, and online video site Tudou.com both keep on growing very fast. That is also one of reasons that blogging is a bit light at the moment; others are that my internet connection at home is not working, so late night blogging is not possible, and the fact that I just spent a few days in Beijing in a hotel with only a dial-up connection – not good if you have a MacBook Pro that does not support this anymore…

Game.com.cn, currently our leading Asian gaming site, now has over 300,000 unique IP’s per day and about 6 million pageviews per day. As a comparison, around Chinese New Year (mid-February) we were still at 100,000 unique IP’s. According to iResearch game.com.cn is now the 4th biggest gaming site in China, and my aim is to be in the top 3 within a few weeks.

Zlong Games, the game development subsidiary of Spill Group Asia, also goes very well. The company has grown to over 50 artists and programmers, and will now be ‘split’ into two parts: the serious gaming division will be rebranded Seeriously and for the casual games we will start using the brand name GameDino. GameDino.com will feature all games that Zlong has built. Flash games can be copied for free from there, and downloadable games can be bought there (test versions can be played for free).

I have been working on a strategy to do more with multiplayer games, and soon we plan to launch this in China. Exact details we don’t know yet, but we might work with, or take over, an existing Chinese company (we found a very interesting one already). Next to that we also will focus more on India. In two weeks I plan to go to Mumbai to meet some companies there to see how we can work together. Interesting but hectic times!

In terms of numbers Tudou.com is doing even better than Spill Group Asia, after the USD 19 million C-round was closed a few months ago the site keeps on growing very fast. According to another iResearch report Tudou now has a 47% market share in China, based on time spent on video sites. In June we streamed 1.2 billion films on the site, and in July the clip views are up to 60 million films per day. Tudou also introduced its innovative advertising system earlier this month. Personally I think it looks very cool, and actually makes the site even nicer. If you want to read more about it check among others Kaiser Kuo’s blog post or this article in the Hollywood reporter.

Over the past weeks I received more and more emails from readers who want advice on finding accommodation during next year’s summer Olympic Games in Beijing. It’s getting too much to answer all of them (which I regret), therefore I decided to do a blog post about this subject.

First of all, as the name of this blog implies, I live in Shanghai and not in Beijing. Therefore I do not have the inside scoop on which hotels you should try, and which are fully booked already. What I understand is that it is impossible to find a room in one of the centrally located 5-star hotels in Beijing, likely because tour operators snapped up all the rooms. If you want a room, try to get one through a tour operator – you will end up paying more, or you might be forced to also book tickets through them. Some hotels close to the Olympic venues, such as Purple Jade, still had rooms a few months ago, but were charging outrageous prices (USD 1700 per night for a standard room).

If you are not able or willing to pay such prices you can try to stay in a smaller hotel. These can be found online, e.g. by using the English version of Ctrip. You might not be able to book online one year in advance for rooms, but at least it gives you an idea about hotel names and facilities, and their usual prices. Then you can then try to find the websites from these hotels in Google (although many may not have a site), and call them or send them an email. If you call be prepared that nobody speaks sufficient English, and if you send an email you might not get an answer. But if you try several hotels one should eventually work. Tip: The Home Inn hotels have decent, clean rooms and are not expensive (less than USD 40/night for a double room).

Another option is to look at serviced apartments. You may need to book them for at least a full month, but you might still end up saving money in the end. A Google search should help yo to find them. If you want to see a lot of events, the best location would be in the north or northeast of Beijing (Haidian, Asian Games Village or Chaoyang district) because of travel times to the Olympic sites.

But there is also the option to live in apartments that people rent out especially for the Olympics. A fellow entrepreneurial Dutchman, Piet Bos, set up a website for this where people can offer accommodation and others can rent it. The site can be found at http://www.homestaybeijing2008.com I think this is a very smart idea, and I hope many people can find decent and not-too-expensive beds during the Games through his site.

In case I find new information about accommodation over the next 12 months, I will post it as an update to this blog post. If you have any information that I should add here, please put it in the comments or send me an email at marc (at) spillgroupasia (dot) com

Today was not my day. I planned to do a lot of things, but when the internet did not work this morning (once again) my whole schedule fell apart. I wrote a column for a Dutch magazine, but could not do any research online, so I was not too satisfied with the result. I checked my email on my phone, but it’s a nuisance to answer emails with a small keyboard. We had to wait at home for a person to repair the internet (so we could not go out), but when he finally arrived he could not find the problem and we are still without internet.

I wanted to do something and decided to go to Xujiahui and check if they have any black market iPhones already. The iPhone fever somehow intirigued me, I still don’t think this is a great phone, but I’ll probably buy one anyway to try. But when I left the building it started to rain heavily, so I went back home. I started to read a book, but still felt I needed to do something. So when the rain stopped after an hour or so I decided to go for a walk in a part of town where I don’t come often. My wife did not feel very well, and decided to stay home.

I took a cab to the Ritz-Carlton and took a left from there onto Xikang Lu. I occasionally drive through here, but the last time I walked here was during a visit to the Jade Buddha temple about 4 years ago. Lots has changed, but not in a negative way. Yes, there are a lot of new apartment buildings, but there are also lots of old areas left. And some of them are totally redeveloped, and could really change this part of town in the near future.

Especially the New Factories area (Xikang Lu / Yuyao Lu) was impressive. Several good bars and restaurants, including Cafe Montmartre (my favourite lunch place in its old location before the Xiangyang market was torn down) and a City Diner. But there was nobody there… Maybe because of the rain, but still I had expected more people here on a Saturday afternoon. Possibly people don’t know about it yet, for me it was also my first visit here. But I will be back for sure.

On my way back I walked through Shanxi Road, and passed an old villa that my former company (China Bay Partners) had almost rented as an office. At that time (2 years ago) the area was not that impressive, but now it had turned into an upper class location. Among others there were a Cambodian Spa, a store with Mediterranean food products, and a high-end wine cellar. It still amazes me how things change in this city.

I ended my walk at Malone’s, where I am now sitting on the terrace having a Tiger beer (well, two actually) while using their free wifi. Well deserved after a two hour walk in 30+ degree temperatures and after being without internet for almost 24 hours.