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.

CNN reports today that Toodou is among the 23 hottest start-ups worldwide. Of course the Toodou staff is very proud of this! There are two other Chinese companies on the list, Bokee (blogging) and Douban (book and music reviews).

Some of the other companies that we share the list with are OpenBC (my favorite social networking tool), Korea’s CyWorld (a virtual world that is HUGE in Korea), Last.fm (that I use to track the music that I play) and Finish Habbo Hotel (not really a start-up anymore, but a very popular virtual hotel – they just opened a Chinese hotel as well).

Interesting is that out of the 23 companies, only Toodou and Bokee are not available in English. For Toodou we discussed last year to offer the site in English as well (long before YouTube became as big as it is now :-), but we decided at that time to focus our limited resources on China.

Yesterday Spill Group Asia moved into its new office, also in the Jiaotong Universities Science Park. I don’t very much like the process of moving an office, because it costs so much precious time. But it’s unavoidable when a company grows. We first planned to move last Sunday, but because the painters had just finished painting the day before, we decided to postpone the move for a few days to get rid of the smell first. Because Tuesday was August 8 (08-08), and 8 is a lucky number in China, it was agreed that this was the best day to move.

The movers were supposed to come at 2 PM, so at least we could still work half a day. But they were a bit early already, so I had to cut my lunch break (a sandwich while reading emails) short. The first thing they did was disconnect the internet, which literally forced me to stop working.

Packing went very quick, these guys are experienced and work very hard. They get paid a fixed amount, so the harder they work the quicker they can go home. Not only did they help with packing the boxes, but they also disassembled the furniture and later assembled it again (very quickly as well). Then they carried all the boxes and furniture on their back (!) to the new office. I was once again amazed at what these small guys were able to lift. I am glad it’s not my job, especially in the scorching heat of a Shanghai summer.

But connecting the phones and internet took a bit longer than planned. Davin, our systems engineer, worked with Amanda the whole night to make sure we would have internet this morning (vitally important to an online gaming company). Davin then slept two hours and continued his work. That’s the spirit! Thanks to him also our phones are working again now. The office is a big improvement over our temporary office, and I feel very confident to really grow our business from here!

Today’s Shanghai Daily does many tourists to Shanghai a big favour, because it lists the best places to buy fake goods in this city. I received several mails from readers about where the Xiangyang market moved to, and from the stats of this blog I noted that one of the highest ranking search terms to find my weblog is “Xiangyang Market”, so to help people locate the new places here a short overview:

1) Yatai Xinyang Fashion & Gift market, located in the Science and Technology Museum subway station (Line 2)

2) Qipu Road Market on Qipu Road, north east of the Bund, cross the Suzhou creek on Henan Road and take a left on Qipu Road

3) Jing’an Xiaoting, on Yuyuan Road close to Jing’an subway station.

Lots of bags and watches are still available in the ‘underground’ shops in houses and apartments close to the former Xiangyang market. Just follow one of the vendors with catalogues that will approach you on the street.

Of course these markets do not only sells fakes, but be aware that the majority of the goods is likely to be counterfeit. If you want to make sure you buy the real stuff, go to an official store (although I understand that even there they might sell you fakes). Happy shopping!

A few weeks ago I changed to a new gym because I moved to a new apartment. This gym is located in my compound, and it’s a great place for a work-out. In- and outdoor pool, lots of running and other exercise machines, and all quite new. The place opens up at 6:30 AM, so I can do a 10K before going to work, and that’s a big advantage over my former gym that did not open until 9 AM. And there is hardly anybody, because membership is about triple as expensive as other gyms.

The only thing that was a bit annoying is that some of the running machines are set to a maximum of 60 minutes (and one even to a max of 30 minutes). On weekends I sometimes do 90 or 120 minute runs, and it’s annoying if you have to stop halfway and then start again. So I asked one of the staff to change that, but her reaction was that this cannot be changed and that it is standard for this brand of fitness equipment (Life Fitness). Well, I have run in gyms all over the world and have used Life Fitness treadmills on several occasions for runs over 60 minutes. I told her that and then figured out that she actually had no clue. I asked her to look at the settings in the machine, but she had no idea how to do that. But another instructor was better trained and opened the menu (she tried to hide from me how to do that, but it was clear you just had to push ‘pause’ for a few seconds). Problem was that she could not read English, so she was pushing around on the buttons without really knowing what she was doing.

I asked her if I could help her, but she said the gym does not allow clients to change the settings. Fair enough, but in the meantime she had managed to change the settings to miles instead of kilometers, and the language was now Portuguese. It was clear she was lost and had no clue what to do. So when she walked away I changed those things back for her, and looked in the settings myself. I changed the settings to a maximum of 99 minutes, but when I restarted the machine it turned out that the manufacturer settings (that I could not access) overruled this. I talked to the lady again and she would ask the Life Fitness staff the next time they would be visiting.

Then she said that they would not like to put the maximum time at more than 60 minutes, because ‘it is not healthy to run for more than an hour’. Huh? This was a certified fitness instructor telling me that it is unhealthy to run for more than one hour? I wonder what else they teach them in fitness class! I decided not to argue with her, but hope she will risk my health by asking the Life Fitness staff to change the settings to at least 90 minutes for me.

I am a big fan of Second Life, but my ‘First Life’ is already too busy to spend much time there. This cartoon comes from bLaugh, The (un)official Comic of the Blogosphere.
(via: Marketingfacts.nl)

If you live in one of the compounds on the outskirts of Shanghai, this is probably no news to you. Many of the owners of villa’s in suburban Shanghai are digging their own wells to save on water costs. Construction companies only charge RMB 300-RMB 1000 to provide you with your private well, so the money can be earned back relatively quickly. But the result be may less desirable: not only does the ground water level go down, but if too much water is pumped out (not unlikely with 1000’s of people doing this), there may be structural damage to the houses if the land subsides. According to the Shanghai Daily the government is not doing much: the Land Resource Administration Bureau only takes action if an illegal well is reported, it does not send out inspector to do checks.

Most taxi’s in Shanghai are Volkswagen Santana’s, with an occasional Passat thrown in. But since early 2005 Dazhong taxi also introduced light blue Mercedes-Benz E-class taxi’s. They are quite popular, because they are the same price as the old Santana’s. But that low price may mean that soon the Mercedes taxi era will be over in Shanghai. Yesterday the Shanghai Daily already mentioned that there were rumours among taxi drivers that Dazhong taxi would discontinue its Mercedes-Benz taxi fleet. And today they write that this is indeed true: out of 100 MB taxi’s 45 will be discarded soon.

The reason? Mainly the fact that the company is not allowed to charge higher fees for luxury cabs. The operating costs of a Mercedes is of course much higher than a Santana (not only the depreciation, but also gas, repair and spare parts). I would not mind to pay double or triple the price for a decent taxi, but it is just not allowed in China. Therefore many MB taxi drivers refuse to take people on short rides (they earn less on those), and try to get rides to the airport or other cities for fixed prices.

According to the article another reason is that it is quite difficult to get spare parts on time, because they have to be imported from Germany. I wonder if this is really true. I am quite sure many spart parts are on stock at dealers, especially because the E-class is now produced in Beijing as well.

Taxi’s in China normally have anti-robbery plastic boards, roof taxi lights and seat covers. But many customers asked the drivers to take these off, so it looks like they are not using a cab, but their own luxury car! Because drivers are not allowed to do this this often led to disputes and complaints. As all the taxi’s are light blue and there are no other light blue Mercedes E-class cars in Shanghai, it is quite obvious that these customers are riding a taxi. But they seem to forget that in their efforts to gain face by showing off.

So what will happen to these 45 discarded taxi’s? Nobody knows yet. But if you are looking for a well-maintained, but heavily used, second-hand Mercedes-Benz you might want to give Dazhong taxi a call.

(See also an earlier blog post about a similar problem in Hangzhou, where Mercedes taxi drivers literally kidnapped their taxi’s because they lost money on them)