Lei Feng is an icon in China, although some people doubt he really existed. Born in 1940, he became an orphan after his father was killed during the anti-Japanese war and his mother committed suicide after being harrassed by her landlord. At a young age he joined the People’s Liberation Army and allegedly spent all his spare time and money helping the poor, old and needy. He died at the age of 22 after a telephone pole fell on his head (no kidding – someone drove a truck into a pole that struck Lei Feng), and became a national hero from his selflessness and noble-mindedness.

Chairman Mao Zedong then decided that March 5 would be a national Xiang Lei Feng tongzhi xuexi (Learn from Comrade Lei Feng) day. Suddenly many pictures of Lei Feng doing good deeds turned up, and also his diary was found and published. This year it seems that the Party wants to revive the Lei Feng spirit among younger people, because after 40 years it was suddenly announced that Lei Feng had a girlfriend (did he not write about her in his diary?). This of course led to quite some media articles about him. And according to the Shanghai Daily now there is even an online game starring Lei Feng (according to Xinhua published by Shanda):

To do good deeds, as many as you can, is the trick for passing each level in the online game. The game, so-called “Learn from Lei Feng,” has become very popular among many Guangzhou students as of recent. Hard work, a plain life and willingness to help others are the game’s themes, which is very different from most other online games. “For beginners, sewing and mending socks is the only way to increase experience and to upgrade,” said Jiao Jian, a six-grade pupil in Yuexiu District, quoted by the newspaper. “Every time you are promoted to a higher level, your clothes will become more average,” he said. “You have to do good deeds in order to upgrade, such as contributing and volunteering on building sites. The more you do, the better and higher you get. Thus boosting your reputation.”

The game also sets up tasks like a treasure hunt, which can be found in many online games. But the treasure here is a copy of Chairman Mao’s Collection, unlike the usual swords or jewels. “It’s a novel idea, very interesting.” Jiao said. He also said he likes to battle against the secret agents mainly. “Sometimes the enemy was very strong. The fight almost exhausted me, so I would go to talk with the Party secretary to replenish my vitality at once.” “As long as my experience, reputation, skill and loyalty satisfy the game’s criteria, I will win and meet Chairman Mao,” Jiao noted. “I still have several tasks to go through. I will ‘work hard’ and strive to obtain the Chairman’s autograph as soon as I can.”

It seems like a potential cult game to me, and through viral marketing it could even become a hit outside China. Not sure if there is an English version though.

I managed to get 4 tickets to the Rolling Stones concert on April 8, they were just delivered to my office!

‘I can’t get no satisfaction’? Well, I am pretty satisfied now.
‘You can’t always get what you want’? True, but I managed to get my hands on these tickets.
‘It’s only rock ‘n’ roll’ – good enough for me though!

Anybody else planning to go?

For the past couple of hours Google.com has been down in Shanghai. But not only that, also its adservers seem to have a serious problem: when opening a site with Google ads you get the error message that googlesyndication.com cannot be reached. Luckily Gmail still works, although it seems to be slower than usual.

Google.cn is working flawlessly, coincidence?

Update: (March 15, 8 AM) Google.com is working again in Shanghai, but all their adservers are still down. Maybe it was due to a misconfiguration of the Great Chinese Firewall? But why was only Google affected? And why not just Google.com, but also all the other country codes?

This morning I was as usual reading Dave Winer‘s blog Scripting News on my way to work. And I was surprised, very surprised, to read that he plans to stop writing his blog. Dave has influenced me a lot, even though I have never met him in person.

For those of you who don’t know him or don’t regularly follow his weblog, Dave is a software and internet pioneer. He is one of the very first bloggers (he started in 1994 with his first semi-blog), he invented XML-RPC, RSS (that is finally taking off) and OPML. He was the founder of Userland, and he is one of the people who together invented and developed podcasting.

Because of reading his blog I decided to set up my first weblog about two years ago (Shanghaied Weblog is my third weblog, the first two have since ceased to exist). And without him the idea of podcasting would have never be born, so likely there would be no Toodou.com.

Dave wants to stop blogging because the goals he had when he started blogging are now fulfilled. Also, he has become a public figure because of blogging and he wants some more privacy. To be honest, I don’t think he can stop blogging anymore. It’s too much part of his life to share his thoughts and ideas with the outside world. I enjoyed following his travels all over the US, and developed many new ideas because of his posts. It’s a pity this might stop soon. Thanks for the inspiration you have given me over the past years Dave, and good luck with your new plans!

Spill Group Asia is a fast-growing online gaming company with headquarters in Shanghai. We run and build online gaming webportals in China, Malaysia, Singapore, India and Australia.

We are currently looking to expand our team with a junior programmer/web designer and a senior systems engineer/programmer for our office in Shanghai (Xujiahui). Details of the requirements for both positions:

Function description Designer/Junior Programmer

• Functional design of sites, games, cartoons, logo’s
• Making banner materials and promotional content
• Broad experience with Flash, Photoshop, Illustrator, Html
• Programming of applications for gamingwebsites with high trafficvolumes and dynamic web environments. Easily specified in per-project outline.
• Work on basis of schedules and deadlines
• Preparing work on basis of flowcharts
• Documenting work in English.
• Programming Skills needed: PHP/XML/HTML/MySQL/XSL/Object oriented programming.
• Competencies needed: Relative good writing in English, Flexible, Goal-oriented, a high drive to learn, responsible, deliver speed and quality.

Function description Senior System engineer/programmer

• Responsible for the structure of the server farm
• Giving guidelines to programmers regarding fine tuning to the Linux servers
• Engineering of server farm i.e. the ones in China
• Load balancing

• Committed to have the servers working 24*7
• Taking care for all internal systems and back-ups
• Broad experience with Unix/Linux, Apache, PHP and MySQL
• Competencies needed: Good writing and verbal skills in English, Flexible, Goal-oriented, a high drive to learn, responsible.

Because of frequent communication with Europe and other Asian countries, only candidates that have good English skills will be considered. Spill Group offers a very competitive package in a great working environment.

Interested in becoming part of our team? Please send an email to amanda (at) spillgroup dot com or contact her by phone at 1376 430 3884. More information about Spill Group can be found on our corporate weblog.

Mid-December last year one of my companies (China Bay) received a notice from the landlord that we would have to vacate the building. The reason was that our office villa would be torn down to make way for a skyscraper. We would have exactly one month to find a new place and to move out. Well, that’s a bit short, and even if we had wanted to move we would not have been able to do so within a month. Finding a new place and renovating it already takes at least 2-3 months. So after some serious negotiations we could stay longer, because the rental contract that we signed does not allow them to just kick us out like this.

There were some more tenants in our building (we only rented the ground floor), and all have left in the meantime, so we have the whole place to ourselves now. Probably in order to motivate us to hurry up to find a new place, the developer put some nice red banners on the outside of our office (see picture). The message of the banners is that we should ‘support the relocation’. China Bay will probably have to find a new place soon, it’s a pity because the location is great and we spent quite some money on decorating the building on the inside.

At the moment Spill Group Asia also has its office in this building (renting some space from China Bay), but for this business I already found a new place. We will move to an office in the Jiaotong University Science Park (an incubator center). A great place for an online gaming start-up, surrounded by all other Chinese internet and software start-ups. I look forward to moving there, likely we can move in by April 1.

I was getting a bit worried that the Rolling Stones might not play in Shanghai, because the ticket agency (Emma Tickets) had taken the event off their list. Checking the official Rolling Stones website, I found no mention of the concert either. I sent Emma Tickets an email about this a couple of days ago, and asked for the status of the event. No reply of course.

This morning I called the company directly, and was transferred to someone who confirmed that the concert is on. She could not explain why the event was not on their site anymore, nor why the Rolling Stones do not have it on their own concert website. She told me that tickets will go on sale on Monday, but they already take reservations now. Interested? Call 021-6481 2938 today to make sure you get your tickets, they speak English. Do not use their email address to make a reservation, I wonder if anyone reads those mails.

A few weeks ago I read a post on Jeroen Berghuis’ blog about problems with an elevator that made me laugh. Not only because I can imagine this really happens in China, but also because of his cynical writing style. Today I came across the same post again, and still found it so funny that I decided to cross-post it here. I cannot link to the post directly, but it can be found on this page. Here it is:

On my way to the airport I got into the elevator in my apartment building. As it was early (08:00 AM which I personally consider being in the middle of the bloody night…) there were only two Chinese girls in the elevator when I got in. On the way down there was suddenly a loud bang and the elevator plunged down for a meter or two (it felt like much more…) until it came to a crashing halt. The girls screamed in fear like girls do and so did I (which is slightly more embarrassing as I am not a girl and should not screech like one, not even when I think I’m going to die on the bottom of a Chinese elevator shaft…).

Luckily the elevator came to a halt on the 12th floor and after a couple of antagonizing seconds the doors opened and I rushed out to safe ground. I was expecting the two girls to do the same but no. When I looked back the girls were still standing in the elevator. They told me “good choice” (I safely assume it was about my choice of getting off the malfunctioning elevator and not about my attire…) but stayed themselves in the elevator! WTF? You have a death wish or just no brain? This fucking elevator is about to fall apart! Take the bloody stairs and live, you lazy bitch! But the elevator doors closed again and the last thing I saw was one of the girls furiously stabbing the ground floor button with her little finger…

5 minutes later I arrived on the ground floor and saw that the elevator was still stuck on the 12th floor, presumably with the girlies still in it. Well at least it didn’t end up crashing on the basement floor. That would have been a massive loss of PRC brain power…