Scott loves cars. When he goes outside the first thing he normally does is to run to our car and point that he wants to go for a ride. We never give in to that and I was wondering why he keeps on trying, until I recently found out that our driver sometimes gives him a ride around the compound before he drives me to work!

Because he likes cars so much we decided to order him a small ‘real’ car (he already has several tricycles and other user-powered vehicles). Scott got his car this weekend and he is extremely happy with it. It’s a battery operated car with a top speed of just 5 km/h (with a second battery it goes up to 12 km/h, but that’s for when he is a bit older), and it also has a remote control so we can decide where he can or cannot drive to. The only problem with the remote is that if Scott pulls the steering wheel hard enough he can override it, so that we (or better, his nanny) have to run after him all the time.

It’s interesting to see how quickly he understands how to operate the car, and it’s great to see how happy he is. Luckily typhoon Morakot did not arrive in mainland China on Friday or Saturday (as originally forecast), so Scott could spend a lot of time outdoor in his car this weekend.

After among others McDonald’s and Burger King, Shanghai will soon get another fast-food hamburger chain: Carl’s Jr. The first store will be in the Raffles Shopping Mall on People’s Square, a convenient 10 minute walk from my office. The exact location is on the north side of the food court on the B1 floor, and the signs there indicate that the store will open this month already.

But I will probably wait a few weeks before trying out whether their first Chinese store is as good as their US restaurants: I still remember the huge lines at Burger King when it first opened a store in Shanghai (waiting time > 30 min!). I like Carl’s Jr. better than the current chains, but I hope the next fast-food restaurant to come to China will be In-n-Out, in my opinion by far the best hamburger chain in the US.

Yesterday was the first day of operations for Shanghai’s latest new amusement park, Happy Valley (warning: terribly designed and very slow flash site). But the first day was not as successful as planned, about everything that could go wrong went wrong. Today’s paper version of the Shanghai Daily had an amusing story from a reporter that went to check out the park.

Happy Valley is located in Sheshan, close to the only hills and wooded areas in Shanghai (see for example a post here about Sheshan and about Tianmashan). Sheshan used to be a nice and quiet location, but with the metro line extending to here and now even an amusement park, these days are gone. When I stayed at the Meridien in Sheshan in 2006 when it just opened, you could see Shanghai in the far distance. Now the city has almost reached Sheshan and the being-out-of-the-city feel is almost gone. A pity, but that’s what you get when an economy keeps on growing at 10-15% per year – even in a global recession.

Happy Valley was supposed to open last month already, but because the park had not been finished yet the opening was postponed until August 6. It seems that was still too early, because yesterday was quite a disaster. The huge wooden roller coaster that is visible from far away and that’s the main attraction of the park had some serious malfunctions. It did not stop unintentionally once or twice, but a total of seven times during the day. Waiting time for the attraction was four hours, even though the ride itself is only two minutes.

Another start attraction, the 60-meter free fall, completely malfunctioned at a certain point, leaving people hanging in the air for several minutes because of a short circuit. Eventually the park shut down this attraction, upsetting people that had lined up for the attraction for hours. It was not the first time they had to wait, because even at the entrance gate the waiting time had been several hours – in the rain, because it’s monsoon time in Shanghai. Most attractions were not even open, according to the Shanghai Daily two thirds of the rides were still closed yesterday.

There were also problems with food, a very important thing for Chinese. There were not enough food outlets and the quality was not good enough. Even for a simple KFC meal you had to wait two hours in line!

Not only the malfunctioning rides are kind of dangerous, just walking around the park could get you injured as well. Three people found this out when a big sign board suddenly fell down on top of them. They were injured but could not be treated on site because the first aid facility had not been finished yet…

The management then made the smart decision to close the park today, officially because of the approaching typhoon (but not the real reason of course, because typhoon Morakot won’t be here until Saturday and today was actually quite a nice day). It’s probably the safest decision for now, I certainly will wait at least a few weeks until the park gets it act together. Going there should be a thrill, not a thriller.

This afternoon I was at the airport in Jinan and saw two interesting signs. I also learned a new English word: Bumf – according to the Chinese text it should mean paper, but I have no idea how they came up with this word.

Update: As Danwei‘s Jeremy Goldkorn points out in the comments, bumf is actually an English word (slang) which comes from bum fodder. Thanks Jeremy!

There are a lot of books about how to do business in China, and most of the foreign entrepreneurs here read at least one or two of them before they started out. But it seems not everybody did so, or at least not everybody followed the basic advice in these books, which may lead to disastrous results. You may have seen yesterday’s article in the Financial Times about the fate of a German business man in China already on other sites or on Twitter, but it’s too good not to post it here as well.

The story in short: A German business man with supposedly lots of China experience under his belt made all the classic mistakes in setting up and running a company in China. In 2004 he founded Business Media China, a company selling billboard advertising space at railway stations and airports all over China (and even listed it on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange). He trusted his Chinese associates (a male and a female) completely without checking them or trying to control them. When the two become romantically involved and realize their boss has no clue about what is going on, they eventually start to defraud the company. They go so far as to set up another company within the company that takes away all the business. The German business man does not realize what is happening behind his back and finally has to raid his own office to get evidence.

A great article to read if you do business in China, or if you ever plan to do so in the future. Some things I have seen myself as well over the past years here (I even had people trying to set up a company within my company, but found out about it on time), but most things are easily avoidable. Most important is to never give complete control away. You could probably do this in Europe or the US, but China is different. That does not mean that Chinese cannot be trusted (to the contrary, many of my Chinese business friends I trust more than Europeans I did business with in the past), but you just have to be more careful. Just don’t give people the opportunity to try things, then they won’t happen.

You can find the full article in the Financial Times here.

Next week it’s one year ago since we moved into our new house. It was the first time for us to live in a typical expat compound, but although I was skeptical at first I quite enjoy the convenience of living in a gated community and I also met a couple of new friends here (both expats and entrepreneurs). The interesting thing about an expat compound is that you don’t really live in China. Not only does everything work most of the time (and if not a repair man shows up within minutes, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week), but it also looks like you are not in China. Big houses with gardens, lots of trees, hardly any traffic or people, and waking up from singing birds instead of cars blowing their horns. I like it, but I sometimes miss living downtown as well, where it was never really quiet but where the views from our penthouse apartment were unbeatable.

These weeks I realize that one other aspect of life abroad has been imported into the compound as well: summer holidays. In China the concept of going on a summer holiday does not exist, most people don’t have many vacation days and normally only take time off around Chinese New Year. So the months of July and August are not different from the other months of the year in China – except when you live in an expat compound.

Most families in our neighborhood are from Europe or the US and most of them are currently on holiday in their home countries. The result is that the playground is completely empty on a Sunday afternoon (normally there are at least 5 kids playing there at any time) and even the pool is virtually deserted despite the warm weather. Also you hardly see anybody walking around the compound. For me it’s something new in China: over the past years I never really had a summer holiday feeling, but now for the first time I also would not mind taking a few weeks off to relax. I don’t have time for it right now, but plan to take 1-2 weeks off in early September, combining business with a vacation in Europe.

Yesterday we had a Tudou board meeting, and two of our VC’s had flown in from Beijing the day before. At least that was the plan, because both had about a 12 hour delay (meaning sitting in the plane on the tarmac for 12 hours, with the plane eventually running out of drinks for the passengers). Today I read on Twitter that David Feng had a 7 hour delay yesterday, flying from Shanghai to Beijing.

What I heard from one person is that the pilot did not want to give a reason why they had such a long delay, and for a long time they did not even know whether they would ever take off or not. I wonder what’s the problem on this route? Are there secret military exercises, like I once had with a severely delayed flight to Macau? And why can they not inform the passengers in advance? In one plane it apparently got so bad that passengers started to beat up the airplane crew, and some people had blood on their shirts.

I fly regularly in China, and normally flights are reasonably on time and the service is quite okay (I still don’t eat Chinese airplane food though). But every now and then you hear these horror stories, and nobody really knows why this is happening. If China truly wants to be a modern first-world country this kind of delays without any explanations should not happen. I checked both yesterday’s and today’s Shanghai Daily for the reason of the delays, but as expected I did not see any article about it. Does anybody know what’s going on?

As many readers of this blog know I am a big fan and happy shareholder of M1NT Shanghai. The club is doing very well, and on weekend nights the place is completely packed. The success of both M1NT Shanghai and Hong Kong now leads to the opening of a M1NT in Beijing.

The location was announced today, M1NT Beijing will open on the 3rd and 4th floors of the Dolce & Gabbana Building, in the same complex that also houses the Park Hyatt. The design will once again be extraordinary, with Andy Hall of MQ Studio leading the architecture and design, and Nathan Thompson of Flaming Beacon in charge of the lighting design.

The Grand Opening will be on New Year’s Eve 2009. Interested in becoming a shareholder of what will probably be the best club in Beijing? You can download an Information Memorandum with all the details and benefits here (pdf). By filling out page 24-26 you can apply to become a shareholder. For me M1NT is much more than a financial investment, but it’s always nice to know that If things keep on going well M1NT plans to go IPO in 2011 already.

I look forward to the opening of M1NT Beijing!