I just got back from a Friday night visit to Carrefour and noted that the company is not taking any risks during the melamine crisis and has removed all Chinese milk products.

But you can still buy milk: there is a large supply of French milk at (what I assume) are discounted prices. RMB 16.30 does not seem to be much for a liter of imported milk (about EUR 1.60)

Just last week Tudou received its SARFT license, and this week the company made its next big announcement: Tudou officially launched the beta version of “Hei Dou” (black bean), the name for the new high definition area within Tudou: hd.tudou.com. This is a major breakthrough for the online video industry in China. In foreign media Tudou is often referred to as the YouTube of China, but with the addition of Hei Dou it is now more a combination of Hulu and YouTube. Hulu is quite similar, but Hei Dou offers programs from a lot more TV stations (mainly Asian content) and all Hei Dou’s programs are in high def quality.

Hei Dou provides high definition version of popular shows, for which Tudou has the full copyright. Currently Hei Dou has 3 different channels: TV shows, movies and variety shows. Upon launch Hei Dou already has over 10,000 shows, all fully legally licensed on an exclusive or semi-exclusive basis.

The name Hei Dou was chosen because of the black background (hei = black, dou = bean, the same character as the ‘dou’ in Tudou) of the site, and of course because of the abbrevation hd (=high definition). The working name of the project used to be Kili, guess where that name came from 🙂

All Hei Dou’s programs are broadcast using H264/MP4 encoding, which allows for the lowest bandwidth consumption while keeping the highest broadcast clarity. No additional software or plug-in needs to be installed in order to watch the shows (unlike what some media report).

Once again Tudou shows its strength as the market leader by being the most innovative online video site, bringing higher quality video programming to Chinese netizens.Enjoy the show(s)!

I just received a press release announcing that Spil Games was nominated for the China Trader Award 2008. This is a yearly award given to the most successful Dutch company that is active in China. Spil made it to the last three, and on November 13 the winner will be announced during a festive award ceremony.

I am very happy with this, and I want to use this occasion to thank Spil’s founders Peter Driessen and Bennie Eeftink that they had the vision to become active in China in early 2006, and that they gave me the opportunity to set up and grow this business for them. Without their knowledge and support Spil Games Asia would have never taken off.

A major reason why foreign businesses fail in China is because management cannot act independently from headquarters (see for example Yahoo or Ebay China). But luckily they understood that I needed the freedom to run the business independent from their other worldwide operations, and that was an important reason why we managed to grow so fast. Thanks for the chance to do this and congratulations to the whole Spil Games team with the nomination!

The press release:
HYVA, ROYAL BOON EDAM GAMES AND SPIL GAMES GROUP NOMINATED FOR CATHAY PACIFIC CHINA TRADER AWARD 2008

Schiphol, September 17 2008 – The nominees are known for the Cathay Pacific China Trader Award 2008 (in alphabetical order):

— Hyva (www.hyva.nl)
— Royal Boon Edam (www.boonedam.nl)
— Spil Games Group (www.spilgames.com)

These three Dutch companies are all very successful in China. Through innovation, creativity and corporate sustainability they are able to distinguish themselves from their competitors and managed to maintain in the complex and constantly changing Chinese market.
Hyva a global multinational company which is offering a wide range of technical products and components, mainly used in connection with hydraulic loading and unloading systems on trucks and trailers for the road transportation industry in on and off road applications. In 2004, the first office of Hyva in China opened and now they opened already 3 offices waste collection and treatment facilities in municipal authorities of a large number of cities across China.

Royal Boon Edam began in 1873 as carpentry and went in 1970 to focus fully on revolving doors. Under the leadership of the Huber family a unique leadership position built in the market for revolving and security entrees. Since 2002, Boon Edam production set up in Beijing. Since then, Royal Boon Edam has a marketshare of more than 60% in exclusive hotels in China but they also placed doors in the CCTV Building and they are placing the two highest revolving doors around the world in the China World Trade Tower in Beijing.

Spil Games Group is a leader in the field of online game portals and gaming traffic. In China, Spil Games has become in two years the second largest player in the field of flash games (free games) with the websites game.com.cn and xiaoyouxi.com. At this moment Spill Games is the largest foreign game site in China with over 21 million unique visitors per month. In Shanghai Spill Games also set up its own game development studio where most games are remembered. This studio is already the largest flash games studio in China.

During the festive award ceremony on November 13, 2008 at Country Estate Duin & Kruidberg, Santpoort, we will announce the award winner. Besides the actual award, the winner receives two Business Class tickets to Hongkong and five overnight stays at one of the Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts. This year the Hong Kong Shooting Star Award will be presented to a young Dutch enterprise operating from Hong Kong. The Lifetime Achievement Award, which is presented occasionally will be received by Mr. Rattan Chadha, former CEO of Mexx.

Note: In the original press release Spil Games was misspelled as Spill Games (also the website was misspelled).

Furthermore, the figures in the press release were based on early July. At that time we had 21 million unique visitors, in the meantime we already have 32 million visitors per month!

During my mountain run with Marcel and Dolphin in Hong Kong last weekend, we among others talked about food and life styles. Marcel leads a very healthy life style and that made me think about what I am eating and drinking every day. I probably eat more healthy than the average person from Europe or the US, because of the Chinese food that our ayi prepares for us every day (lots of vegetables, rice, noodles and fish). But during lunch time I often run to Starbucks to grab a muffin or sandwich or (worse) I order McDonalds. Next to that I like to drink lots of coffee during the day and I also regularly drink wine or beer.

I decided to do a mini detox: I would stop drinking alcohol and coffee and switch to a semi-vegetarian diet for at least a week. Not a full detox, because that would hurt my ability to keep on running and likely would affect my daily work as well. Next to that I would try to sleep at least 7-8 hours per night. I started the mini detox last Monday, today exactly one week ago.

On Monday I decided not to turn on my Jura coffee machine and instead of drinking coffee to drink carrot juice mixed with sparkling mineral water. That tastes pretty good, and because I had a good sleep I did not feel I needed the coffee. I still drank about a liter of black tea on Monday to make sure I would not get caffeine withdrawal symptoms. From Tuesday on I only drank fresh fruit or vegetable juice, sparkling mineral water and green tea, instead of coffee and black tea. I had a bit of a headache for a while, but by Friday the symptoms had disappeared. I actually don’t really miss the coffee and like the fresh juices more and more.

Next to that I also stopped eating meat for the whole week, only eating a bit of salmon on Wednesday and some sashimi and sushi (mainly raw tuna and salmon) at a Japanese restaurant on Sunday night. Instead of meat I ate a lot more vegetables, both during lunch and dinner. I did not change my breakfast (fresh yogurt with muesli), but I substituted the big mug of black tea for a large glass of fresh juice. During the day I ate lots of fruit, so I would not crave for other snacks. At night I did not drink a single drop of alcohol. Not too difficult, because I was home most nights and I normally do not drink anything if there are no visitors. Even at our company outing I did not order a beer, although I would have loved to have one after the long hike on Friday!

Getting more sleep is the most difficult change to make. Especially with Scott it’s a bit complicated, as he gets his last feeding at 11 PM, so we don’t go to bed before 12 (and often much later). Scott wakes up at 5 AM, but normally the nanny takes care of him. However, I want to be on my running machine by 7 AM, so normally I am already happy if I get at least 6 hours of sleep. The outing did not help either to get more sleep!

Do I feel any different? I felt more healthy and energetic this week, but to be honest I am not sure if it’s because of my diet change. It’s good to think about what you’re eating: because of that you eat less and enjoy the food more. And you feel good when you manage to keep your diet without too many problems. I even lost about 1-2 kilo’s over the past week, likely because of less alcohol and no junk food or snack, but also because I did a lot of sports during the past days.

For me it was a good thing to live a bit more healthy and I have decided to keep certain elements of the diet over the next couple of weeks. I will slowly start drinking coffee and tea again (but max. 2 coffee per day), and might drink a glass or 2 of alcohol during business dinners or other special occasions. But I will keep cutting back on meat (just once or twice a week) and eat a lot more veggies. McDonalds and KFC won’t see me until at least after the Trailwalker early November. And for sleep? I am afraid that’s the only thing I won’t be able to change. I have several business trips coming up over the next weeks and I know from experience that they are exhausting. Also at home it will be difficult to get more than 7 hours of sleep, unless I cut back on my early morning work-outs (which I won’t do).

Conclusion for me: a mini detox is a good idea as long as you don’t overdo it (no radical changes over longer periods of time) and as long as you realize that perceived results may partly be psychological.

Every year Spil Games Asia and its daughter companies go on a 2 or 3 day outing somewhere in China. The past two years we spent our outings in Zheijiang, but this year we went a bit further and spent our company trip at Huangshan in Anhui province. For various reason not everybody could go, but in the end about 50 colleagues joined us. We left Thursday around 5 PM and the buses arrived in Huangshan by 11:30 PM. Although we all had to get up at 6 AM some people decided to make the most of the outing and did not go to bed before 3 AM. That did not make their Friday easier!

Friday morning the buses left at 7 AM to the foot of the Huangshan mountain range, where we had to change buses and were taken to the cable car station. Because I am training for the Hong Kong Trailwalker I decided not to take the cable car but run up to the top station of the cable car (900 meters altitude difference). Some other people also decided to join, and we set off with about 15 people to run/hike to the top. Some gave up after a few minutes already and took the cable car anyway, but about 10 made it to the top. One of the people from Zlong Games, Wang Xinguo, actually ran with me all the way to the top (he was probably in better shape than me, it seemed less of an effort for him than for me), the others arrived about 1-2 hours later. We made it to the top in 1hr30min (with our backpacks!), completely surprising our guides because they had never seen people do it in less than 2 hours. I was exhausted, it was basically climbing stairs with hardly any straight part in between, something I am not used to. But I recovered quickly and a few minutes later I was already hiking to the next peak with the people who had taken the cable car.

After a good lunch we decided to make a 4-5-hour hike through a deep gorge. The hike was supposed to be difficult and quite dangerous, but looking back now I felt it was quite doable. The group fell apart quickly (only half of the people actually joined, the rest went to the hotel to rest), and I hiked together with my wife for most of the trip. The views were beautiful, literally a stunning landscape. I knew it would be a nice environment, but I had not expected such beautiful natural scene. My wife and I hiked at a relatively fast pace (I was surprised about her shape, although she did not have it easy) and we managed the hike in just over 3 hours. We took a shower in the hotel (the Shilin hotel, at Beihai on top of the mountain) and waited for the rest of the group to arrive before we had a nice dinner. After dinner we had a foot and leg massage, which was heavenly after such a long hike!

On Saturday most people got up at 5 AM to watch the sun rise from a nearby view point, followed by a Chinese breakfast (I brought some croissants and Camembert, I still cannot eat preserved vegetables with porridge early in the morning). At 7:30 AM we hiked up to another cable car top station and the group went down from there by cable car. Wang Xinguo and me decided to run down with a guide and arrived at the bottom in exactly 44 minutes, setting another record (at least according to the guide, who hikes up the mountain 7-8 times per month). The guide told us the total distance is about 9 km with almost 1000 meter altitude difference, a bit more than we had climbed up. We could have done it at least 5-10 minutes quicker without our back packs and if there had not been a lot of people and porters climbing up the mountain while we were running down. It was a fun run, but because we ran so quickly also a bit dangerous. At some points the mountain is really steep and one wrong step could be fatal (literally). But once you’re into your pace it seems to go automatic and you don’t realise what you are doing. At the bottom of the mountain I called my wife, who told me the group had not even arrived at the cable car station yet! We had to wait for over an hour for them to arrive.

The run was followed by a very early lunch: at 10:15 AM it was the earliest lunch I ever had. I was not very hungry yet, so just had some soup and green tea. I gave a speech to the whole group, thanking them for the good achievements. Zlong Games is doing a pretty good job and has probably become the biggest flash game studio in China (please correct me if I’m wrong), with an output of 1-2 new flash or shockwave games per week. More and more games are now also designed in-house (before all game designs came from our team in Holland) and the aim is to eventually do all games from the design until the final tests in-house. I told the team that my aim is to make Zlong Games the best flash game development studio in the world. Not an easy task, but with the team and our in-house training it could be possible. The websites are also doing extremely well (see my blog post here for example) and here the aim is to become number one in China. We now already reach 50% of all gamers in China every month, but the end of the growth is not yet in sight.
After lunch we visited an old water town, Hongcun. A nice old town that was remarkably well preserved. Too bad there were too many tourists (the movie Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon was partly shot here) which spoiled it a bit. But as usual, if you take a side street from the main streets you don’t see a tourist anymore. Because of the pleasant weather I felt very comfortable walking around this old town, where time had literally stood still: people still wash their clothes in the river and prepare food on open fires. A bit like walking in a museum. After the visit to this water town the buses went back to Shanghai, and just after 10 PM everybody was back in the city. I had a great time with our company and look forward to our next outing!

More pictures of Huangshan and Hongcun can be found here.

I am happy to announce that Tudou confirmed today that it received its SARFT online video license. The company did not release a press statement. The license itself has already been put on Tudou’s website, if you’re interested to see what this important document looks like you can see it here.

Last night I was at Carrefour in Gubei to buy some groceries when I noticed a girl sitting on the ground in the electronics department with a lot of people around her. One of the store employees told us that the girl had bought a mobile phone, used it but did not like it anymore. So she returned to the store and wanted to return it. But naturally Carrefour did not want to take it back since it was working well and had been used.

So what did the girl do? She made a fuss, sat down on the ground and refused to move! Eventually the police was called in and they made a report, but the crying girl still did not want to go. I did not wait to see what would happen, but of course took a picture for my blog 🙂

Note: I only got this side of the story from the Carrefour employee, so maybe there was more to this that I am not aware of.

When I am in Hong Kong I normally stay at a small hotel in the Mid-Levels. The views over the HK skyline and harbor are fantastic, and the price is about half of what you pay a few hundred meters lower. And the wifi is free of course.

When I am here on a weekend I often end up at Staunton’s for breakfast or brunch, which is just a 10 minute walk from the hotel. To read the SCMP or a book while having Eggs Benedict with a coffee and an orange juice, and to watch the people passing by on the Escalator. An enjoyable start of a Saturday or Sunday!