This weekend Spill Group Asia and our new colleagues from Zlong Games went on a company outing. We left on Friday afternoon by bus to Anji, a city in the mountains of Zhejiang. The place is famous for its nature, especially for its huge bamboo forests. It actually turned out to be close to Moganshan, where I spent last weekend. The trip by bus was about 3-4 hours, but it seemed a lot longer: the tour guide that was provided to us kept on talking and talked so loud that my left ear (that was right below the loudspeaker – which was not functioning well) was literally hurting – I can still feell it now! Luckily he did not talk the whole way, but it certainly seemed like it.

We arrived in Anji just before it got dark, and made a short trip to the set of the movie The Banquet. From there we hiked up to a viewing point, from where we overlooked a sea of bamboo trees. As far a you could see only mountains full of bamboo forests. A beautiful sight, but we could not enjoy it long because it got dark and we had to leave the woods.

When we got back to the entrance of the park, dinner was ready. Some nice local dishes with lots and lots of local beer. The beer was called bamboo beer, but I am still not sure if bamboo is one of the ingredients (anybody knows?). It tasted a bit sweeter than my usual Tsingtao or Heineken, but was not bad. During the dinner many colleagues decided to toast with the management, and I was one of the victims. I had to drink several glasses of beer ganbei (drinking it empty at once), but because the bamboo beer was quite light it was not a very difficult task.

The dinner was followed by a bonfire (the second in a week for me), in an open area in the woods. We did some games, and the losers had to perform for the group. During the bonfire I received an email that Peter Driessen just got a new son, so I could annnounce that to the whole group. Peter, if you read this, congrats from all of us!

The night we spent in a hotel in Anji, which turned out to be much better than expected. Even the breakfast the next morning was quite OK (I had a bit of a hangover from the bamboo beer, but the greasy fried noodles made me feel much better). The only thing I did not understand is why they served hot orange juice. When we asked if they had cold orange juice the waitress brought us some ice cubes!

We spent the whole next day enjoying the nature outside Anji. First we hiked up a mountain, which was much higher than I expected. But the view from the top was fantastic, and the walk was a good opportunity to talk to some colleagues that I did not know very well yet. After the hike (almost 2 hours up and 1 hour downhill) we had lunch at a local restaurant, before we drove to a river close to Hangzhou. Here we went rafting on bamboo (what other material can you expect here?) boats. It was a nice ride, especially because the weather had cleared up completely and it had become nice and sunny with a blue sky. The water was quite calm due to a lack of rain, but the water pistols that many colleagues had brought ensured that we all got soaked anyway.
The day ended with the drive back to Shanghai. The whole bus was watching The Banquet and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon on the internal TV, but I decided to catch up on some sleep. All in all a nice weekend in a beautiful scenery. I had not been to Anji before, and it’s definitely a good place to visit for a weekend trip from Shanghai. The hotels are decent (much better than Moganshan), and the nature is stunning. Some valleys that we drove through reminded me even of the European Alps, although the mountains are much older here (=less steep). There are even one-day organized trips from Shanghai, but considering the distance you will likely spend more time on the road than in nature. If you want to go by car, the quickest way is to take the expressway to Hangzhou and then take the ring road (at exit 18) until you hit the expressway to Nanjing. From there you should see signs to Anji.

More pictures from the trip you can find here

Yesterday afternoon we had internet problems in our office, several hours without internet thanks to China Telecom. This really hinders my work (an understatement), therefore I decided to do something else, and work from home at night. So I drove to the hospital to get a flu shot, something I had planned to do for two weeks already, but never found the time to do.

Last February I came down with a pretty nasty flu, and had to spend most of Chinese New Year week in bed. I don’t like laying in bed, because it’s a total waste of time. But I was so sick that I did not even realize I was in bed most of the time. Kind of scary, I cannot remember I had ever been so sick before. At least I was lucky that it happened during my vacation, instead of during a normal working week (although now I could not go skiing, which is also a pity of course). But in order to avoid the flu this year I decided to get the flu shot.

The nice thing of living in Shanghai, is that there are private clinics that you can go to. You just call them and you can come right away. No waiting time, friendly staff and good English speaking doctors. Not cheap of course, but I don’t mind paying for good service (and my insurance normally pays most of it anyway). I normally go to WorldLink, they have several clinics in Shanghai, and I am quite happy with them.

The flu shot itself was a two-minute thing, but I am having some side effects now. My shoulder is sour, and I am feeling a bit lousy. But this should go away within 24-36 hours, and then I’ll hopefully be protected from flu for the rest of winter (knock wood!). Well, as long as bird flu does not reappear of course. But I am not too afraid of that: that was a typical media scare, and the journalists are too busy writing about global warming right now (finally).

On Saturday Mark Kitto celebrated his 40th birthday with a party in his house on Moganshan, a mountain in Zheijiang province about 220 km from Shanghai. We left the city around 2 PM, and although it was busy on the expressway to Hangzhou we managed to get there by 4:30 PM. The weather was amazingly good, a clear blue sky and on the Hangzhou ring road our car showed a maximum temperature of 29 degrees. Is this accelaterated global warming or just a coincidence? I hope the latter… Driving into the mountains it cooled off a bit, but upon arrival it was still 24 degrees. Lots of friends were already sitting in front of Mark’s bar/restaurant The Lodge, enjoying cocktails in the November sunshine and enjoying the autumn colors of the trees on the mountain.

Many of Kitto’s guests were long-term China residents (like Mark himself of course) and a lot of them had set up their own businesses here. But the main thing they had in common was that they all like living in China. People had driven over or flown in from all over the country, and three of his friends had actually arrived that morning from Great-Britain just for the party! A couple of the guests I knew already, and some of them I had not seen in years. Nick Bonner for example, who is running Koryo Tours (trips to North-Korea, check out his website if you’re interested). The last time I saw him was when I was still living in Beijing, over 3 years ago, but he had not changed a bit.

After the pre-dinner drinks we went over to a local restaurant where we had a nice local meal with lots of beer and baijiu (I skipped the Chinese liquor though). Many people had brought their kids, and they had the time of their lives running around the restaurant. After dinner we went back to The Lodge for a drink and a good speech by Mark, before we all hiked up the mountain to Mark & Joanne’s two houses on the top. The location is fantastic, high up in the woods with a view far into the valley and no close neighbours. They also have a nice, half-wild garden where we spend most of the night chatting, dancing and listening to music. The temperature was still quite nice, and because of the full moon we did not really need the fire torches that they had set up all around the garden. When it cooled off a bit more, Mark made a bonfire in the back of the garden with all kinds of bushes and wood that he had collected. And around midnight he fired up the BBQ, for the guests that had gotten a bit hungry again. Very nice to have some barbecued meat after a night filled with beer and wine.

Sunday morning Mark was up early again, preparing an English breakfast for all the guests in The Lodge (he’s a good host!). When we turned up there around 10:30 AM most people had already gathered there for bloody mary’s (or in Mark’s case a Tsingtao beer to wake up). The breakfast made me feel more stable again, and after it Qi and I went for a short walk around the village. Most people planned to spend a few more hours on the mountain, but we decided to go back to Shanghai in the early afternoon already, because we both still wanted to do some work. The drive back went quite smoothly, although we probably should have mounted a video camera in our car: we saw several almost-accidents by people who seemed to have learned to drive in a computer game, swerving from left to right to left to right at speeds over 160 km/h. Most people just don’t know how to drive safely (thanks to China’s driving schools), and thereby not only endanger themselves, but also others. Would have been nice video material for Tudou though.

Last night we were invited to ‘The World of Calvin Klein’, a cool party for CK’s new collection. When we got the invitation earlier this week (I seem to be one of their better customers), we thought it would be some sort of fashion show and at first I was not too excited. But when Friday’s Shanghai Daily had a glossy Calvin Klein cover and a full page pre-event coverage, I realized it would be a bit bigger than a catwalk with some models. Shanghai’s newspaper even called it Calvin Klein’s biggest event in Asia this year.

Whether it was the biggest I cannot judge, but it certainly was a great party. CK had reconverted a warehouse in Northern Shanghai into a hyper-modern white labyrinth in which models were showing the latest collection. The underwear models were in an enclosed room with small windows to peek at them, but most other models were in the ‘open’. Combined with special lightning and video screens it gave a very futuristic feeling. In the back there was a huge lounge area with a DJ, where top male models showed off their bodies to the ladies (and to some non-gay Chinese men, who even wanted to take pictures with them…).

The crowd was mixed, lots of beautiful well-dressed party people (I recognized quite a lot of faces from ad agencies, from my time working in TV commercials), people who want to look good but don’t know how to dress or who did not yet have the money for it (friends and family of sales staff?), more regular people (I guess I am in this segment now, just as some of Qi’s INSEAD classmates that we saw here), some very local Chinese (old-fashioned suit wearing men with fake leather shoes, a mobile and keychain on their belt and carrying a man bag), and of course the ubiquitous VIPs (film stars and TV personalities, followed by their fans and camera crews). A nice crowd to observe with drink in hand.

And these drinks were excellent. Good mixes, and an endless stream of Moet & Chandon, combined with well-designed and good tasting finger food. They even served small portions of french fries in paper cones (with mayonaise!), that tastes really good after some drinks (but ruins the taste of the champagne…).

At the exit all the female guests received a bottle of CK’s Euphoria Blossom eau de toilette, making sure the night would be one to remember for a long time. Once again a fantastic evening in Shanghai, I love this city!

It’s only early November and outside it’s still warm (tomorrow it will be 26 degrees), but I have spotted the first Christmas trees decorated with lights already. Two trees actually, standing outside the “Ye Olde Station” restaurant in Xujiahui (the old white building on Caoxi Bei Lu, this used to be Shanghai’s train station many decades ago – there are still train carriages in the garden). I can actually see the trees from my apartment window, but it’s way too early for me to get into Christmas mood.

If you blog with Google’s Blogger and don’t have your own hosting, you get a blogspot.com account name. This domain used to be blocked in China until this summer, but then the government suddenly unblocked it. I was happy because before that I often would get the ‘page not loading’ error message, when weblinks pointed to a blogspot weblog. This would now finally be over.

Until about a week ago that is, when blogspot stopped working again. I was thinking about calling the domain blockedspot, but this morning I see that all my RSS feeds from these accounts are suddenly filled with new posts. So I checked it, and it seems blogspot is again available in China. A mistake from the Great Webfilter or was the re-blocking just temporarily? We’ll find out soon.

Last week MBH, the manufacturer of the famous London taxis, signed an agreement with Chinese car manufacturer Geely to produce their cabs in Shanghai. Geely will hold 51% of the shares in the new joint venture. According to the press release, the cars will mainly be exported to England, but will also be sold in China.

Does this mean that now the Mercedes-Benz taxi’s in Shanghai are faded out, they will be replaced by London cabs? They would look good in Thamestown, that’s for sure.

Yesterday I was following Joi Ito’s observations during the Internet Governance Forum through my RSS reader. He was there on a panel about openness on the internet. During the panel China was discussed as well, and at that point a Chinese UN delegation member stood up and bluntly said: “China does not restrict any access to any content”.

Because everybody knows this is complete bullsh*t, the sympathy that the crowd had for the Chinese delegation was gone right away. Why does an official say something like this? It’s not a secret that the Net is censored here. Does he really believe this, or is he just plain unaware of the issues? For me it’s difficult to understand. But likely he was just fed up with the discussion, and wanted it to end. This I can imagine, because once ‘outsiders’ start talking about the Chinese Net there are a lot of misconceptions. Even I have to defend China’s policies sometimes, because people who have never been to China have a completely wrong idea about what’s happening here (mainly because of incorrect media reports)!

Or maybe the delegate just meant that every content is available, as long as you know how to use a proxy server 🙂

Update: Asiapundit links to another post about this on the China Digital Times called “China: we don’t censor the internet”. And as he notes: “Ironically, the above report cannot be accessed in China without a proxy.” In case you are in China and want or read it, this is the link with a proxy.

Update 2: Shanghaiist has the transcript of the conversation. It seems the Chinese delegate was totally ignorant about the censorship issue. Also his reasoning was strange: because he can listen to the BBC on his PC in his Geneva office, this site cannot be blocked in China…