Dutch public broadcaster TROS is planning to produce many programs in China over the next couple of months. In December there will be a China week on Dutch TV in which all these programs will air. Last night I was invited by Sierk Vojacek (whose company SVP is the local producer of these programs) to join them for dinner at M on the Bund.

It was a nice evening, as is usual when going to this great restaurant. We had a big table on the balcony overlooking the river (we were in total 12 people), and the Dutch TROS team enjoyed the view from there a lot. For all of them it was their first time in Shanghai, and then the skyline is indeed amazing. I still remember my first time in Shanghai many years ago. I stayed at the Hua Ting Hotel (on Cao Xi Bei Lu) and had walked all the way from there to the Bund (at least a two hour walk). I arrived there when it was dark already, and when I walked up the stairs to the river front I remember I could hardly believe how fantastic the view was. And this was many years ago when the skyline consisted of just the Oriental Pearl Tower, the Jinmao Tower and the original Shangri-La Hotel (plus a huge Philips billboard)!

The food at M on the Bund was fabulous, and I had some interesting conversations with the TROS people and some of the SVP staff. Several of the programs they will produce will be really cool to watch (e.g. regular Dutch formats in a Chinese setting). And one will likely be about Tudou. Maybe I should go back to Holland during the broadcasting week (likely around December 15) to watch all of them there.

This weekend we moved to a new apartment. The lease on our old apartment ran out, so that was a good reason to look for something new. In the former apartment we lived for 2 years, which is quite long for me. I just calculated that I moved 28 times in my life already (I am 33 years old), and this is my 7th apartment in China (in 6.5 years).

The new place is a high-end apartment in Xujiahui, and you would expect that everything therefore would work flawlessly. Well, that was not the case. Some of the things that we found during the past 3 days:
– Out of six airconditioners two did not work, one did not even have the liquid in it that produces the cold air (I am not an expert, but this is what I was told). Note that these were brand new appliances!
– No hot water. It was repaired the first day, and it worked fine after that. But this morning I wanted to take a shower, and again there was only cold water.
– The water in the shower would not flow away, because the drain seemed to be blocked.
– Satellite TV only available in black and white. According to the satellite guys this was a proble of our TV. But all the normal channels are in color, I replied. Well, they said, that is true, but it is still a problem of the TV. Let’s wait what the TV repair man says…
– Internet: I won’t write the whole story here (Shanghai Telecom might block my IP address), but the fact is that I still don’t have internet at home. I can tell you that that’s not easy if you almost live and work on the internet.
– The lock in our front door almost fell out of the door when we opened it.
– About 10 light bulbs did not work. They were supposedly all brand new!

Most things are repaired or solved by now (thanks to my wife who spend 2 days on the phone and discussing with workers – she even missed one day of work because of this), but I still cannot believe that so many things were not working in a new apartment. Is this normal or was this just bad luck?

As many of you know Toodou means potato in Chinese. However, in pinyin this is normally written as Tudou. We have always wanted the Tudou.com domain name. Quite a significant number of first-time visitors thought that our domain name was Tudou.com instead of Toodou.com. When we first launched the site we had to settle with Toodou.com because Tudou.com had long been taken by another website. However, that web site did not do as well as Toodou.com (they actually shut down their operations), and we had the possibility to buy the domain name.

We plan to switch over to Tudou.com in the very near future. Toodou.com will be automatically redirected to Tudou.com. The switch over will be completely invisible and will require little communication even for offline Chinese media, as most of our users know our brand simply as
?? or ???. For foreign media it might be easier as well, because it happens quite often that Toodou is misspelled as Toudoo (For example I just noticed an unlinkable -I had to pay to read it!- article in the Dutch Financieel Dagblad where this was the case). So from now I’ll refer to Toodou as Tudou!

During my last trip to Holland, I bought a Senseo coffee machine for the Spill Group Asia office in Shanghai. Senseo machines make one or two cups of coffee, with a small layer of creamy foam on top. It basically gives people the possibility to make a cup of coffee at home, like they would get in a restaurant. It’s easy and quick, but the product was not for sale in China, so I had to import one in my suitcase for the office.

Because Senseo machines are priced quite low, they penetrated the market quickly in Holland (they were introduced there five years ago). The machines, produced by Philips together with coffee brand DE, are now being sold in many European countries, and even in the US and Australia. And the next country on the list is China, according to the daily email bulletin that I get from Radio Nederland Wereldomroep. And even better, the first city they will start selling the products is Shanghai! This means that I do not have to rely on Senseo pad shipments from Spill Group in Holland, but we can buy our own supplies.

Will the product be successful in China? I think it could be (Fons Tuinstra seems to disagree I just read). The timing is right: many young people in cities drink coffee nowadays, that has quickly changed over the past couple of years. Starbucks has surely made coffee more popular, in the beginning because of the status it gives you to go there (it’s as expensive as the rest of the world, so if you can afford to go there it implies you must be ‘rich’), but now also because people like coffee. But most people only drink one or two cups at home or in the office, not more than that. For that purpose the Senseo is a good product.

I think Philips should focus on the Chinese corporate market first for this product. Let white collar workers try out the product in the office, then they might also buy one for use at home. But I hope the price of the pads will be adjusted to Chinese standards. Not sure if a Chinese is willing to pay so much money for a cup of coffee, without other people seeing that they spend this money (like at Starbucks).

The China Daily had a funny story today. A guy named Hu from Jiangxi province was riding a train when he dropped his mobile phone out of the window (it was not explained how this could happen by the way). Because the phone contained pictures of his girlfriend, he immediately asked a train attendant to make an emergency stop. Of course this was refused, and so the guy decided to jump out of the train to retrieve his phone. Although other passengers tried to stop him, he leaped out of the window anyway. The result: a broken hand and leg – and because of that still no phone! It makes me wonder what kind of pictures he had on his mobile 🙂

The earthquake in Beijing yesterday probably reminded many people of the earthquake in Tanghshan (close to Beijing), this month exactly 30 years ago. While I was living in Beijing I never encoutered an earthquake, but several of my former colleagues told me about that time (because I was curious about it once, and asked them about it). They are now all in their mid-thirties, and so they were little kids at that time. Some lived on the streets for weeks (at least in their memories) after the quake, that killed 240,000 people.

Jeroen Berghuis (who now lives in New York but is visting Beijing) had an interesting post about the quake yesterday. A quote from him in his typical cynical style, about the coverage in the China Daily:

“Premier Wen Jiabao and Vice-Premier Hui Liangyu, immediately after the earthquake, instructed the seismological departments to closely monitor and analyze seismological situation to ensure the safety of the people and property, particularly around Beijing.”

Yes, ‘Wen the man” and “Howling Hui” picked up the phone together (speaker phone I assume?) and called the dumbstruck receptionist at the seismological department… Too bad the quake took place at 11:58 local time, which means that the whole seismo department was out to lunch…

And the typical “people don’t worry, we have it all under control” message ends the article:

“Experts in Beijing said there won’t be any devastating earthquakes in Beijing in the near future and urged residents to keep calm. And Tianjin experts, after the quake, also said the city will not have any major quakes in the near future.”

How do they know these things! Wonderful clever people. Too bad that 30 years ago they didn’t see the Tangshan City (also in Hebei province) quake coming. That killed 240,000 people…

Jeremy Goldkorn from Danwei.org noted that the new proposed Chinese law that forbids reporting of sudden news items could lead to lots of rumours through SMS and MSN:

The Big One would hit Beijing at 2pm, said one rumor, later revised to 5 pm, and then 7 pm, as the rumored Big One stubbornly refused to arrive.

He then continues:

Which made clear a point about the recent proposed law that threatens to fine news media for reporting ‘unauthorized’ stories about breaking events: The function of news media during a time of emergency is to gather as many facts as possible and present a version of the truth that is better researched than casual text messages. Any law that hinders the process of sorting the facts from the rumors is a bad law.

My wife told me that the Roland Berger office in Beijing was even evacuated after the quake. No bigger shocks happened luckily, but it shows that Chinese media still have a long way to go, especially during emergencies.

Toodou moved to a new office two weeks ago, because the old space had become too small already. The new building gives the company more than enough room to grow, with approximately 2500 m2 available to us. The building is located on the downtown side of the Suzhou Creek, about 300 meters upstream from the old office.

The new place features among others a roof terrace, and that comes in handy for….. The Toodou New Office Party! This party will take place on July 15 and is open to friends, family, bloggers and podcasters. Because the walls of the corridors in the new office are still very white graffiti will be allowed – just like during the first Toodou Party last year November. Looking forward to seeing all of you again!