Today was not my day. I planned to do a lot of things, but when the internet did not work this morning (once again) my whole schedule fell apart. I wrote a column for a Dutch magazine, but could not do any research online, so I was not too satisfied with the result. I checked my email on my phone, but it’s a nuisance to answer emails with a small keyboard. We had to wait at home for a person to repair the internet (so we could not go out), but when he finally arrived he could not find the problem and we are still without internet.

I wanted to do something and decided to go to Xujiahui and check if they have any black market iPhones already. The iPhone fever somehow intirigued me, I still don’t think this is a great phone, but I’ll probably buy one anyway to try. But when I left the building it started to rain heavily, so I went back home. I started to read a book, but still felt I needed to do something. So when the rain stopped after an hour or so I decided to go for a walk in a part of town where I don’t come often. My wife did not feel very well, and decided to stay home.

I took a cab to the Ritz-Carlton and took a left from there onto Xikang Lu. I occasionally drive through here, but the last time I walked here was during a visit to the Jade Buddha temple about 4 years ago. Lots has changed, but not in a negative way. Yes, there are a lot of new apartment buildings, but there are also lots of old areas left. And some of them are totally redeveloped, and could really change this part of town in the near future.

Especially the New Factories area (Xikang Lu / Yuyao Lu) was impressive. Several good bars and restaurants, including Cafe Montmartre (my favourite lunch place in its old location before the Xiangyang market was torn down) and a City Diner. But there was nobody there… Maybe because of the rain, but still I had expected more people here on a Saturday afternoon. Possibly people don’t know about it yet, for me it was also my first visit here. But I will be back for sure.

On my way back I walked through Shanxi Road, and passed an old villa that my former company (China Bay Partners) had almost rented as an office. At that time (2 years ago) the area was not that impressive, but now it had turned into an upper class location. Among others there were a Cambodian Spa, a store with Mediterranean food products, and a high-end wine cellar. It still amazes me how things change in this city.

I ended my walk at Malone’s, where I am now sitting on the terrace having a Tiger beer (well, two actually) while using their free wifi. Well deserved after a two hour walk in 30+ degree temperatures and after being without internet for almost 24 hours.

The roads in Beijing are even more congested than in Shanghai. The Shanghai Daily writes that according to Beijing’s Road Traffic Management 90% of all roads are at full capacity, which seems a bit high to me. The paper does not question this figure, but likely they only look at the average for major roads during certain time periods.

But statistics aside, the roads in Beijing are indeed overloaded and it’s getting worse by the day. Literally, because each day 1000 cars are added to the Beijing car population. During next year’s Olympic Games this will be a major problem, because there will be 350,000 extra cars on the road – and now already Beijing is gridlocked.

Therefore during the Olympics many cars will not be allowed to drive in the city. And in order to rehearse that, the Beijing government has decided to close the road for 1 million Beijing cars next month! But according to a spokesman for Road Traffic Management this will cause little inconvenience. His logic: Students will be staying home for the summer holiday and working people can take public transport. Well Mr. Spokesman, you probably don’t have a car yourself so it won’t be an inconvenience for you, but navigating Beijing by bus or subway is not the most convenient way of traveling in the middle of summer. That’s exactly why most people bought a car in the first place.

I think Shanghai is doing a much better job in this respect. The subway infrastructure is already very good, and more lines are added each year. And for cars you pay a one-time license plate fee of more than USD 5,000, making sure that not everybody rushes to buy a car. Maybe Beijing should consider a fee system as well: charge an amount of money for car usage during this period. This gives people a choice instead of forcing them to abandon their cars during the hottest period of the year. Given the price sensitivity of the average Chinese, this may actually work pretty well.

Last night I was tired from work, and suddenly felt I was in need of a short vacation. So I browsed the net for a nice location to spend a mini-break with my wife. I first looked at one of the Nusa Dua resorts on Bali, but there are still no direct flights to there from Shanghai, so I decided to choose a location closer to home. Hainan is then the easiest option. I have been numerous times to China’s Hawaii already, and spending a few lazy days around the pool or on the beach there is always a safe choice. We normally go to Yalong Bay, close to Sanya, where all the major hotel chains have set up resorts. There is not much to do there except for eating, drinking and relaxing, but that’s what a mini-break is all about anyway, right?

Two of the resorts I have not stayed at so far are the Hilton and the Marriott, so I decided to check their location and prices online. In China the most comprehensive travel website is Ctrip, so naturally I searched there for prices. I went to the English version of the site, and looked at their resort selection. My wife was using her laptop as well, but she was on the Chinese version of Ctrip. I always assumed that both sites would be mere translations of the other, but that turned out not to be the case.

First of all, the Hilton did not appear on the Chinese site. It seems to be the most expensive resort on Yalong Bay, so that may be part of the reason (prices starting at EUR 200 per night). When we looked at the Marriott, however, I was startled to see that the prices on the Chinese site were lower than those on the English one! Not a big difference, RMB 1513 for a certain room type on the Chinese site versus RMB 1680 on the English one, but still a difference of more than 10%.

I guess they get away with it because people normally don’t use both sites, but it does not give me a good feeling. The law in China is that foreigners cannot be officially overcharged anymore (until not too long ago there used to be different ticket prices for foreigners at for example sight-seeing places). But I think legally a website can do this, as the prices are not based on nationality but only on language ability. From now on I will use the Chinese version of Ctrip to book rooms, and only if I cannot find a certain resort I will also check the English site.

On Friday night we went to the Cirque du Soleil show Quidam, in their tent next to the Science and Technology Museum in Pudong. The official premier was on Thursday night, but because of work we decided to skip that and go on Friday. It was a great show, and something I can recommend you to go and see. The circus will be in town until August 26, tickets can be booked through Piao.com.cn.

In case you don’t know the Cirque du Soleil, this is a circus troupe originally from Quebec, Canada, that use a combination of live music, acrobatics, juggling, ballet and clowning to create a show that is different from any other circus performance you have ever seen. The show takes place in a traditional circus tent, the yellow and blue striped Grand Chapiteau. The air-conditioned tent can seat about 2500 people, and is connected to two other tents in the back, that are used by the circus artists.

The Quidam show that the Cirque performs in Shanghai, tells the story of a girl whose parents are not very interested in her, and she therefore disappears into an imaginary world. I could not really follow the story beyond this, but that does not really matter, it is one big sequence of top acrobatics and clowns. One highlight is the so-called German Wheel in which an artist rides and at the same time performs stunts. Other highlights include young Chinese girls doing a diabolo show, a group rope jumping session and many trapezium acts high in the sky. The Cirque’s shows are humans only, so no animals like in traditional circuses. Most of the music is performed live by a small orchestra, and is originally composed for the show.

The show was supposed to start at 7:30, but started already a few minutes earlier. Due to the Shanghai traffic jams, many people arrived too late and had to wait about 10 minutes into the show for a short intermezzo before they were allowed in. The first half ended around 8:40. The break lasted about 30 minutes, during which time you could buy many Western food and drink items such as hot dogs and Budweiser beer, but no Chinese food. The only thing Chinese was the popcorn: only the Chinese sweet variety was on sale, and not the original salty popcorn. Considering the tropical temperature outside it was amazing that the Budweiser tent was almost deserted, only a few foreigners ordered a beer. Most of the Chinese audience opted for the cold green tea or a Coca-Cola. I had my first beer in a week there; I had been sick most of the week, and did not feel like a beer earlier.

The second part of the show lasted a bit less than an hour, closing with a finale with all performers on stage. A fantastic show, only slightly spoiled by several Chinese in the audience that thought it necessary to leave a few minutes before the end, in order to get home quicker. This seems to be standard during concerts and other shows in China, and it annoys me. Not only does it show disrespect for the artists, but they also block the view for the rest of the audience. When the show was over we decided to take the subway back into town and catch a taxi there. But close to the subway we suddenly saw two empty taxi’s and so we took a taxi back to Puxi. The metro would have been quicker though, as the Yan’an Lu tunnel was still one big traffic jam at 10:30 PM!

This afternoon I was driving on a quiet street in Pudong when I suddenly encountered a traffic jam. At the public library drivers in the opposite lanes were crossing the double yellow line (=not allowed to cross) to get into the parking lot of the library, and by doing that blocking the traffic in the lanes on my side. Because the parking space was full, there was hardly any movement. When cars finally started moving the drivers who illegally crossed did not let our lanes go first, which would have solved the whole traffic jam in one minute, but instead they kept on blocking the road. Sadly, this is very normal in China, most drivers do not care about others at all and only think about themselves while in traffic (combined with their poor driving skills this explains 80% of all traffic jams).

When cars finally moved a little bit again, I pushed myself in between two cars that were trying to get into the library parking lot, so that my lane could start driving again. But the driver of the car immediately on the left of me apparently did not like the idea and touched my car with his car. He got angry and said he wanted to call the police. Did he maybe think I, as a foreigner, would be afraid of that and give him some money? He was the one who was breaking the traffic laws, so I took pictures of the situation and my wife called the police.

They were there within a few minutes. The guy found out quickly that he was the one who was wrong, and the police explained him that very clearly. Upon examination it turned out that I did not even have a scratch on my car, and only he had some damage. The guy was not so happy, and started to curse my wife, to which she of course reacted by telling him what she though of him – the guy was not so good at arguing as she is, and did not know how to react anymore. The police man told him to stop, making remarks about that it’s a hot day and we should stay calm. Then he told me and my wife that we could go, and he gave the guy a fine and 3 points on his driver’s license. I felt good, I hope the other driver will learn from this, although that’s probably idle hope.

Chinese banks are still a bit backwards compared to their foreign competitors. For years they were protected by China’s laws against competition, but that has changed quite a bit over the past 5 years. You would assume that competition would force the Chinese banks to quickly change their archaic systems and regulations, but that takes a bit more time.

Today I came across an typical example of how modern Chinese banks are. I was talking to my HR manager tonight about the salaries that we will transfer to the staff on Friday. She told me that the bank needs a simple text file for that, which contains a combination of the bank account numbers and the amounts to be transferred. The HR manager told me that each month she has to go to the bank to deliver that to them.

I did not fully understand it, and asked why she could not email it to the bank Well, she said, for a simple reason, because they don’t use email there! We are talking here about a branch office of the Bank of China (China’s biggest bank, listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange) and it is 2007, not 1993. She then told me that they wanted her to deliver the file on a floppy disk to her. A what? Yes, a floppy disk! I have not seen one of those things in many years, and of course none of our computers has a slot for floppy disks anymore. But luckily the bank’s computers are so modern that they already have a USB port, so we now managed to find a mutual agreeable solution by using a USB disk to transfer the file. Welcome to the modern world Bank of China.

Last week the German ADAC and Dutch ANWB released a crash test with the new Chinese brand Brilliance, in which the car only received one out of five stars. German test results called the car extremely dangerous, and of course all the media jumped on this opportunity to show how bad the quality of Chinese cars is. I disagree with that, and was thinking about blogging about the test result. However, I did not have the time to do it at that moment, so I let it be.

But just now I finally see a positive column on the frontpage of leading Dutch online news provider nu.nl about Brilliance and the overreaction of the press. The author is Vincent van Twillert, who blogs on autoblog.nl (a weblog that is normally quite negative about everything Chinese), and who acknowledges that he also thinks the whole press reaction is over the top. He has some interesting points in his article, that I totally agree with.

He writes that this seems to be a strategic action of the German car producers lobby to make sure new competition does not stand a chance. They did this two years ago as well with the Landwind, which was supposed to have the worst crash results in 20 years. What the author does not mention (or does not know?) is that when the producer of the Landwind a few months later hired the respected German test institution TUV to repeat the test, the results suddenly were very positive. The Landwind actually passed the tests with very good marks…

I think the automotive lobby is trying to use fear to stop people from buying Chinese cars. In the long run it won’t work, but in the short run it’s very effective. Landwind never recovered from its bad test results, and Brilliance is also off to a very bad start. Even it it turns out that the Brilliance results were incorrect it is too late anyway for the brand. If I would be a consultant for the next upcoming Chinese brand, the Chery, I would advise the board do these test with an independent organization before launching in Europe. In that case you can immediately react if organizations ADAC or the ANWB are trying to trick the public again.

The nu.nl column mentions some other interesting facts. The Brilliance car is said to have the safety standard of cars that would be produced 10 years ago. So? Were all cars 10 years ago extremely dangerous? And does that mean that nobody should buy a second-hand car anymore because that would be suicidal? It’s all about price versus quality, and in this case the Brilliance is relatively cheap – just as second-hand cars are cheaper than brand-new cars. You get what you pay for.

A nice detail is that the Chrysler Voyager got the same result out of this test (done in England), but for some reason the media did not write much about this test. For me all the more reason to believe in some conspiracy theory against Chinese cars. Right now the media and car producers still win, but in a few years things will definitively change. A few months ago the last sentence of a column I wrote for Dutch car magazine Autovisie was: “I expect that in a few years it would be just as normal to drive a Geely, Great Wall or Chery as it is now to drive a Mazda, Nissan or Toyota”. I would not hesitate to write that again.

Since Sunday I am having a nasty cold, or maybe it’s the flu. Feeling cold one moment and hot a minute later, all muscles in my body are hurting, and I have a headache. Problem is, I am really bad at being sick because I feel it’s a waste of time. Sunday night I spent mainly on the couch in a half-asleep, half-awake state of mind so I decided to go to bed early, but when I was in bed my body was aching so much that I could not sleep anymore…

Monday morning I did not feel much better, but I went to the office anyway. I just cannot lie in bed the whole day, it drives me crazy. Furthermore, I hardly worked on Sunday and there are always too many things to do. But it was not a very good idea, early afternoon I felt so dizzy that I could not think clearly anymore, and I had to go home. I turned off my phone and slept most of the afternoon and evening, but this morning I was feeling even more sick. Sigh…

So I decided to stay home, and work from my bed. That does not happen often, I actually cannot remember ever not going to work for at least part of the day because of being sick (maybe I should do a search on my blog, it might prove my memory wrong). A bed is not the best place to type mails and take phone calls, so I soon moved to my study. I was cold, so I turned off the air-conditioner, and soon I was sitting wearing my clothes plus a winter bath robe in a 30+ degrees Celcius environment (it’s summer in Shanghai). After half an hour I went back to bed again, because I could not sit up anymore and I felt extremely tired.

But around 1 PM I decided I could not take it any longer to be in bed wasting my time, so I took a hot shower and 2 aspirins and drove to work. My idea was to stay in the office for 2-3 hours, but when I left it was past 7 PM already. I actually felt better while in the office, especially when talking to people. It takes your mind off how you feel. But now I feel much worse again, so I guess typing this blog post is the last thing I will do today. If I don’t force myself to rest I’ll never get better.