This weekend Gary and I went to La Bici, the bike shop on Wanping Lu (close to Jianguo Lu), to decide on which bikes to buy for our upcoming ride through the Himalaya. After looking at several model we went for two Sunn mountain bikes. Not very cheap, but it’s better to spend a bit more on good bikes, than to end up with a broken bike in a snowstorm at 5000 meters altitude. The bikes will be delivered later today, and I am looking forward to taking my first ride on them!

We need to start doing some serious training soon, because we only have about 3 months left before our planned departure to Tibet. My running shape is not too bad, but I need to start focusing more on bike riding now. I already put my stationary spinning bike in front of the TV at home, so that I can start training a bit there as well. On weekends we plan to put the bikes in the car and do some training in the hills (if we can find any close to Shanghai!).

If anybody else still wants to join let me know. We plan to leave around April 22, the trip from Lhasa to Kathmandu will be just over 3 weeks (including acclimatization).

The other major announcement that was made during the party, is that starting on January 22 Tudou.com will have its own daily TV program on Chinese TV. In partnership with the leading entertainment oriented TV station Southeast Satellite Television, Tudou will get a 5 minute segment in the most popular prime time program Yu Le Le Fan Tian. Tudou is the first leading video website in China to cooperate with a major TV station.

An English press release will be sent out tomorrow, and I will put a copy on my blog.

Friday night the Tudou New Year Party was held at The Melting Pot, one of the better bars on Taikang Lu (Shanghai’s art street). The staff from Spill Group Asia had rented a small bus to drive there, but I decided to take a cab from my apartment because I had to wait for my wife to come home first. Of course we then could not find a cab (rain on a friday night equals no taxis), so I drove there myself. So we were a bit too late, but just in time for the announcements. Yang Lei was the presenter of the evening, and after her Gary gave a speech. During his speech Gary announced that Tudou is growing very fast, and this week managed to break through the 10 million films per day! Especially the past weeks the growth has been stellar, and it seems none of our competitors is able to keep up with us.

The Tudou staff had made a video, showing all our ‘records’ plus the dates they occurred (50K views/day, 100K, 500K, 1 million, 2 million, 5 million, 10 million) and some of the clips that were submitted around that time. Interesting to see was that the time between the dates of the records got shorter and shorter. Some of the clips in the video were quite funny and I had not seen most of them. After the video was shown we made a human 10,000,000 sign ( Gary was the 1, and 2 people each made a 0).

Lots of friends attended the party, and I talked the whole evening with all kinds of people. Gary and Qi were sitting at the table with some VIP guests, but I mainly walked around. Got to know some interesting new people, and for the rest just had a relaxed evening with a couple of beers. After 10 PM the official party ended, but it actually got even better after that. The live band continued to play great songs (although a bit too loud at times). Only downside was that we managed to drink all the Tudou-sponsored beer and had to start paying for it ourselves 🙂

The next party will likely be a rooftop party again in the Tudou office, but that has to wait until spring will arrive in Shanghai.

A Chinese couple is sueing Emirates, because they were kicked off their flight from Shanghai to Dubai prior to departure. According to today’s Shanghai Daily the problem started when the husband was feeling a bit nauseous, and asked a flight attendant for some medicine. Instead of getting that, the flight attendant informed the captain, who asked the husband to get off the plan.

He refused this, because he did not feel that bad. But the captain insisted, and a 30 minute quarrel followed. During that time the airline already started to unload their luggage, and in the end they threatened to call the airport police to force them to get off. This was too much for the couple and they gave up. After leaving the flight the husband said he did not feel sick anymore.

Now they are sueing the airline, because their planned vacation to Dubai and Egypt was ruined. And if this story is correct I totally agree with them. Emirates says it refuses to accept passengers out of consideration for their safety, but if someone is just feeling a bit nauseous that is hardly a safety concern. The Shanghai Daily asked other foreign airlines about this, but they said they would only force off passengers that have diseases that could harm the health of other passengers. A strange story, but good to keep in mind during my travels. Better wait until after departure to ask for medicine!

… is the Tudou New Year Party. Invitation only, but if you are in town and would like to join give me a call. As you can see on the flyer the party starts at Taikang Lu 288 (so not the Tudou office!) at 7:30 PM.

The most used Dutch-language site to get updates on the latest news is nu.nl. But although they are quick with their reports, they regularly do a very shabby job in terms of research for their articles. The latest example was an article that I read this morning during breakfast, titled (translation) ‘First non-stop flights US-China‘.

I first thought the header was misleading to lure people to read the article, but also the text of the article says that United Airlines will get the first direct route between the US and China. Of course this is totally wrong, there are many direct flights between the US and China. The article should have read that one additional route was added, and that United won the right to fly this lucrative route (Washington DC – Beijing). A one minute Google search learned me that 3 years ago there were already 54 direct flights per week, why did the author of the article not check his facts? I would not be surprised if the un-edited article will end up in several other Dutch papers and websites.

The south wing of the famous Peace Hotel on the Bund will get a USD 50 million upgrade starting in April. The building, constructed in 1906, is indeed in need of a renovation. I stayed in some of the rooms in the hotel several years ago, and I was not overly impressed. The rooms are nicely decorated, but it’s all a bit old-fashioned. The furniture is quite worn out and the dark rooms felt and smelled dusty. And on top of that many things did not work properly, such as the jacuzzi and the TV in the bathroom (I was staying in a suite). The service was even worse, and nothing like it would have been in its heighdays 80 years ago.

However, some people love the ambiance of the hotel and the decoration of the rooms and come back here all the time. And to be honest, the themed national suites (among others the English, German and Indian suites) are fantastic. Business friends stayed in two of these suites a while ago, and I was truly impressed when they showed me their accomodation.

According to the Shanghai Daily’s paper edition, several of the hotel’s regular guests announced to the hotel that they would like to stay one last time in their favourite suites ahead of the renovation. I am not sure if this means that these suites, including the themed suites, will disappear after the renovation? The nation suites are located in the north wing, so I would assume not. Or maybe Shanghai’s only English newspaper messed up by reporting that only the south wing will be renovated? We’ll find out in due time.

But because of the upcoming renovation the hotel decided to slash the prices of their 35 most historic rooms by 80%, including the rates of the nation suites. So this might be your last chance to the feel the grandeur of the Peace Hotel, and that for a relatively modest price! Don’t be surprised however if you wake up in the middle of the night because of construction work. I read somewhere that the renovation of the hotel has already started (I could not check it out myself). Maybe that is the real reason of the lower prices?

Last week game.com.cn, one of Spill Group Asia’s main websites, had a complete redesign, adding lots of functionalities and making it load much faster. Our people worked extremely hard on this: when I went to bed in Holland after midnight the team was still working in China. This means it was after 7 AM in the morning here already, and they had worked 24 hours non-stop to get the site live. Thanks to Demi and her team, you did a great job!

Personally I think the site looks great, and it seems the visitors think so too. This weekend we had a new pageview record, with 1,024,000 pageviews in one day! This was done without any ads on Google or Baidu, so most people on the site are returning visitors. Over the next weeks we will add some more features that will further enhance the user experience, and increase the so-called stickyness of the site. Up to the 2 millon pageviews!

Note: due to the continuing internet problems in China because of the earthquake, game.com.cn will load quite slowly in the rest of the world.