Danwei writes today that the Sex in Shanghai story now even reached the Beijing Times. Professor Zhang Jiehai seems not satisfied with the password that Chinabounder put on his blog and wants to keep finding him. He thinks Chinabounder is scared. Could be, but maybe Chinabounder is just smart, and noticed that the situation was getting out of control. Then closing off the source to the main public is a good strategy to try to cool down things a bit.

Also the English Guardian picked up the story. They tried to contact Chinabounder, but got no reply so far. I actually contacted him as well right after he closed off his blog to the outside world, but did not get a reply either. Maybe someone hacked into his account, so he cannot read his mail anymore? I would not be surprised if this has really happened. Hacking into a blogger and/or gmail account is not impossible, and there might be lots of angry Chinese that are skilled at this.

There is actually some potential evidence for this theory: in the hours before the the blog closed down, Chinabounder left several comments on his blog. In these comments he copy/pasted parts of articles about penile lenght increasing surgery (I think that was what it was about, I actually skipped over it – and I cannot check it anymore now). This is not his normal style, so why would he do that? At that point I did not think too much about it, but when a bit later his site was blocked I started to suspect that something else might have been going on. If he would have been scared he could have done this a day earlier already, but he only did it after posting another sex-related article.

To be continued I suppose.

A couple of months ago I wrote about a new Chinese game that had been developed around Chinese national heroe Lei Feng. Although I never see people playing the game, the government decided to build another online game around Chinese heroes. Also this time Lei Feng will be participating, and he will be accompanied by among others Zheng Chenggong, a 17th century general who ‘liberated Taiwan from the Dutch’.

But will the game be a success? That’s doubtful considering the tasks that need to be performed: one of them is moving bricks, which probably sounds very exciting to gamers who are used to high-tech games in which they steer F1 racing cars or compete with magic swords in virtual worlds. Another task will be catching raindrops on a building site. No further comment needed I suppose.

The reporter wanted to know what gamers would think of the game. You would then normally go to an internet cafe and ask some of the gamers there about the game. But not this journalist from Chinese press agency Xinhua: he decided to go to the Beijing Internet Addiction Treatment Center and check with the internet addicts there! Can you imagine, you are addicted to games and try to get over your addiction, and then a reporter comes to by to ask how you would like a new government-developed online game.

At least he got some good comments from the inmates. They were not interested in this game, which goal is to ‘teach the public about Chinese ethics’. One even called it boring and a turn-off. And the center director agreed: “If hero games do not focus on killing and domination, gamers will not play them.” So I guess it’s back to the drawing board for the game developers.

It seems that yesterday’s witchhunt has forced Chinabounder to close down his blog, or at least to only make it accesible for invited readers. This morning he still posted a new article, which had over 100 comments by lunchtime when I read it. But it seems a few minutes ago he decided to pull the plug himself, or someone hacked his blogger password and did it for him.

If there are any new developments regarding this in the Chinese blogosphere I will post them on my blog.

China loves ambitious infrastructure projects, and normally not only announces them but also finishes these projects – and finishes them quickly (something that does not always happen in Holland, many projects there are eventually cancelled or drag on forever). Just last month the train connection between Beijing and Lhasa (in Tibet) was finished, a project that was impossible to carry out according to more than one foreign scientist. But the Chinese managed to pull it off, although there are still some questions about what will happen if the ice melts on which part of the railway is built.

And now the next project has been announced already, a rail link between Lhasa and Kathmandu (capital of Nepal). This is a stretch of well over 1000 km through very remote territory. Because I am planning to ride this route on my mountain bike, I did a bit of research on the area over the past months. The railway would need to go over several mountain passes that are over 5000 meters high, and would run along the foot of Mount Everest. Construction is planned to start next year, and should be finished within 3 years.

And in case you are wondering, the bike trip from Lhasa to Kathmandu that was planned for this year will still take place. However, it had to be postponed until spring next year. Last week we (Gary from Toodou, my dad and I) decided to start this gruelling ride around April 22 next year. We should be able to finish the distance in about 3 weeks. There will still be quite some snow along the route, but it promises to be a fantastic journey. The trip is open to other sportive people as well, contact me if you are interested. Costs should be around USD 3000 per person (excl. flights, but incl. permits and jeeps that carry our food, luggage and tents). We expect to cover the trip on Toodou, Flickr and our blogs, so everyone can follow our experiences.

An English blogger in Shanghai might have blogged himself into trouble. This person, who blogs here under the name Chinabounder, has had a blog for a couple of months already. But because he hosted it at blogspot, it was unavailable without a proxy until a few weeks ago (China unblocked blogspot.com accounts a few weeks ago). Therefore only a couple of people were following his blog through a proxy server on the mainland.

Chinabounder is an English teacher who likes to seduce former female students, and describes his sexual encounters quite graphically. He is a player, managing several girlfriends at the same time, and pretending to love all of them, but really doing it just for the thrill. This upset a lot of people, both foreigners and Chinese, but to make things worse he is now also including his personal political opinions in his blog. And these do not fit with the world view that most Chinese have, causing several people to start an online witchhunt for him.

The first one was a Chinese guy who set up whoischinabounder.blogspot.com. Lots of people left comments there with hints on who he could be, based on the descriptions in his blog. But things are now getting a bit out of hand, because Zhang Jiehai, a professor of psychology in the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences wrote a blog post about Chinabounder and is asking the ‘Chinese people’ to ‘find this foreign trash until we kick him out of China’. This blog post is widely circulating on the internet, and an EastSouthWestNorth provides a translation of the article. I hope for Chinabounder that he was smart enough not to provide real details about himself, or at least to start feeding the crowds with false information. But once the internet is trying to find you it will be very difficult to escape.

To be continued, I am sure.

Sunday morning my dad and I decided to run around Hangzhou’s famous West Lake. Because of the high temperature in Hangzhou (it’s even warmer than Shanghai, when we drove into the city my car showed an outside temperature of 42 degrees), we decided to leave early. So we started at 6:30 AM to beat the heat and the crowds. But that was in vain: not only was the temperature already above 30 degrees, but also the crowds were bigger than during day time. Everywhere elderly Chinese were practicing Tai Chi, or dancing in the shadow to the tunes of an old tape recorder. A nice sight, but a bit difficult to navigate through if you are running.

The run was nice though, but we underestimated the heat. Halfway we had to buy some drinks to ensure we would not get dehydrated. Also the distance was a bit further than I estimated, or maybe the heat made the run look longer. In total we needed about 75 minutes to run around the whole lake, so I estimate that the distance to be about 14-15 km. A bit too much in the middle of summer, but we had both never run around this lake before (my father has often been on business here, but never had time for the full distance) and we wanted to do it together at least once. Has anybody else ever done this run?

Friday night we drove to Moganshan, a small town high up in the mountains of Zhejiang, not far from Hangzhou. There were no traffic jams, so the drive over from Shanghai took us only about 2.5 hours. Moganshan is quite famous because it used to be a resort for rich foreigners and Chinese in the early 1900’s. The mountaintop is covered with more than one hundred old Western style villas, most of them in a dilapidated state. Instead of one family, most now have several families living in one building, and none of them seems to care to spend a penny on paint or a new roof. Actually, that is not completely true, as most villa’s roofs likely collapsed after half a century of neglect, and now have bright blue corrugated iron roofs. An ugly contrast with the green bamboo tree covered hills.

Mark Kitto, former media-entrepreneur in China (That’s magazines, Voyage), has been coming to Moganshan for 7 years, and is now living full-time here. He and his wife have two villas high on the mountain in the middle of the woods, and they started to run a restaurant/bar in town called The Lodge. Our hotel was next to The Lodge, so it was the first place that we checked out. It is a nicely decorated, with wooden floors and classical furniture, hundreds of books and DVD’s, and a well-stocked bar. They serve dinner here as well, but you have to order in advance so they can make sure they have enough supplies. And not unimportant, there is free wifi, so you can keep on working if you really want to (this time I managed to keep my laptop unopened).

We spent most of the evening (and night) in The Lodge. Mark had invited three friends from Shanghai, John (who is in the medical supplies business, and decided to become barkeeper for the night), Philippe (who brought some great cigars, and coincidentally used to work with my wife about 6 years ago) and Scott (who runs an M&A company in Shanghai). All of them are old-China hands (on average 9 years in China or so), and we had lots of stories to swap. Mark and I talked about doing business in China, and as it turned out some of our experiences are quite similar. After two bottles of wine during dinner, and several whisky’s after the meal, Mark decided to mix some martini’s for us. He is pretty good at that, and it was a nice nightcap!

The next morning Mark cooked us an excellent English breakfast with tea, coffee, eggs, bacon, fried tomatoes and toast. A great way to start the day after a short night. Then we went for a hike to the ‘Queer Stones’, which took us about an hour. The views from the (odd-looking, therefore the name) stones is fantastic, and I realize there is still much to be discovered in the area. From there we walked down through a tea plantation, had a drink at a farm restaurant and then hiked back up the mountain. We finished ouir hike at The Lodge, where Mark and his friends were enjoying a bottle of champagne. Because we planned to spend the night in Hangzhou we only had a quick drink, said good-bye and drove down the winding mountain road back to the plains of Hangzhou.

Moganshan is a very nice place to spend a weekend. It’s a bit cooler than Shanghai (and it even seems to have quite some snow in winter), and the nature there is beautiful. The only downside is that there are no decent hotels yet. There are many Chinese hotels that are OK if you just need a bed, but it’s not more than 2-star quality (at least not the ones that I saw). Radisson manages two old villa’s here, but they did not do a very good job at the renovation. The one we looked at (Priest Villa) had cheap decoration and had a dusty (almost dirty) feel to it. But The Lodge compensates for this (too bad Mark did not start a hotel yet), and it’s a great place to relax after a day of exploring the hills. So if you need to get away from the big city for a day or two, head over to Moganshan.

Last weekend I took a trip to Nanjing with my parents. There is a 8-lane highway from Shanghai to Nanjing, so the 300 km trip takes less than 3 hours. The first 80 km is still quite busy, but once you pass Suzhou the toll road is suddenly almost empty. I was not sure if there are any speed camera’s, so I put my cruise control on 130 and had a relaxed drive to China’s former capital.

Nanjing is a city with a turbulent history, and it still has a lot of historical sites that make it worth to go there for a sightseeing weekend trip. Also the nature around the city is wonderful with the mighty Yangtze river in the north and the wooded hills surrounding the city center.

We stayed in the recently opened Sofitel Galaxy, on the corner of Zhongshan Bei Lu and Shanxi Lu, a 48-story building with several good restaurants, a pool and a nice gym. The view from our rooms on the 43rd floor were amazing, both during the day and at night. The hotel is good value for money, for a mere RMB 550 (EUR 55) we got queen size rooms and even an upgrade to the executive floor.

Nanjing feels a bit like Beijing some years ago, and it’s developing quickly. I had not been to the city since April 2000, when a DaimlerChrysler colleague of mine was murdered there together with his whole family. That had quite an impact on me (I worked closely with him until 2 days before he was killed), and I almost decided to leave China at that time. I am glad I stayed, and I now felt it was time to go back to the city. I even walked by his house (he was attacked at home), but that was more by coincidence.

The nice thing about Nanjing in comparison to Shanghai is the proximity of nature and the relatively clean air. My dad and I ran from our hotel to the Xuanwu lake early in the morning, and then ran all around it (about 10 km), something you cannot do in Shanghai. Great views over the lake, the city and the mountains during the run. There are not too many foreigners yet, and therefore lots of ‘laowai’ cries during the run. Another place that is great for a run, are the woods around Zhongshan Park (where Sun Yat-Sen’s memorial is located). Of course if you are not a runner it’s also nice to just have a hike here, far away from bustling downtown.

What else should you see in the city? The best places are the Confucius temple and the canal just south of it, Sun Yat-Sen’s mausoleum and the park surrounding it, and Xuanwu Lake. These can all be enjoyed in one day, but if you want to do some more hiking you can easily spend two days here.

What is also a nice experience is the walk up to the bridge over the Yangtze river. This structure was built during the Cultural Revolution, and it is a typical ‘communist-design’ bridge. It is about a two kilometer walk to the middle of the bridge, but when we were on top we found out that you can also get there by bus (there is a bus stop at the top of the bridge). Great views over the river and the city from there. We had also planned to visit the Nanjing Massacre museum, but this was closed when we arrived there. It turned out that it is currently under renovation and will not re-open until Dec. 12, 2007 – the 70th anniversary of the Rape of Nanjing.

As usual I took lots of pictures (over 300), and I put some of them on my Flickr photostream. The whole set can be viewed here. If you want to get out of Shanghai for the weekend this is a trip I would recommend you. From Shanghai Nanjing is easy to reach, either by car over the HuNing expressway, or by a 3-hour train ride.