We got a registered mail this week, and my wife had to go to the post office to pick it up. It turned out to be a speeding ticket, I got caught after picking up people from the airport about 2 weeks ago. I did not see the camera or the flash, but they had a good picture, I could even see one of them sitting in the back of the car. I drove 104 km/h on an 8-lane highway without any traffic, but apparently only 80 km/h was allowed. Bad luck.

The speeding ticket itself is not a big deal (fines are quite low), but the problem is that as a non-Shanghainese you have to go to a specific traffic police office to pay the fine (Shanghainese can pay online). Of course they are always located in out of the way locations, so it costs you a lot of time to go there, stand in line to show your drivers license (they gave me 3 points as well, after 12 you loose your license), stand in another line to pay the fine and stand in another lane for the receipt. And they even charged me to park the car outside the police office!

Over the years I have taken many visitors to Shanghai’s Xiangyang market. It is the biggest market with fake products (think Ralph Lauren polo’s, Mont Blanc pens and Rolex watches) in Shanghai. But it will close tomorrow. Not because of the fact that they sell fake products (nobody seems to care about IP rights), but because a developer bought the place and will put up a hotel there.

I had a meeting close to the Xiangyang market today, and decided to take one last look at the small shops. I was surprised by what I saw: it was more busy than I had ever seen it, even though it was quite hot (bright sunshine, no wind and at least 35 degrees Celcius). And people were frantically buying as if they would never have this opportunity again. To be honest, the shopkeepers were also doing everything they could to get rid of their stocks. For the first time several shops actually put up prices next to the goods. And they were lower than ever: Lacoste shirts for RMB 20 (EUR 2) and leather belts for just RMB 10 (EUR 1). And I am sure these prices were still negotiable.

If you are in Shanghai and looking for a real bargain (and don’t mind wearing fakes), tomorrow is your last chance. And if you read this too late? Just wait a few weeks, I am sure new, smaller markets will appear all over the city. I talked to some of the shopkeepers, and several of them told me that they plan to move to Pudong to an existing building. Other rumours were about a new market in Hongqiao and one close to the Longhua Temple. Many were handing out business cards with their mobile phone numbers: please call me in a few weeks and I will tell you where my new shop is.

When calling people on their mobile phones in China you often don’t hear the phone ringing on the other end of the line, but you get a personalized ‘ringtone’. You can choose your favorite song for this, and of course China Mobile earns good money for the songs that you install. I find it quite annoying that I have to listen to these songs when calling people, but I guess lots of people love it, otherwise the service would not exist.

Two weeks ago I called my wife, and was surprised that she had also installed this feature on her phone. I asked her about it when she picked up the phone, but she said that she was not aware of it. She immediately called China Mobile and asked them about it. It turned out that they were doing some sort of marketing campaign by installing the ring tone on people’s phone (without asking), hoping that they will change it to another one for a fee.

Last week Gary also suddenly had the ringtone installed, and he also did not know about it until people told him. Maybe it’s time to call my own number to check, who knows what my business relations have to listen to when they call me. Outside China this kind of push-marketing would likely lead to a lot of cancelled subscriptions, but when you are monopolist you can get away with it.

Do Chinese like to complain? Generally I would say no, they seem to be quite happy compared to the average Dutch or German citizen. But if it is about product quality you cannot fool them. If a Chinese person buys an electric article in a store you can make sure that he or she wants to test whether it works before paying. You don’t even have to ask for it, the store clerks take the article out of the box and plug it in for you. And if a product does not work as expected you can make sure Chinese will make a big fuss about it.

I remember a case a few years ago when I was still working at Mercedes-Benz where the Chinese owner of an SLK convertible was extremely angry because the car stopped working quite soon after he bought it. If I recall it correctly, he then got a donkey to pull the car to the city center. There some hired workers destroyed it with hammers in front of hundreds of onlookers. He got a lot of publicity and we were not too happy of course. Too bad for him the investigation afterwards showed that the malfunctioning of the car was due to the fact that he had used a low quality gas. So no new car for him.

But what if a product is better than you expected? Well, then you file a complaint as well. According to Pacific Epoch, this is what Dell found out when they started selling their Inspirion 640M notebooks with a newer model CPU. Fifty consumers complained about this, even though the new chip is just as fast but consumes less power. The article did not say whether Dell replaced the chips for them.

One of my favourite blogs is that of Robert Scoble. However, since he started using WordPress a couple of months ago I could not read it in China anymore without using a proxy. Just now I clicked by mistake on a link to his blog and to my surprise it started to load. Slowly, very very slowly. After about 4 minutes (serious) the page was there. I then checked Dave Winer’s other blog on WordPress, and that also loaded (just as slow). Is China finally unblocking WordPress?

The weekend in Macau was great, but we had some bad luck with the flights. Both the flight to Macau and the flight back were delayed. Especially the flight last night was not a lot of fun. We were supposed to fly at 6:10 PM, but only boarded around 7. Fifteen minutes later the pilot announced that he had some ‘bad news’. We had missed our slot and air traffic control would not let us depart until 10:20 PM… Most people on board did not really react, which I found strange. But then I realized the announcement had been made in English. A few minutes later a stewardess translated it into Mandarin, and suddenly all hell broke lose in the plane. People let out their frustration at the staff, but they could not help it either of course. We had to stay on board, and that certainly did not help to cool tempers! Luckily I had an emergency exit seat, so that made things a little better for me.

After dinner was served people started revolting and around 8:30 PM the captain let us all out of the plane again. We were not the only plane that was delayed, and also in the departure hall people from other flights were loudly discussing with airline personnel. A fight almost broke out between a very angry passenger and the ground staff of Air Macau, and I was surprised that airport security did not intervene (they just looked on, like most other passengers).

Our flight finally departed around 10:30 PM. The captain explained that only one flight per 15 minutes is allowed to cross the border from Hong Kong into mainland China (which was our flight path), so once we missed our slot we had to wait for the next available one (and we had 12 planes that were ahead of us). Around 12:30 AM we arrived in Shanghai Pudong, and by 2 AM we were finally home.

Qi and I are in Macau (or Macao – both spellings are used) for the weekend because one of Qi’s best friends from INSEAD, Josie Zhao, is getting married here. Josie is Chinese, and Mark (her husband-to-be) is Portugese-American and they both live in Hong Kong, so Macau (as a former Portugese colony and now part of China) is an excellent location for the wedding.

I had not been to Macau since 1998 or 1999, and the place has changed completely. Especially the waterfront next to the ferry pier is unrecognizable. Since Macau’s ‘return to China’ in 1999 several new gambling licenses have been issues, and this has had a huge impact on the city. Sands was the first company to set up a Las Vegas style casino here, and its huge USD 240 million building dominates the waterfront. Many other companies will follow soon, making Macau the gambling capital of the world. I was told that gambling revenues are now already higher than Las Vegas.
Luckily the old city has not changed too much, and most tourists to Macau don’t come there anyway (most of them come from Hong Kong or mainland China on a day-trip). It’s still very pleasant to stroll around the narrow streets and look at the mix of European and Chinese buildings. We walked up to the fortress and the Museu de Macau, from where you have a nice view over the city and to Zhuhai (mainland China). It’s only a 10 minute up-hill walk from the city center, but we that seems too much for most people because were almost alone there.
Before dinner we went to the old Casino de Lisboa, which had not changed at all. I seemed to be the only Caucasian in the whole place, every table was filled with chain-smoking Chinese. Most games I did not understand, and we left after half an hour already. First we planned to go to Sands as well, but time was running out. Qi had a wedding preparation meeting at 9:30 PM, and we still needed to have dinner. So we headed back to the hotel, where we met up with Jim Feldkamp and had a great seafood dinner with him (oysters, mussels, salmon, lobster, shrimp and tuna – among others).

This afternoon the wedding will take place in an old church in the city center (we went there already for the rehearsal yesterday), followed by a dinner and party in the hotel. Many of their friends have flown in, so I think it will be a great event today.

Today my flight from Shanghai to Macau was delayed, so instead of waiting at the gate I decided to go to the business lounge. I have a Platinum Elite card from KLM, and that gives you worldwide access to KLM lounges, even if you do not fly KLM. Over the past years I have often used this when I wanted to avoid the crowds, or just to drink a cup of coffee. But it seems that KLM is cutting costs: the lounge at Pudong Airport refused to let me in, because KLM changed its policy. Only by paying RMB 150 per person I could enter the lounge. That seemed a bit steep to me, so I decided to move on to the Air France lounge (the 2 airlines merged last year). But here I got the same message, and again I was shown the door. A nice way to treat you best customers KLM 🙁

Then I realized that I am still a VIP member of China Mobile, and that their card also gives access to selected lounges. I have been carrying the card around for a year already, but never used it. The card runs out next week, so just in time to try it out. At the Air France lounge counter I was told that I could indeed enter with it, and even had access to the First Class lounge instead of the Business Class lounge. Not that there was much of a difference, only the chairs were a bit more comfortable. But at least I could read some French and English newspapers and get some fresh coffee. Finally something positive from China Mobile!