It suddenly got quite cold in Shanghai, and what happened: many buses and garbage trucks could not drive anymore. During summer they are using a cheap kind of diesel, that can only be used at temperatures above zero degrees. Because the temperature dropped so quickly they did not have time to change to better diesel, and even if they had the time most gas stations did not have it in stock. One of the few station that carried it had two-hour waiting lines to fill up the tanks of waiting vehicles. But soon the garbage trucks will drive around again, as temperatures gradually go up again to about 12 degrees.

The Shanghai Daily has a story this morning that at first glance is funny, but which is actually very sad. A male gay couple put an ad online to look for a lesbian couple to get married to. The males are being pushed by their parents to find wives, and they are even setting up dates with potential partners for them. To get over this they now decided to find a lesbian couple that is facing the same issues, and get married to them to be able to continue their current lifestyle.

It is sad that many people in China are still so conservative that they cannot accept homosexuality. Especially when people are forced to marry someone they don’t love, just to make sure the family does not loose face. I think this couple made a good decision, at least better than marrying a woman who has no idea about their gay background and potentially putting her into misery as well. But of course the only real solution would be if they would be able to come out of the closet.

Hallmark China’s service was better than expected (see post below – we found out that all Christmas cards that we bought had a price sticker on the back that could not be taken off without damaging the card, and we had to go back to return them). After a short discussion they agreed to send us new cards, although they may be different from the ones we bought.

They told us that all their cards have the price and barcode sticker on the card itself, instead of on the plastic cover. The reason is that Chinese tend to take the card out of the plastic in the shops to take a closer look, and then put them back without the plastic. In that case the bar code would get lost and the card cannot be sold. Strange that this only happens in China, and even stranger that we seem to be the only ones complaining about it (so maybe Chinese really like the recipients to see the high price they can afford to pay for a card?). The cards with sticker we could return, except for the ones that I already wrote on. Good service Hallmark, other companies can learn from this!

Several blogs including Danwei write this morning about the fact that Chinese premier Wen Jiabao has joined the trend and is also blogging. He does not have his own server, but blogs on the partly foreign-owned bokee.com. Check his blog out at http://www.wenjiabao.bokee.com.

If you are afraid your blogging service will be blocked in China, such as happened to for example typepad and blogspot accounts, just switch to bokee.com. I am very sure they will not shut the premier’s blog provider down!

Update: the blog has been shut down, it seems it was all a hoax.

Another typical China experience: Qi went to buy Christmas cards yesterday at Meilongzhen, one of the best shopping malls in Shanghai, and one of the few places to buy decent cards. She came back with nice Hallmark cards. But tonight when I was writing them I noted that they all have a sticker with the price on it – not on the plastic cover which is normal, but on the card itself! How stupid can they be? Someone must have opened all the plastic covers, taken out the card and put the sticker on the card itself. The only reason I can imagine is because of the price. RMB 9 (over 1 USD) per card is a very steep price for China, and people might want to let others know that they paid so much for a card to gain face. But I refuse to send out cards with a sticker on it, so we will go back to the store to either get new ones or get a refund.

Sitting on an Air China plane between Beijing and Shanghai. As usual it was delayed by over an hour, and as usual there was no announcement as to why and how long the delay would be. After an hour they suddenly announced a gate change (only in Chinese by the way), but after arriving at the new gate there was indeed a bus waiting to drive us to the aircraft.

Sitting in a coffee shop in the basement of the Kerry Mall in Beijing where I found a free hotspot to check my mail. Nice and warm in here, outside it is freezing cold and it is expected to snow later.

Just now I had a long meeting with a client. I was a bit early, so I walked around a neighbourhood shopping mall before going to the meeting. Just before I planned to walk to the meeting I passed by a perfume store. One of the shop attendants was standing in front of me and wanted to give the air a nice fragrance by spraying some perfume in the air. Nice idea of course, but not if she puts her hand high above her head and sprays the fragrance behind her – right into my face and eyes! She apologized a thousand times, but that did not help me. My eyes were hurting and I smelled like a cheap ladies perfume. And that 5 minutes before the meeting started. I went to the washroom to try to wash off the smell with soap, but that did not really help. Nobody said anything about it during the meeting, but you can imagine that I felt quite awkward!

Off to Beijing today, for a meeting with a China Bay client there about Chinese taxation issues. That’s what I like most about what I am doing: every day is different. And another great thing is that I always tend to meet interesting people with interesting stories: be it clients, friends or reporters. The biggest problem is that there is just not enough time in a day to everything I want to do.

It is always nice to go back to Beijing. Tonight I plan to have a couple of beers with old friends. Flying back to Shanghai on Saturday, where I plan to have Belgian mussels for dinner at the Hilton Hotel (I was informed they flew them in from Europe). In Beijing I used to go to Morel’s quite often, enjoying a Belgian beer with mussels and french fries, but I have not found a place like that in Shanghai.