Does the Shanghai Daily not have an editor that reads articles before they are printed? Today’s paper has a story on page 3 about Shanghai tourists that were killed in a landslide while trying to cross the Luxi Gorge in Zhejiang. At the end of the article one of the victims, Zhang Lin, is described. The article continues:

“I know he loves traveling, but we never imagined anything like this happening,” said his father, who requested anonymity. (emphasis added)

What can I say, you must be a pretty dumb editor to write this or to let this slip through the proofreading process!

I am sitting in the business lounge at Shanghai Pudong airport waiting to board a flight to Amsterdam. I usually have a drink here and read a US or Dutch newspaper before departure, but it seems I will have to change this ritual: The Chinese government has apparently issued a new regulation saying that foreign newspapers and magazines are not allowed in lounges anymore! This is the first time I hear about this new rule and I seriously wonder what use this is. I guess I will have to read the paper online then.

I did not hear many positive stories about 3G in China so far, and I therefore hesitated to buy a 3G connector for my laptop. But yesterday I decided to give it a try and bought a Huawei 3G USB connector for my MacBook Pro. So far I am very happy with it. Until now I normally used a GPRS connector to go online at places without wifi, but the speed was so slow that it was hardly workable. 3G makes a huge difference. I did not measure the exact up- and download speeds yet, but it seems quite similar to the wifi connection that we have in our office. But maybe speeds will go down once more people start to use 3G?

I bought the 3G connector at the small Apple retailer on the 2nd floor in the new computer market on the corner of Xizang Road and Huaihai Road, next to Times Square. The price is RMB 450 and you pay an additional RMB 100/month for 60 hours of usage (for RMB 200/month you get 200 hours). For me 60 hours is enough, I mainly use 3G when driving to and from work and when I am at Starbucks having a coffee.

Dialing up takes about 20 seconds, disconnecting about 10. I lost my connection only once so far while driving through Shanghai, so it seems the connection is relatively stable. The guys at the Apple counter installed it for me within minutes (ask for Roy, he is an expert and also speaks English fluently), but it was so easy that I could have done it myself as well. If you want to be online everywhere in China (well, in the main cities at least, there is no 3G coverage all over China yet) I recommend you give this a try.

Scott loves cars. When he goes outside the first thing he normally does is to run to our car and point that he wants to go for a ride. We never give in to that and I was wondering why he keeps on trying, until I recently found out that our driver sometimes gives him a ride around the compound before he drives me to work!

Because he likes cars so much we decided to order him a small ‘real’ car (he already has several tricycles and other user-powered vehicles). Scott got his car this weekend and he is extremely happy with it. It’s a battery operated car with a top speed of just 5 km/h (with a second battery it goes up to 12 km/h, but that’s for when he is a bit older), and it also has a remote control so we can decide where he can or cannot drive to. The only problem with the remote is that if Scott pulls the steering wheel hard enough he can override it, so that we (or better, his nanny) have to run after him all the time.

It’s interesting to see how quickly he understands how to operate the car, and it’s great to see how happy he is. Luckily typhoon Morakot did not arrive in mainland China on Friday or Saturday (as originally forecast), so Scott could spend a lot of time outdoor in his car this weekend.

After among others McDonald’s and Burger King, Shanghai will soon get another fast-food hamburger chain: Carl’s Jr. The first store will be in the Raffles Shopping Mall on People’s Square, a convenient 10 minute walk from my office. The exact location is on the north side of the food court on the B1 floor, and the signs there indicate that the store will open this month already.

But I will probably wait a few weeks before trying out whether their first Chinese store is as good as their US restaurants: I still remember the huge lines at Burger King when it first opened a store in Shanghai (waiting time > 30 min!). I like Carl’s Jr. better than the current chains, but I hope the next fast-food restaurant to come to China will be In-n-Out, in my opinion by far the best hamburger chain in the US.

Yesterday was the first day of operations for Shanghai’s latest new amusement park, Happy Valley (warning: terribly designed and very slow flash site). But the first day was not as successful as planned, about everything that could go wrong went wrong. Today’s paper version of the Shanghai Daily had an amusing story from a reporter that went to check out the park.

Happy Valley is located in Sheshan, close to the only hills and wooded areas in Shanghai (see for example a post here about Sheshan and about Tianmashan). Sheshan used to be a nice and quiet location, but with the metro line extending to here and now even an amusement park, these days are gone. When I stayed at the Meridien in Sheshan in 2006 when it just opened, you could see Shanghai in the far distance. Now the city has almost reached Sheshan and the being-out-of-the-city feel is almost gone. A pity, but that’s what you get when an economy keeps on growing at 10-15% per year – even in a global recession.

Happy Valley was supposed to open last month already, but because the park had not been finished yet the opening was postponed until August 6. It seems that was still too early, because yesterday was quite a disaster. The huge wooden roller coaster that is visible from far away and that’s the main attraction of the park had some serious malfunctions. It did not stop unintentionally once or twice, but a total of seven times during the day. Waiting time for the attraction was four hours, even though the ride itself is only two minutes.

Another start attraction, the 60-meter free fall, completely malfunctioned at a certain point, leaving people hanging in the air for several minutes because of a short circuit. Eventually the park shut down this attraction, upsetting people that had lined up for the attraction for hours. It was not the first time they had to wait, because even at the entrance gate the waiting time had been several hours – in the rain, because it’s monsoon time in Shanghai. Most attractions were not even open, according to the Shanghai Daily two thirds of the rides were still closed yesterday.

There were also problems with food, a very important thing for Chinese. There were not enough food outlets and the quality was not good enough. Even for a simple KFC meal you had to wait two hours in line!

Not only the malfunctioning rides are kind of dangerous, just walking around the park could get you injured as well. Three people found this out when a big sign board suddenly fell down on top of them. They were injured but could not be treated on site because the first aid facility had not been finished yet…

The management then made the smart decision to close the park today, officially because of the approaching typhoon (but not the real reason of course, because typhoon Morakot won’t be here until Saturday and today was actually quite a nice day). It’s probably the safest decision for now, I certainly will wait at least a few weeks until the park gets it act together. Going there should be a thrill, not a thriller.

This afternoon I was at the airport in Jinan and saw two interesting signs. I also learned a new English word: Bumf – according to the Chinese text it should mean paper, but I have no idea how they came up with this word.

Update: As Danwei‘s Jeremy Goldkorn points out in the comments, bumf is actually an English word (slang) which comes from bum fodder. Thanks Jeremy!

There are a lot of books about how to do business in China, and most of the foreign entrepreneurs here read at least one or two of them before they started out. But it seems not everybody did so, or at least not everybody followed the basic advice in these books, which may lead to disastrous results. You may have seen yesterday’s article in the Financial Times about the fate of a German business man in China already on other sites or on Twitter, but it’s too good not to post it here as well.

The story in short: A German business man with supposedly lots of China experience under his belt made all the classic mistakes in setting up and running a company in China. In 2004 he founded Business Media China, a company selling billboard advertising space at railway stations and airports all over China (and even listed it on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange). He trusted his Chinese associates (a male and a female) completely without checking them or trying to control them. When the two become romantically involved and realize their boss has no clue about what is going on, they eventually start to defraud the company. They go so far as to set up another company within the company that takes away all the business. The German business man does not realize what is happening behind his back and finally has to raid his own office to get evidence.

A great article to read if you do business in China, or if you ever plan to do so in the future. Some things I have seen myself as well over the past years here (I even had people trying to set up a company within my company, but found out about it on time), but most things are easily avoidable. Most important is to never give complete control away. You could probably do this in Europe or the US, but China is different. That does not mean that Chinese cannot be trusted (to the contrary, many of my Chinese business friends I trust more than Europeans I did business with in the past), but you just have to be more careful. Just don’t give people the opportunity to try things, then they won’t happen.

You can find the full article in the Financial Times here.