Jon@Shanghai

On the theme of discovering great websites that makes living in China very convenient, I am presenting a couple more great websites.

Electronics

A couple days ago my wireless router of 2 years just suddenly died. I didn’t want to go to computer stores here in China because most of them employ aggressive sales techniques that makes you just want to leave the place immediately. Going to bestbuy is a great alternative, however the overpriced products there is not something to be desired.

Enter newegg.com.cn. For those who live in America, I’m sure you all know about newegg.com, one of the better priced electronics online retailer out there. Well, they have expanded their business in China and is one of the best electronics online websites in China.

On newegg.com.cn, I quickly found a netgear router for only 200 RMB (free shipping). That’s less than 30 bucks for a wireless router. I took a look at amazon.com to compare the price, and in the US the router was selling for 40 bucks without free shipping.

Registering for an account was extremely easy, there were only four fields to fill out. Username, email, password, confirm password. That’s it. I was surprised that there wasn’t even a confirmation email to confirm your email. By just filling the four fields, I had an account and could immediately checkout. That’s one of the best account registration process I’ve ever seen.

Like all online websites, newegg.com.cn allows you to pay cash upon receipt of the purchased product. What was different though, was that they allowed you to select a specific date and more importantly, a time range (morning or afternoon) to receive the delivery. That is way better than Yi Hao Dian I introduced in my last post. Instead of having to wait for possibily the entire day to receive your product, you can now narrow down the time down to 6 hours in which you can be confident that you will receive the product.

I ordered my new router on Thursday night, and the next day I got the product. That’s overnight delivery with free shipping! This was a simple, satisfying, and pleasant shopping experience. Most Chinese websites do not adhere to html standards and always require IE to view their site properly. Newegg.com.cn was completely standard compliant and using firefox I had absolutely no problems. I will definitely be going back to newegg.com.cn to buy computer products again!

Bill Payment

The next website is www.shfft.com, which is a bill payment website that allows you to pay water, gas, electricity, internet, cellphone, television bills and more. I had been using this website since I’ve came to China, but lately they’ve upgraded their site and is now not only a lot prettier, it is html standard compliant, which means I can use the site properly with firefox.

Unlike newegg.com.cn though, the registration process is a bit complicated. Once you register though, using the site is pretty easy. After the upgrade the process is even easier and I highly recommend it for paying your bills. It is a lot easier than the alternative, which is to go to a covenience store or the bank to pay it. I do all I can to avoid those rude cashiers, and having a website is always my choice.

After about a 6 week hiatus, I am finally back to writing my blog again. Over the past 6 weeks I’ve discovered some new interesting things about Shanghai. Cheap books and an awesome online supermarket.

Books

Books in general are already very very cheap in China. The number is the same as America, but the currency is RMB. You can find these legit cheap books (supposedly) on the Chinese amazon website as well as many others.

What I have found, though, is independent vendors selling really really cheap books on the street. You can commonly find them on Huai Hai Rd where a lot of ex-pats hang out. These books are almost exclusively on management and economics.

What surprised me though, is that the depth of knowledge these vendors knew about their books. I saw one selling Warren Buffet’s book on investing, and right next to it he placed Ben Graham’s classic tome on value investing.

I also saw freakonomics, and also the black swan. When I picked up black swan, the vendor immediately recommended “fooled by randomness”, the book that preceded black swan by the same author. I was amazed at how much this vendor, who supposedly wasn’t highly educated, knew about what he was selling. The vendor then asked perhaps I would be interested in the “80/20 Principle” book, which I was.

I gladly bought 2 books at 15 RMB each. That’s 2 bucks for 2 quality books! There were no discernable difference between the quality of binding from those that you would see in Barnes & Noble’s. As far as I could tell, it read, and felt, exactly the same as the same book bought in America. What a great value! I’ll be going back to buy more in the future.

Online Supermarket

The other pleasant discovery is Yi Hao Dian which means number one store in Chinese. Here in Shanghai there are lots of big supermarkets (Carrefour, Metro, Tesco, and even Walmart!). The problem is, for those of us without cars, hauling all those groceries every week is ridiculously exhausting. You also need to deal with the massive crowds and rude cashiers. In addition, doing grocery shopping every week is just a chore that I dislike.

Enter Yi Hao Dian, which presents a extremely nice looking website from which you can just order items online. Shipping is 1 RMB per 1 kilogram, but for each 100 RMB spent, you get a free 10 kilogram shipping discount. Really cheap! Compared to having to walk and haul all the items back by hand, I would gladly pay a couple of RMB and have people send the items to me.

The shopping experience was as easy as could be. You need to sign up an account with your email, which I found the sign up process quick, direct, and without hassle. After that you can just add items to your cart. The payment process was also easy, with options ranging from pay cash when receiving the package, use your ATM or credit card when receiving the package, and pay directly online using your credit card, bank card, or alipay.

The entire process was easy and pleasant and I received my package the next day. There is, however, one drawback. You only know the package will arrive the next day, but not what time. This means you need to have someone at home to receive it, which isn’t always convenient. The alternative would be to order the items in the weekends.

Overall though, using Yi Hao Dian really helped me free up my weekend time and I no longer need to worry about carrying all those heavy groceries back! This would be invaluable during the depths of winter. Trying to do grocery shopping in sub-zero temperatures is NOT fun!

When I first heard about the Shanghai Outlets, I thought to myself, oh well just another Chinese rip off of an American idea. I didn’t expect it to be even half as good as the prime outlet I used to go back in Ohio. I even doubted whether the famous brands would be there.

Boy was I wrong! I went to Shanghai Outlets last week and it was a stunning sight. For a moment I thought I stepped into an American outlet. The structure looked exactly the same, and my girlfriend, who’ve been to California outlets before, said it looked exactly like California’s outlet. Maybe Shanghai Outlets is owned by the same company?

There are 3 sections, with section A hosting the most expensive brands like Armani, Max Mara, Burberry, etc. Section B contains Nike, Adidas, New Balance, Nine West, Columbia, North Face, and many many more. Section C is a four story building that contains many smaller brands that I have never heard before.

What’s kind of funny is that Section C isn’t completely filled yet, there are a lot of empty spaces on the third floor and fourth floor. There’s definitely room to grow for this outlet. I heard a lot of people complain that the merchandise are not the newest and the price is not as cheap as they thought. They obviously have not been to American outlets, because that’s exactly how it is in America!

A lot of these brands are from Europe, with American brands like Gap, American Eagle, JCrew, and others all missing. For some reason, it seems that American brands have a strong resistance in coming over to China (even though all its clothes are being made here). Gap and JCrew has stores in Japan, but not China. Come on! Chinese sure have a lot of money to spend too!

Other than that, the food court is average, with KFC, some Chinese restaurants and an Italian restaurant. When I went there the food court was under rennovation and certain restaurants weren’t open. Perhaps it’s for the 2010 expo?

Commute

Getting to the outlet is very convenient. There are several lines from people square that will take you directly to the front entrance of the outlet. The bus stops are on PuAn Road (浦安路) and you can take HuQing Line (滬青專線) or HuQingYing Line (滬青盈專線). HuZhu Line (滬朱線) will also take you there but I’m not sure where the stop is.

I took HuQingYing Line and it was 8 RMB (7 RMB using the GongJiao card (公交卡) if you are switching from the subway) and it took exactly 1 hour to get there. HuQingYing Line also stops at YanAnXiLu subway station, but I would recommend going to PuAn Road because that is the first stop and you can actually find seats on the bus.

Other Outlets

From reading on the internet, there seems to be more outlets than just Shanghai Outlets. There is one called Foxtown that is operated by a swiss company.

Apparently though, there seems to be quite a bit of confusion about Foxtown, since there are three Foxtowns in Shanghai, all operated by different companies! The “real” Foxtown is the one from Switzerland, and from the website it looked pretty good. It even has a free commute bus which is awesome! I plan on going there some time in the future.

Admittedly, this post is a little late as the Stanley Cup finals are over (what a great Game 7 for the Penguins!). But what I’m about to discuss will be useful for other sports (football season is about to start soon, GOOOO BUCKS).

Watching American Sports in Shanghai

The biggest problem with watching American Sports in China is that, well, there’s no live broadcast! The only exception I can think of is Basketball (Yao Ming is huge here) and Monday Night Football. Yep, the NBA has a good history with expanding the market here in China, but the NFL? The NFL too is trying to get Chinese to watch football.

Monday Night Football unfortunately is broadcasted live on Tuesday morning here. Almost everybody I know do not watch it, because everybody’s at work. The other 2 more less popular sports MLB and NHL are non-existent in China. Nobody watches it, no live tv broadcast, not even replays.

That is a huge problem for me, since I love watching football and hockey, especially when my Ohio State Buckeyes and Columbus Blue Jackets are playing. However, with the power of the internet, it seems nothing is impossible.

Watching Live Games on the Internet

There a lot of volunteers who stream their tv signals over the internet so that people like me can watch it over the internet. The most convenient way is to go to Myp2p.eu and find “channels” who will be broadcasting the game of your choice. Last year I watched OSU got their asses handed to them by USC live over the internet. I also watched OSU beat Michigan the same way. It was enjoyable and thrilling to once again be part of the buckeye football experience.

The problem though, is the video quality. While it’s good enough so that you know what’s going on, it isn’t high def. Being spoiled by high def quality TV in America, this was a tough pill to swallow. The other problem is that the time usually is during midnight or early morning, which makes going to work the next day extremely painful.

Watching Recorded Games

I found a better way to enjoy sport games. Bittorrent! Nowadays it’s hard to find things that are not distributed via bittorrent. People record high def TV signals, encode them, and upload it on the internet. It is usually about 12 hours later from when the game begins and when the video file is on your computer.

Although it might sound like there is no point in watching a game when it’s already over, consider these arguments:

• Since you can watch the game 12 hours later, what was previously an inconvienient time for you (early morning) just became super convenient (late afternoon).
• The video quality is high def, with no lag because your internet is slow
• Since nobody in China cares about American football or Hockey, nobody will discuss the result and there’s little chance of a spoiler.
• Resisting reading about the result on ESPN is easy because you’re working during the day anyway.
• Commercials are cut and you can fast forward or pause the video.

In practice, I have found that watching high def quality games 12 hours late is just as exciting and enjoyable as watching games live. All you need to do is resist reading the headlines for 12 hours and you can enjoy the game as if it were live.

That’s how I followed the Stanley Cup playoffs from the beginning to the end and watched my hated Detroit Red Wings lose with pleasure. I signed up with nhltorrents.co.uk and got to download high def games as they were played. Their sister network hdsporttorrents.co.uk also host MLB, NBA, and European football torrents. I have yet to see if they host American football games, but even if they don’t, there’s always other sites that have them!

With bittorrent living in China no longer means you need to sacrifice the thrill of watching exciting sport matches anymore! Long live the internet!

A couple of days ago I bought a new Dahon folding bike. Living in a city like Shanghai, cars are not only expensive but also inconvienient. Traffic is crazy and parking is impossible. Even with the availability of subways, numerous locations are far away via walking. Taxi is relatively cheap, but cost can add up quick if you take a cab all the time.

The Return of the Bicycles

A stigma that a lot of people have about China is that EVERYBODY ride bikes. That is no longer true in cities like Beijing and Shanghai. However, Shanghai still maintains bike lanes for all major roads. This makes riding a bike in Shanghai quite friendly.

Riding a bike can be 5 times faster than walking, making locations easy to reach that was previous inconvienient. These past few days, I’ve found that owning a folding bike has greatly increased my mobility and the sense of freedom. Having a folding bike also makes it easy to jump into the subway and take you cross city.

Problems

The greatest problem with my folding bike is sadly its weight. While lighter than regular bikes, the weight is around 12 kg and can wear down your body fast. Perhaps this will build my muscles and after 3 months it won’t feel that bad. But having to haul the bike when transfering subway lines is not something relaxing.

The other problem is bike theft. I don’t know how frequent bikes get stolen here in Shanghai, but I would expect it to be quite high. I never leave my folding bike and always fold it and take it with me to restaurants or stores. This makes riding to a musem or shopping mall completely impossible. Perhaps one day I’ll feel secure enough to lock it outside so I can enjoy some fine art, but until that day comes, I’ll have to pass on biking to museums.

Today I finally had some time to download and install the latest Mac OS 10.5.7 update. It had been out for a couple weeks and I didn’t have the opportunity to install it until now.

Part I

Well, that was the start of a hectic day. Right after installing the update, I noticed that my HDTV’s resolution dropped to 1280 x 720. Thinking that the update probably just reset the resolution or something, I went to adjust the screen resolution.

To my surprise, the native 1366 x 768 wasn’t even on the list of resolutions. I quickly googled and found out that 10.5.7 broke the DVI resolution auto detect ability. What the hell! I couldn’t even revert back to 10.5.6 if I wanted to. My Time Machine wasn’t turned on because the back up hard drive died a couple weeks ago and I never felt the need to re-backup. Boy do I miss it now!

Using google, I found a software that would let you set your resolution to any arbitrary resolution (as long as the monitor supported it, of course). Using that, it took me about half an hour to adjust all the proper settings just to get my HDTV back to its original 1366 x 768. What a bad experience!

I know Apple likes to say its products “just work”, but releasing an “update” that breaks existing features isn’t what I had in mind. Don’t get me wrong, I still love Apple and its design taste. However, just 1 month after buying my macbook, it would randomly short circuit. It turned out it was a common problem with the first macbook generation and I had to turn my macbook in and have it fixed. Then about 2 years ago, my power adapter died too.

Now with this new hiccup, I wasn’t very happy.

Part II

Little did I know, there was more. In the afternoon, while I was surfing the internet, Mac OS suddenly told me it was running on battery power because the AC power was disconnected. I looked at my power adapter and all connections were fine. I couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t working.

Thinking maybe it had something to do with the 10.5.7 update, I googled around to see if there any results. While I was doing that, I heard this loud “pop” sound and a burnt smell emanated from the power adapter. I touched the power adapter and it was burning hot. Immediately I pulled the plug in case of any fire emergency. My power adapter, after 2 years of service, was dead – again.

Disappointed, I rushed out to see if I could buy a new adapter. This time I decided to buy an 85 watt power adapter for my macbook (which only required 60 watt) because during my google session I learned that using 85 watt wouldn’t make your power adapter as hot. I took the subway and went to Bestbuy to check it out.

Going into Bestbuy, I could only find the 45 watt power adapter for the Macbook Air, but not the 60 watt nor 85 watt. I asked the store clerk if they sold it, he said he would have to order it in. When I asked the price, he came back with the answer: 1050 RMB. Now that’s about $150, compared to $79 listed on Apple’s own website. Highway robbery! This was unacceptable.

I went to other stores to find out, and when I was desperately looking I stumbled upon a small store who specialized in Apple accessories. I went in and asked if they had the power adapters. To my delight, they said yes, they had it in store. With some trepidation, I asked how much was it. Thinking it would be around 1000 RMB, I almost jumped when they told me the 60 watt would be 470 RMB, and the 85 watt was 550 RMB. 550 RMB is right around 80 bucks, which is entirely reasonable. Bestbuy! You should be ashamed of yourself!

Back to Normal

Now that everything is back to normal, I do hope my macbook won’t keep having problems anymore. Hopefully my new 85 watt power adapter will be good for a long long time without dying. Apple’s products are amazing, but their hardware sure are a bit fragile!

Going green and eating organic is all the rage these days. In America there are Whole Foods Market that sell organic vegetables. But apparently their target audience is aimed at a more elitist group, because their prices are often almost twice as much as non-organic vegetables.

In Shanghai the thought of eating organic vegetables have never occurred to me, since there is nothing similar to Whole Foods Market here. And even if there were, I wasn’t prepared to pay the extra money to buy it. However, after a conversation with my coworkers, I have found a avenue for acquiring organic food that may convert me into an organic food enthusiast (without the high price!).

Biofarm

The name is “Biofarm”, which as far as I can tell is a chain store around the world (I saw several biofarms i different countries when I was googling it). It is an organic farm that you can “subscribe” to and have baskets of vegetables delivered to your home each week.

When you first subscribe, you need to commit yourself to 3 months, 6 months, or a year. Then each week, depending on the plan you subscribe to, you will have varying sizes of baskets with undetermined types of vegetables delivered to your home. You can specify up to 5 types of vegetables that you absolutely do not want to be included in the basket.

Plans

There 3 plans that you can subscribe to. 69 RMB, 99 RMB, or 129 RMB per week. Delivery is free for the 99 RMB plan and above. 69 RMB will give you vegetables adequate for up to 3 persons, 99 RMB up to 5 persons, and 129 RMB for over 6 persons.

You can select between a Western vegetable basket, which includes vegetables geared towards a western diet, and an Eastern vegetable basket, which includes vegetables geared towards an eastern diet. There are also organic tofu, organic eggs included for the 99 RMB ans 129 RMB baskets.

Experience

I have not yet subscribed to any plans yet, because I live alone and even the 69 RMB plan would be too much for me. I am though, trying to find someone to split the cost with me. From my coworker’s experience, the vegetables included in the 69 RMB basket is so much that 2 people can’t regularly finish it off. That seems like a pretty good deal to me!

The advantage is that you get organic food every week without leaving your home, and you’re eating healthy without the high cost ($10 a week for loads of organic vegetables per week, how can you beat that?). The disadvantage, of course, is that you don’t know what you’re getting ahead of time. If you have no idea how to cook a certain vegetable, the alternative is to give it away or throw it away (kind of wasteful). You could, though, use a blender and just jam everything in there!

My beloved grandma passed away last month. With her passing my mother’s family has lost the remaining members of the generation who moved from China during civil war. Losing her is deeply painful and we will all miss her dearly for years to come.

Shanghai Origins

My grandma was born in Shanghai and lived in the city till she was 24 years old. She belonged to a very wealthy family whose business spanned from pawnshop and banking, to commodity trading and real estate. Her family owned over a dozen apartments that occupied entire blocks. When the communist came to power, her family was one of the first to be persecuted.

A New Home in Taiwan

My grandma moved to Taiwan about 3 years before the Nationalist lost mainland China. Japan had just surrendered and returned Taiwan to China. My grandpa went to Taiwan to help reconstruction so he moved to Taiwan. My grandma would return to Shanghai for holidays and vacations.

On her last trip to Shanghai, the communist party was about to take Shanghai city. My grandpa and grandma fled the city on a military cruiser part of the Nationalist party who was fleeing to Taiwan. All the jewelry and possessions she had were left at home since they didn’t have enough time to return home. That would be my grandma’s last trip to Shanghai, she would not return to the city until 1989, when relations between Taiwan and China were (somewhat) normalized. My grandma would not see her home which she grew up in for nearly another 20 years – in 2008.

Hardships

In Taiwan she had to endure extreme poverty. All of her family’s wealth was gone, and all the maids and chefs who would perform daily routines for her in Shanghai were non-existent. She had to learn how to cook, how to clean her house, how to perform daily functions. She had to learn how to be poor.

Through of it all, I don’t sense any bitterness from her after all these years. I cannot imagine what had gone through her mind, the aspect of losing the comfortable, wealthy ways of her past, and coming to the realization that the best days of her life were already past her. The future had nothing but poverty and misery for her, but she always had an open and optimistic mind.

She always spent money as if she were still the wealthy rich girl in her teenage years, except there were just less money to spend. She never worried much about money, always saying if it was gone today, more will come tomorrow. Even I and my cousins, the third generation of the family, cannot view money as freely as she did. It often makes us wonder what our lives would have been if China didn’t go through nearly 200 hundred of external war and civil war. My grandma represented the peak of Chinese wealth and power, right before everything was lost to the communists and everybody had their wealth reset to zero.

Chinese Identity

For my family, my grandma is our link to a Chinese identity. Perhaps one of the reasons I wanted to come to Shanghai was the fact that my grandma was a Shanghainese. Shanghai always felt strangely close, like a home I’ve never lived in. My grandma had a heavy Shanghainese accent and cooked Shanghai dishes. To us, our entire family was immersed in Shanghai values and customs.

This made us feel like Chinese, even though I am currently the only member who’s ever lived in China. Our grandma made us feel entitled to feel that we were part of China, when in fact we live in an era where many people from Taiwan do not consider themselves Chinese. She was the key to our Chinese identity.

My Dear Friend

Cultural issues aside, my grandma was one of the most open elder people I’ve ever met. She would never nag or chastise our behaviors, which many old people do. This made us felt like she was always on our side, and the out-dated conservative demeanor or customs that old people forced young people to follow never applied to us. She was open to new things and would never pretend to be an expert on things she didn’t understand. She was not only my grandma, she was my good friend.

Goodbye

Losing her was extremely painful for our family, as it was for me. My grandma was the core that held our family together, and I do not know how close our family will be now that she is gone. I have, however, confidence in our family. We were a tight and cheerful family that did not have a lot of the usual Chinese family issues. I hope that in grandma’s absence we will still maintain that closeness, and always cherish the sweet memory of our grandma. Grandma will always live in our hearts.

As I wrote before, any foreigner gets to deduct their home rent off. Previously, I was told that as long as I could provide evidence that I paid for rent at the amount I stated, there would be no problem. However, a couple weeks ago I received an email stating that I had to provide an invoice for my payments. I thought that meant a written receipt from my landlord. Little did I know, an invoice is different than a receipt, and that an invoice would require the landlord to pay a 5% tax.

Unfair Tax

Naturally, the landlord resisted paying anything extra. The company who handles my taxes was very specific that if I didn’t provide them a copy of the invoice (thereby forcing the landlord to pay his taxes), they would not be able to deduct my rent from my taxable income.

As I found out from other foreigners, the landlord almost never pays the invoice tax. They always make the renter pay. The original purpose was to tax the landlord for earning capital income from their property. However, this tax gets shifted and the tenant pays the burden. I find this entirely unfair.

If the government really want to tax capital income from property owners, they should tax them annually based on their market value, much like property taxes in America. Levying taxes based on rent only allows the landlord to make the tenant pay.

Invoice Really Necessary?

One of the questions I have is why it is necessary to maintain a copy of the invoice. The tax company states that it is necessary in case the Chinese IRS wants to audit me. Since you can request an invoice for any date in the past, I don’t really understand why they need an invoice even though I might potentially never get audited. Paying this extra 5% is really annoying and unfair. I will try to figure it out in the future and see if there’s any way to avoid paying the 5%.

A couple days ago I read on BBC that England’s Virgin internet division was getting ready to roll out a 150 Mb/s fiber optic connection by 2010. I was shocked to learn that with the current maximum speed Virgin offers, the 10 Mb/s connection is only 50 RMB more expensive (in absolute dollar terms) as my 2 Mb/s fiber optic connection in China.

Chinese Telecom Monopoly

In China, there is only a couple telecom companies that provide internet service. The largest China Telecom, is controlled by the government (big surprise). It offers 1 Mb/s connection at 140 RMB, and 2 Mb/s connection at 150 RMB. In contrast, Virgin’s internet service offers 10 Mb/s at 20 pounds per month (about 200 RMB), and up to 50 Mb/s at 50 pounds per month (about 500 RMB).

In Shanghai, lots of new apartment buildings are equipped with FTTB (Fiber To The Building), which means they have fiber optic cables running up to each building, and traditional copper wire to each room. One of the advantages of using fiber optics is your upload speed is symmetric with your download speed, which isn’t the case for ADSL (the A is asymmetric). Another big advantage is fiber optics have greater speed capacity.

Incomprehensible Restrictions

If in Shanghai newer apartment buildings have fiber optics, why isn’t the speed a hell lot faster than the current 2 Mb/s I’m getting? Turns out they have restrictions on how fast personal users can receive the internet. Even though fiber optics allow us to get at least 10 Mb/s easily, the Chinese telecom companies only let you use 2 Mb/s. The higher speeds are only available to companies.

This has been most unfortunate and, frankly, an incomprehensible restriction. If I am willing to pay more to get faster internet, why shouldn’t I be allowed to? Aren’t you telecom companies after more money? Maybe you think that users won’t need more than 2 Mb/s? Why won’t you let us, the consumers, decide what we want, and not predetermine what I can want? The fact that the internet service is a whopping 150 RMB, when I could get 5 times faster with only 50 RMB more in England, is also tough to take. Bear in mind that people make a lot less money in China and are paying a lot more per 1 Mb/s of internet! This only further proves that nationalization of companies and enterprises is an invitation for inefficiencies and high prices.

Please raise the speeds!

As with many internet users, I download multimedia content 24 hours a day. I am watching the newest TV shows America is showing, as well as NBC nightly news and the Today Show every single day. I would love not have to wait for hours to get my content! If China is serious about modernization and proving to the world that it’s ready for the 21st century, it needs to start to loosen the speed limitations. You have the infrastructure, you have the technology, you have the capacity, why pull it back with non-technical restrictions?