Okay, I really want to share my China trip experience with you every day and I planned to do this. But I realized the second day I arrived: I simply can’t keep up with my changing schedule here. All my original plans and schedules have been changed almost every day and it’s still changing.

Is this a bad thing? So far, it’s actually very exciting to me and working well with what I want to do during the trip. It’s just that there are so many people, things, events, and information that come to you all the time in China…all these lead to a very interesting new schedule that you didn’t expect. So I canceled my flight, changed my meetings, even now need to change my departure date.

This is how fast China is going. I guess I’ll just follow the flow and let things lead to where I’m supposed to be.

Also, I realized that I won’t be able to share my day-to-day travel experiences with you as I planned (just remember, change is a lot faster than plan in China). So I’ll try my best to enjoy the trip for now. And I’ll share more thoughts and updates with you in separate posting when my trip ends in September.

Enjoy the excitement if that’s what you are looking for in China; Enjoy the order of life if that’s what you are looking for in US. Or I should say, enjoy both no matter where you are

Tags: china, travel

Some people want to lead a life that is predictable, simple and sortable. Some people enjoy the craziness & the richness of the disordered, unpredicted and changing life. If you are the latter, you will fall in love with Shanghai so easily!

I got extremely excited while flying over the Pacific from US to Asia and I thought heart-attach can easily be developed. Without sleeping during the 17-hour trip, my mind has been fired up like a hot engine - spinning, spinning and spinning!

Why?

I don’t know. I only know this happens to me normally when I’m physically close to places like New York City.

My first taste of Shanghai hasn’t really started yet. I arrived at 9PM at Pudong International Airport. The minute I stepped out the airport building, I said, wow-it’s humid and warm (just like what I thought). Then 30-min we drove from the airport to one recently developed home&business community center in Pudong. People were walking, shopping, and getting into the bars. My friend who picked me up said to me: the life of Shanghai just started (10PM).

Everything is so available even at night: shops, bars, people, voices, lights, street-vendor fruits, food…It must be an exciting and lovely place to be, I told myself before sleep. Well, just found out that stuff like Facebook and Twitter are NOT available! Crazy - it will be a crazy but fun place to be!~

Now, it’s 4AM Shanghai time - I had a 4-hour sleep and I guess I’m waiting for the day to start. So I can really see who Shanghai is!

Have a great weekend.

Tags: Asia, Business and Economy, china, New York City, Pacific Ocean, Pudong, Shanghai, Shanghai Pudong International Airport, travel, trip

I’m going to visit China for a month in Aug. I do want to post my trip experience here and share it with friends. One thing that I’m sure: this is not the China that I knew! Which China? It is a China that I need to re-define, re-look at, and re-understand!

One thing that I can’t decide: should I write in English or in Chinese?

So, I’ll just follow the flow - let my brain and present feeling to decide which language the post will be written.

Here is the first pre-trip conversation that’s related to my travel and it is in Chinese

今天晚上和一个朋友吃饭。他在美国呆了许多年，去年回国创业。这次回到湾区办事情。能在我回国前见个面真的是很好！他给了我些很中听的建议，我总结为 “我是骗子”：

1，不要以为你还是中国人，你已经不是中国人了；中国人都是犹太人

2，把你自己想成是骗子(总要站在对方的立场上考虑问题）。大家都假设对方（或者自己对于对方来说）是骗子；然后慢慢通过了解，通过合作才取得一步步地信任

3，多听，多了解，抱着虚心学习的态度

4，做什么都行，只要闷着头做，都能做出来

最后他又说，“没问题，你前途无限”。我听了大笑。有这样一个朋友真是不错！到了上海争取再和他吃顿饭。哈哈！

Tags: china, travel, trip, 中国

ComScore recently did a research, which found that among 40 individual countries reported by comScore, Russia has the world’s most engaged social networking audience, with the average online Russian spending 6.6 hours and viewing 1,307 pages per month.

Brazil ranked close behind Russia at 6.3 hours, followed by Canada (5.6 hours), Puerto Rico (5.3 hours) and Spain (5.3 hours). The US ranked at #9  in terms of social network engagement, with an average of 4.2 average hours and 477 pages consumed per visitor.

I was surprised at once, because I thought that the Asian countries will definitely top the ranking. But neither China, Korea, or Japan is even showing up in this top-20 list. So I looked closely and found out that this data/research doesn’t include the internet Cafe or mobile web browsing…

This is really a good example of showing how mis-leading a social networking research could be. In my opinion, this research totaly ingored the big social networking factor - how it’s being social networked. In other words, in what way people are socializing. Without Internet Cafe data, China of course will not show up; without mobile web browsing, Japan, Korea, South Africa or China will probably not show up. Because that’s how people in those countries socialize. If you cut their main social networking platform, there is no way to understand how they are engaged.

Here is the list of the top 20 countries from ComScore research:

Tags: Australia, Canada, china, ComScore, mobile, Puerto Rico, Russia, Social network service, social networking, Spain

Happy Friday!

To save time and put things in a more organized way, I decided to create some pages in this blog as my library, that captures my regular finding around the topics that I’m interested, such as Crowdsourcing, Mobile, Amazon, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and China.

I update these pages in stead of writing all different small posts. Check out these pages if you are also interested in these topics

For other topics that I have more to say, I’ll continue to write as separate posts.

Tags: amazon, china, Facebook, linkedin, mobile, Online Communities, social network, Twitter

To continue my passion and interest around Digital China theme, here are some research, online resources and tools that I want to share with you:

• Asia Pacific Digital Marketing Yearbook 2008 (digital marketing profile of Asia Pacific countries, including China)
• Web2Asia (a blog about web / mobile news & events in Asia, including China)
• China Web2.0 Review (a blog about web2.0 trend in China )

There are a lot of technology orgnizations in Bay area with the focus on China:

• Hua Yuan Science and Technology Association (network among Chinese professionals in Silicon Valley and mainland China)
• Chinese Software Professionals Association (network among Chinese software professionals in Silicon valley)
• Lots of university also have different clubs for Chinese professionals or entrepreneurs

(I’ll continue to add to this list with my other finding)

Tags: china, digigal china, resources, social networks for digital china

I am so glad that I went to the SD Forum event last night - International SIG: CHINA - INSIDER INFORMATION

It was not surprising that there are a lot of people in Silicon Valley and US are interested in China, from culture, business and all other perspectives. What encouraged me from my conversions at the event is: I really could bring a lot of value on this topic - a lot more than what I realized. It seems that my culture background as a Chinese and the fact that I now live and work in Silicon Valley is an interesting combination, given the economic time and global shift that we face. I’m planning to contribute more in this area in several ways: to help people in Silicon Valley learn and understand China, especially in technology and culture related topics; to connect the people who have interests in exploring more opportunities in Chinese market;  and to participate in the conversation and activities where I as a Chinese American techie can contribute more

Enough about my own plan. Here are some tips from me on how to look at web and mobile in China:

• Start with culture: things simply don’t work the same way in different cultures. Understanding people’s life, values and believes helps with the communication and relationship the most.
• Drill down to each industry: one character of China in general is the huge difference between regions, working classes, ages, and industries. It’s helpful to learn about the general statistics, but it’s probably more practical to dive deeper into one particular industry. Then, find out what matters / interests you the most within one industry.
• Talk to different people for different opinions: I don’t think any one has the best understanding on any single topic. The power of connecting with different people is for you to have a bigger and more complete picture of one thing/topic. Don’t get caught by one person’s opinion. Seek more ideas and get connected with more brains.

This is just the start of my series posts around the topic “China - web & mobile”. I’ll focus on some more specific topics in my upcoming postings. Stay tuned And let me know what you are interested in.

Tags: china, mobile in china, sdforum, web in china

For some of my friends who are curious about how the real Beijing looks like, here are some highlights from one blog’s survey. I agree with most of it. But I hope there will be interesting to know what the most surprising thing and the worst experiences are.

Repost: Most overrated Chinese story lines
Smog (31). Yeah, it was sci-fi horrible the first few days. And everyone obsessed on it, because there were no competitions yet and there was nothing else to do. But then it cleared, and pretty much never came back. We had a ton of blue sky the past two weeks, and the heat was overrated, too.

Most notable Chinese traits
Gold: Seriousness (34). The folks here don’t exactly cut up like, say, the Aussies in Sydney in 2000. The Olympic pastime among them was taking their picture in front of the venues, and 80 percent of them weren’t smiling for the camera. There was one moment of humor Saturday, when Jeff Duncan of the New Orleans Times-Picayune went to the Main Press Center help desk to get his going-away media gift: a genuine bronze medal. Jeff’s playing question, “Why not a gold?” was met with a surprisingly playful response from a volunteer: “Work harder next time.” That prompted The Metric Dash to chuckle and hold up a hand for a high five from the volunteer. She looked at the hand as if it were radioactive. End of high jinks.

Silver: Helpfulness (35). The Chinese service industry generally bent over backward to please. Of course, when you have volunteers on every street corner, in every hotel lobby and crawling around every venue, things tend to work well. One thing China never runs out of is manpower. One night at the patio bar of The Metric Dash’s hotel, there were 17 patrons and 15 workers. Not too difficult to get a waiter’s attention with a ratio like that.

Bronze: Diligence (36). One night, The Metric Dash left his BlackBerry in the back of a cab, and figured it was lost forever. Yet, 24 hours later, a note was in the hotel room inquiring about ownership of said BlackBerry. How the cabbie and the hotel managed to track down The Metric Dash remains a mystery. Regardless, it’s not the kind of thing you see happening in Manhattan every lunar eclipse. (The flip side of that anecdote was the dozen cab drivers who meandered around Beijing, hopelessly lost. The Metric Dash has never seen so many cabbies with no idea where anything is.)

Best Chinese things to experience
Gold: The Great Wall (37). Nothing else like it, anywhere.

Silver: The Silk Market (38). This is full-contact shopping like nothing in the Western world. It’s five stories of booths manned by astonishingly aggressive shopgirls, who literally will grab you and drag you into their micro-store in an attempt to sell you everything from shirts to jeans to shoes to luggage to, yes, silk dresses. Once you’re in, expect a hard-core bartering battle conducted on a calculator — you pressing buttons, them countering — with prices starting at roughly 10 times what you might end up paying if you play hardball. The saleswomen alternate between flirtation and anger, depending on how the negotiations are going.

Bronze: Opening Ceremony (39). They sure seemed great, back before we heard how much was fake and how badly some of the participants were treated. But the flame-lighting remains an all-time show stopper.

The original post is here.

Tags: beijing, china, olympic

I was on a business trip in San Diego. No body really mentioned anything about Olympic during the 2-day web seminar that I was there for. It’s funny how one cop at the SD airport who actually paid a lot more attention to the Olympic.

(San Diego airport, 8:30am)

Me: excuse me, Sir. Do you know how I can get to the taxi area across the street?

Cop: Sure. Just fly over! It’s Olympic time.

Me: Oh, Okay. I wish I could.

Cop: I’m going to marry you if you could. BTW, are you married…I’m just kidding

Me: You will be disappointed not only because I’m married, but also that I really don’t know how to fly, even it’s Olympic game time.

Cop: You are really a fun person…Do you see that bridge across the street? Go straight and take the elevator…

He really made my day by being open to the world and fun to run into.

Tags: beijing, china, olypic beijing

Stunning Stunning Stunning Beijing Olympic Opening Ceremony

Story of the oldest cultuer in the world was told through the newest technology.

Director of the openning ceremony said that there are three things the show tried to deliver: 激情(Passion)、浪漫(Romance)、梦幻(Dream).

Hard to describe in words and hard to show in pictures. You have to see it from NBC’s live Video. (it has better video quality than youtube.)

Congratulations, Beijing!

Tags: beijing, china, olympic