CN Reviews

Wild Card Zheng Jie Eliminated from Wimbledon

Kai Pan — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 11:08:36 +0800

China’s Zheng Jie, was finally eliminated from the Wimbledon’s women’s singles tennis yesterday, losing to #6 Serena Williams (USA). This was following a historic run that saw her upsetting top seeded Ana Ivanovic’s (Serbia) in Round 3 and defeating #18 Nicole Vaidisova (Czech Republic) in Tuesday’s Quarter-Finals. Ranked #133 in the world, she entered the prestigious event as a wild card and became the first Chinese player to break into the Semi-Finals.

The Chengdu native’s surprise performance captivated a nation, known more for table tennis, as Chinese around the country tuned into late-night live broadcasts both on TV and on their computers. I watched the repeatedly rain-interrupted game on the computer last night. I probably would’ve gotten this up earlier had I not immediately gone to sleep, disappointed as I was by Zheng Jie losing the tie-breaker to Serena…with an anti-climactic double-fault. Dammit. Bursting with pride, China Daily even has a poll up today asking if Zheng will win a medal at August’s Olympic Games.

In the news:

Changes In Tiananmen Square

Meg Stivison — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 11:55:33 +0800

Two of my college friends are visiting us in Beijing right now, so we’ve been making the tourist rounds. Climbing the Great Wall, exploring the Forbidden City, eating Beijing duck and haggling at the Silk Market are all on this month’s agenda.

It’s still a bit bizarre for this Jersey girl to be a guide to Beijing attractions, but I’ve been noticing subtle changes in tourist spots over the past few years. In preparation for the Olympic visitors, Beijing is getting better English signage (or perhaps I’m adjusting, since my visiting friends saw plenty of photo-worthy Chinglish), more restrooms, more rubbish bins and some attempts at lining up. There have been changes everywhere, but when we visited Tiananmen Square, I was stunned at the difference.

On my first visit to Tiananmen, in 2006, I was mobbed by sellers of paper kites, postcards, bilingual maps. It was sensory overload, but in a delightful, uniquely Beijing kind of way. Hawkers offered discount tours to the Great Wall, pulled Mao watched out of their jackets, or quietly offered my male friends special services. Families munched on dumplings or fruit as they walked around. I spoke to lots of “art students” who really really wanted to take me their exhibit.

But yesterday’s visit was much quieter. The sellers of postcards and Mao paraphernalia are all gone, from the square itself and the pedestrian access tunnels under the street (I bet transit guru David has a much better word for those!). It seemed like no one was eating, although there were a couple parked vans selling chips and drinks. No one tried to drag me to an art show… ok, i didn’t really miss that bit. A smaller, milder crowd milled around taking photos.

This wasn’t the first time I’ve seen guards posted at every entrance to Tiananmen, but last time they waved us through, and only stopped a few people with large bags, probably to make sure they weren’t carrying in kites and postcards and maps to hawk in the square. Yesterday, we were all stopped, and our camera bags and purses were examined by a polite guard. There was nothing invasive or unpleasant about the process, one of the guards saw my Mandarin phrasebook in my purse and put my Chinese conversational skills to the test! But it’s a huge change from the Tiananmen carnival three years ago.

A trip to the Great Wall is planned for the next blue sky day, and I’m really interested to see if the Badaling vendors have been moved on as well.

Beijing Capital International Airport Express(way) Guide (PEK)

David Feng — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 11:18:02 +0800

OK, so you’ve just landed at Beijing’s Capital International Airport (PEK). Welcome to China! So, what’s next? Into Beijing you go.

Wait. There’s got to be a way for you to get from A to B — in this case, from Beijing Airport into “the Jing”, as they say.

Beijing Airport used to be a remote outpost — far beyond the reach of any ring road until 2002. Just recently, the airport itself has been boxed up — by a ring expressway network. New towns are planned north and east of the airport.

How times have changed.

Click the image for a bigger map (Airport transit network relative to central Beijing)
Click the image for a bigger map (Airport freeway network).Destination: Central Beijing (e.g. CBD & Wangfujing)
Route: Airport Freeway or 2nd Airport Freeway This is the path the great majority of you will take. Most of you probably aren’t heading to the Great Wall next to the reservoir in northern Beijing — yet; you’ve got, instead, a hotel room waiting for you. We hear you.If your destination is somewhere more CBD-ish or near eastern urban Beijing (around the eastern 4th Ring Road 四环), you might be better served with the new, sure-not-to-be-clogged-up 2nd Airport Freeway (机场第二高速). It’s actually supposed to be called the Airport East Freeway, geo-wise, but there you go anyways. This new freeway opened fresh on Summer Solstice 2008, which for those of you who prefer nitty-gritty figures actually turns out to be June 21, 2008.
If your destination is more a la central Beijing — Tian’anmen, Wangfujing, Chang’an Avenue — you’ll be served by the oldie-but-goldie Airport Freeway (机场高速). The Airport Freeway is a tad more crowded — the thing’s been there for about the best part of 16 years — but it’ll get to your destination in central Beijing. If you’re staying in the hotel cluster on the northeastern 3rd Ring Road, take the Airport Freeway; it’s closer to the whole cluster.Destination: The West, Northwest, or North (e.g. the Great Wall)
Route: Airport North Freeway (机场北线)If, however, your first destination, as a matter of fact, is the Great Wall next to the reservoir in northern rural Beijing, your ticket is the Airport North Freeway (机场北线) . The Airport North Freeway links you to the Jingcheng (Beijing-Chengde) Freeway, which heads into northern rural Beijing’s Huairou District. (Not a lot of five-star hotels there.)

If you’re heading further west, you’ll need to switch on over to the 6th Ring Road heading counterclockwise when the duo (Jingcheng Freeway and 6th Ring Road) meet. This is the direction for you if you happen to be going to western Beijing’s Mentougou District. No idea where that is? Tanzhe Temple — anyone? This is supposed to be the temple in Beijing that predated Beijing.

And if you’re living next to the Great Wall (as in the Commune by the Great Wall), you’ll take the same route, except that you’ll head onto the Badaling Freeway (八达岭高速) a bit after getting on the 6th Ring Road. The Badallineing Freeway is true to its name — this is the freeway that gets you to The Wall!Access to the Airport North Freeway is a bit complex at best.

If you’re coming in from Terminal 2, you’ll need to head via Terminal 1 to connection roads to the freeway. If you hail from Terminal 3 — you’ll need to reach Terminal 2 and 1 (in that order — to the shock of mathematicians) before you set flight on the Airport North Freeway. If you’re landing in Beijing’s Terminal 1, you’re all set. Just follow the signs for the Airport North Freeway. Life sure is easy for T1-ers.

Destination: The East or Northeast (e.g. Pinggu District)
Route: Airport South Freeway followed by Jingping or Jingcheng Freeways

So what if your arrival in the Chinese capital sees peach-picking in eastern Beijing’s Pinggu District as the first must-do item on the agenda? Or where should you head to (freeway-wise) if you long to see the Great Wall at Simatai (think: mountain + Great Wall on top)?

In this case, you’ll be served well by the Airport South Freeway (机场南线). Head further east until Litian Bridge. This is where you’ll have to make up your mind.

Continue, by all means, further east if you’re headed to peach-populated Pinggu District (does this thing sound too close to the Swiss penguin comic series Pingu? Then again, we digress.) You’ll be on the Jingping (Beijing-Pinggu) Freeway before long.

But make a turn onto the 6th Ring Road headed north and head onto the Jingcheng Freeway later if you’ll be making it into Miyun — and the Great Wall at Simatai. (Actually, there are about a million and one more great scenic spots in the northeast, but we’ll leave that for another day.)

Destination: The South (e.g. Daxing)
Route: Airport South Freeway (机场南线) followed by 6th Ring Road

Got an invitation to Panggezhuang, Daxing, aka Watermelon Heaven? Or what if you’ve been invited to that great big Beijing Economic Technological Development Area in Yizhuang (亦庄)? (This actually could happen to you — especially if FDI + biz = your trip to the Chinese capital.) All those wonders are in southern Beijing.

And you’ll need to get to these places. Right. It’s time to head onto the Airport South Freeway and head further east. Once again, before long, you’re confronted with this massive Litian Bridge.

The trick here is to turn right and head clockwise onto the ringway. Before long (a la a couple dozen kilometers or more), you’ll be in southern Beijing.

Zukunftsmusik: The Airport Express (轨道交通机场线)

Click the image for a bigger map.All right, we hear you. All you want to do is to get into Beijing — downtown Beijing — nothing more, nothing less.There is an incredibly easy way to reach central Beijing straight from the airport. (Note, however, that this will not get you to “outward” places such as the city suburbs. But that’ll be good for about 90+% of you anyways.) It’s called the Airport Express (轨道交通机场线), and by the time July 2008 rolls around, you’ll be able to take this express train into Beijing. This special, airport-optimized line of the Beijing Subway network will be reality pre-Olympics. Think of it as the airport-to/from-central-Beijing train.

Fares haven’t been finalized for the service — it’s not going to be cheap (RMB 25 or RMB 30 are on the table). But at the end of the day, it’ll be the only way into Beijing where you are absolutely guaranteed that you’ll be kept out of Beijing’s best road export: jams galore.The Airport Express will link central Beijing to Terminal 3 within just 16 minutes, and Terminal 2 from Dongzhimen (东直门), central Beijing is no more than 25 minutes away. The distance between Dongzhimen and Beijing Airport is 23 km by car. It presently costs RMB 16 for airport express bus and RMB 70 by taxi.

Trains leave pretty frequently (about 8 to 10 minutes is what we’re hearing, although we’re not too sure yet). Into Beijing, you get to change at Sanyuanqiao for Line 10 bound for Zhongguancun and the CBD or at Dongzhimen for the inner city loop line (Line 2) or the outer suburbs loop (Line 13).

There are 4 stops along the express rail link: Terminal 3, Terminal 2, Sanyuanqiao (三元桥) and Dongzhimen. Dongzhimen will be the final city terminus. The Infrastructure Powers That Be, fully recognizing the current transport mélange at Dongzhimen, are putting the touching pieces to the Dongzhimen Transport Hub. The Airport Express will come into the hub on Basement Level 4, with Lines 2 and 13 a few floors above. You’ll actually be able to follow the signs and complete the interchange without ever seeing a ray of light (sun or moon). After the Games, you’ll even be able to check in your bags from Dongzhimen.And when it opens, this will be one sweet service.

Now before you daydream your way into the Airport Express — get packin’! Come to Beijing! (I know, we have a sub-optimal visa policy, but if you’re prepared in full — we should be able to see you in the capital!)

Ping An Credit Cards, 10 RMB Movies, and Kung Fu Pandas

Kai Pan — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 00:50:36 +0800

I’m getting a little embarrassed that so many of my posts here have been prompted by those fine folk over at China Law Blog and, embarassingly, this post won’t be an exception. Dan cited an article from Wednesday’s Shanghai Daily reporting that the number of credit cards in China have nearly doubled, up to 104.73 million in circulation nation-wide. That’s 1/3 of the United States population and just imagine how many credit cards those 300 million debt-ridden over-consuming Americans have…each!

While that news in of itself is squarely in the “hm, that’s interesting” category, it immediately reminded me of my night out at the movies the day before, where I went to watch Dreamworks’ Kung Fu Panda (功夫熊猫)…for the second time.

Now, watching movies in China on the big screen at a theatre or cinema (as opposed to watching it off a bootleg DVD) is still relatively expensive for most locals. On average, it costs 70-80 RMB per ticket, comparable to American box office ticket prices of 9-10 USD. Given that necessities like a filling meal can be had for under 10 RMB and the average monthly income (in Shanghai) is still 2000-3000 RMB, watching the latest screening is an exorbitant luxury. Therefore, as you can imagine, the cinemas here aren’t exactly packed even on weekends or when big blockbusters debut. Watching a movie here can be a very lonely experience. Compared to the lines, mobs, and subsequent front-row, whiplash seating often associated with watching the latest movie in the States, I often wonder just how the cinemas in China manage to stay in business with so little patronage.

Perhaps one method these cinemas use to stay afloat is by offering half-price tickets on certain weekdays, most commonly Tuesdays. It also brings bourgeois amusements within reach of the proletariat masses. Having lived in China for so long where I can purchase so many things for so little, I’ve become something of a cheapskate and now measure all Western prices by how many meals off the street I could instead buy in China. Just earlier this month, when visiting Los Angeles, I felt like a royal ass for thinking the Chipotle burrito I treated an old friend to was an extravagant sum of money. But hey, when in Rome, do as the Romans do, right? So, whenever I declare a movie to be worth more than a Bit Torrent download, I’ll go to the cinemas here in China and I’ll usually go on half-price Tuesdays because 40 RMB is still 50% better than 80 RMB.

Normally, even half-price Tuesdays rarely brings out the crowds. So imagine my surprise when I walked into massive lines at the box office this past Tuesday. At first, I figured it was all due to the awesome bodacity of pandas and kung-fu. After all, despite utterly ridiculous attempts to prevent the movie from being shown in China on the pretenses of it being from Beijing Olympics traitor Steven Spielberg and the culture-thieving, Sharon Stone spawning Hollywood, the movie has been very well-received in China. The Chinese were probably out in force to support a movie that paid homage to two wildly popular icons of Chinese culture. Great date movie too.

But the teeming crowds weren’t just out because Kung Fu Panda was promising entertainment…no, the teeming crowds were out because so many of them were armed with new-fangled Ping An Bank credit cards. In what can only be described as a fit of ingenious marketing, recent applicants for Ping An Bank credit cards are entitled to use their cards to watch movies at the cinema on any day for only 10 RMB a ticket. It is the perk of the century, single-handedly invigorating the cinema business with a deluge of movie-going masses clamoring for a taste of the high life.

I heard about this awesome deal weeks ago and despite strong entreaties from a friend that I apply for a card, I just haven’t been able to shake the probably unwarranted unease I feel towards applying for credit in China. It irked her to no end that she couldn’t apply because she already ruined her credit by being stupid while I could but simply refused to do so. Vindicated by the lines of people happily waiting to use their cards to purchase 10 RMB tickets, she slammed me with her incredulity yet again. My only solace was that there was only one ridiculously long line for those using Ping An credit cards and four very short non-promotional lines for the rest of us. Suckers.

Even so, we had to wait two hours for the next showing with any decent seats left. It was the closest the Chinese cinema experience has ever gotten to what I took for granted in the States, and the credit goes to pandas and Ping An Bank kung fu.

So, what do you think? Is the 10 RMB movie ticket promotion worth getting another credit card I don’t plan on using?

Baixing.com - Kijiji.cn becomes the People’s Classifieds

elliottng — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 22:36:21 +0800

I consider Wang Jianshuo one of my blogging mentors, and I read on his blog about the announcement that Kijiji.cn is changing to Baixing.com (百姓网):

Baixing logo

Kijiji logo

Baixing screenshot

Kijiji screenshot

Baixing.com seems like a great name for China

Baixing (百姓) is reminiscent of the term lao bai xing (老百姓), or literally “old hundred surnames” and can be used to refer to the “ordinary people” or “commoners.” This is meant in a positive way, like “people power” or “The People.” As such, the name seems very populist, and very Chinese. Kijiji, on the other hand, is a completely foreign name that means “village” in Swahili. So maybe to Chinese the new brand means “The People’s Classifieds Network” or something like that!
History: Kijiji started in March, 2005

Wang Jianshuo joined Kijiji around March, 2005. At that time, Kijiji was just getting started. According to Wikipedia, Kijiji launched in March 2005. China was one of the initial launch categories at the time. Here is a picture from the Wayback Machine of Kijiji.com on March 6, 2005:

Today: Kijiji in the United States

Meanwhile, eBay Live is going on in Chicago and eBay (the owner of Kijiji worldwide) just issued a press release celebrating Kijiji’s launch in the US (h/t AuctionBytes):

Kijiji will mark its one-year anniversary in the U.S. online classifieds market and commemorate its success of reaching more than four million unique visitors per month. This milestone clearly positions Kijiji well ahead of most major competitors who have targeted the online classifieds market. With the goal of creating a free, clean, and easy-to-use online classifieds platform for local communities, Kijiji has exceeded expectations with phenomenal growth and adoption since the site went live on June 29, 2007.

So clearly eBay is not abandoning Kijiji worldwide…yet.

Question: Are international brands an asset or a liability in China?

The big question this name change raises is: is an international brand an asset or a liability in China, and in which categories? Clearly you can identify foreign brands that have cachet, especially in luxury goods. But what about internet brands?

Kijiji has been in the market for 3 years, and is the dominant classifieds site in Shanghai. They have been building the Kijiji brand for over 3 years. The classified business is competitive, and Kijiji competes with many classifieds players including Ganji (赶集), Koubei (口碑), and Taobao (淘宝). This change suggests that a good local brand that is memorable, easily recognizable and has some Chinese meaning and positive connotations was worth the switch.

The other implication is that Kijiji failed to build sufficient brand preference in the last 3 years such that the switching cost of changing to a new brand was low relative to the benefit of a good brand foundation for the future.

Last year, Wang Jianshuo also highlighted some of the historical reasons why classifieds was not popular in China in the past, and his belief in why that will change in the future. Many of the reasons offered were because of historical restrictions around where to live and where to work. Many of those restrictions are now gone, and Chinese have the same needs as people in other countries to buy and sell things. So this change may also be driven by a belief that there is a great future for classifieds in China and it is not too late to make.

Congratulations to Wang Jianshuo for driving this decision and doing what he felt was right for China. It was probably a difficult decision for an international company like Ebay to make and I can only imagine the amount of convincing that he had to make.

Here are some pictures from the Baixing office from our recent visit!

Baixing.com office building:

Jianshuo Wang, Head of Baixing.com and blogger at Wangjianshuo.com

View from the Baixing office down onto the grounds of the Shanghai Jiaotong University Xujiahui campus (SJTU):

Congratulations again Jianshuo!

Duplicated Contents Problem, Be Careful!

Min Guo — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 22:27:20 +0800

Duplicated contents is not a new topic. We all know that it is not good for your site.

SEOmoz has categorized this problem into “issue” and “penalty” here. An “issue” is created when Google or other search engines don’t know how to index and rank the same piece of content on different domain. Rand Fish summarized how to know if you are having an issue or getting penalized:

Penalties require a good bit of abuse to go into effect, but I’ve seen it happen, even on domains from respectable brands. The penalties really arise when you start copying hundreds or thousands of pages from other domains and don’t have a considerable amount of unique content of your own.

Recently, CN Reviews has experienced one of this duplicated content problem - between an issue and a penalty. I want to share with you and hope it is helpful for you to maintain a healthy blog.

Symptom of sickness:

CNReviews can’t rank at the first place on Google for title tag. In fact, a RSS feed aggregator site called virtualreview.org ranked on all our title tags during that period.
The ranking of some keywords dropped dramatically. See below. Obviously, our ranking for “airport” dropped dramatically during May 16 - Jun 8.

Trouble shooting process:

I started to “blame” a plugin we installed recently which is to create “sticky posts”. So I deactivated.
I signed up Google Webmaster Tool and look at CNReviews from the eye of Google (bot). It is a two-step process.Sign up here and upload a verification file to your site’s root directory. And soon I found out there were a few hundred pages URLs ended with “?wpcf7=json”. For example, we have a page called: cnreviews.com?wpcf7=json which is extractly the same as cnreviews homepage. According to WebTalk, this is a problem created by a Wordpress plugin called “Contact Form 7″ which we have installed since the blog launched.

Solutions

Deactivated the Contact Form 7 plugin.
I used the “disallow” command to block Google bot from indexing the pages have “?wpcf7=json”. It is very easy to compile this robots.txt file once you get into Google Webmaster Tools and follow the instructions.

So far, I think we have solved the problem as you can see the searched for “airport” going up again. But why Google, such an intelligent search engine, indexes pages like this. The code “?wpcf7=json” is only used in AJAX submitting (POST) process by the plugin? And why this issue didn’t float up as a problem earlier? I don’t know the answers from technical standpoint, but this problem became visible after we got the traffic spikes from Sichuan Earthquake Donation Guide.

Lessons Leaned:

Do more research about the plugins before installing.
Monitor your metrics, especially when you have a spike in traffic; a larger data set tell you more stories. If you find something unusual, do some sample queries to see if your ranking of past top keywords drop.
Sign up Google Webmaster Tool and see if you have any duplicated contents indexed by Google.

Supernova 2008: Does the Gamers’ Disposition apply to Chinese Gamers?

elliottng — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 00:56:46 +0800

I attended a panel at the Supernova 2008 conference entitled “All the World’s A Game” and then posted about it at length on the UpTake blog. The panel was meant to answer the following questions:

Massively multiplayer online games offer glimpses of how social interactions and work will develop in the Network Age. What can they teach us? How can businesses and online communities leverage insights from virtual worlds to develop more effective systems and practices?

At CNReviews we’ve blogged about Gaming in a Strange Land and China Vortex has some great posts about the sordid reality (and some more choice words here in part 2) of the Chinese internet cafe and by extension the Chinese internet user.

I posted detailed notes on this panel on the UpTake blog. I won’t repost the whole post here. But I wanted to highlight Professor Douglas Thomas’ thesis that the Five Characteristics of the Gaming Disposition can help gamers deal with the workplace of the future better than non gamers. Do these apply to Chinese gamers?

source: The Guardian UK

Five Characteristics of the Gaming Disposition

Douglas Thomas’ thesis is well described on a post on the Harvard Business School Publishing Blog here. I will excerpt from this liberally below:

1. Gamers are bottom-line oriented

From the HBS post:

Today’s online games have embedded systems of measurement or assessment. Gamers like to be evaluated, even compared with one another, through systems of points, rankings, titles, and external measures. Their goal is not to be rewarded but to improve. Game worlds are meritocracies where assessment is symmetrical (leaders are assessed just as players are), and after-action reviews are meaningful only as ways of enhancing individual and group performance.

2. Gamers understand the power of diversity

From the post:

Diversity is essential in the world of the online game. One person can’t do it all; each player is by definition incomplete. The key to achievement is teamwork, and the strongest teams are a rich mix of diverse talents and abilities. The criterion for advancement is not “How good am I?”; it’s “How much have I helped the group?” Entire categories of game characters (such as healers) have little or no advantage in individual play, but they are indispensable members of every team.

3. Gamers thrive on change

From the post:

Nothing is constant in a game; it changes in myriad ways, mainly through the actions of the participants themselves. As players, groups, and guilds progress through game content, they literally transform the world they inhabit. Part of the gamer disposition is grounded in an expectation of flux. Gamers do not simply manage change; they create it, thrive on it, seek it out.

4. Gamers see learning as fun

From the post:

For most players, the fun of the game lies in learning how to overcome obstacles. The game world provides all the tools to do this. For gamers, play amounts to assembling and combining tools and resources that will help them learn. The reward is converting new knowledge into action and recognizing that current successes are resources for solving future problems.

5. They tend to “Marinate on the Edge”

From the post:

Finally, gamers often explore radical alternatives and innovative strategies for completing tasks, quests, and challenges. Even when common solutions are known, the gamer disposition demands a better way, a more original response to the problem. Players often reconstruct their characters in outrageous ways simply to try something new. Part of the gamer disposition, then, is a desire to seek and explore the edges in order to discover some new insight or useful information that deepens one’s understanding of the game.

I have a feeling that the theory that multiplayer gaming cultivates this kind of behavior is a little utopian. These behaviors may be great qualities that successful gamers have, but I’m not sure that games actually create these behaviors. On the other hand, these qualities seem to be what it takes to be successful in China. Let me rephrase and see if it fits:

Successful people in China are bottom-line oriented
successful people in China understand the power of diversity
Successful people in China thrive on change
Successful people in China see learning as fun
Successful people in China “marinate on the edge”

Seems to fit pretty well, eh? Or at least 1,3, and 5 do in my mind. Doesn’t mean you should hang out in s—holes and firetraps to cultivate these qualities!

Certainly for foreigners coming to China, I see these 5 characteristics as helpful. Maybe that is why Sinosplice says that Living in China is like an RPG, and Tom Melcher says that China is like a video game and why Meg Stivison says that China is Like being the protagonist in a fantasy novel. (also on Meg Stivison’s new blog).

Beijing Subway Line 8 - The Olympic Venues Connector

David Feng — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 23:58:41 +0800

Beijing’s Subway Line 8 is nearly reality. With a wait of less than a month to go — Line 8 is reality with Line 10 and the Airport Express — the new Subway lines will open up in early July 2008. (Note that they once said “late June 2008″, but they moved it back…)

Don’t, by any chance, discount Line 8. Without Line 8, you won’t be able to get to the Olympic venues. This line is about a million times more important than Lines 1 (running underneath Chang’an Avenue), 2 (running in circles inside central Beijing) or any other Subway line.

Line 8 — The Olympic Branch Line

When Beijing won the Olympics in 2001, the world was already watching. Beijing had to find somewhere to entertain the world in seven years’ time; in 2003, the Olympic Green was chosen as the place. Situated at the northernmost end of Beijing’s 25 km long north-south axis, this bit of Beijing is sandwiched between the northern 3rd Ring Road and the northern 5th Ring Road (part of the Forest Park, in fact, spill out over the 5th Ring Road) and is big — coming in at a handsome 1,159 acres.

So it soon dawned upon the Subway people that they had to serve the 1,159 Olympic Green. No sweat: The Subway Powers that Be cooked up Line 10, running a semi-arc from the Zhongguancun (中关村) tech hub in northwestern Beijing and went east into the Beijing CBD. The really smart thing was that they added an interchange halfway through the northern part of Line 10 — to link with the future Olympic line.

The Olympic line was originally designed to be part of Line 10 — and was supposed to be this tiny bit that jutted into the north. There wasn’t really much use for the line, apart from two months of Olympic fever in 2008. The 4 km-ish Line 8 has every potential to become a real Subway dragon, with all extensions in place.

Ah. Here’s the good bit. The Olympic line was renamed Line 8, stripped of its Olympic-only name, and became a separate line. The newly-renamed Line 8 then took a life of its own — with extensions further north and south to come long after the Games were finished.

Fellow riders will be pleased to know that the flat RMB 2 fee for all lines (except for the Airport Express) will work very well on Line 8.

Click the image for a bigger map.Getting To Line 8: Getting to Line 8 is not the easiest thing you’ll be able to do — the only direct way to Line 8 is if you’re taking Line 10. (Line 10 runs from Zhongguancun, the tech hub in northwestern Beijing, all the way through to the CBD in eastern urban Beijing, but does an arc more than a straight line service.)
Line 8 entrances look very different from other Subway entrances in Beijing From a few “big” places in Beijing, this is how you reach Line 8 in 2008:

Tian’anmen Square ( 天安门): Take Line 1 eastbound to Pingguoyuan; change at Dongdan for Line 5. Take the Line 5 train northbound to Tiantongyuan North, and change again at Huixinxijie Nankou for Line 10. Take the Line 10 train to Bagou, and finally exit at Beitucheng (two stops). Change at Beitucheng for Line 8.
Beijing Capital Airport (PEK) : When the Airport Express opens in early July 2008, exit at Sanyuanqiao (三元桥) and change to Line 10. Take the Line 10 train to Bagou (巴沟), and change at Beitucheng for Line 8.
Beijing Railway Station: Take Line 2 for just a stop further west (to Chongwenmen). Then change at Chongwenmen for Line 5. At Chongwenmen, take the Line 5 train northbound to Tiantongyuan North, and change again at Huixinxijie Nankou for Line 10. Take the Line 10 train to Bagou, and finally exit at Beitucheng (two stops). Change at Beitucheng for Line 8.
Temple of Heaven (tiantan,天坛): Take the Line 5 train northbound to Tiantongyuan North, and change again at Huixinxijie Nankou for Line 10. Take the Line 10 train to Bagou, and finally exit at Beitucheng (two stops). Change at Beitucheng for Line 8.Wangfujing (王府井): Follow the instructions for Tian’anmen Square.
CBD (Chaoyang Guomao area): Take the Line 10 train to Bagou, and finally exit at Beitucheng. Change at Beitucheng for Line 8.
Zhongguancun: Take the Line 10 train to Jinsong, and exit at Beitucheng. Change at Beitucheng for Line 8.

Stops And Sights

Here are some good sights near the main Line 8 stations:

• Beitucheng (北土城): Just west of Beitucheng is the Chinese Ethnic Culture Park (a.k.a.China Nationalities Museum 中华名族博物馆/园), where all of China’s 56 ethnic groups are showcased. You’ll get to see buildings representative of different ethnicities — a good chance to immerse yourself in a bit of Chinese history. See, the Han majority (at about 92%) doesn’t really tell the whole story about China — ethnic-wise. The remaining 55 have equally interesting stories to tell.

• Olympic Sports Center (奥林匹克体育中心) and Olympic Green (奥林匹克公园): These stops are close to the major venues, including the Bird’s Nest, aka the National Stadium, and the Water Cube, aka the National Aquatics Center. Exit at the first stop (Sports Center) for the Bird’s Nest and the Water Cube; exit at the second (Olympic Green) for the National Indoor Stadium and other venues in the park.

Cliché already? If you must… the Bird’s Nest…• South Gate of Forest Park (森林公园南门) : Enter the Olympic Forest Park through its south gate here. We’re talking about a forest park covering over half of the entire area of the Olympic Green. Spanning 680 hectares (the whole Olympic Green is “just” 1,159 hectares), the Forest Park is huge — and is all green. There’s even a pedestrian-only bridge over the 5th Ring Road — they didn’t do “Green Olympics” just for the heck of it! All of these sights should be open by the time the Games are in Beijing.

Good Connections

The main transfer point on Line 8 is the massive interchange at Beitucheng. South of Beitucheng, the Olympic Green is no more.If you’re heading on to Line 8 from Line 10, follow the signs and enter a T-shaped interchange — down the stairs you go into the green Line 8 (distinguished from the (what must be) Mac OS X Aqua Line 10).

You’ll be pleased to know that Lines 8 and 10 all use central platforms — so use the full width of the entire platform, and don’t just crowd yourselves at the far ends of the platform.There is also good signage for those making their way back to Line 10. Unlike those heading to Line 8, you’ll have to pick your destination if you’re transferring back to Line 10.

Zukunftsmusik

Line 8 is, by all means, the measliest of all Subway lines as we have it right now. However, the whole line should come with a huge WATCH THIS SPACE line, as up to three extensions could see this being the line through all of Beijing.

In the first extension, Line 8 will expand further north to Huoying North and south through to Meishuguan East Street, near the Art Gallery. The northern extension will bring Subway services to Huilongguan, which is a massive community in the northern suburbs. Meanwhile, the southern extension will bring services to Houhai, not far from the Houhai Bar Street in central Beijing, and finally end near the Art Gallery — just northeast of the Forbidden City.

When that’s all said and done, Line 8 might make a further extension further south to somewhere near Nanyuan Airport. This, though, isn’t likely to start until 2015 at the very earliest. The southern link will bring services through to Qianmen in the heart of Beijing (just to the south of Tian’anmen), as well as Yongdingmen Gate, and finally all the way to Nanyuan Airport, which is the second largest airport in Beijing (although it’s measly if compared with Beijing Capital).

Finally, Line 8 is almost certain to head into eastern urban Changping, in northern suburban Beijing. This part is north of Huilongguan, and is to be a university area in the north. The northernmost extension still has no timetable, but is pretty much a near-done deal.

So there you have it — Line 8 of the Beijing Subway. Not really big when you take a look at it in 2008, but hey, this guy’s got room to grow!

Supernova 2008: Three insights about distributed conversations from FriendFeed, CoComment, Seesmic

elliottng — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 09:23:49 +0800

I’m at a Supernova panel called Liquid Conversations that is generally about the migration of comments and participants away from the blog and to other venues, like Seesmic, CoComment, Twitter, FriendFeed , Disqus. It started out as “Who Owns My Comments 101″ and then went in some other interesting directions.

Dave McClure moderated the panel. Social media A-Listers Loic LeMeur (Seesmic), Matt Colebourne (CoComment), Bret Taylor (FriendFeed), and David Sifry (OffBeat Guides previously Technorati).

1. Fragmentation is our friend, not our enemy

So far, the most interesting example was given by Bret Taylor , founder of FriendFeed. When Barack Obama gained the delegates needed for the Democratic candidates, 1000s of conversations about the nomination cropped up on FriendFeed. But because the distribution of these discussions were fragmented across many different posts and shared items, they became more:

semi-private or at least opt-in
more intimate
more in depth or meaningful
anchored by more shared context or at least a real identity

These became more useful than “people yelling at each other” in the comments section of the NewYorkTimes website.

Bret called this the “power of distributed conversation” and is a very subtle point that helps explain why Twitter and FriendFeed have been so useful as a selective and personalized information filter for people.

Implications for designers of social applications: Fragmentation helps people come up with a much more personalized set of conversations, and insures that they don’t get drowned out by the loudest and most common news and information that floods all channels. Don’t make it TOO easy to find people, and don’t make it TOO easy to find the most popular feeds. Create space for a more idiosyncratic, personal space.

2. Soon we will have the rise of the celebrity commenter and comment DJ artist

According to Matt Colebourne of CoComment, just as we had the rise of celebrity bloggers, we will in the future have celebrity commenters or as Dave McClure sez, “comment DJ artist.”

My first reaction was “no!” Its hard to “shape” the conversation without long-form written content. But then I thought about examples where “celebrity commenters” or “DJ artists” already exist:

Wikipedia
Wikihow
Twitter
FriendFeed
Forums and BBS
Facebook

Personal reputation can be built on different platforms. But reputation requires a long-term interaction through that medium with a community around a specific topic or interest. All the more reason to tie your username and identity in one system to another.

3. Nirvana of universal flow between one system to another is not a standards or business issue but “impedence mismatch between one service vs. another”

Several people brought up the issue of sharing information back and forth. Bret Taylor gave the simple example: “if you are posting a reply from FriendFeed to Twitter what happens to the 140 character limit?” Do we split it into two Tweets?

Aside from basic bookmarking, its just as likely that these platforms will actually diverge rather than converge in order to become differentiated participation platforms. So an “impedence mismatch” happens when objects to be shared are in different forms in different systems.

This seems like a reasonable explanation for why it will take time for systems to be interoperable. I personally don’t have any real interest in following the progress of standards efforts, many of which are likely doomed to failure.

Other Supernova2008 coverage

Summize search for Supernova OR Supernova2008, TechCrunch, NextWeb, KennethCarter, DNWallace, Sanford Dickert

Mind the Gap: Runner Fan Paopao

David Feng — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 21:55:22 +0800

The Chinese Internet is abuzz with “Runner Fan”(Fan Paopao, 范跑跑), aka Fan Meizhong (范美忠). This guy, in short, was a teacher and was supposed to save kids when the Sichuan earthquake struck — but chose to run outside and even had the nerve to blog about the event. In the blog entry, he went to great lengths to — well, dig himself into a deeper hole rhetoric-wise, by means of resorting to language such as “I’d rather save my daughter than my mother” (which does you no favors in China, where filial piety is high on the agenda — in fact, it makes you look really, really bad).

“Runner Fan”, in fact, has won himself very few friends and a whole host of — well, maybe not enemies, but in Chinese thinking, “people who have a lot to say about ‘Runner Fan’” (对“范跑跑”很有意见的人 in Chinese). China isn’t exactly a place to throw off heavy, fight-inciting language (especially if at 7 PM every day we are told that we live in a “harmonious society”), despite it coming out with Sun Zi’s The Art of War, but then again — how can you song the praises of someone who dumped their students just for self-preservation?

The 7 o’clock news and public newspapers of record are now talking about those brave men and women who have given in to save people from the quake area. This is quite the opposite of “Runner Fan”, who is now spared no bit of Web rhetoric.

Today is not the time to bridge the gap. Rather, it’s time to take a look at the gap from different angles — and see if you can agree on what angle you take. In no particular order, here are a myriad of different angles on the issue…

• “Runner Fan” did something illegal: Chinese law requires teachers to save kids first, and he didn’t.
• “Runner Fan” didn’t exactly sin on running out of the classroom, but to blog about this tripped “Runner Fan” over the line.
• “Runner Fan” apologized, but the damage has been done.
• It’s all about instincts. “Runner Fan” did no wrong. This is an earthquake. Lives are precious. (You only get one go in life…)
• Criticizing or even talking about “Runner Fan” actually advances the Chinese — this is a first for China, and China has to experience a lot of things in due time.
• This is about extremes — and “Runner Fan” took to this extreme that put the individual above all else.
• Remember, China is a 5,000+ civilization deeply rooted in what’s called “collectivism”. This is nothing new (a la since 1949). The group has always overshadowed the individual in importance long before Mao’s People’s Republic.
• “Runner Fan” did wrong? Well, only the individual can come to conclusions…
• Fan Meizhong — a Chinese failure, a person truly missing a brain. China has spent so much on him — only to raise a mere animal!
• Out of all those shameless people, I’ve yet to see one as shameless as “Runner Fan”.

What do you think of Fan Paopao?