About China blogosphere, travel, and entrepreneurship

There is an utterly amazing perk many American expats or travellers in China can enjoy so long as they’re customers of Bank of America (whom are legion, despite the fact that Bank of America is somewhat widely despised amongst many in the States): BofA customers can use their BofA ATM card to withdraw the USD in their accounts back home as RMB cash via China Construction Bank ATMs throughout China…for free.

No ATM fees, no currency exchange fees, no credit card cash advance fees, and no need to set up a CCB bank account either. Just cold, hard, delicious cash converted at the day’s exchange rate.

I used this a year ago and, embarassingly, I didn’t think to write about this useful tip until Dan over at China Law Blog just recently discovered and posted about it earlier today.

Now, the daily ATM withdrawal limit in China was raised from 5,000 RMB to 20,000 RMB in mid-2007. Accounting for the current exchange rate (6.94 RMB per 1 USD at the time of this posting), this means you can effectively move up to about 2,880 USD into China each day, barring any daily withdrawal limits you have on your BofA account. If your limit is lower than the converted amount you want to access in China, you’ll need to call Bank of America in advance to raise your limits appropriately, lest you get confounded at the ATM. There’s also the current 2000 RMB per transaction limit at CCB’s ATMs, so you’ll need to repeat the withdrawal process 10 times to get the full 20,000 RMB daily limit. After making everyone behind you wait, however, you can walk smugly past them carrying your fat stacks of 100 RMB bills. Baller.

Now, 20,000 RMB is a decent sum of cash for the vast majority of transactions. That’s about 5000 street-cooked fried rice meals in China or 714 Starbucks cappucinos. Being able to freely access and convert your USD into RMB cash should be particularly useful for business travellers and other short-term visitors. You no longer need to hassle with carrying large amounts of cash, getting cashiers cheques, using wire transfers, or going through the hassle of setting up a Chinese bank account (which would require you to bring money in first anyway). Not only do you save money on fees and exchange rates, it is downright convenient.

The free ATM withdrawals perk has been available since April 2006 and you can thank BofA for opting to buy a stake in CCB and partnering with them instead of pursuing the retail banking market on their own. I, however, only learned about this service in mid-2007 when I needed to quickly move several thousand USD over to cover development costs for my startup, adex360, without fussing with wire transfers. In fact, BofA required me to physically appear at a US banking center just to wire my own money to myself in China. Yeah, like I’m really going to buy a round-trip airplane ticket just so I can pay them an additional 45 USD fee for a wire transfer to myself. I ended up withdrawing over several days to accumulate the RMB bricks I needed.

So yes, you can certainly make withdrawals over several days (or weeks) should you need to move more than 20,000 RMB. Of course, going to the ATM each day isn’t the most graceful way of moving large chunks of money, but it may be less annoying than having to set up, pay for, and then wait for a wire transfer that can sometimes take longer than you prefer. As with my example, you often can’t actually initiate a wire transfer of your own money to yourself from abroad anyway, thereby necessitating that you have someone abroad who can wire funds to you. Moreover, for many expats and travellers, trying to communicate with Chinese tellers when their English is about as good as your Chinglish can be a hassle as well.

There may be more good news too, as it appears that BofA and CCB has had a free wire transfer pilot program in place since late 2006 also. This allows BofA account holders to wire transfer money without the 45 USD fee or the 20,000 RMB daily limit to CCB account holders. But, before you think this is a better option than making 10 withdrawals a day over several days to move larger chunks of money, remember that you need a BofA account, a CCB account, and you’d still need to initiate the transfer at BofA in person in the United States. Therefore, as far as using this to wire your own money to yourself, it would only be useful if you’ve already set up your CCB account and you’re doing initiating the wire transfer right before you fly over from the States to China. The actual target market for this service are family members, friends, and businesses that need to move money between themselves and have the people to initiate and receive wire transfers on both sides. If you’re just one person in China trying to access your money in your US account, then the free ATM withdrawal service is still what you’re looking for…if you’re a BofA customer, that is.

18 days of free ATM withdrawals and you’ll be able to transfer the yearly maximum of 50,000 USD. Heh, how’s that for hedging against RMB appreciation and USD depreciation?

One final note: Despite the conveniences afforded by this partnership, don’t expect any service from CCB banks and representatives regarding your BofA account. The most they’ll know is that you can access your BofA account balance through their ATM. They are not there to help you with managing your account otherwise or answering any BofA questions.

I have been following Yeeyan (译言) - a community for people to translate articles in foreign languages (mostly English) into Chinese language volunteerly, since Aug. 2006 when it was called “言多必得”. I personally like the old name which means”you will certainly get something if you express more”. It is form a Chinese idiom “言多必失” means the opposite: you will certain leak some secretes if you keep talking. The current name is more straightforward: “translation” and “language“.

In a presentation by Zhang Lei(张雷), one of Yeeyan’s founders in CnBloggerCon 2007 in Beijing, Zhang Lei compared the online resources about “Breast Cancer” in Chinese (乳腺癌) and English. In the example of Sohu Health Channel, there are less than 30 articles about the general knowledge and treatment. But in a single website of http://www.breastcancer.org/, there are more than 8,000 pages. Statistics show that 1/7 of women will suffer from breast cancer in the world.

• Baidu: 乳腺癌: 8,210,000
• Google: breast cancer :38,800,000

According to Lei, the huge gap of quality contents between Chinese language and English was one of the motivation that Ding Ding (丁丁), Zhao Jiamin(赵嘉敏) and himself found Yeeyan. These three founders from Silicon Valley saw the opportunity in “High Quality Chinese Contents” on the web with the inspiration to encourage Chinese to “discovery, translate and read the best of the Web“.

Yeeyan is a bridge of KNOWLEDGE in Chinese and other languages. I found 140 results about “earthquake” (地震) on Yeeyan 9 days after the earthquake, and more than 100 translators joined a translation group. These articles include the reports by western medias (such as CNN, Newsweek, BBC, etc), knowledge about earthquake forecast, rescue, disease prevention. For example, one translator finished <Epidemics after Natural Disasters> by World Health Organization 4 day after the earthquake. Webtizens have helped to spread the word about these great resources on what to do scientifically after the disaster. (see here, here, here and here)

Zhang Lei even contacted Dr.Barbera Joseph from George Washington University and consulted him about crisis and disaster management. Here is the abstract of his post on Yeeyan blog:

请译言的读者、译者、合作伙伴、媒体广为转载本文！
今天，我与美国乔治华盛顿大学灾难、危机、风险管理学院（ICDRM）主任约瑟夫·巴贝拉博士（Barbera, Joseph）通了电话，听取了他对 四川地震紧急应对状况的看法。巴贝拉博士提出下述几点呼吁：
*第一：目前最关键的问题，是救援的决策者**决定**何时停止**对被掩埋者的搜救工作。* 巴贝拉博士紧急呼吁，*搜救工作至少应坚持到震后14天！*他提供了这样一份研究报告：《地震垮塌房屋受困幸存者时间与存活分析》（译言正在紧急翻译)…

Thank you! Yeeyan and all volunteers who have built a bridge in knowledge in face of such crisis.

I have also Interview Zhang Lei on phone about two weeks’ ago. Here is what I learned from him about the team, product and plan.

Q: Why did you and your other two founders get this idea?

Lei: We are very interested in translation. And when we are able to read some many great and fresh contents online, we want to share them with more people in China.We were the first translators of Yeeyan.

Q: What’s your background?

Lei: I am a Tsinghua 96 alum. After I got my Master Degree on Operation Research (OR) in US I worked for Oracle in Silicon valley. Yeeyan is not my first start-up. We tried to launch fantansy sports product during 2006World Cup. As you know, it is very common that first startup fails. Yeeyan is our second baby.

Q: Could you briefly share with us the milestones Yeeyan has achieved today?

Lei:

Jul 2006: 言多必得 found; it was a platform for volunteer translators to publish articles.

Dec 2006: Yeeyan launched. It is a more open platform with more support for translation. For example, users can copy and paste the original contents into an editor, and can run machine translator before editing. Users can tag the article and join different group,such as business, literature, current issues.

Mar. 2007: Yee Pro Beta launched. It is a wikimedia platform also translators to work together for larger projects.

Q: Why do you want to turn Yeeyan into a wiki? Isn’t wiki difficult to use for most users?

Lei: We believe in the social collaboration(SC), and wiki is a great tool for SC. In the past year, we have learned that translation is addictive. It is also very time consuming. In a wiki platform, we will enable more users to work together for big projects. We want more volunteers to join us, even though they don’t have time to finish a long article, but just editing a paragraph whenever possible. A wiki platform creates the possibility.

Wikipedia is successful. I have written a very detailed guide on how to use wiki on editing. I don’t think the technical aspect is a problem.

Q: What’s the status after you launched Beta?

Lei: There are 4 completed projects (including “Long Tail” which has been completed before) and 14 on going projects. It is pretty amazing.

Q: What are the difficulties you have in the past 18 months?

Lei: In Chinese websphere, except of Baidu Zhidao(百度知道), there are not many communities generating high quality contents. Good news is that we don’t need to translate ourselves now. lol. The community is generating 30+ pieces a day. The one big challenge we are facing is that we don’t know much big the UGC market is in China/Chinese.

Q: I know you have quite some Techcrunch translations. What are the most popular contents ?

Lei: A lot. Yes, technology, entrepreneur, business, these are what we ourselves are interested in. Arts and literatuer, current issues are also very popular. Curently, we have 5000+ articles contributed by 1500+ active translators.

Q: How do you guarantee the quality of the translating works? What about copy right issue？

Lei: We have a feature called “眉批”, a sticky note like feature with which readers can always comment on the translating for correction or improvement or whatever. Readers can also rate the work.

We think a published piece of content online is meant to be distributed and shared, especially blog posts. We encourage translators to inform the authors before publishing. And we will take down the contents if the authors disaprove. So far, we get permission from some prominent bloggers such as Guy Kawasaki, Fred Wilson (A VC)and haven’t received any ”complaints” from the authors.

Q: What about your other team members? Are you full time?
Lei: The other two founders are Ding Ding (丁丁) and Zhao Jiamin (赵嘉敏). At early stage, we three did technology, product and marketing together. Now, Ding Ding is more focusing on product, Jiamin is on contents/editing and I am repsonsible for media and marketing. Jiamin and I are full time for Yeeyan. Jianmin is now in Beijing leading a team.

Q: Are you in need for any financial funding?

Lei: We are talking very closely with a few VCs.

-End

More coverages of Yeeyan from the web and media:

• YeeYan Translates Blogs Posts Into Chinese - ReadWriteWeb
• A window to the world (China Daily)
• web2.0时代背景下的网络翻译与创业 (Chinese)
• Interview of Zhao Jiamin (Life Weekly,三联周刊) (Chinese)

The current projects on Yee Pro.

A Yeeyan fans meet-up in Beijing early this year.

The China Business Network (TCBN) is sponsoring an invite-only cocktail party this Friday May 23 at the JWMarriott (北京JW万豪酒店, Beijing JW wàn háo jiǔdiàn) in Beijing. CNReviews is also a co-sponsor of the event. Space is limited to 150 people. If you want an invite, see the bottom of the post.

Originally the event centered around tech and VC attendees of the Asian Venture Capital Journal Conference and the CHINICT Conference in Beijing this week. But after the Sichuan earthquake, Christine Lu, Founder of The China Business Network decided to donate all proceeds to earthquake relief. From Christine:

The Library Project has created a program, “Project: Earthquake Relief”, to help rebuild the educational system that was affected as a result of the earthquake. It is projected that hundreds of elementary schools have been damaged in the Sichuan and Shaanxi Provinces. The Library (more…)

Being an UpTake (formerly a Kango) for more than 400 days, I am proud to share with you that UpTake officially opens its Beta doors to everyone TODAY! Uptake is ”

a new vacation search site that has amassed the travel industry’s largest database of hotels and attractions (more than 400,000 in US) and analyzed more than 20 million online opinions from other travelers.

In the age that the “wisdom of crowds” are generated faster than ever, Uptake offers to collect and filter word-of-mouth from the web to make vacation planning easier. UpTake also got press at ReadWriteWeb, TechCrunch, SemanticWeb, SearchEngineLand, Les Explorers and the UpTake blog itself. It is only for United States for now. But Winser Zhao of SinoHotelReservation also wrote about us.
To describe the Uptake services using the geek’s vocabulary, it: uses a travel ontology and natural language analysis to extract meta-tags from the collective intelligence it has collected and returns unbiased, personalized recommendations based on travelers’ facts and feelings.” So how much do you (more…)

Just read a nicely-written article with interesting statistics about China at The Independent (via Dan over at China Law Blog).

Though China’s market reforms and subsequent economic growth started 30 years ago, it has only been the recent decade where an appreciable amount of the masses are finally grasping just how profound it is. I say “grasping” because even so, the vast majority of them have yet to appreciate or truly understand just what China’s rise to global economic and political prominence will mean, burdened as they are–understandably–by their fears and ultimately their ignorance.

Here is a good excerpt (emphasis mine):

I am not sure we in the West fully grasp the magnitude of what is happening. Intellectually we can see it affecting us but emotionally it is hard to understand that we are moving towards a world where Western ideas, our ideas, will no longer hold sway. China has other ideas. Those will increasingly co-exist alongside ours in shaping global economic and political development….We will not find this comfortable. What we think will matter less and less. But we cannot do anything about it, and in any case, consider the alternative. Would we really want a China that was failing in economic terms, with all the misery that would cause? That would surely be far more dangerous and disruptive to the world than a continuation of China’s thrilling but terrifying success story. (more…)

On 4/29 I attended a Asia American MultiTechnology Association dinner called “Silicon Valley-Style” Startups in China: The Next Wave. The panel was moderated by Evan Ng, of Dorsey & Whitney, a Silicon Valley law firm. Flickr photo set for the event is here.

(more…)

Sometime in early 2007, some wise guy on ShanghaiExpat.com felt expat entrepreneurs in Shanghai could really use a community and network to support each other’s endeavors. He offered to set up some events and invited those interested to join his e-mail list, promising to notify everyone of when and where those events would eventually take place. I signed up and not long after, I began receiving e-mails with digital fliers from some organization eventually known as NextStep Shanghai.

I attended my first NextStep entrepreneur mixer over three months ago, when it was held at Volar on January 15th. Keen to network with fellow entrepreneurs to pick each other’s minds and swap business cards (you know, to feel important), I even dragged my business partner (who dragged his friend) to come along.

Unfortunately, we ultimately left feeling rather disappointed.

To be sure, there was a reasonable crowd, but for an “entrepreneur” mixer, it was sorely lacking in…well, “entrepreneurs.” Of course, like many professional mixers everywhere, there’s a high probability of meeting a lot of sales reps for various companies hoping to find customers, connections, or (mostly business-to-business sales) opportunities. You also run into a lot of individuals trying to network their way to some important person at some big-name company in hopes of landing a job that’ll look good on their resume. As anyone with experience with such professional events would know, these are often expected. Nonetheless, the bottom line is that such an environment isn’t exactly helpful for actual or aspiring entrepreneurs looking to discuss new business ideas or solutions to new business problems and difficulties. As such, I had a nice drink or so, and met a few decent people, but didn’t consider the event having been worth my time.

Not long after, Elliott asked me to guest-blog here at CNReviews.com. As I sat down to detail my experience, I realized it wasn’t quite fair to judge NextStep’s entire concept and execution on the basis of a single event’s results. Setting my notes aside as a draft, I resolved to give NextStep another chance by attending another event.

That draft sat untouched for months.

What can I say? I’m a busy guy. It wasn’t until April 15th that I finally made my way, through heavy rains, to another event. This time, it was held in The Collection at Shanghai’s ever-lovely Xintiandi.

I’m glad I went.

(more…)

A few weeks ago, I wrote a brief post advising would-be entrepreneurs and business-owners looking to source from China to do their due diligence when using Alibaba to source products from Chinese suppliers. As Alibaba continues to ramp up its marketing and advertising efforts, I want to reiterate this advice.

I passed through Hong Kong’s international airport this past Monday, and was amused to find that Alibaba had blanketed the entire terminal with its advertising. Most prominent were the 16 massive banners (similar to the one pictured to the right) suspended from the ceiling across the entire reception area of the terminal. Each one featured a random “member” from some randomly significant country exclaiming how Alibaba helped them. Every one of them also “Thanks Alibaba.com!”

“Tushar, let me ask you: How do you find the ‘best quality suppliers’ when the suppliers can simply purchase their positive reputation on Alibaba?” (Note highlighted portions to the left)

Yes, let’s recommend TrustPass to ALL suppliers. That way, they will all appear to be more “reliable” and prospective buyers everywhere can rest at ease! Suppliers also get “Verified Company Status” as an extra!

Fantastic.

Oh, and just why is Alibaba on an advertising blitz, particularly in Hong Kong’s international airport?

Because the China Sourcing Fair will be held there between April 12-15 and 20-23. Not a bad idea to remind all those fair visitors that they didn’t really need to come to Hong Kong to find “the best quality suppliers.” They’re all on Alibaba.com already.

Thanks for the tip, Tushar.

More pictures: Terminal Left, Terminal Right, Tushar, Kenneth, Charles, and Eden.

The China Game has some interesting news to share:

Alibaba shares have fallen to below their IPO price. It took a few months, but, as we suggested, it was inevitable. This IPO was the largest of its kind, and it was promoted heavily by the media. At the very height of the hype - when everyone was asking how Jack Ma did it - we asked whether the company was really worth US$7.8bn. Never mind the run up that followed the stock issue; the price put on the initial offering was itself too rich.

Given the recent rash of negative publicity and subsequent sentiment towards China, this news will no doubt embolden some (particularly in the States) to remark “ah hah!” Unfortunately, there is a high probability and at least some correlation between this and the current market woes facing the world financial markets, not least of which is sub-prime hell America. Therefore, any nationalistic rejoicing should be tempered with such in mind.

That said, the criticisms lodged against Alibaba from many circles are certainly legitimate. For entrepreneurs and small-business owners looking to source from China, Alibaba’s promises cost-savings that can’t be found at home…or getting your ass fleeced so bare you come out of it with razor burn.

Having previously used Alibaba to do some price research, I was consistently amused with how often suppliers tried to pull fast ones on me quoting absurdly high prices only to immediately “correct” their quotes the moment I call them on it. The same products by many manufacturers even often had different prices, depending on whether you were reading the Chinese site or the English site.

No doubt, buyers sourcing through Alibaba, or from China in general, owe it to themselves to do their own due diligence. While many Chinese businesses or individuals will still try to take advantage of someone at every opportunity, not doing your research only rewards such unethical behavior. What amount of due diligence is required often depends on what you’re trying to source and how much money is involved. Good deals and good suppliers can certainly be found on Alibaba but, in many cases, the cost savings will come from the time you save comparing prices over the internet and not from the cost of airfare to China.

Oh, and Jack Ma looks like an alien Doogie Howser. There, I had to say it.

A combination pool hall and bar lounge with dark and sleek decor, Racks is an impressive space. The mechanical bull by the DJ booth and bar is definitely a nice touch, but getting to the hidden-in-the-wall restroom brought back nervous People 7 flashbacks. As it is, Racks is located across the bridge from the G-Plus nightclub at the south end of Shanghai’s XinTianDi, where the old CK Why Not nightclub use to occupy.

Yeah, “why not name our club CK?” That’s a real forehead slapper.

Like Volar, Racks has a sister venue in Hong Kong and also promotes a certain members-only exclusivity. But if Volar Shanghai’s experience is of any indication, that’s a policy with its obituary already written.

The China Business Network and The Shanghai Business club hosted a “Joint Happy Hour” at Racks this past Wednesday, and Elliott suggested that I attend after twittering a pseudo-invitation out of the event organizer, Christine Lu. After an afternoon of plotting world China domination with the Regional Director of admanGo, Herman Yueh, I managed to convince him to come along. After all, we’re looking for a few good men and these sort of international-minded/expat professional mixers just might be a good place to do some network recruiting, especially after one gets fed up with local talent (more on this in a future interview piece).

We arrived fashionably late. Greeted by the vast and empty black expanses of Rack’s, we almost walked right back out the door. To be sure, a splatter of people for the event were lounging in the corner, but the relative emptiness (and vastness) wasn’t particularly inspiring.

I’m glad I forced us to stay.

We ended up spending about a couple of hours there, and while we didn’t meet an army of people, I did get to network with a handful of great individuals across different fields (FMB, international trade, publishing, expat services, logistics, chemicals, contract manufacturing, architecture headhunting, etc.). With that came ample discovery and discussion of various potential business opportunities, both for admanGo and my own travel start-up, adex360. As far as I was concerned, that made for a productive evening.

I never did end up meeting Christine Lu, which I felt would’ve been common courtesy due to her and Elliott’s twittering relationship. I recall recognizing her (from her Facebook picture) early at the event but later she was nowhere to be found, ostensibly busy interviewing for her video profiles. Too bad, quite a few of us were curious to meet her.

One last thing, and I hate feeling compelled to ask this but, did anyone at the event catch those two (questionably) stunning ladies? Someone tell me those two dolls were, uh, professional models (yeah) and not, uh, the stereotypical gold-digging Chinese huntresses that prowl Shanghai wherever relatively affluent foreigners with the scent of money can be found (of which XinTianDi is not unknown for).