About China blogosphere, travel, and entrepreneurship

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.

Imagine a conversation like this:

Lee (Chinese): Eric, which university did you go to?
Eric (American): I went to UC Berkeley.
Lee: oh, I didn’t know it. Where is it?
Eric: ….

Elliott brought up an idea called”Cultural literacy” the other day as our colleagues in Uptake were very surprised at he telling everybody that he didn’t know about “Liu Xiang” (刘翔), “Lu Xun” (鲁迅) or “Zhe Jiang University” (浙江大学) which is a a top university constantly ranked at top 10 in China. It is the same scenario that a Chinese is asking an American what is “UC Berkeley” while maybe all well-educated American assume people have some knowledge about US will also know about “UC Berkeley”.

Definition of “cultural literacy” from wikipedia:

Cultural literacy is the ability to converse fluently in the idioms, allusions and informal content which creates and constitutes a dominant culture. From being familiar with street signs to knowing historical reference to understanding the most recent slang, literacy demands interaction with the culture and reflection of it. A knowledge of a canonical set of literature is not valuable when engaging with others in a society if the knowledge stops at the end of the text - as life is interwoven with art, expression, history and experience, cultural literacy requires the broad range of trivia and the use of that trivia in the creation of a communal language and a collective knowledge. Cultural literacy stresses the knowledge of those pieces of information which content creators will assume the audience already possesses.

I hope the following list of Chinese University Ranking can help you out of embarrassment from the conversation at the beginning, when your Chinese friends expect you to know they are from big names but all you have to say is “I don’t know about it.” This list is from a <2008中国大学评价> (2008 China University Review) by Wu Shulian (武书连).Wu is leading a group to evaluate universities in China Academy of Management Science (中国管理科学研究院). This review and ranking has been running for 12 years in 2008. The completed list is published as a guidebook for high school students to choose colleges every year.

As in the West, there are many different ranking every year, each ranking has different approach or measurement. Knowing university in No. 10 or No. 15 is less important than having the idea that it is a pretty well-known top 20 U.

Top 30 China Universities in 2008

1. Tsinghua University (清华大学): Beijing
2. Beijing University (北京大学): Beijing
3. Zhejiang University (浙江大学): Hanzhou, Zhejiang
4. Shanghai Jiaotong University (上海交通大学): Shanghai
5. Nanjing Univerity (南京大学): Nanjing, Jiangsu
6. Fudan University (复旦大学): Shanghai
7. University of Science and Technology of China (中国科学技术大学): Hefei, Anhui
8. Huazhong University of Science and Technology (华中科技大学):Wuhan, Hubei
9. Wuhan University (武汉大学):Wuhan, Hubei
10. Xi’an Jiaotong University (西安交通大学): Xi’an, Shanxi
11. Jilin University (吉林大学): Changchun, Jilin
12. Zhongshan University (中山大学)：Guangzhou, Guangdong
13. Sichuan University (四川大学): Chengdu, Sichuan
14. Harbin Institute of Technology (哈尔滨工业大学): Harbin, Heilongjiang
15. Shandong University (山东大学):Jinan, Shandong
16. Nankai University (南开大学): Tianjin
17. Tianjin University (天津大学): Tianjin
18. Beijing Normal University (北京师范大学): Beijing
19. Central South University (中南大学): Changsha, Hunan
20. Southeast Unversity (东南大学) : Nanjing, Jiangsu
21. Xiamen University (厦门大学): Xiamen, Fujian
22. Renmin University (中国人民大学): Beijing
23. Beijing University of Aeronautics & Astronautics (北京航空航天大学): Beijing
24. Dalian University of Technology (大连理工大学): Dalian, Liaoning
25. Northwest Polytechnical University (西北工业大学): Xi’an, Shanxi
26. Tongji University (同济大学): Shanghai
27. South China University of Technology (华南理工大学): Guangzhou, Guangdong
28. Chongqing University (重庆大学): Chongqing
29. East China Normal University (华东师范大学): Shanghai
30. Lanzhou University (兰州大学): Lanzhou, Gansu

There is almost at least one top university in the provinces along our coast line, from Liaoning to Guangdong, except of Guangxi and Hainan (which was part of Guangdong). Xian and Nanjing were the capital cities for many dynasties in China history. The advantages in politics and economy attracts more talents for these areas.

One defect of this ranking is that it didn’t include the specialized universities for language, medical and law, etc. And the private colleges are not included either. It’s more focus on the “research capability” of a university.　But all the above 30 universities with other 20 universities are “the universities that Education Dept. invests directly to build and development” (教育部重点建设高校) which I understand as “these 50 universities get more funding from the government”. And a freshgraduate from the top 50 universities will have a greater chance to get a Shanghai Hukou (户口) according the Hukou application score system.

Check out here to visit the websites of these universities.

复旦光华, from West Lake in Hangzhou.

Shanghai Railway Station (Shanghai Huoche Zhan, 上海火车站, a.k.a. Shanghai Station, 上海站) is also known as New Passenger Railway Station (Xin Kezhan, 新客站) by Shanghai residents to distinguish it from the old North Station which retired in 1987. 刘建春 (Liu Jianchun) described the history and development of the history of Shanghai railway stations in a book《火车老站地图》(Map of Railway Stations) published in 2007. The earliest railway station in Shanghai was put to operation in 1876. And there have been 7 railways stations existing in Shanghai in the past 130 years, including the existing ones. It is very interesting to see how these stations were built and moved or changed or disappeared. I marked them on the map below for your quick reference, check here for an interactive version. (The site of an old South Station in Luwan District is not included.)

(more…)

CNbloggerCon finally announced the conference location for 2008 in a very short notice on May 6 2008 without publishing the poll result:

中国广州市举办 (Guangzhou, China)

时间： 2008年11月15日-16日 (Nov. 15- 16)

It is a fair and nice choice. Guangzhou is the “South Gate” of China, the biggest city in south China. It is also known as “Flower City” (花城) and famous for its food culture. And it is also the only city that report TV/radio news in a dialet Cantonese.

See you there!

Happy Labor Day!

I remember I stayed at home (Shanghai) for 7 days watching all the Desperate Housewives episodes last year. LOL. It is not that I don’t want to explore our beautiful western provinces - Yunnan (云南), Sichuan(四川), Tibet (西藏) and Qinghai (青海), I was afraid that the overwhelming crowds would ruin the beautiful natural scenery. Year 2008 is the first year that the eight-year-old “7-day-Golden-Week” is cut to 3 days. Still, I can’t go out to explore the far-away Wild Wild West. What’s worst, my friend from Suzhou told me that a nice hotel in Suzhou is very difficult to book (= more expensive) in the coming few days. So, I guess I will have to stay at home to watch LOST this time (like other Chinese fans of US TV shows).

According to a news report from Qianglong(千龙网), tour bookings are only 50% of what they were in year 2007, especially long distance tours to more remote destinations, such as Hainan (海南) and Lijiang Yunnan (丽江，云南). Self-driving packages are most popular.

So, if you are coming to China, I suggest you schedule your trip to avoid our public holidays. My take is: avoid visiting big cities in 3-day long weekends, and avoid the remote destinations during national holiday and Chinese New Year. Check out the calendar below and bookmark it.

In Summary:

1. We have 11 days public holidays, and minimal 5 days paid leave according to Labor Contract Law.
2. The government wants us to take advantage of the public holidays to drive travel industry, so a holiday usually make a 3-day long weekend. For example, we will have to work in the coming Sunday (May 4) because we are off on Friday (May 2).
3. So, What are these holidays?

• Jan. 1 : New Year Day (元旦)
• Chinese Calendar Jan. 1: Chinese New Year (春节)
• April. 5: Qingming (清明). People usually go to ceremonies to “sweep the tomb” (lit 扫墓) of their ancestors. The act of clean-up the tomb, and bringing some flowers, food and wine to the tomb is to show respect and memory to our passed family members. So you don’t need to say “happy holiday” to your Chinese friends on Qingming.
• May. 1: International Labor’s Day (劳动节). I guess it is a public holiday in all “communist” countries (though it originated from a labor dispute in the United States).
• Chinese Calendar May. 5: Duanwu (端午). It is a day to memorize one of our ancient patriot Quyuan (屈原). People eat a kind of food called zongzi 粽子(sticky rice “cake” wrapped with leaf). That day, dragon boat races are also held.
• Chinese Calendar Aug. 15: Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋节). A festival to appreciate the most rounded moon in a year and eat moon cakes.
• Oct. 1: National Day (国庆节). The day Chairman Mao announced that People’s Republic of China was founded in front of Tiananmen Square in 1949.

Baidu Data Research Center (百度数据研究中心) released a Online Travel Report 2007 on April. 10, 2008. It provides some very interesting data about online travel industry in China. [Note: all data are for year 2007 if not specified; all Baidu data are collected from browser cookies in Q4 of 2007 Q4.]

1. Market Size

• Total Revenue of Travel Industry of China: 1,090 Billion RMB -> 155.7 Billion USD (data from China National Tourism Administration, 中国国家旅游局);
• Total Online Travel Booking: 2.25 Billion RMB -> 0.32 Billion USD, increased 65.4% from 2006 (data from a report by Data Center of China Internet 中国互联网调查);
• Estimated Online Travel Booking in 2008: 3.84 Biilion RMB ->0.55 Billion USD (中国互联网调查).

2. Travel Theme/Category

The categories are analyzed from the key terms. One interesting category for English speakers would be “红色旅游“ (ranked at #2 ) which literally means “Red Tourism”. People usually visit China Anti-Japan/ Liberation War (1920s-40s) and Chinese Communist Party development related historical places in a Red Tour.

3.Top 10 Most Searched Information Categories

I wasn’t surprised to that “Air Ticket” is the most WANTED key terms in travel related searches, but a little surprised to see only 3.57% terms are about “lodging/accommodation”. This is very different from the United States market where “hotels” is a hot term. A large percentage of people are searching for “itinerary” (旅游路线) which I will understand as “deciding where to go”.

4. Top 10 Travel Booking Sites

Top 3 players are: Ctrip, Elong and MangoCity.

5. Top 10 Travel Information Sites

I have personally used Go2EU (穷游网) and knew it was very hot, but I didn’t expect it to be Number 1. Go2EU’s Chinese name can be understood as “Travel though you are poor” or “How to travel even if you don’t have much $$$.” It is a portal and community for budget/independent outbound travelers. All the information (in Chinese) focuses on overseas travel: from how to get a visa, where to buy cheap ticket, to tips on when and where to take great pictures. I am a little surprised to see only Travel Channel of Sohu on # 10 but no other major portals.

6:Top 10 Domestic Travel Destinations for Shanghai Residents (most searched)

The top 10 destinations are: Hangzhou, Suzhou, Beijing, Nanjing, Guangzhou, Huangshan, Wuxi, Hong Kong, Shenzhen and Chengdu. Except of Huangshan (黄山) which is a natural park, all others are cities. I haven’t been to 2 of them.

7. Top 10 Oversea Travel Destinations for Shanghai & Beijing Residents (most searched)

Shanghai: Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Singapore, Australia, Bali, Sin-Ma-Thai, North Korea, France

Beijing: North Korea, South Korea, Singapore, Thailand, South Africa, France, Vietnam, The United States, Finland and Japan.

An interesting finding: North Korea is a in the “Top 10″ lists of both cities. Very funny! I can’t believe people are actually travel to North Korea, or maybe just it is just a MOST Interested country that people search for general purpose rather than travel. How do you think? I bet the United States will be in the list of 2008 for Shanghai residents.

There are some other interesting charts in this 44-page report, such as top 10 most searched hotel brands, airlines, travel agents, cities. It can be easily download here.

UPDATE from Elliott:

CNReviews.com Trivia Question: On Twitter, I tweeted the trivia question: “When asked if the French Revolution was successful, which Chinese statesman said “it is too early to tell?” JPostman of SocializedPR answered the question correctly–Zhou Enlai. The lucky winner gets a link to his blog at SocializedPR! Now I have to reread Alexis de Tocqueville’s Old Regime and the French Revolution to contrast it with Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (also on Amazon)to even be able to understand what Zhou Enlai was thinking when he said this. Thanks JPostman!

1kg More (多背一公斤）was four years old on April 18, 2008.

Happy Birthday, 1kg More! And congratulations on the great progress in the past year, Andrew!

I chatted with 1kg More founder/blogger/travel enthusiast Andrew Yu (my previous interview with Andrew is here) a few days ago and got the latest updates on 1kg More:

1. 1kg More is in Shanghai taxis: If you are taking any taxi that is running Touch Media, who recently announced to receive RBM 1000 million VC funding on Mar. 28, 2008, advertising, you will see 1kg on the screen. As I know, Touch Media is currently running in Qiang Sheng Taxi (强生出租车, the brown/deep yellow color cab).

2. 1kg More has a new website: With this new version, a user now can:

• Search schools that need help by typing in the destination name .(I gave a try and found 10 schools in Guilin (桂林) area, and 26 schools in Lijiang Yuman (云南丽江) area, very nice!)
• Upload the school information online. 1kg volunteers will then contact the school to make sure the information are accurate.
• Share photos with other members.
• Join any other 1kg activities.

Volunteer Suave Su is using various open-sourced technologies to build the website, and the 1kg.org site is open to any volunteers to contribute. You can email Suave (suave.su at gmail.com) if you want to help. It is not a rocket-science project, but I am very impressed by what Suave has done by himself.

3. 1kg More has more schools: In the past 3 months in 2008, there are 120+ added into the search-able database (the number for the year 2007 is 98).

4. 1kg More is now a registered entity: As a grassroots NGO in China, Andrew told me it is impossible for 1kg More to get a non-profit organization registration. And the only way to have a legitimated identity is to register 1kg as a commercial entity. Andrew and I have chatted about this before, and the reality is that there is hardly a way for a grassroots NGO to get an official recognition from the government at present due to a serial complicated concerns. I am looking forward to 1kg More’s Chinese characterized NGO model.

Read 1kg More annual summary from Andrew Yu in Chinese here.

Zhang Liming (张黎明) from Beijing Morning Post (北京晨报) has a report titled as “Tencent learned from Korean Model to Hire a 3000-people Human Flesh Search Army” (腾讯参照韩国模式招三千人肉搜索军团) on April. 10, 2008 on Sina Tech. The author learned the news from industry insiders and quoted quite some comments from CEO Huateng Ma (马化腾) of Tencent Inc.- the largest and most used Internet service portal in China with annual revenue of $520 MM in 2007, about this big bet action. Here is the summarized translation of the report.

Tencent Inc. (QQ.com) is building a 3,000-person search result editor team. The employees will be/are hired as engineers but in fact, their job nature is to edit search results of its search engine called SOSO (搜搜, means “search search” in Chinese) soso.com (which was launched in Dec. 2005).

CEO Huateng Ma (马化腾) didn’t comment on the size of the editor team directly, but compared with the practice in Korean search engine industry: “a 700-person search result editor team in Korea is very common.”

Ma continued to explain why “it is common”: “for example, 20 users might search one same key term, and what they need might be the same information in two paragraphs. But nobody locks the two paragraphs (on the top of search result thus enables a more efficient search for majority of users). So actually people want editing of search results.”

“Tencent is experimenting with ‘human+search’ model. In domestic market, Baidu Zhidao (百度知道) is a similar model, but its editor team is not strong enough.”

When continuing to compare SOSO with other human-powered search engines in Korea, Ma admitted that “one key reason that Korean local search engines beat Google and Yahoo to win the local market is that there are relatively less pages in Korean Internet (for Google and Yahoo to crawl). So I don’t know if human-powered search engine will be successful or not in China. I have a question mark for this model. But Tencent has a portal (qq.com), the edited search results are valuable to the portal anyway (so it worth a try).”

Other posts about Tencent (QQ.com) and SoSo here:

• Techcrunch: Soso.com partnered with Google
• Kaiser Kuo from Ogilvyy Digital Watch: Coin of the Realm, revisited
• Paul M. Denlinger from China Vortex: Understanding China’s Youth Through Tencent’s QQ: A New Must-Read Report

UPDATE Elliott: 4/14 made minor edits

UPDATE: Part 2 of 2 posts on China Proxy Server Tips. Part 1 by Min Guo is here.

I hate to make a second post for this but given that I cannot simply edit my additions into Min’s post, I decided I’d have to throw up another post for the benefit of readers like Sue who are having trouble with the Great FireWall (GFW).

Note: In order for Min’s Option II to work, you’d have to be able to get the RSS feed link, which can be hard if you can’t get to the blog in the first place. Of course, you can have a friend get it for you, but that requires you discovering the blog first. Moreover, certain feeds burned through Feedburner have difficulty getting into China, which is why you’ll see some blogs using Feedsky, a Chinese equivalent to Feedburner.

Option III: Anonymouse.org

Probably one of the more famous casual proxies, Anonymouse has the added benefit of being available in German and English. Well, that’s actually pretty unimportant, but I guess the Germans never know when Germany is going to block popular Chinese portal sites like sina.com. Using Anonymouse is about as simple as inputing the URL address for the website you wish to visit. In return for their service, they’ll pop up a window and overlay an ad on the targeted webpage (both of which you can close easily). Anonymouse isn’t hardcore enough to get through everything, but it works most of the time.

Option IV: T0r Pr0j3ct (note: l33t used to mask sensitive keywords)

I’ll quote Black and White Cat for Option IV and V:

Since the block is a strong one and Youtube has also been harmonized, now is perhaps the time to mention two of the serious proxies that get through to everything, including BBC news video, can handle Youtube and enable you to watch Google videos.

1) The first is maddeningly slow (though one enthusiast assures me it works quickly on his computer) but you need it if you want to download the faster second option. Tor works in Firefox. Once you’ve installed the program on your computer, you will see a red notice at the bottom right of your brower saying “Tor Disabled.” To turn the proxy on, click once on that notice and it will turn into a green “Tor Enabled.” You can now read or watch anything you want, but slowly. Tor also offers high-quality anonymity and privacy, but only if you read, understand and act on the instructions. For most of us that is not necessary since we simply want to get past the blocks.

Option V: Ult——h (sensitive keyword)

2) The second, faster option only works in Internet Explorer. I’m not going to name it in full because it is blocked at the keyword level in China. I’ll refer to it here as U. If you want it, it’s the first result for this search (look for the word Download on the U page). Don’t even bother Googling it on the mainland unless you are using a powerful proxy like T0r. Unlike T0r, U is an executable file that you save onto your computer, but do not have to install. If you decide you do not want it anymore, delete the file. As with option #1, you can read anything or watch anything, though it often messes up Youtube - if that happens, close down IE and U and try again.

If you choose Option V, you should be aware that it is a creation of FLG and financed by the US government. Bear that in mind when deciding whether you want it on any particular computer. Both these proxies function only in one browser. So if you use Tor in Firefox, you can carry on browsing in Internet Explorer while you are waiting for the page/file to download.

There you have it.

Anyone have any opinions about all these methods? BTW, please be discreet about using sensitive keywords in comments so CNReviews doesn’t get harmonized! It is already slow enough as it is in China. — Elliott

UPDATE: Part 1 of 2 posts on China Proxy Server Tips.  Part 2 by Kai Pan is here. 

I received an email from one of CN Reviews‘ readers yesterday. Here is the abstract of Sue’s kind message:

I just stumbled onto your blog and find it enormously helpful. I wonder if you already have a post on proxy servers and if not, may consider doing one.

I’m incredibly frustrated about not being able to find certain sites. I’ve just arrived in China and am still figuring out how to find the right proxy server, esp if I’m trying to blog.

I am not a technical person and really don’t know much about proxy servers, but I do find my way to read 99.5% of the blogs I like including those are not directly accessible in Shanghai, such as gigaom.com.

Option I: Gladder - Great Ladder

This is a firefox add-on called “Great Ladder”- ladder to the great wall. You can find it here.

• Step 1. Click on the green button says “Add to Firefox”.
• Step 2: You will see the pop up window asks you to install it. Follow the instruction and you will get an icon on the right bottom corner of your browser like this:

Now you are armed with the ladder to climb over the wall!

When you are on a web page, right click on the ladder icon and you will see the menu like above image. We are lucky that we don’t need it for CN Reviews. We are not afraid of being harmonized but would prefer not to be!

To enable the gladder, simply click on the URL on the menu. When the gladder is enabled, you will see a “check” mark in front of the URL See above image. Joe Duck’s blog is not as lucky as CN Review and it looks like his when the gladder is not enabled.

A recent Gladder review by Jianjun can be found here.

Option II: RSS feed readers such as Google Reader.

I don’t have a problem reading Joe Duck’s blog after I subscribed to it on Google Reader. But, of course, I can’t see the blog visual design, can’t browse by its categories, tags or menus. I think RSS feed reader is a good option for the blogs that you are familiar with and want to subscribe to it.

That’s all my secrets. I think they are good enough for people don’t like the technical hassle. Good news is that you don’t need it for English Wikpedia since a few days’ ago. Good luck!