About China blogosphere, travel, and entrepreneurship

My film “600″ which I shot in Shanghai in 2007 has recently been accepted into some major U.S. and international film festivals after a short successful China festival 2007 showing(3 awards in 2 festivals). I’ll be heading to the following venues in the next month Austin Asian American Film Festival, Vancouver Asian American Film Festival, International Community Film Festival(can’t make this one, it’s in England). I’ve been wanting to share “600″ with CNreviews for the longest time, but post production with my 2nd film “Drowning” prevented me from having any free time to write. BUT!!!! I FINALLY have some time, so here it is:

Background: I spent my post-college years all over China acting in movies before ending up in Shanghai. While living in Shanghai, I also took a part time job at an English teaching company formerly known as TalkdaTalk as an events coordinator(flexible, easy, I loved it!). When I was free, I would also teach English there and hosted company events. During my time there, I met a lot of English teachers; people from all walks of life now living in Shanghai as expats. Besides the English teachers I met at TalkdaTalk, I also met a huge number of them during social and expat community events. Why teach English? The reason being English teachers are a hot commodity and the Chinese pay nice $$$ for a full time teacher. Full time English teachers are making the ranges of 10,000-15,000 RMB per month. Even though that doesn’t sound a lot to people here in the States, you have to consider the cheap living standards in China where you can eat a cheap meal for 7 rmb( $1), share an apartment for 2000 rmb ($300). To put things into perspective, most of my Chinese local friends all make between 2000rmb-5000 rmb per month (note: most have a college degree). For this reason, people come from all over the world to teach and party in Shanghai.

The film’s core: The core of “600″ is about the loneliness and struggles with identity of an American ex-pat living in Shanghai teaching English. I used the stories of many expat English teachers as inspiration in writing “600″. The main motivation behind this film being the crazy stories I hear from people talking about their lives and how they somehow ended up in Shanghai. When I was living in China, I felt this aura from all the expats that they were all lost(myself included), and was looking for something. This maybe the reason why most of the expats I knew had different jobs and was always trying to do different things. They all deeply loved Shanghai for the city’s energy and were drawn closely to it. In getting to know more and more of these people, I realized most of them were all looking for something in life that they hadn’t found in their previous existence. As expats of Shanghai, they all loved the city and culture initially and are having the best times there. But gradually, over time, the reality and problems begin setting in… and this is where our film begins…

The film”600″ is online and you can watch it for free HERE

(feel free to donate $$$ to support my next film)

In my next post, I will focus on the theme from “600″ and talk about

Living in China as an Expat

Don’t touch that dial!

A small city now 45 minutes of bullet train away from Shanghai(was 2 hours a few years ago), Wuxi is and has been one of the brightest spots of tourism in all of China for the past ten years due to the film sets and the beautiful Tai Hu( Lake Tai). Of the “Three Heavens” outside of Shanghai: Wuxi, Suzhou, and Hang Zhou, Wuxi is more frequented due to the popular studio sets of many Chinese television series such as “Romance of the Three Kingdom”.

Three Kingdoms City - The title of all the films/tv series shot here are listed on wooden boards with each respective title.

After they built the sets a few years ago, they have also named one of the huge studio sets Three Kingdoms City. Although there are other sets next to the Three Kingdoms City, I’d have to say none are as exciting and magnificent. If you go visit during the day, be sure to catch the 1:30pm martial arts show held in the round Shaolin temple located in the center of the attraction. Each film set costs about 100 RMB to get in, there are a few around the area, but I’d skip out on the other ones and just go to Three Kingdoms City. They are all mainly the same; you seen one, you’ve seen all.

I don't even remember where this was, LOL, can't tell you how to get here, sorry!

Traveling tip: If you are ever visiting Shanghai and want to get away from the city for a weekend, visit these cities in the following order: Hang Zhou, Suzhou, Wuxi.

Traveling tip #2: Do NOT fall for overpriced ripoff tours like this one. $191/person for a one day trip is ridiculous.

YOU HAVE TO TRY THIS!!! 30 or 50rmb to rent this and take a picture! Bring own digital camera otherwise they charge you more!

How do I get there? If you decide to take a tour, it might be costly than going on your own(they charge locals and foreigners different prices for these tours due to language-barrier. Foreigners will most likely pay 4x the price of a local) But at least you don’t have to organize anything and worry about getting lost.

Wedding Crashers, well, a fake one...

WWJD? I’m a pretty adventurous cat, so I love to go out and explore, this is what I would do:

1. Get a map first and find out addresses of the spots I’d want to visit(from tourist guide pamplets available in your hotel room or internet sites. If your hotel has no tour guides, then you must be in a really ghetto part of town)

2. Buy a train ticket and go to that city.

3. Once there, take a taxi to the addresses (Make sure you get in a  legitimate looking taxi with a working meter or else you’ll get jacked without knowing it)

4. Once you get to the front gates of the attractions, buy tickets, and also get out 50-100 RMB bill ready to give out to walking guides looking for business. A lot of them can speak English, and they might cost more, but 50-100 RMB should be sufficient; unless there’s some new union or inflation in China I don’t know about. What SHOULD be included in that fee is a full day of walking around showing you around, showing you a nice restaurant to eat some local cuisine(invite them to eat with you even if they politely say no; common courtesy), and finding you a hotel if you need.

This isn't exactly England with the tall guards; THIS CHINA FOOLS!

Traveling Tip #3: DO NOT miss out on the world famous “Wuxi Spareribs” (pronounced Woo She Pie Goo). Ask a taxi driver and he’ll know where to take you.

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… C: wait… SD: wait…

Disclaimer: “I am here to bridge the gap. Not to hate. Not to love. Not to be biased. Only honesty.”

After seeing and hearing many of the critical comments made from so many Americans on newspapers, blogs, forums, TV, venting their frustrations on China’s policy-making, human rights issues, security issues. I’ve decided to step into the limelight and give my two cents on this critical issue currently circulating the media worldwide.

I’m willing to make a bet that many of these critical comments about China are coming from sources that haven’t lived in China for an extensive amount of time; people who don’t really know China. I believe some people just love to hate because I’ve encountered a good number of these bitter souls, but there’s a difference between someone who hates with no foundation behind their arguments and someone who actually knows why they are hating something. Here is my formula: Hate = misunderstanding + ignorance + arrogance, Arrogance = Not wanting to understand (due to fear/insecurity in most cases). Most of us probably read a biased article somewhere in a magazine about China’s workers working for $20/month and automatically scream “Oh my gosh! I can’t believe this injustice! How can this be? We’ve got to do something about that!”

I know people who hated China so much that they went over to China to collect evidence to strengthen their arguments (now that’s some serious hating).  However, most of them came back here with a better understanding and appreciation for China as a culture. I respect these people and applaud their efforts in attempting to at least understand the subject they are arguing against.  That is what we refer to in sports as respecting your opponent.

My advice to all those have negative views about China: “Go to China, live there for 6 months, don’t be a shut in and close your mind.  Open your mind and really experience the culture, and then come back and tell me you still hate it.”  That’s the very first step.  I’ve encountered some of the brightest expats in the world who now reside in China, and we’ve gotten into conversations about China and different perspectives, and every conversations always ends with “best damn decision I made in my life to come here, mate (lots of Aussies).”  Before you criticize something, don’t do it because you have been biased by secondary materials and sources that have influenced you in a negative way; go out there and get to know it yourself before you judge!  

First and foremost, I want to make this clear: the purpose of this post is to help each other understand and accept different cultures so that we may all live in harmony. First, I want to mention that China has made great strides in the past ten years to be more globally receptive to become more international-friendly, and yet I feel we Americans unfairly expect China to make a 360 degree turn within days. It’s almost like telling a 3,000 year old Big Mac Lifetime Honoree to turn vegan within a week. It’s not fair for us to expect a culture with such a rich history to change and conform to our ideals because we think they ought to; especially when we think it’s for their own good.

The popular Chinese opinion regarding the main flaw of America is that we are arrogant, stubborn bullies that think the world should operate our way because we are almighty and everyone else is weak and small. Do we Americans agree with that?  Let’s be truthful here (please do not let your patriotic feelings blind your logic and reasoning because it will make for a weaker argument), it’s my firm belief that a lot of things (media, propaganda, racism) can blind us from understanding other people’s beliefs and cause us to block out the legitimate arguments they may espouse; it’s called cognitive dissonance. If you saw any of the debates from the recent Presidential Election, you’d have a pretty good idea of what that looks like. Let’s ask ourselves, “Are we really a stubborn, arrogant nation that doesn’t want to understand and blocks out everything we don’t believe in? Or is that just a misconception?” Don’t get me wrong, I love America and am proud to be a citizen of this wonderful country where we can speak our mind and not fear persecution. But being in China for two years have helped me understand where the Chinese people are coming from, and that understanding has changed my perspective about a country I had previous biased notions about before actually living and breathing here for two years.  

Here is a quote I found interesting:

“When we have too much security, you blame us for oppressing people.
When we don’t have enough security, you blame us for being a dangerous place to be…

What do you want from us?”

I want everyone to read that statement and absorb it.

Please watch this interview with Chinese veteran blogger Wang Jian Shuo to better understand what we need to do as human beings to help this world.

Quote of the Day:

“Don’t criticize what you don’t understand, son. You never walked in that man’s shoes.” Elvis Presley

Wang Jianshuo, Veteran Blogger of Wangjianshuo’s Blog from Shanghai, China.

Part II: Wang Jianshuo, noted Shanghai blogger, explains his philosophy of perspective and how he keeps control of the online debate on his weblog. Part I is here.

Interview Transcript

How do you deal with extreme comments on your blog and maintain neutral?

First, most important thing is to understand how this world works. My favorite story is the “blind man and the elephant”, anything in this world is like the elephant and any person is like the blind man. You can only grasp part of it (the world), most of the time just a very small part of it. So when I read all those comments, I assume that every comment I read are all part of this world. I realized for any questions, there are many different correct answers even though most people think there should only be one correct answer. Actually, there are many conflicting answers but they are all correct answers.

For example, is China a good or bad country? It’s a good country and a bad country. Is it a rich country? Yes it is. Is it a poor country? Yes it is. I think there are many reasons: first reason is that you can only see part of it, just like the “blind man and the elephant”, the second reason you see it from different perspective. It’s just like this name card for example, is this a white name card or a red name card? I think it’s white, no, it’s red. From different perspectives, you can say different things. So you mix all this together and you can see the different opinions.

So as a blogger, I facilitate the communication, and I try to understand no matter how extreme an opinion is, he is telling the truth, he is right, and the guy on the other extreme, he is also right. My responsibility is just to help these two people to see which part this person see, which perspective does this person see, which relevant scale does this person see, so adding all this together, we can put these two guys together and have them shake hands and say ok, we have a better understanding of the world.

I remember in my blog, there was someone from the proud Tibet, and he shared his feeling about this, he said “Before I came to this blog, I really hated the people in China, because of this, but after being here, I’ve read a lot of comments here and now I don’t hate them anymore because I know there are reasons behind it. ” I think it’s the same with the anti-Tibet group, so they come together.

How does this make you feel that you are changing people’s perception like this?

For example, in Tibet, there are two groups fighting with each other, I will see it differently. When they are fighting against each other, you draw the line right here (between the two groups), but actually I draw the line here (next to the two groups). I say “there is a group of people like you and me trying to bring people together, and there’s an other group who do not want to sit down together”, so we just grab them from this camp although they have different opinons and put them into the other camp and have them start talking and communicating with each other and making it a better world. Just like the French and the Chinese at that time boycotting Olympics. Here we had the anti-Carrefour protests. The French and Chinese are coming together to bring a worst future for the world; what they are doing is destroying the whole world I think, so we are in the other camp.

Where can people go to find you and your blog?

home.Wangjianshuo.com

      I have a friend, let’s call him “Terry”, he is a legendary “mattress wrestler”. What is a mattress wrestler? A mattress wrestler is not a glorious title, luckily I’ve never had the pleasure of experiencing this work of art. But as Terry has gotten older and more experienced with “mattress wrestling”, he’s accepted the challenge and taken on his new identity full throttle. Below is Terry’s definition of “mattress wrestling”:

Mattress Wrestling - Near wrestling moves and countermoves performed in attack/defense of one’s attempt to get into panties. It is safe and no one is ever seriously harmed in the act of mattress wrestling. (I will save the mattress wrestling concept/philosophy and stories for another post).

Terry is going to be our spiritual guidance counselor in the world of dating local women in China. His comical, borderline sad experiences will make most American men cringe, but also remember Terry is one of the unluckiest man alive on any side of the world that I know. Terry is also one of the only guys I know that can say “Only in China” everyday due to his unlucky and crazy encounters with Chinese culture.

Disclaimer: This story will elicit the following different reactions:

WTF!!!   <–U.S./Foreign audiences

HAHAHA <—Understanding sympathetic “been there done that” laugh from the Expat community in China.

Dating Tale #1 Transcript: (Content has been edited to PG, feel free to laugh, he doesn’t mind )

Terry says:                DUDE, I ran into some crazy messed up things again just 1 hour ago!!!
James Z. says:          Again?
Terry says:                So I ran into this one: http://www.*****.com/2440*

Terry says:                Did the usual messages and text and all that, and she wanted to meet me at Rouge out at the Bund, she said she will reserve a table there.
James Z. says:          Ok, and then what happened?
Terry says:                So she said if I got there first just tell the bouncer I am her guest and she  has a table. So i got there before she does and waited downstairs.

Terry says:                She walked right by me and did not recognize me
Terry says:                So I went up and I saw her walked out to out side patio
Terry says:                Ok. she must not even seen my online profile then, I said
Terry says:                So I got a drink from the bar and paid for it and walked around to scope out the place
Terry says:                So she texted me asking where I was. So I walked up to her and finally met her
Terry says:                She saw the drink in my hand she was like where did you get that?
Terry says:                I said I got it from the bar.
Terry says:                I said this place is cool.
Terry says:                She was like oh you should order the table service.
Terry says:                I said ok, may be later after I drink this.
Terry says:                She said “Oh, we have a table, let’s just order a bottle.”
Terry says:                I said may be.
James Z.says:            lol, TRAPPED! Come on now, you should’ve seen this coming during the text messages! You rook!
Terry says:                Then i sat my drink down and asked her where the Men’s room is.
Terry says:                I said I gotta go to the Men’s room.
Terry says:                Luckily, I scoped it out and the kitchen has a utility stair way exit by the Men’s room.
Terry says:                So I ran the hell down and went out the utility stairs
James Z.says:           lol OMG!
Terry says:                I got lucky and was able to get out in time, it was close.
Terry says:                Some night huh
James Z. says:          LOL why am I not surprised anymore, LOL.
Terry says:                I pushed it too far man
Terry says:                I should have not even gone in the bar.
James Z. says:          LOL, you got played like an instrument! hahahahaha!
Terry says:                But lucky thing is I scoped where the back door is beforehand.
Terry says:                Gold-diggers!!!!!!!!!!
Terry says:                Yeah man. The legend of mattress wrestling continues…
James Z. says:          LOL
Terry says:               digger defense (defensive strategies against gold-diggers, we should write a book)

Terry says:               You know what though; I was smiling the whole way when I was running down the stairs,

Terry says:               it was an awesome fun feeling getting into some crazy ass incident like this, LOL, only in China…
James Z. says:          Lol ! I need to blog this.

Wang Jianshuo, Veteran Blogger of Wangjianshuo’s Blog from Shanghai, China.

Part I: Wang Jianshuo discusses the origins of his blog and the pains of finding an audience, and how he kept blogging through the tough times to make it a blogging icon. Jianshuo is now the head of Baixing.com (formerly kijiji.cn).

Interview Transcript

Let’s start with our first question, why do you blog?

When I first started in 2000, I didn’t think about starting a blog and just simply registered a domain and wrote some English articles. If I remember, among them I wrote an article about the Pudong airport, and to my surprise a few months later as I googled Pudong airport, my page came up as the first result. I was very surprised and realized there were no previous information about Pudong airport in English on the internet. So I decided to keep writing about the city of Shanghai one article every week.

Two years later in 2002, a blogger interviewed me through MSN and asked a lot of questions. I thought he was a journalist but at the end of the interview he told me he was a blogger and sent me his site. It was then I learned about blogging and how great it was since you can write articles and help people by sharing your knowledge. I then decided to change my website from html format into a blog. The reason I blog is because I consider myself a volunteer for the city of Shanghai by blogging and helping the people and the city.

When you are blogging, what’s the inspiration behind each post? Do you have a certain person/audience in mind when you blog?

Most of my blogs are regarding the events in Shanghai that affect my life and others. I have certain guidelines: first it must be something in Shanghai, second it has to affect people’s lives. The “persona” you are referring to my target audience when I blog is a new visitor to Shanghai, I want to share these small details of Shanghai life with them to help them. You can see in my blogs that I like to focus on the small things. For example: “I take the bus, pay two Yuan, and most of the bus here cost two Yuan if it’s air-conditioned, and one Yuan if it’s not” would be an excerpt from one of my blogs. I believe it’s very important information that you can’t learn from books or newspapers. This information is very important stuff for visitors, so I write all kinds of these small things for these people. I don’t really know what they need, so I just share my life and tell them the details of how to live a life in the city as I see it. For example, one day I had nothing to write about, but I saw an image of 119(emergency number in China), and I posted a blog to about dialing 119 for emergency calls. To my great surprise, there were so many comments on that short post alone; people commented “I’ve been in Shanghai for many years, and I had no idea, we salute you and thank you so much Mr. Wang!” I thought it was shocking and couldn’t believe that people didn’t know.

Do you feel pressured to blog? Does it come naturally to you? If you go a day without blogging, do you feel pressure or is it something you enjoy and look forward to?

It changes over time; the first six months were very painful since you never had the habit to write a blog. Another most important thing is that no one read blogs back then; it’s better and easier now since I know there are thousands of people who are waiting to read my blog. Back in the days, you knew you only had one or two readers, and you write for three months and get nothing back, so you start questioning yourself why you are still doing this. That was a tough period for most bloggers is that first month or two.

What advice do you have for bloggers who are all in that same boat within first few months of blogging hardship?

I think the most important question to ask is “why do you blog?”, if you blog for readership, chances are you will give up. It’s very hard for to get readership, some people after one year still have no readers except their parents and friends. My advice is “never write if you just want people to read it”. At the very beginning, when I was working for Microsoft, I would give people my business card and feel the pride of belonging to such a prestigious company as people were impressed by Microsoft the company. One day in 2002, all of a sudden I had an epiphany and realized the honor I was proud of belonged only to the company and not me. As a person, you have to accumulate something of yourself, not for fame, not for the readership, but accumulate the knowledge in life and share it even if no one read it. That’s why I wrote everyday and didn’t care I had no readership because doing a blog made me think and observe everyday and this is very helpful.

Olympic Torch is in Shanghai now. The torch relay will restart after the national mourning period for Wenchuan earthquake (May 19-21). Originally, it was planned on May 20 and 21. I got this notice about traffic control on May 23 and 24 in Shanghai via an email. It might be helpful for you.

Day 1, May 23 2008 (530 -1600)

• Huangpu (黄浦区): People’s Square -> The Bund
• Luwan (卢湾区): Xingye Rd (around Xintiandi area) to Fuxing Rd. & Xizang Rd. intersection
• Yangpu (杨浦区)：Yingao Rd to Jiangwan Rd. to Guofan Rd.
• Pudong (浦东新区)：Huamu Rd (around Century Park, and Yincheng Rd (around Lujiazhui, Oriental Pearl Tower, Jinmao Tower)

IMPORTANT: Metro Line 2: none stop at Nanjin Dong Rd. station from 730 - 930 am.

Day 2, May 24 2008

• Xuhui (徐汇区): Chaoqi Rd (around Xujiahui center) to the Shanghai Stadium
• Minhang (闵行区): Jianchuan Rd to Dong Chuan Rd. (around Shanghai Jiaotong University Minhang campus)
• Jiading (嘉定区)：Moyu Rd & Caoan Rd

Century Park(世纪公园), Shanghai Scence & Technology Museum (上海科技馆) will be closed on May 23. Oriental Green Boat (东方绿洲), a park, will be closed till 2:30pm on May 24.

This is an route map published in July 2007 (green for day 1, red for day 2). source from Xinmin Net(新民网)

Obviously, the route has been updated. For example, the torch will be in Pudong New District area in day 1 in the afternoon.

The same information can be found on Sohu here in Chinese.

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…)

Tom Mercer from Simple Green Choices (this blog might not be accessible in China if you don’t have a proxy server) has great resources in green travel. And his post about travel options has been my self-justification of not owning a car - not environmental friendly, especially when I am in Shanghai. Here are the numbers of how many “greenhouse emissions“ created by different transportation methods.

Total Emissions Per Person

• Average Car/Single Driver - 1.39 lbs/mi
• Average Car/Family of 4 - .34 lbs/mi
• Train - .32 lbs/mi
• Bus - .48 lbs/mi
• Plane (250 mi trip) - .85 lbs/mi**
• Plane (600 mi) - .69 lbs/mi**
• Plane (3500 mi) - .56 lbs/mi**
  

So last weekend, we decided to take train instead of to rent a car to a nearby city Hangzhou (杭州, Hángzhōu). The later option will be environmental friendly if I have a family of 4. But not now. It was a great riding experience and I’d like to share with you how to enjoy “train riding” to Hangzhou from Shanghai.

1. Buy train tickets: Unless you buy the tickets at train station ticket boots, there is always a small sub-charge on buying a train ticket from agents. The best way is to go official ticket vendors/offices and it will cost you only 5 RMB/ticket. If you call a travel agent, the max. amount could be 30 RMB even in non-national holiday period.

2. Go to railway station: There are two major train stations in Shanghai: Shanghai Railway Station (上海火车站) and Shanghai South Railway Station (上海火车南站). Both of the stations are connected to Metro Line 1 and Line 3. South station is a very new and modern architecture and was open on July 1, 2006. A lot of trains to southern provinces (Zhejiang Province, Hunan Province and Jiangxi Province) are departed here, so was the high-speed train we took was departed here as well. Make sure you know which station you want to depart from and arrive at. The taxi fee from South Railway Station to Jing’an Temple is around 30 RMB in daytime non-rush hour.

3. Take the train: I have the experience of spending 24 hours in the train when traveling from Shanghai to Beijing around 10 years’ ago. But it only took me 12 hours last year. So the train travel experience becomes more and more enjoyable (except of Chinese New Year period) in China. But I have to say the toilet condition is still a big challenge for most western travellers in a long distance trip.

4. Buy return tickets：The only benefit of buying return ticket at your destination is to SAVE the transaction fee since you are at the train station! We saved 10 RMB! ^_^

Here is a image tour of our train-riding experience:

We traveled from Jing’an Temple direction and arrived at North West Entrance on level 2.

There is a layout map on the left-hand side near the entrance. B1- Arrival; Level 1 & 2 - Departure.

A grand architecture! Definitely not a traditional train station you see in China!

Highspeed trains CRH (which means “China Railway High-speed”) to Hangzhou are all departed at A1 lounge on level 1. We took the stairs on our left hand side and went down one level, then followed the sign to the waiting room. CHR has a “funny” Chinese name “和谐号” (Hexie Hao, 和谐 means “harmonious”).

This is what you want to look for.

Double confirm that you are not going to the wrong waiting room. This sign at the entrance tells you the numbers of all the trains that depart from this room, including to Hangzhou: D653, D657, D663, D667, D675, D681, D683; to Changsha (长沙): D109. “D” trains (train number started with letter “D”) (动车组，DòngChē Zǚ) are the fastest trains in China railway transportation system. If you take “D” train to Beijing, it takes you only 10 hours.

Hangzhou is a very popular spring travel destination for Shanghainese, people (and us) are desperated to see the spring green in Hangzhou!

Our train departs at 9:30am.

On the platform. There are 16 cabinets in a CRH.

The cabinet of CRH is very clean and spacey, 5 seats in a row and luggage rack overhead.

Even though the toilet condition has room for improvement, we can’t complain about the “hot” and “cold” FREE water on the train. I believe all the trains in China provide free water today.

Three minutes after departure, the train was at a speed of 130km/hour. The highest speed is around 170km/hour, avg. 140km/h. It only takes 75 minutes and costs us 54RMB/person to travel from Shanghai to Hangzhou.

The bullet train CRH 和谐号。

This is a used ticket from Hangzhou (杭州) to Shanghai South Railway Station (上海南).

[the end]

Shanghai Pudong Airport Terminal (T2) was open to operation on Mar. 26 2008. This is a cover story in all the major newspaper and TV news. Shanghai Morning Post (Mar. 26 2008 issue) has great information about how to get around Terminal 2 and here are the summary:

1. From Shanghai city to T2

- By Taxi or Self-driving: You are supposed to be driving on A20 express way (A20 outer ring road) to Pudong Iinternational Airport and the take A1 to the terminals. There will be sign saying “Terminal 2″ (left lane) and “Terminal 1″(right lane) at an intersection. Pay attention to “arrival” or “departure” sign.

• T1: departure level only connect to T2 departure level
• T1: arrival level doesn’t connect to T2, you need to take a U turn at Hangtianwang Rd.
• T2: both departure and arrival levels connect to T1

- By Airport Maglev: The Maglev railway lays in the middle of the two terminals. It is about 10 minutes walk between T1 and T2. So you want to confirm the direction before you walk, especially when you have huge luggage with you.

- By Airport Shuttle Bus: The shuttle bus will stop at T1 first and then T2. It is said that you can check the terminal information of the flights on the airport shuttle bus TV so that you will know where to get off.

2. Travel between T1 and T2

- Yellow Shuttle Bus: There are free shuttle buses (a kind of yellow color 13-seat van) that travel between two terminals from 6am to 9pm, departing at 10 minutes interval. There are two bus stations in T1: Domestic Gate 1, International Gate 8, and 2 in T2: Iinternational Gate 23, Domestic 27 (all are gates on departure level). The shuttle bus is a good option if you have large luggage.

- On Foot: The distance between T1 and T2 is about 500 meters . There are three hallways for visitors to walk between T1 and T2. Usually it will take you less than 10 minutes if you have light luggage.

This is a hallway connecting T1 & T2, image took from T2.

3. T2 to Shanghai Downtown

- By Taxi: On ground level

- By Airport Shuttle Bus: It is about 5-10 minutes walk between shuttle bus station and taxi station, which is not very convenient if you want to take shuttle bus when you find out taxi line is too long. The shuttle bus will stop at T1 first and then T2. So there will be a chance that you can’t get onto the shuttle bus on T2 on peak hours.

- Maglev：Maglev is connected to Metro Line 2 at Longyang Rd. Station. Fee for single ride has dropped to RMB 50 from RMB 75; a discounted price is RMB 40 if you have the airticket of the flight on the same day.

Images?