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Wednesday, May 25, 2005 |
The NY Times has an article
about shopping malls in China. It is a good example of the massive
change that this country is undergoing. Right now the two biggest
shopping malls in the world are located in China, and in 2010 7 of the
biggest 10 will be here! I also found out that the huge new shopping
mall in Beijiing I wrote about on February 9 is the actually biggest one in the world.
8:37:16 PM 
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Just got a call from China Mobile. Because of my high mobile phone
bills over the past 12 months I will get a VIP card from them. No idea
what it is, but it seems even monopolistic companies start to do
marketing to keep their clients. Maybe that's the real reason: my phone
bill used to be 400-500 EUR per month, but it is now around 100 EUR.
Thank you Skype!
2:38:11 PM
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For some reason the logs I wrote over the past 2 days still do not
appear on my blog (it's now Wednesday 2:15 PM). This has happened more
often in the past. I used to think that it was a problem with my
software (Radio Userland), but from other Chinese bloggers I heard they
face the same problems every now and then. I guess it may be related to
censorship issues. Not sure if every software is affected though.
Anybody any ideas what causes this or an idea for better blogging
software? Leave a comment or write to me at marc (at) china-bay dot com
2:14:05 PM
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When I left DaimlerChrysler about 3 years ago and studied Chinese for a
while at Beijing Foreign Studies University, I was one of the few
people on campus with a car. It was easy to park, and the guards were
never sure whether to charge me or not. Sometimes they did (I think it
was about 1 or 2 RMB per day), but most of the times they just let me
in and out of campus when I said a friendly [OE]Ni hao[base '] to them. The same
was true for Beijing University, where I sometimes went for a walk
around the lake.
But China develops fast, and things seem to have changed. I have not
been on a campus in China in 2 years, but according to an article in
the Shanghai Daily many students now come to class with a car. This
causes problems, as Chinese campuses were not designed with cars in
mind. There are lots of bicycle parking lots of course, but only a very
few places where you can park you car. Some universities started to
charge parking fees (RMB 10-15 per day) or ask students to park
off-campus. Fudan University is now implementing a policy where
students are allowed to park on campus, as long as they have applied
for a permit. However, it turns out that only staff can apply for the
permit!
12:20:05 PM
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© Copyright 2005 Marc van der Chijs.
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