techblog86 spin: The Truth About “Freedom of Speech” and “China”…

CNN, Auntie Beeb and just about every last “western media outlet” has given China excessive hell for not living to “human rights” promises, promising “freedom of speech”, and expanding “democracy”. In fact, for Us Expats (as in not just US (as in United States) expats) based here in China, some of us see things a bit differently.

This is just a “thought post” your blogger’s doing early in the morning… he just flipped through a book on political scandals and was kind of amused to find “reactionary propaganda” against England’s King Charles about four centuries back. (Yep, the poor guy ended up in the Tower all right. Much like your present-day detention and imprisonment.) The upshot?

It’s a given — the tables will eventually turn. Just part of this whole “growing pains” thing. It’s probably not the best time right now to go out and shrieking for change. Good things come to those who wait…

Alibaba Now Does PayPal

If you have any second doubts about PayPal — no longer. Yes, it is a bit DHS-ish when it comes to verifying your personal data — but that’s supposedly to keep you (and your money) safe. Behind the PR lingo, it’s official: Beginning today, April 26, 2010 (05:30 in the morning if you want more precision), PayPal now works with Alibaba. There’s also escrow and instant purchases (AliExpress) in this.

It hasn’t been a smooth ride — as in Alibaba and PayPal — and there were even mentions of potential scams a while back. Still, the new service, in the form of the AliExpress website, targets small to medium-sized retails and wholesales outside of China who want to source products from companies in the city, according to Alibaba Hong Kong spokeswoman Linda Kozlowski.

It’s funny how the two are working out now, given that there’s a fair bit of competition between the two companies as well as eBay, who actually owns PayPal. Taobao, an Alibaba consumer e-commerce and auction website wildly popular in China, is king in Chinese cyberspace — at the expense of eBay. How the partnership between the two remains to be seen, reports Computerworld.

阿里巴巴通過「AliExpress」站點正式開放使用 PayPal 以付賬之服務，全球速賣通平台使用者將可通過 PayPal 付款。今日正式推出起，使用者可按本身小本經營需要下單，並提供包括小批量訂單保障買賣雙方利益之第三方信用擔保等之服務。

Wifi Around China: Chamate Guomao

China’s a republic built on tea, not coffee, so when Starbucks wanted to dig deeper into the country, it had to do tea. Thankfully, Starbucks now does Green Tea, English Breakfast, and a host of other tea.

But no chrysanthemum tea.

And according to traditional Chinese med experts, that stuff is supposed to be good for ya. It’s supposed to make you chill… and make you feel a lot better. It’s too bad Starbucks doesn’t offer that stuff: Starbucks’s loss is Chamate’s gain.

Chamate (一茶一坐), a tea house chain that is supposedly Taiwanese by origin, is one of those places where you lose yourself in their menu. They have just about every last variant of tea you could probably name — or not name, rather. For Tea Gods, it’s a dream come true. It’s true that they have smoking areas — hence giving them one less point in their favour (smoking is bad for ya), but at least they’ve adequate wifi. We say adequate as it seems to be doing the wifi waltz every so often, disconnecting especially your tech blogger.

There are a host of Chamate outlets in both Beijing and Shanghai, and there’s even one in Tianjin (right by the Yingkoudao Metro station). This particular Chamate (as in Chamate Guomao) is located in the China World Mall, where a Starbucks on the ground floor has sucked in more expats than you can imagine. Provided you don’t mind about the rather dim lighting, next time you want to invite someone to tea (or get invited “to tea” by the secret police — Chinese Netspeak for being grabbed to a cop station in order for them to tell you “what not to say on the Web”), try this place. It’s also a good place to escape the Starbucks crowds, which at times can seem — well, too PRC. (People’s Republic. Get it?)

Wifi: Free; password-protected.
Signal: OK in general. Disconnects happen.
VPN support: Generally OK.
Transit links: Guomao Subway Station on Lines 1 and 10 (exit A for direct access to China World Mall).

Chamate Guomao (一茶一坐國貿店)
Underground Level 1; west area
China World Mall
Beijing, China

#foursquare Day Beijing Featured In National News Mag

Will we soon see #foursquare harmonized? Travel sites have a much better track record with the Net Nanny… that is, unless you get un-harmonious with them. (How — that we don’t know.)

Anyway, #foursquare Day Beijing made it big. One of the nation’s most libre papers, the Southern Metropolitan Weekly (《南都周刊》), did its bit in letting the world — at least the Chinese-language world — know all about foursquare Day. In addition to letting your blogger claim a full page of the paper’s territory, the paper, more importantly, gave more airtime to @frankyu, mayor of the Sanlitun Apple Store, as well as other folks, including Joel Danielson of Illuminant.

(Yep — the paper also revealed that @frankyu is mayor because he checks in every single day. In fact, Frank just checked in about an hour before this post was pushed out. Ah, Frank, why don’t you just write the Great Leader Steve Jobs and — own the Store for good?)

The paper also interviewed the folks behind Fubar, where the party moved after 50+ folks checked in at the city’s Mac temple. Fubar gets its biz done through word of mouth, and — true to the #foursquare spirit — offers the mayor (currently no-one but @BeijingBoyce) happy hour prices all day.

PS: The paper got David Feng’s nationality wrong — he’s a Swiss, not a Singaporean. Beijing’s Subway Goddess, @sioksiok, by the way, is Singaporean…

PS 2: The guy you see with an index finger sticking out is pointing at the swarm by the Apple Store. We should have pointed that out earlier…

(Thank you @chinewinelover for the OK to use the pic.)

於 4 月 16 日舉行的 foursquare Day 線下聚會引起了媒體的關注，其中一個做大篇幅報導的就是《南都週刊》，並採訪了本博客博主、舉辦場所之「foursquare Mayor」及其它 foursquare 人物。

What Were You Doing Today? There’s NTALKS Every Month

Too bad your blogger had other things to tend to, but he attended the initial NTALKS late last month and he recommends it. (And no, it’s not because he had a 3-minute mic moment to “propagate” the bits and bobs on status.net, the WordPress of microblogging.) If you have nothing to do on the last Sunday of every month — or if you just want to stay informed more and more about the more 2.0 aspects of the Chinese Web, there’s always NTALKS, co-hosted by Gang Lu and Cindy Jiang from the Mobinode.

The first-ever NTALKS kicked off with microblogging, and we had some heavyweights come onstage — including folks from Hesine, Netease Microblogs, and many more. The most recent event focused more on the mobile market, and folks from UCWeb, Tencent Wireless and Renren, one of the major Chinese SNS networks.

Both these events were held at the France Telecom OrangLabs centre (10th floor, Raycom Info Centre C; 2, Kexueyuan South Road, Haidian) in Beijing (海淀区科学院南路 2 号融科资讯中心 C 座南楼 10 层). Events take place around 14:00 through 17:00 and prior registration online is needed.

由盧剛及 Cindy 之「動點博客」從上個月 (2010 年 3 月) 就開始創辦 NTALKS，每月一次。上個月講的是微博 (微型博客)，這一次則是移動 (Mobile)。每個月一次的 NTALKS 群音薈，值得大家關注。

Wifi in China: Starbucks PEK T3 Arrivals

Ah, “US imperialism” in a Chinese airport. When they designed Terminal 3 at Beijing Capital International Airport (PEK), they wanted to make this as “Chinese” as possible. As if printing out more Mao notes was nothing, they made sure T3 (as it’s known for short) was the kind of super-face project that could win a Skytrax award or two.

And it did. Beijing’s T3 cannot be described without using the word “kick-ass”. From the rarely-experience lush deluxe of personalized security checks and luxury lounges in the rarely-accessed VIP terminal to the massive hall housing what must be a trillion check-in desks, Terminal 3 is a sight to behold, whether you’re here going out of the country, or if you’re just out to, say, Nanjing, or if you’re even just here to “weiguan” (围观) or have a look around. When T3 came out, the best thing about it was the food. No longer the churned out result of the planned economy of yesteryear, there’s that fattening Burger King (sorry, no Fatburger here) to Thai treats, both in the arrival and departure halls.

When your blogger met @shelisrael for the first time in late 2008, the two agreed that it was as if “we never left home”. The Starbucks in the arrivals hall is a “big”, so to speak. It has both a neat indoor section with just a few seats (that used to lie all empty) to a sizeable outdoor area which, unfortunately, has the tendency to send people to the sick bed for freezing temps during spring (especially if you’re not here with a jacket or so). In return you get the Starbucks drink of your choice and wifi.

Sadly, wifi is where the venue really, really doesn’t do well. Rather than spoiling you with in-store Starbucks, seen at hundreds of outlets in central Beijing, Starbucks has you use the airport-wide wifi, which to the uninitiated seems available to only China Mobile customers (unless you do “Roaming Partners”). Furthermore, surfers-to-be better come with their own surfboard, so to speak: even getting a signal from the CMCC wifi network (all others appear to be locked) is more than a gamble than anything. When you’re finally on, you’ll unfortunately be greeted by the kind of speed that makes the average turtle seem like the Maglev. VPNs? Iffy here.

Wifi: Free but uses airport terminal network; complex to log on.
Signal: Iffy. Especially hard to log on.
VPN support: Very iffy.
Transit links: Airport Express station not far away.
Note: Temperatures change inside the terminal; come with an extra layer, especially around spring, when the heaters are off!

Starbucks Beijing Capital International Airport (PEK) Terminal 3 (T3) Arrivals
Arrivals hall, between exits B and C (international passengers turn left)
Beijing, China

The Grass Mud Horse, Revisited

It’s no longer early 2009, when the Grass Mud Horse, or the Caonima (in essence Chinese for “f##k your mother”), was so popular that the censors stepped in and harmonized or blocked YouTube. Still, despite official disapproval, the much-adored Grass Mud Horse lives on — and CNN has it all on tape.

While on a late night Googlefest, your blogger found just the tip of the iceberg when it came to the Caonima Cult. Full diaries have been written about the alpaca-turned-grass-mud-horse. There’s Grass Mud Horse art on the Uncyclopedia. And there’s the kid’s song about the cult alpaca, in case you missed it.

From what we’ve seen, there are even alpacas at zoos in Beijing and everywhere else — yes, in China.

It’s no surprise: the Grass Mud Horse remains loved by everyone, boys and girls.

But the Grass Mud Horse is becoming of age — as in it’s becoming an old joke. There’s now the Yax Lizard, a derivative of Chinese communist propaganda from Xinjiang — Yaxshi — used to praise the party. This has, unsurprisingly, drawn much controversy.

中國線上神獸「草泥馬」只需要谷歌一下就能發現好多相關資料，如《草泥馬之歌》、圍觀草泥馬 (羊駝) 記錄等，而中國不少動物園依然都養著「草泥馬」/ 羊駝。國外亦對草泥馬做了大片報導。

Plurk: “Harmonized” in China — For A Year Now

Some things never change. As in — when good things meet bad people — or bad firewalls. China’s super-harmonious Great Firewall (#fuckGFW in Twitterese) has taken Plurk (噗浪 in Chinese) offline — and that was a year ago today.

In the meantime, Plurk has since just about exploded with nearly two thirds of the user base from Taiwan. In fact, in a meetup with one of the more notable English-language tweeps in Taipei a few months ago, your blogger heard a fair bit of hearsay — of whether or not Plurk headquarters would migrate on over to the Green Isle. Meantime most Taiwanese news sites have a direct link to Plurk out news and commentary, and the island’s main political parties do Plurk.

Since then, China seems to have taken a liking to blocking social networking sites, whether they’re reactionary (Twitter) or not. With them even blocking I Can Haz Cheeseburger… it’s just a case before, as the Twittersphere has hinted to, them blocking every last website and creating an all-PRC intranet.

(The mandarins came close late last year, when they brandished the “foreign websites / whitelist” (白名單) sword. It, obviously, backfired.)

中國大陸去年今天起，開始對噗浪社交網絡進行封鎖，此後又對了推特、臉譜網等諸多國外社交網路採取封網措施。同時，噗浪在臺灣廣泛使用，許多政黨都在此設立帳戶，而臺灣不少新聞網站也提供噗浪連結，讓讀者直接將一條新聞轉入噗浪中。

Wifi Around China: Starbucks Juchuan, Tanggu, Tianjin

I’d have loved to call this the Tanggu Starbucks outright, but it turned out the thing had a real name. The Starbucks Juchuan (巨川) store is one of those places in Tanggu where it’s dead quiet (apart from the canned music playing at near-full volume — shame to you) — and one of those places where you seem to get a decent wifi connection, although it did seem to, at times, reveal its flakier intentions.

Basically what this is is a two-storey Starbucks with ample seating. If you want your own bit of peace and quiet, try the second floor, where it’s rare to spot a soul (OK, we do have folks coming in then and now, but it’s pretty quiet nonetheless). They have a fair number of sofas — the kind of stuff that seems to have been grabbed at every last Starbucks.

The place is silent to the extent that it’s the antithesis of the Starbucks at, say, Shin Kong Place right after lunch hour (13:00), when everyone comes back to the place. Still, if you want somewhere where you can think (OK, super-loud music aside) and go online (or meet up to talk biz / “other stuff”) and you’re in Tanggu, this is pretty much it. I haven’t been here outside “right after lunch hour”, so for late nights, your mileage may vary!

Wifi: Free; password-protected (they give you the password with any purchase).
Signal: Pretty good (be it laptop or mobile devices such as the iPod touch).
VPN support: Good on Witopia.
Transit links: Often lots of taxis underneath; about a 10-minute ride from the Tanggu Railway Station.

Starbucks Juchuan (星巴克巨川店)
Just by Xuexiao Road
Tanggu, Tianjin, China