new tourist markets

We are at the end of the so called Golden Week of Mainland China. This week is normally around the 1st of October, and results in pretty much the whole of China being off work.

There are more and more people in China that have a free spendable income and since the recreation industry is not developed that well, people spend it on trips (see my previous posting). Hence the big influx of mainland tourist during all holiday periods. They come here for shopping and sightseeing.

On the other side they have learned from countries around them that stockmarkets can give you a good income as well.

So some smart ones decided to combine both interestests. In the last week a number of "theme" trips have been organized. The theme was investment, so basically a master class on investing. THere was a 20 year old busconductor that wants to change her job to become full time investor now....

Many people still seem to have the idea that everyone get rich by investing, and they forget you can loose money as well. Another one was that if friend A invested in company X before and made money, that if I invest now....i will make money as well.

Ah well...interesting to see new business opportunities develop!

china conquers the world

Yesterday I was on a flight from Hong Kong to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia again.

As China is developing more and more, its citizens start traveling around as well. I remember reading that a good number of tourguides at the Eifeltower have to learn Mandarin to service this new market for them.

More and more I find those travelers take part in interesting activities when traveling. For many of them its their first trip abroad and they are not always used to the "safety" rules and regulations on board.

On this flight there was an other group on board. We left the gate without any troubles, taxied on the run way. Suddenly I hear a loudspeaker conversation beside me. When looking left I see 3 elderly mainland ladies having a good laugh via a speaker mobile phone with one of their friends. When more people are staring at them, they realize hmmm maybe not the best thing to do. So the lady ends the conversation, unlocks her seatbelt, stands up and puts her phone away into the overhead lockers, roams through her luggage to find some things...... This is all seconds before the plane takes off :)

Recently I had a similar situation, when landing though..... always interesting :). In the newspapers was an article where a gentleman occupied the toilet for a long time. When the flight attendant checkec up.....he said he was having a bath in the little toilet room........

More to come

Beijing Mobilized?

The olympics in Beijing in 2008 drive many new initiatives in and around the city.

Activities like cleaning up and restoring major tourist areas as the forbidden city, the summer palace, numerous temples and of course increasing security measures around tianmen square to protect the visitors.

A very interesting initiative is a WAN deployment in the Chongwen district in Beijing.

On top of that a city information portal will be deployed. The portal will be providing information like maps, events, travel information etc. The cool bit is that this will be accesible online with PDA's, mobile phone, basically any device with WIFI.

I would be curious to see if only the portal can be accessed or the generic internet as well. THat would be a good challenge for blogging regulations etc I would say.

Cooperation takes place with a number of companies that build up experience with a similar excercise in Heidelberg Germany. The network there is called Heidelberg Mobil

Other companies involved are www.eml-development.com, www.capinfo.com.cn, and www.cwi.gov.cn

Now other then being absolutely cool for users I do see some ideas on linking virtual and the real world. How about the forbidden city in a 2nd life kind of environment?

Location based marketing and advertising for Mr Ho his noodlejoint.....a yellow pages site that in combination with google earth tells you where your company is and how to get there.

In short a very interesting development!


Posting inspired by an article in De Ingenieur, 25 May 2007.

Beijing 2008: IP protection

That China is developing fast is no news, that Beijing is focusing on the 2008 Olympics is no secret either. They even start realizing the value of IP and are in touch with Hong Kong customs officers to train up their own staff on how to recognize fake products.

So the customs officers receive training on how to recognize the so called FUWA mascottes. There are basically 5 characters. a fish, a panda, a Tibetan antelope a swallow and the Olympic flame. They are symbols representing the so called five elements of sea, forest, fire, earth and sky.

The naming of the Olympics Mascots is actually quite interesting, as they are called BeiBei, JingJing, HuanHuan, YingYing and NiNi. When taking the first part of every name it leads to BeiJing HuanYing Ni! or in English, Beijing welcomes you!

Anyway, especially the Guangdong customs team, united with Hong Kong via the Guangdong/Hong Kong expert group on the protection of Intellectual Property are stepping up the efforts in clamping down on illegal copies of the FUWA materials sold. Results so far cover.....key hangers and a number of moulds to produce goods.

The main motivation behind it is obviously that all those articles bring in BIG CASH for the olympics organization...and who wants to loose out on that.

China drops real-name blogger plan

In the recent months there has been some talks in China where webloggers were required to start using their own names.

This would of course allow a stricter control on (critical) postings...The plan has been scrapped. One of the reasons is that it would be nearly impossible to administer it properly.

On the other side, the community has take its own responsibility now.

The Internet Society of China (ISC) said on its Web site that it would seek public comment for one week on the "Blog Service Governance Communique." It encouraged "self-discipline" among bloggers and called upon the blogger community to "consciously enhance their sense of responsibility and social awareness of public morality."

source

The Great China Firewal

A lot of discussion was and is going around the great China firewall.
The wall that filters and blocks information of internet going into china.

A few people started up an initiative to allow others checking whether their site is accesible in China.

Concept is easy, you type in a URL, they route it to China where they let it access the net via a local server, then feedback the result.

http://www.greatfirewallofchina.org