We'll spend the first week of the Chinese New Year in Xiamen, which is a two-hour flight from here. All I know about Xiamen is from a recent Neal Stephenson novel, and that featured a lot of explosions and gunfire, which I hope we can avoid (on the other hand, come to think of it, the Spring Festival is quite heavy on pyrotechnics). I did learn that Xiamen is very close to Taiwan, though, and am looking forward to the warmer climate.

The new year is the Year of the Dragon, which is my year.

Speaking of rich "alphabets", I encountered my first Chinese CAPTCHA this week, on the Ikea page, where Cissy was selecting a free promotional gift:

In China, the Lunar New Year is more important than the Gregorian one: The Year of the Dragon will begin on January, 23rd, and there will be a week-long national holiday (Spring Festival) then, but that this year New Year's Eve, even though a Saturday, has been declared a working day is a bit much. Elimination of week-ends to compensate for bridge days is in itself quite common here, though, and it is important to clump holidays together so that people have a chance to return home, which can be far in China.

We are not going home for New Year, we are going to Suzhou tomorrow for three days, about a hundred kilometres (a 25 minutes train ride) to the west of Shanghai.

Amazon is trying to re-launch in China, and as part of their rebranding (they are changing their Chinese name) they are advertising with the domain name z.cn. As of now, this just redirects to amazon.cn, and it is not clear how Amazon got hold of the domain, or if they even own it at this point (the WhoIs database entry points to someone called Wang Hanhua), but that is certainly a neat URL, almost as cool as PayPal's developer portal.

Angry Birds and Plants versus Zombies are popular in China, too, and the appeal of the cartoon characters has far extended the computer (or rather: mobile phone) games that spawned them. You can buy all kinds of toys, clothes and accessories featuring them here. They have reached a level of omnipresence akin to Mickey Mouse, Snoopy, Kitty-chan or the local contenders Pleasant Goat and Big, Big Wolf. Plants versus Zombies has also been turned into a successful trading card game for children. Not all of this is trademark piracy, there are a couple of big-name commercial companies that use the characters in their marketing campaigns, all the way up to nationwide TV commercials and coupon codes in soda bottles.

Faiz is in town for a few days, and we took this opportunity to finally visit the China Pavilion. While the 2010 Expo has been finished for a year now, its biggest and most iconic pavilion will remain as a permanent exhibit. Even on a weekday it still draws a lot of people. We did not have to wait to get in, but there were still lines. I forgot to bring my Expo passport, so I'll probably have to go again to get it stamped. The very popular Saudi Arabia pavilion is currently undergoing renovation, and will for some time also remain open to the public.

I was waiting in a hotel lobby for a business meeting, when I heard a familiar tune from the TV set that was playing in the bar: the theme song from the Korean drama that I enjoyed so much in Singapore last year. I walked over to see that Shanghai Oriental Television was not showing the Korean original Cruel Temptation ( aka Temptation of a Wife), but rather a local adaptation, called The Desire of Going Home (回家的诱惑).

From what I can tell, it is a shot-for-shot reproduction. The names and location (seems to Shanghai) are different, but everything else is the same (just looks cheaper). The actors must have studied the original, you can tell that they are imitating their counterparts. So without the need for subtitles I could tell who each character was, and what was going on (also what was about to happen). I hope the producers are paying some kind of royalties for this, I cannot think that this can otherwise be legal, even in China, at least as far as the music is concerned.

Unfortunately, the show is already in its last third, so that this does not give me a chance to catch up with the first half that I still have not seen (of course, while researching for this post, trying to find a good image, I came across scores of streaming sites that have all episodes of both versions; going into Baidu with the name of a movie or show, it is hard to find anything else).

In related news, I am going home tomorrow: We'll be in Europe until the end of the month.

2:1-IDEAL ratio

Rosbacher mineral water has the physiologically beneficial 2:1 ratio for the body. During physical activity a fit person loses calcium and magnesium in a ratio 2:1.

Michael Schumacher, seven-time Formula One world champion swears by Rosbacher

I have said before that I do not understand the economics of shipping water across a number of oceans, but our neighbourhood Walmart here in Shanghai now carries Rosbacher sparkling and non-sparkling mineral water in the imported foods section (unfortunately, the same can at the moment not be said for Nutella).

A popular TV programme here in Shanghai is the Property Reporter, which covers the (still booming) real estate market. They walk the viewer through apartments and houses, and helping with that is Kyle Broflovski, sliding along on the floor plan. The Property Reporter is a very professionally produced show, so it is possible that Kyle is actually under contract there, but maybe the Intellectual Property Reporter needs to look into it. Either way, it is an interesting choice.

In case you were wondering about the reports about panic-shopping and salt hoarding being triggered in China by false rumours of salt being necessary or beneficial to protect against radiation poisoning: Our neighbourhood Walmart is indeed sold out, there is a small crowd in front of the shelves evaluating and dismissing the various types of sugar instead, and staff posted a message on the wall, presumably advising buyers against hoarding, but they did not let me take a picture of it.

Even if you fear that the amount of radiation that will spread to your area calls for medication (and we can still be reasonably confident hope that this does not even go as far as Tokyo), you'd have to eat three kilos of regular table salt in a single serving to get enough iodine from it. I am not a doctor (or a chef), but that sounds both difficult and not particularly healthy.

Fortunately for me, I cannot even read the text messages I get (working on it...). Incidentally, preventing this kind of behaviour is one of the reasons the Chinese government regularly puts forth to justify the need to block services like Twitter.

Today marks the beginning of the Year of the Rabbit, and the New Year is ushered in with fireworks. The focus of Chinese pyrotechnics is not so much a dazzling display in the sky (although nowadays and at the scale of the event in Shanghai you get this, too), but sustained noise in the streets.

Throughout New Year's Eve yesterday (and also a little in the days before), people would set off fire crackers. Frequency and intensity increased markedly around 8pm, and from 10pm the explosions were incessant, without interruption or pause, climaxing in a big crescendo at midnight. I am not sure if this will continue for the rest of the week, but they certainly are at it again in the morning.

The purpose of this racket is to drive away the Nian, a mythical beast that comes out of hiding every spring to attack people. Fortunately, it can be scared off by loud noises. Wearing red clothes helps, too.

Notice:

These rendered files have a small amount of bleed added outside the clipping path.
To use this image, first make a selection from the clipping path and copy image.

They probably should have followed these instructions instead of printing them two metres high.

It started snowing in Shanghai yesterday. Time to break out the heavy gear.

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After numbers, colours and animal names, Kai has turned his studying efforts to vehicle types and makers. During the last week, he has developed very reliable Audi-spotting skills, and he also greets every sports car with excited shouts of Ferrari (even though they never are, at least not on our side of the river, and his inflection is Chinese to a worrying degree: Falali).

China is the largest car producer (and the largest car market) in the world now. About half of the automobiles produced here are local brands (which I had never seen or heard of before), the other half are the output of joint-ventures with foreign makers (almost all of which are sold domestically).

The first and largest joint-venture is Volkswagen Group China, which started operations in Shanghai in 1984, and has been the leading car maker for more than twenty years. Almost all taxis (and many police cars) in Shanghai are VW Santana (the new Expo taxis are Tourans).

Other joint-ventures are Shanghai GM (Buick, Chevrolet, Cadillac), Beijing Hyundai, Dongfeng Nissan, Chang'an Ford, and Sichuan FAW Toyota; local brands are called Chery, Geely, or BYD.

The best selling new cars last month have been

1. VW Lavida – 25,100
2. Xia Li – 24,300
3. Chevrolet Cruze – 23,800
4. Hyundai Elantra – 21,800
5. Chery Fulwin – 20,500
6. VW Jetta – 20,300
7. BYD F3 – 20,300
8. Buick Excelle – 19,200
9. VW Santana – 17,900
10. VW Bora – 17,900

Kai can count to ten now, in both German and Chinese, and also read the digits. And he understands the gestures Chinese people have to signify the numbers one through ten (using just a single hand). This does lead to a bit of confusion in that my two looks like an eight to him.

When I went to pick up my sister from Pudong International Airport (she will stay with us for five weeks, doing an internship at a hospital here), I took the Shanghai Transrapid. It was my third (and fourth) time on this magnetic levitation train, but the other times it did not travel at top speed, which fortunately it did today. 431 kmh, wow. The thirty kilometres trip only takes eight minutes.

There is a museum attached to the train station, which explains the history of (and predicts a bright future for) magnetic levitation trains. I suppose if this is going to happen, it has to happen in China. At least in Germany, where the technology was developed (it is a Siemens train), not a single route has been built, because of high construction costs and opposition of the communities along the track. Even here, a proposed extension of the current line towards Shanghai's other airport via the Expo site has met with a lot of resistance and been suspended. It does look like a 169 kilometres long inter-city connection to neighbouring Hangzhou is going to be built, though.

The museum also mentions that the train is equipped with decelerating glass, so that passengers can better admire the view outside the window. It seems to be shaped in a special curvature that distorts the sight in a way that makes objects outside appear to move less fast.

Whenever you buy something in China, you should get a tax receipt (发票, fa piao). These receipts are used by the tax authorities to calculate and collect sales taxes, and also by government agencies to track their expenses. Consumers are strongly encouraged to get fa piao with all their purchases, but since that would prevent the vendor from not paying sales tax, the shops are making this as difficult as they possibly can. First of all, the fa piao is not integrated into the regular sales receipt, you are not given it automatically, you have to ask for it separately, sometimes not at the cashier, but at a special service counter. Even if you ask for a fa piao, you will sometimes be offered some handwritten papers without official stamps instead. Or you will be asked to come back later because they are out of forms at the moment, or the manager who has to do it has gone out for lunch (we have had all of this happen).

There is also a vibrant market for second-hand (or outright fake) fa piao, which can be used to draw money from expense accounts or tax returns. This seems to be risky business, at least if you overstep the unspoken limits that seem to socially accepted: six people in Guangdong have been sentenced to death for multi-billion dollar tax fraud in 2002. But use of this kind of fa piao in moderation (even though it must definitely constitute tax fraud) is terribly wide-spread and hard to avoid. Cissy's massage parlor gives her receipts for food, dated last year. Since I doubt that massages are tax deductible anyway, this is probably not a problem for us. But our monthly rent entitles us to a significant tax rebate. Of course, our land lord does not want to pay income tax on the rent and will not issue fa piao. There is not much we can do about that (and I doubt that other land lords would be any different), other than accepting the food and transportation receipts he gives us instead.

There are other grey zones. The girls at Walmart always write "food" on the receipt, no matter what I really bought. I'd look like a complete fool (no problem with that), and waste everyone's time if I tried to ask them to separate out the non-food items. My modus operandi now is to only get fa piao for purchases that include at least some food, and discard the totally-non-food receipts.

Having spent all my life in Germany and Japan, I am much more comfortable with following the law to the letter, rather than navigating unwritten grey areas of interpretation, but these are compromises that I think you have to work out in order to not lose your mind/cool/temper in China.

Excerpt from Wikipedia's list of statistically superlative countries:

China	Largest rice producer, output of 182,042,000 tons	Agriculture	2005
China	Largest wheat producer, output of 109.9 million metric tons	Agriculture	2007
China	Largest fruit and vegetable producer, output of 506,634,000 tons	Agriculture	2004
China	Largest apple producer, output of 26,065,500 tons	Agriculture	2006
China	Largest garlic producer, output of 12,088,000 tons	Agriculture	2008
China	Largest pear and quince producer, output of 11,537,000 tons	Agriculture	2005
China	Largest tangerine producer, output of 14,152,000 tons	Agriculture	2007
China	Largest peach and nectarine producer, output of 6,030,000 tons	Agriculture	2005
China	Largest plum and sloe producer, output of 4,635,500 tons	Agriculture	2005
China	Largest persimmon producer, output of 1,987,000 tons	Agriculture	2006
China	Largest tomato producer, output of 32,540,040 tons	Agriculture	2006
China	Largest watermelon producer, output of 69,315,000 tons	Agriculture	2005
China	Largest chestnut producer, output of 825,000 tons	Agriculture	2005
China	Largest walnut producer, output of 499,070 tons	Agriculture	2005
China	Largest peanut producer, output of 13,090,000 tons	Agriculture	2008
China	Largest eggplant producer, output of 18,033,000 tons	Agriculture	2008
China	Largest carrot and turnip producer, output of 8,395,500 tons	Agriculture	2005
China	Largest potato producer, output of 70 million metric tons	Agriculture	2006
China	Largest cabbage producer, output of 36,335,000 tons	Agriculture	2008
China	Largest cauliflowers and broccoli producer, output of 8,585,000 tons	Agriculture	2005
China	Largest spinach producer, output of 11,011,000 tons	Agriculture	2005
China	Largest lettuce and chicory producer, output of 11,005,000 tons	Agriculture	2005
China	Largest asparagus producer, output of 5,906,000 tons	Agriculture	2005
China	Largest onion and shallot producer, output of 17,793,000 tons	Agriculture	2005
China	Largest cucumber and gherkin producer, output of 26,000,000 tons	Agriculture	2005
China	Largest fish producer, output of 49,467,275 tons	Agriculture	2005
China	Largest aquatic plants producer, output of 11,163,675 tons	Agriculture	2005
China	Largest honey producer, output of 298,000 tons	Agriculture	2005
China	Largest mushroom and truffle producer, output of 1,410,540 tons	Agriculture	2005
China	Largest cotton producer, output of 11,400,000 tons	Agriculture	2005
China	Largest silk producer, output of 290,003 tons	Agriculture	2005
China	Largest rapeseed producer, output of 10.3 million metric tons	Agriculture	2007
China	Largest tea producer, output of 1,183,502 million tons	Agriculture	2007
China	Largest tobacco producer, output of 2,298,800 tons	Agriculture	2000
China	Largest livestock of domestic sheep, 157,900,000 heads	Agriculture	2004
China	Largest livestock of domestic pig, 488,800,000 heads	Agriculture	2005
China	Largest livestock of mules, 4,194,000 heads	Agriculture	2003
China	Largest livestock of donkeys, 8,499,000 heads	Agriculture	2003
China	Largest livestock of horses, 8,088,000 heads	Agriculture	2003
China	Largest rice consumer, 135 million metric tons per year	Consumption	2004
China	Largest car market, 13.64 million vehicles	Consumption Transport	2009
China	Largest population, 1,315,844,000	Demographics	2006
China	Largest labour force, 807,700,000	Demographics Economy	2008
China	Largest renewable energy producer, 576.1 TW·h per year	Energy	2006
China	Largest hydroelectricity producer, 585.2 TW·h per year	Energy	2007
China	Largest coal producer, 2,536.7 million tons	Energy Industry	2007
China	Largest wind turbine producer	Energy Industry	2009
China	Largest solar panel producer	Energy Industry	2009
China	Most carbon dioxide emissions, 6,103,493,000 metric tons	Environment	2006
China	Largest forex reserves, $2,273,000,000,000	Finance	2009
China	Largest exporter, $1,200,000,000,000	Finance	2009
China	Highest current account balance, $371,833,000,000	Finance	2007
China	Highest elevation above the sea level, 8,848 m (29,029 ft) at Mount Everest (shared with Nepal)	Geography	2009
China	Longest land border length, 22,117 km (22,147 km if Hong Kong and Macao, the two special administrative regions are counted)	Geography	2009
China	Most countries bordered, 14 (16 if Hong Kong and Macao, the two special administrative regions are counted), the same number as with Russia	Geography	2009
China	Largest gold producer, 276 tonnes	Industry	2007
China	Largest aluminium producer, 5,896,000 tons	Industry	2006
China	Largest antimony producer, 126,000 tons	Industry	2005
China	Largest arsenic producer	Industry	2006
China	Largest bismuth producer, 1,900 tons	Industry	2006
China	Largest cadmium producer, 3,000 tons	Industry	2005
China	Largest cement producer, 1,038,000,000 tons	Industry	2005
China	Largest fluorite producer, 3,000,000 tons	Industry	2006
China	Largest iron producer, 588,000,000 tons	Industry	2006
China	Largest manganese producer, 6,000,000 tons	Industry	2006
China	Largest mercury producer, 1,150 tons	Industry	2005
China	Largest mica producer, 89,000 tons	Industry	2005
China	Largest steel producer, 500,500,000 tons	Industry	2008
China	Largest strontium producer, 700,000 tons	Industry	2005
China	Largest tin producer, 120,000 tons	Industry	2005
China	Largest tin reserves, 1,700,000 tons	Industry	2006
China	Largest tungsten producer, 46,900 tons	Industry	2005
China	Largest zinc producer, 2,600,000 tons	Industry	2006
China	Largest motor vehicle producer, 13,790,000 vehicles	Industry Transport	2009
China	Largest army by number of active troops, 2.25 million troops	Military	2005
China	Largest police force, 1,780,000 officers	Military	2010
China	Most frigates in operation, 49	Military
China	Best performance at women's badminton Uber Cup, 11 times winner	Sports	2009
China	Best performance at World Badminton Championships, 43 gold medals won	Sports	2009
China	Best performance at World Amateur Go Championship, 18 wins	Sports	2009
China	Best performance at World Table Tennis Championships, 35 team wins	Sports	2009
China	Best performance at World Weightlifting Championships (women), 314 gold medals, 423 total medals	Sports	2007
China	Leading surveillance society (Endemic surveillance society)	Surveillance	2007
China	Most internet users, 298,000,000	Technology	2009
China	Most main line phones, 368,000,000	Technology	2006
China	Most mobile cellular phones, 703,000,000	Technology	2009
China	Largest total length of waterways, 110,000 km	Transport	2008
China	Largest total length of high-speed railways, 6,003 km	Transport	2009

Today is the fifth day of the fifth month in the lunar calendar, and that makes it a major holiday, the Duanwu Festival, also known as the Dragon Boat Festival.

Duanwu commemorates Qu Yuan, a famous Chinese scholar, who was expelled from the royal court after conspiracy charges made up by jealous officials, and later drowned himself in the Milo River. To deter the fish from eating his body, the townsfolk decided to make zongzi rice dumplings and throw them into the water.

To make a Wednesday holiday into a long weekend, Monday and Tuesday have also been declared holidays. While many countries have such a rule, the Chinese are doing it wrong, though: To compensate for the two extra holidays, Saturday and Sunday were turned into working days instead.