A city full of technological marvels

Hong Kong local time Sunday 12:39pm

 

One of the many things I am really going to miss about Hong Kong is its array of technological marvels. Over the past three weeks I have seen technologies here that are almost unheard of in the States.

 

The one technology that I use most often is the Octopus card. This is a debit card system that is accepted as the payment method by all public transportation systems (except taxis) and many major shops (such as 7-Eleven). One supermarket chain even uses it to keep track of its customers’ loyalty rewards status. One of my relatives said that the Octopus card has eliminated the need to carry around any spare coins. The closest thing we have in the States to this is Revolution Money being launched by former AOL executive Ted Leonsis. Hong Kong’s law require its residents to carry the Hong Kong Identity Card when out in public. This is a “smart card” with a computer chip that also serves as (I think) a driver’s license and the chip stores information about its owner that is used by providers of government services such as public libraries and government hospitals. In addition to being readily available, much of the technology here is also relatively cheap. I have GSM world phone that uses a prepaid SIM card from PCCW. The card has $98 of value on it and each minute (send or receive to almost anywhere in the world) is only 25 cents a minute. This is equal to approximately 3 cents USD.

 

But the most amazing technological innovation I have seen here is the new ten dollar bill. It is not printed on paper but on a piece plastic elastic that is almost impossible to rip. The material is very similar to the parking tickets issued by the UNC Department of Public Safety. Someone told me this technology was developed by a bank from Australia.

(insert the picture here later on next week.)

China’s “Las Vegas”

Hong Kong local time Thursday 10:28pm

Me and my parents were in Macau today. Macau is a former Portuguese colony that became a Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China in 1999. Historically Macau has not been a center of business or commerce but that has changed radically in the past ten years with the development of major casino hotels and resorts.

We arrived at Macau after a one hour boat ride from Hong Kong. There are several things I noticed right away upon arrival. One is that there are a ton of visitors arriving. At the ferry terminal I spent at least 20 minutes getting through customs while standing in line among people holding passports from places such as Japan, Singapore, and South Korea. The second thing I find very peculiar is the currency. Even though Macao uses the pataca (MOP) as its own currency, Hong Kong’s HKD is just as widely accepted. Merchants actually prefer to be paid in HKD because the relative value of the HKD is a small bit higher. Visitors, on the other hand, often get shortchanged when they pay in HKD and receive their change in MOP.

I guess all that stuff I learned during first year in business school about foreign currencies weren’t completely useless after all.

Last stop in China

Nanjing local time Friday 10:52pm

We arrived in Nanjing this afternoon and had the tour of the Nanjing city wall. This wall was built around 800 years ago and surrounds the city to protect against invaders. Many of its bricks are inscribed with the name and address of its craftsman and in the event the brick failed to hold up, the builder would face execution for his incompetence.

As I listened to the tour guide talk about this city’s history and its people, I couldn’t help noticing the one very tragic irony about this city, which ranks as one of the four great ancient capitals of China. That irony is that Nanjing is famous for two things which completely contradict one another. The first is the Nanjing city wall, which completely surrounds the city. The second is that during World War II, the Japanese successfully penetrated the city wall and proceeded to massacre hundreds of thousands of civilians. The slaughter still has a large impact on Nanjing. Every year on its December 17 anniversary, the city sounds its air defense alarms at 10am for half an hour. Many locals still hold an enormous amount of animosity toward Japanese people.

We are “wheels up” for Hong Kong tomorrow.

Capitalism in China

Changzhou local time Thursday 10:34pm

As I make my way across various parts of Eastern China, I have made some observations of the business climate in this still-communist country. While I have seen signs that capitalism is alive and well and that China is definitely on its way to becoming a major financial superpower, I have also seen signs that certain remnants of communism still remain.

Before we left Shanghai yesterday we visited the Oriental Pearl TV Tower and had an amazing view of this city from its observation deck. One of the things I noticed as I looked out at the downtown financial district with buildings decorated with names of major financial firms was how much construction was going on in that area. But along with signs of capitalism, I have also witnessed some of the negative externalities associated with it. On our way out of the Oriental Pearl TV Tower, I passed by a bunch of gift shops on the bottom floor and one of them was selling chilled cans of Cola-Cola for 18 Yuan. This equals approximately $2.50 USD and has to be the most expensive can of soda I have ever seen for sale in my entire life.

Earlier today as we made our way to Changzhou, we passed by a gas station with a significant number of vehicles waiting on line. The tour guide explained that there was a gas shortage caused by the government setting a price ceiling for which gas stations owners could not surpass in selling their product and that the night before, our bus driver spent two hours waiting on line for gasoline. I was quite shocked to hear that China still has such price control over a product as crucial gasoline. Then again I thought about how some Americans have reacted to the recent high gas prices and I realize maybe the Chinese aren’t that much different than we are after all.

“The city of the future”

Shanghai local time Tuesday 11:47pm

I post this blog from Shanghai. We arrived here at around 3 this afternoon. Our tour bus took us to various parts of town. We saw the neighborhood where Jiang Zemin lives. We also saw Xintiandi, an area with many bars that is frequented by visitors. This evening we went on a boat ride of the river and checked out a town square-like area featured in the photo above.

One of my business school classmates was here last year and described this as the “city of the future” because of how modern it feels and Western it feels. Walking around certain parts of the city certainly makes you feel as though you are in a modern Western city instead of one in a still developing country. There are a lot of very modern looking skyscrapers. Shanghai is also the richest city in China. Not surprisingly, on the way to the hotel just now, I spotted a couple of shopping malls that resemble the ones in America.

Prior to my arrival in Shanghai this afternoon, China Mobile sent a textmessage to my GSM phone welcoming me to Shanghai and inviting me to use its services to access a wide array of information from traffic to hotel locations. Too bad I could only make out a few of the words because it was in Chinese.

May you live in interesting times

Wuzhen local time Monday 8:58pm

Greetings from the People’s Republic of China where my parents and I doing a seven day tour. We took off from Hong Kong Sunday morning, flew to Hangzhou and spent the night at the city that was once the capital of China 800 years ago. This morning we left Hangzhou for Wuzhen. The following is some video footage of the countryside on part of the drive to Wuzhen, where I am writing this blog post from tonight.

I once heard that an ancient Chinese expression is “may you live in interesting times.” And this is interesting times indeed for China. There are certain things I see here that remind me of America in the 1920s. The country is in the midst of a major economic boom. Hangzhou is a city that has only become a big city in the past ten years or so. Yet there are other things that make me wonder if maybe China is still in the stone ages. I bought a China Mobile pre-paid SIM card for my GSM phone. China Mobile was the subject of an article in Fortune Magazine recently. It is the largest mobile phone company in China, with a larger cellular customer base than AT&T, and is owned partly by the communist government. When I bought the SIM card, the woman I bought it from did not speak a word of English and I had to use my tour guide as a translator. She told me the card cost $100 (RMB) and came with $50 of pre-paid call time. The packaging had a holographic seal of authenticity and the name China Mobile. But there was no other information as to how many minutes it had, what the rates were, or even if $100 was the correct price for the product. The woman had a chart that explained the product’s rate structure but it was completely in Chinese. At the hotel, I brought it to the front desk and asked the people there to call China Mobile. After at least 10 minutes of calling multiple numbers, the hotel clerk told me I would receive $100 of value but it would take about 24 hours for my account to be credited. Over the next 12 hours, I received multiple SMS text messages, all in Chinese, from China Mobile - one suggesting that I recharge my card because it had less than $10 of value and another telling me $50 had been added onto my card. At this point I am pretty sure I have at least $50 of phone interview time on my card but I don’t know what numbers I have to dial to access the IDD service to call the United States. I contrast this to how easy it was for me to purchase and set up a pre-paid SIM card from PCCW when I was in Hong Kong last week, which I will hopefully blog about later when I do a post about the everyday technologies in Hong Kong.

In addition to the technological inconveniences youwould expect from a developing country, there are other inconveniences that are symptomatic of a government that purposely chooses to restrict the people’s access to information. Certain web sites such as Wikipedia are blocked. When I type in CNN.com on my web browser, I am redirected to its international edition. But many of these frustrations were melted away when I went to WABC’s web site and heard part of Don Imus’ first radio show since being fired. Anytime someone equates Hillary Clinton to Satan on a major media outlet and gets away with it is a victory for freedom for everyone.