The opening-up of China has allowed a small minority of people to become ridiculously rich in a very short period of time and behind this has followed all the trappings of those with more money than sense/taste; luxury cars, designer clothing, holiday villas, expensive electronics, and many other less savory vices.

Entrepreneurs are also lining up to cash in on this new generation of the newly moneyed and in the digital age where everyone is perpetually online what better way to bring together rich yuppies and high-end brands than through an exclusive social network which prides itself on selecting only the affluent and “beautiful”. Enter P1.cn. Below is how their email invitation reads:

P1.CN is a social networking site for exceptional people like you who are ambitious, desirable, fashionable and brilliant.

To ensure the quality of our members, P1.CN is invite only.

Yes, it seriously says this (in both Chinese and English). Most of its members are invited by street photographers / spotters or friends of existing members. Being neither affluent nor beautiful I’m not quite sure how I ended up with an invitation but out of curiosity I signed up. This is what greets you:

Functionality is similar to Facebook and other SNS’s with user profiles, friends, photo galleries, forums, chat, blogs and magazine style editorials (mostly about fashion). Advertising comes courtesy of luxury brands such as Versace, Bentley, TAG Heuer, Hennessy, and Adidas.

Content wise it’s a painful mix of self-indulgent exhibitionalism (“look at me! look at me!”) and blatant materialism (the “what did you buy recently?” forum is very popular). Apparently most of its approximate half-a-million members spend at least 4,000 yuan (£375) a month on clothes, electronics and partying (the majority of which are woman). When you consider this in relation to how Chinese outside the big cities are living it’s really quite grotesque (the average monthly salary is below 2,000 yuan).

Still, if you’re looking for somewhere to swap tips about the best place to buy a Ferrari, pick up a trophy wife, post pics of your pampered pets, or just hang out with a bunch of vapid narcissist’s then this could be the place for you!

Oh China, if only Mao could see you now…

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Gorgeous lighting at the reception desks of Le Royal Meridien Shanghai. I didn’t stay there but it looked pretty nice (although not on the same level as the Park Hyatt). Located very centrally at one end of Nanjing Road (the main shopping street).

I have a bit of a burger fixation which was blissfully fulfilled at New York Style Steak and Burger in Taikang Lu (田子坊). Pictured here is “The Big Bleu” which comprised blue cheese, caramelized shallot jam, crisp bacon and fried onions. Truly heaven in a bun.

Inside Land 274, a tiny bar in Taikang Lu also which was practically empty. Good lychee martinis for those who like their cocktails.

On the Sunday I ventured out the city center to the “Happy Valley” theme park which is basically a Chinese clone of Disney Land. For a weekend it was surprisingly quiet to the point where there were even waiting times to find enough people to meet the minimum requirement for some rides.

The park features some impressive big rides, the best of which is a gigantic dive coaster which includes a 91° drop (beyond vertical). Check out the video below for a taster:

I have to say this is one of the best roller coasters I’ve ever ridden – it’s thrilling but at the same time very smooth and comfortable (unsurprising considering it’s Swiss designed). Avoid the wooden coaster unless you want to get a splitting headache and bruised arms/legs.

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He was roaming using a China Mobile SIM card but surely the blocks couldn’t extend outside the geographic boundaries of their own network? Further investigation was required…

Using the same SIM card we tried switching between many of the local HK networks including: CSL, Vodaphone and the local subsidiary of China Mobile. All refused to let us access sites blocked on the mainland indicating that somehow our traffic was being re-routed by the local Hong Kong carrier back to the motherland. When switching on a VPN connection everything worked fine again.

To prove our theory further we installed a traceroute application on the iPhone and ran traces against the same blocked websites. As can be seen from the screenshots above traffic was indeed being routed back to China hence why the sites were blocked even though we were physically in Hong Kong.

Is it normal practice for cell phone carriers to re-route data traffic back to the original provider for those roaming on their network?

The implications here are massive; in essence it allows the hand of the Chinese government and potentially other regimes wanting to limit the free-flow of information to reach globally. Chinese citizens travelling abroad are being kept in a prison via their phone and it would seem that the cell carriers are complicit in allowing it. I’d love to hear from someone who understands a bit more about how these things work.

Update: Accoring to @WildPixels this is normal routing for data roaming. Apparently using a non-China SIM in China also bypasses the great firewall as well (at high cost).

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For young people in China the pressure to get married (and subsequently have a baby) is often strongly exerted by parents who take every opportunity to nag their children about finding a boyfriend/girlfriend. Men are generally expected to get married by 30 and women by their mid 20’s (25 is considered “old”). The older the child gets the stronger the nagging becomes to the point that going home for spring festival and other occasions becomes a source of dread and anxiety for those still single.

The situation is exasperated by the fact that young Chinese adults are expected to work harder than ever to support their parents and themselves so have little time for socializing. In cities like Shanghai and Hong Kong the number of singles living alone has skyrocketed in recent years, with the average marriage age also increasing sharply (now around 29 as opposed to 22 just two decades ago for men).

Some parents have begun to take matters in their own hands and can often be found hanging around public parks in groups exchanging their children’s vital statistics with other parents in the hope of finding a “good match” which can then be introduced (with or without their child’s knowledge!). I came across this bunch in People’s Square (Shanghai) and was even approached by a mother who was keen to marry off her 30 year-old daughter to me! She may have been a doctor but I politely declined

Job, age, height, education and salary are the key factors under consideration with adverts hung on washing lines, bushes and trees laying out the facts for anyone to browse. Professional matchmakers also loiter around with hand-written lists of potential candidates who have employed them to do the searching. In the 21st century world of online dating it was a bizarre sight.

You would be forgiving for making parallels with the traditional concept of arranged marriages although in this case nobody is being forced into anything – the parents merely find potential “candidates” which the children can then choose whether to pursue – some call it “parental screening”. For the cynically inclined it’s a far cry from the romantic notion of “true love” but in this 24/7 society practicalities and the pressures of tradition often outweigh such dreams.

If you’re Chinese I’d love to hear what you think about parental screening.

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I was in Shanghai last weekend for the tail end of a business trip to Wuxi and finally got a chance to ride the experimental high-speed Maglev train from the downtown Longyang Road station to Pudong International Airport. I first wrote about it 4 years ago just after it was built and had been looking forward to trying it out ever since. Despite having been to Shanghai three times previously I always flew from the older Hongqiao Airport and hence didn’t have the chance.

All the speed comes at a hefty 50 RMB ticket price which is pretty steep for China but clearly necessary to pay back the massive investment which was required to build the 30km line – all ¥10 billion ($1.33 bn) of it. Running at an operational top speed of 431 km/h (268 mph) the journey takes only 7 minutes with the world outside passing in a blur.

The Transrapid electromagnetic suspension (EMS) technology is German designed and instead of a traditional engine the trains are propelled by the magnetic field created by the electrified coils in the guideway and track. The trains levitate about 1cm above the guideway creating an extremely low-friction linear movement. As can be seen in the video I took below the ride was a little bumpy compared to conventional trains but not uncomfortable:

At this level of speed domestic travel would be far more convenient and even competitive with flying but the high costs of implementation have so far limited its adoption. New technologies being developed by Germany and Japan should cut the costs but as with all such projects we’re still probably decades away from seeing widespread adoption. If this is the future of train technology then I’m all for it.

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I came across this fascinating diagram in a 1991 report titled ‘The First Global Revolution‘ from the Club of Rome which is a globalist think tank that deals with a variety of international issues. It’s a neat way of visualising the major forces which are at work in our world and how they are all closely connected. Whilst being nearly 20 years old and slightly outdated much of what’s contained in the report is painfully relevant and pertinent to the challenges we are now collectively facing as humankind. Here are a few select quotes:

Today’s approach to social life is superficial, based on current events and crisis government which attempts to eliminate symptoms without diagnosing the causes of problems. This is the way we are setting the scene for the destruction of our planet.

The growing complexity of the world and of its problems makes it necessary to have a complete grasp on tremendous amounts of information before coming to a decision… A dynamic world needs an effective nervous system at the grassroots level, not only ensure the widest range of inputs, but also to make the identification of every citizen with the common process of governance possible.

In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together… All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself.

For anyone concerned with the future it makes fascinating and equally disturbing reading. Aside from the issues of climate change and world governance what interests me most is that 20 years later the world does indeed now have a global nervous system which is capable of processing vast amounts information; you’re using it right now. More than any other technology the internet is enabling humankind to do things our forebears could only have ever dreamed of and if we are to combat the issues we are now facing it will undoubtedly play a major role.

While the internet has narrowed the distances between people, places, and information it has not yet facilitated a deeper understanding between them (and in some cases has even amplified tensions). Culture is far deeper than what the eye can see and the uncomfortable truth is that most of us are fairly ignorant of our global neighbors - even the well-educated and traveled. The question then becomes how do we harness this vast collective consciousness to find solutions to the worlds problems and bridge the massive divides between cultures which cause so much strife?

There are no easy answers to this question but here are just a few ways the internet is and will help:

• Facilitating conversations and deconstructing social norms
• Breaking language barriers with real-time translation
• Hosting massive datasets with computational tools and processing power
• Visualizing information in simple and easily understandable ways
• Providing new mechanisms for governance and decision-making
• Allowing for location independent virtual working
• Connecting b/millions of data collecting censors together
• and many more ways not yet thought of…

To address the fundamental issues will require letting go of thousands of years of pre-conceptions which wont happen overnight but I don’t think it’s outside the realm of human possibility if we can put aside some of our selfishness and stereotypes. Sadly this is unlikely to happen till the death toll is in the millions as the majority will have no interest in doing anything until the point when the issues begin to affect them personally (perversely this might solve the overpopulation issue).

As the ongoing Google vs China debacle proves, the internet is at odds with the old ideas of sovereign borders and regional laws. Quite how both will reconcile with each other in the coming years is unclear but still goes to show the disruptive power people can have when brought together on a shared platform free (mostly) of the usual rules and boundaries. The internet is likely to be the true battle ground for first global revolution which will have direct implications for the survival (or otherwise) of the human race as we know it. Keeping it free and open will be the first challenge.

Another more recent report titled “Mapping the Global Future” from the National Intelligence Council also makes interesting reading with some interesting possible scenarios for the implications of globalization mapped out and examines what an Asian face on globalization might look like (influenced mainly by China / India).

How do you think the internet could be used to help solve the worlds problems?

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Last weekend I took a trip to Foshan (佛山), a relatively affluent city of around 5 million inhabitants near Guangzhou. As you might imagine from a typical Chinese city there’s not much to write home about architecturally – the same generic mass produces factory boxes adjacent to tasteless villas for the super rich built on once picturesque countryside.

There were however a few nice patches of green left on the outskirts and on coming across a strawberry field the temptation was too great to pass. Considering China’s massive workforce it was a bit strange to find the pick-your-own (PYO) business model in operation but I suppose that’s all part of the fun!

Coming from the UK it felt weird to pick strawberries out of season in mid-January but the south of China has the climatic conditions and the taste was more sweet and succulent than you would ever get from the supermarket. I don’t know if they used pesticides or any other chemicals but everything seemed pretty fresh and smelled sensational.

We got a bit carried away with the picking and ended up with far to many strawberries to eat directly so decided to turn the rest into jam by cooking them with sugar in a huge wok. This is not the ideal method to cook jam but seemed to work OK with the result being quite tasty on toast – I think there’s a jam market here in China waiting to be discovered!

If you’re thinking the title sounds a bit like cockney rhyming slang then you’d be right but I’m afraid there’s no hidden meaning

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These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

It doesn’t get much bigger than this. Twitter immediately lit up with discussion about the potential repercussions of the decision:

It’s too early to know what will happen but I wouldn’t mind betting that most or all of Google will be blocked in China within 24 hours. As recent events have shown (Copenhagen and the execution of Akmal Shaikh) China is in a confident mood in its new position of power and will flagrantly ignore any perceived interference from the west irregardless of the ethical issues surrounding the arguments.

I personally applaud them for taking this stance but fear that even a giant like Google will make little impact against the Medusa which is the Chinese Communist Party. Every time China is criticized they only grow stronger in their resentment and determination to do things on their terms. In this sense nobody wins but freedom is rarely free.

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It just so happens that my parents neighbour is a pilot and by coincidence it turned out that he was flying the first leg of the flight I was taking back to China (Norwich -> Amsterdam). He very kindly invited me to sit with him and the co-pilot in the cockpit on the “jump seat“ for the journey – I felt like a boy who had been allowed to ride in a fire engine – absolutely awesome!

The aircraft we were flying in was Fokker 70 which is relatively small with only 70 seats and made in the Netherlands. They’re used by KLM for their short-haul cityhopper service. As we were flying at night it was a bit dark to take any good photos (and I definitely didn’t want to use the flash!) but I did get a bit of video (below):

The coolest part was undoubtedly the take-off and landing which is so much more exciting when you’re looking out from the front. Amazingly most aircraft are able to do this all on auto-pilot which they showed me when we landed – totally automatically in thick fog. As we approached the runway it was mesmerizing to see the tops of building poking out of the misty shroud covering the ground.

Pilots clearly have to be very skilled and focused, especially when it comes to flying and eating dinner at the same time! I feel so lucky to have been able to do this, especially considering the fear-mongering around terrorism these days.

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2009 goals in review:

• Gain basic fluency in Mandarin – failed (while my vocab has improved grammar is still non-existant)
• Improve photography skills – achieved (although I’ve still got a long way to go I’m quite happy with my results recently)
• Get fitter through more regular exercise – moderate improvement (but need to schedule more regular activities)
• Cook more – achieved (and learnt a few new dishes along the way)
• Stay focused and filter out distractions – failed (I read more than ever and have way too many projects on the go)
• Redesign blog template – achieved (you’re looking at it now)

3.5 out of 6 isn’t too bad in my book but the language part is rather frustrating.

2010 goals:

• Create and stick to a schedule for language learning and fitness
• Start a business of some sort and see it through (more on this later)
• Improve writing skills and user participation in blog
• Create more video content and how-to guides
• Visit Japan – something I’ve wanted to do for many years
• Learn how to cope with stress better (and sleep more!)

Finally I’d like to say a BIG thank you to everyone who reads RandomWire – this year traffic has nearly doubled and my only wish is that I had time to write more content for it. In an ideal world I’d love to be able to do this full-time in some capacity but for now it’ll continue as a labour of love blissfully free of ads (although if anyone is interested in sponsorship do get in touch).

As with last year I’ll leave you with an appropriately titled track from the ever-manic Capsule:

A very Happy New Year to all

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