Here is one nice restaurant to pay a visit.

We went to Sichuan hotpot restaurant “海底捞火锅” (HaiDiLaoHuoGuo). Friday night, day before 中秋节 and without reservation, we were in bad timing. We waited for one hour to get a table, but it was still ok, because there were plenty of things to do while waiting. Have place to sit for waiting, cards, chess, game supplies, computers with internet, nail beauty service, drinks ,snacks, fruits and shoe polishing were provided all free. Customers can kill their time without being bored, more importantly not likely walk out of restaurant tired of waiting. In our case, my sister went for nail beauty service, and my dad and I had time to catch up stories while waiting for my husband to arrive.

Nail beautify service

Once we got seat, food was of course good quality and tasteful, but more amazed was the service they provide. Provide endless hot towel to wash your hands, cloths to clean your glass, transparent cover for your phone on the table, hang apron for you and also have cover for your bags. Plus whatever you order, they respond very quick. It’s real good even extreme service that you rarely see in China. Another fortunate thing was that they had English menu that made our lives easy. We had great time together. My dad can be very tenacious when it comes to restaurant service, but he was fully satisfied.

One thing should try to order in this restaurant is Laomian (老面). Someone will come to table and start dancing with dough making thin-wide noodles. I think this is highlight event in this restaurant. Also have sauce buffet that able to make your own sauce here.

It’s depends on what you order, but four people came out restaurant all full and satisfied, we paid about 300 RMB. Very reasonable price and after this good service even felt we should give some tips.

There are 9 of them in Shanghai, and can check out at http://www.haidilao.com

After long negotiation, Joop and I decided to go to a little mountain (about 99m above sea level) called “Sheshan”, situated at Songjiang area. Considering the distance,  easy transportation (metro line 9 “Sheshan station”) and the fact that it’s still a mountain, it was perfect place for us.!

So, Saturday morning, sky was clear. After nice breakfast, we were headed to out of the house. Then…….suddenly it started to rain with thunders!! What the….

49% of our mind said, 'Let’s stay at home and we can go tomorrow' 51% said ' let’s just go and see what happens. Finally, we decided to go!

Fortunately when we arrived at Sheshan, it was dry and even could see such a blue clear sky. Temperature was perfect for hiking and there weren’t much of tourist which helped us to enjoy our quiet times.

Sheshan is divided into 2 parts. East Sheshan and West Sheshan. It used to be one mountain but divided in 1980, due to building highway. However it’s possible to visit both sides in one day. Once got out of the metro station, we took bus (no.92) and got off at Forest Park. It took us about 10min to get there via bus.

Get off @ Forest Park for East Sheshan & Sheshan for West Sheshan is Sheshan

Both part had nice features ,which gave us no time to get bored. We started from East part and ended at West part. East Sheshan has nice quiet national forest park, survival game area and camping space, on the other side, West Sheshan has catholic church and the oldest china astronomical observatory.

Catholic Church built in 1920, was even before China Communism

Astronomical observatory (Enterence 12RMB) Can see cool 3D movie and old devices for observing stars

After surrounded by nature for about 4 hours, though legs are  shaking and stomach is crying out loud, but I felt pleasant satisfaction.

Practicing Kungfu @ Bamboo Forest

@ East Sheshan

Pagoda

Around the Sheshan, there are many other interesting places. There are sculpture park, happy valley (amusement park), golf course and fake beach.

@ Front of Sculpture Park. Thanks to rain, I've never seen this clear blue sky in Shanghai!

Definitely nice place to spend weekend! I will surely visit again when I crave for nature.Now I am recharged with green energy and ready to live Shanghai city for a while

But currently I noticed that things are changing. My little cousins in Korea, primary students, are very busy cramming Chinese character these days and every month they set for Chinese character test. English is still important in Korea but Chinese is quickly becoming as important language. And this seems to happen not only in Korea but also in other parts of the world.

Yesterday, my husband showed me a cartoon called ‘Nihao Kai-Lan’ which is airing in The Netherlands. He said, It is mainly targeted for Chinese kids in Netherlands, but many of Dutch kids also watch it. I watched few episodes, and it surely is fun, attractive to kids as well as very educative in terms of learning Chinese.(I also decided to watch this everyday to learn Chinese and Dutch for myself ) Many of easy Chinese were repeated carefully in the middle of English/Dutch, so that kids would not feel overwhelmed or perhaps not even realize that Kai-Lan (Main Character) spoke different language. My husband and I joked that; pretty soon parents would not able to understand what their kids saying.

Nickelodeon has introduced ‘Nihao Kai-Lan’ cartoon in US in 2008 and now it has expanded to Ireland, Canada, The Netherlands, Russia, Israel and France. It really got shocked and once again realized that China is surely next world power. Most shocked was the fact that it is aired in US. While many of Americans does not think that US would not step down from world biggest power, yet young generation is already preparing to face China.

US just downgraded their credit rating and China is busy making RMB as world currency. I wonder in near future, Chinese would become compulsory language in school education just like it did with English.

As it’s sin to stay inside the house with beautiful weather and we started to miss The Netherlands, we decided to look for Dutch town in Shanghai.

Holland village is situated in Wai Gao Qiao (外高桥), North part of Shanghai neary by Huang pu river. It can be reached by subway line 6 ‘North Waigaoqiao Free Trade Zone station.’ Once got out of the metro, take taxi to Datong lu & Helong lu.

Amazingly the place was real copycat of Holland.

Except for few differences such as Chinese street/building signs, air conditioner and laundry hanging on balcony. I guess external life can be changed but internal life (culture) is difficult to change so quick. However because of this, it made this place more intersting

Place was much alive than I expected, since I heard it’s a ghost town. We also hoped to have some dutch snack, but guess it’s not that developed yet. Place is nice and quite but better prepare well because benches and restaurants or coffee shops were lacking.  So far this place is purely for architectural scenery and due to this reason many couples comes to this place to take their wedding photos. Despite of beautiful weather we could not see any new groom and bride today.

It’s nice place for a date

Search engine

http://www.baidu.com/

Baidu is  google of China

http://www.sina.com.cn/

Sina is getting more popular with blog and twitter concept.

Movies/ Videos

I love tudou (it means potato). They have section for drama and movies for Korea, US, China, England, France e.t.c. Now I do not need to download Korea drama and also practice my Chinese by Chinese movies that can easily found.

http://www.tudou.com/

http://www.youku.com/

Travel (ticket)

These sites are mostly for tickets within China. It’s time to travel~

http://www.qunar.com/

http://www.china-sss.com/

http://www.ctrip.com/index.asp

Public Transportation

http://www.ddmap.com/

http://maps.google.com/

Shopping

http://www.taobao.com/index_global.php

http://www.vancl.com/

@ vancl you order product to be delivered first then check the product. Once you like it then decide to pay.

http://www.360buy.com/

http://www.ganji.com/mobile/client.php

http://www.shanghaisecondhand.com/page1.html

Discount shopping

Can buy cheap movie tickets here~

http://www.lashou.com/

http://www.kutuan.com/shanghai/deal

News

http://www.cntv.cn/

http://www.cri.cn/index1.htm

http://www.chinanews.com/

After nice lunch, my friend Yvonne and I decided to visit largest shanghai book store.

The entire 6th floor building is full of books

<<Shanghai Book City>>  No.465 Fuzhou Road

This Fuzhou road is also has small book stores around the Shanghai Book City. However All the small stores  seemed going to close down soon. All the books were placed in a huddle and people were shouting that they are giving huge discounts. Yvonne explained that maybe the store is closing down due to  Shanghai Book City. I felt bad plus discount made me enter into small store.

I  found 4 Chinese traditional story books with CD, hoping that it would help to improve my poor Chinese. Each book originally costs 79.2RMB so I wondered how much I would get discounted.  20%? 30% or70%?

Interesting part was when cashier weighed the book on a scale!! Half a kilo will cost 15RMB. (Depends on the theme of the book, cost per half a kilo will change. Variation of 6 RMB, 11 RMB and 15RMB)

How heavy is your book?

It was bit shocking concept to me. Content of the book would not really matter but number of pages and quality of paper would matter in this case. If authors finds out about this, it would be very insulting but I guess for seller it makes sense to judge a book. Instead of calculating percentage of the book with headache (i also have headache when i have to calculate discount %), weighing book would be much easier.

So just like I was buying fish or meat, I bought 5 books for 55 RMB . Although I was only planning to buy one book but still i feel satisfied with prices. Guess now my job is to READ THEM!

After I  got out of the small book store, I started to notice that almost all the book stores near by Shanghai Book City, had same discount notice hanging on their door, attracting people.

It’s written 0.5 kg for 11 RMB

All over sudden I started to doubt if this is a market  strategy,  not necessarily clearing out the shop.  So my next mission is to find out if I was an aimed fish or store really closed down next time I visit this area.

So here are what happens after 6month of Chinese study and why it is difficult! This problems occurs not only to myself but also to some of classmates who’ve been learning Chinese about 5-10months.

1. 看得懂, 写不懂

6 months of Chinese classes, you get to see lots of vocab repeatedly. Your eyes become familiar with certain words and start to recognize the letters. The problem is, reading is pretty ok, but when it comes to writing the character without looking, somehow can not remember how it looks exactly. You have an vague idea but not 100% sure or just cannot write!

2. I can speak better than that!

During speaking class, teacher makes people talk about their opinion. When someone speaks, you understands and even knows advanced vocab or sentences, thinking that ‘I can do better than that!’. But when it comes to your turn, all the vocab disappears from your brain. why why why?? Is it just me??

3. I must be Stupid!!

After 3months, your text book content obviously becomes longer and harder.Problems is even though you know all the words in the sentence, you still have no idea what this sentence mean.

4. 外国人 Chinese 听懂, 中国人 Chinese 听不懂

Now that you can speak little bit, you also start to understand your class mate’s Chinese. When you understand about 90% of your class mate’s or teacher’s Chinese you feel your listening is pretty good. The moment you go out and start talking to local, your listening ability goes down to 30%. Somehow it’s much easier talk with foreginger with Chinese than Chinese with Chinese.

5. Too much to remember!!

Lastly.. in order to cram one word, you have to remember; meaning, pinyin, 4 tones, and how it looks! Once you know shape of letter then meaning and pinyin sort of comes along. But 4 tones are really confusing. You end up just pronounce whatever you think is true and of course Chinese don’t understand.

So I decided to make comparison with last year (exactly 2009. Dec)

The result was very surprising!

Total price 15 RMB –> 19.7 RMB (8.5 RMB up)

2 Sweet potato price 3.7RMB –> 4.3 RMB (0.6RMB up)

Mushroom, Rice and egg I could not compare since I did not know how much I bought before. Plus I bought different egg from last year, so I will update it next time

Of course there are some difference that could affect the prices. such as..

1. Season differences
2. It was different market
3. Weight might have been different

But still 8.5RMB higher price for same amount of the food is way TOO EXPENSIVE!!!! Plus if local market is this expensive huge supermarkets will be even worse than this.

Now with 6 euro for two couple for week is not possible any more. Past 3 month, I’ve been spending weekly grocery budget for minimum 80RMB to 150 RMB including fruits. Not only food price is going up fast but also Chinese currency is rising up quickly as well. 6 euro in Dec. 2009 was 59.2 RMB is now 54.5 RMB.

I hear risig of food price is just a beginning now. It’s going to be even worse than this from now on. I am bit worried and wonder how it would affect in the rest of the world. China is known as self- sufficient (自給自足) country, and it suffers with food price with this much, county that has to depend on import will be terribly hit.

2012 project! (2011. 02 was…)

• 12 brown egg: 7.5 RMB
• Small totatomes 0.5kg: 8 RMB
• Straw berry 0.5 kg: 9 RMB
• 2 paprika: 8.4 RMB
• 2 onion: 3.5 RMB
• 1 green pumpkin: 2.8 RMB
• 4 tomato: 5 RMB
• 2 sweet potato: 4.3
• 1 broccoli: 3.7
• 1kg rice: 5RMB
• Total: 57.2 RMB

Lecturer explains that most important thing to success is to find niche market and understand the culture. Even though you found niche market, culture important matter to consider, and followings are failed episode due to this reason.

Tinted window

In Korea, the more care is expensive, the more likely will have tinted window. It’s because owner would like to have some privacy as well as it looks cool! (Just like celebrity). One business man thought since China has so many cars, Tinted window business will be prosperous. But it failed.

Why? Chinese people like to show off their richness and car is the one of their important main pride. So if one apply tinted window, how can people see who is inside the car?

Fashion

As Korean TV drama is popular in China, fashion as well influence in China. One thought if she could bring all the popular clothes in Korea and sell it in China pricey, it will be great success. (I would not consider this as niche market though)

Anyway she failed while shop next door shop run by Korean born in China (朝鮮系中國人) was very successful, selling lots of clothes. To her clothes next door seems bit odd and not really Korean style. This person simply ignored or forgot that Chinese have their own taste and trend.