Shanghai Tan

I saw Xiapu the 1st time in a photography magazine back at 2008, it was very special graphically and seems so remote a place that I don’t envision going there one day. Then during 2009, I keep seeing photos of Xiapu in almost every issue of any photography magazine. Apparently many professional photographers went there and posted their works in various magazines and art galleries. At that point it became clear to me that I’ve got to go see that place. Not just me, many of my colleagues were also stunt and attracted by the unusual, painting-like look and feel of that paradise of the fishers.

After some missed shots for Xinjiang and Xi’an, the team finally decided to go to Xiapu during November. We were lucky, the fast train from Shanghai to Xiapu (2 stops before Fuzhou) was opened at then end of September, it is just a convenient 5-hours train to get there directly. Xiapu is located at the North East of Fujian province, somewhere in between Wenzhou and Fuzhou. It has a long coastal line of 400km, with a large portion of sea shore protected by mountains and rocks (calm and safe), making it perfect for fishers to establish since the past thousand years.

For the last couple of years, an emerging touristic activity is photography, which attracts large number of photo enthousiasts from all around China, and still growing. Large scale of floating village, infinite seaweed field, thousands of rows of bamboo planted in sea shore, endless number of fisher boats going to high sea, crew of fishers carrying their catches to the land, colorful sand, breath-taking sunrise and sunshine, those are unique and abundant things that Xiapu has to offer to every photographer. In addition, the cost of lodging and eating at Xiapu is a fraction of what is costs in Shanghai, beside having much fresher and better selection of seafood!

The 6 of us have hired a local guide, Mr. Zhang, who is member of the association of photographers of Xiapu. He was born there and have lived all his life there, so he knows the place, the people, the weather, the view, and the timing. We wouldn’t be able to shoot any great pictures if any of the 5 elements was missing! Under his guide, we were able to witness amazing tidal effect at the sea shore, within 30 minutes, a seemingly boring place “suddenly” becomes a spectacular zebra-like oyster field; a muddy place suddenly becomes clear white as water fill up. For all of us coming from city, this was such a great show given by Mother Earth!

One last thing worth mentioning is, 2 of crew members are new to our team, Perry and Momo, because Max and Roger were not able to join us this time. It turned out we had a great time together, eating and drinking every night, playing cards and singing too. It was a memorable trip, and probably one of the cheapest I ever had. It costed us only 2000 yuan per person, for 5 days in total, all inclusive!

Click here to see the entire album.

This is the 2nd year that Mary and I went to see the HSBC Golf Championship tournament at Sheshan International Golf Club, thanks to the free tickets (1000rmb each!) donated to us by Mary’s awesomely well connected and pretty friend. Two things are different this year: the HSBC championship is now part of the official PGA tournament, and Tiger Woods is returning to this tournament after 2 years of absence.

I woke up the morning with full of excitment that I’m going to see Tiger in real person, really close, seeing him doing thing that he does best: winning a game of golf. After 3 days of competition Tiger’s cumulative score is at -12, second only to Phil Mickelson’s -14. Unfortunately Sergio Garcia is a distance -2, not sure what went wrong with him this year coz he won the cup last year at this place!

So, after a long metro transit from line 2 to line 4 to line 9, we arrived at the Sheshan metro station after 10am. We then took a taxi because we were too lazy to walk for ten minutes, which turned out to be a mistake because the golf club entrance wouldn’t allow taxi to go in, apparently traffic was a big mess around there.  So we wasted almost an hour of effort and time trying to figure out how to get to the entrance to see our friends and obtain the tickets. Finaly, we arrived on the field around 11am, completely exhausted!

Then, as every new visitor getting in, the first question is to ask around: which hole is Tiger at now? At that time he was only at the 3rd hole, there’s a huge crowd following him, along with media and bodyguards and employees of the country club. There is nothing like a normal golf course should be: ordinary grass, lousy people, people running & walking while there was clear sign to stop down, kids playing, and worst of all, the big bad bodyguards looking at spectators as if we’re trying to steal something from Tiger. It’s amazing how Tiger is the center of all attention, while leaving Phil and Sergio with just a small crowd. I’m sure they don’t mind at all…

Clearly Tiger was not in good mood, within the first 9 holes his score dropped from -12 to -9. Not only did he not make any birdies, but he was falling into bunkers repeatedly, and you can see his unhappy face from very far away.

I managed to take a few photos from far away, because the bodyguards were giving me a shit face when seeing my big lens camera. The big guy insisted that I should put my camera inside the bag, I ignored his request, but I was thinking to myself that this is not worth fighting for. I admire Tiger’s skill and reputation but he is not a role model in any way to me, I won’t sleep with his photos! So, few minutes later I packed up my camera and just watch with naked eyes.

An hour later we left the golf course to return to the city, joining our friends for a small gathering at her showroom, much more comfortable place, familiar friends, red wine, cheese, chips, etc.

Next year we won’t ask for tickets, it’s not worth all the trouble to get there and then be treated like dirt by the very people who came to collect the money that Chinese spectators and Chinese corporate sponsors were paying them. Those people don’t think that without our strong enthousiasm, they won’t be given such a generous prize! They just take for granted, because Tiger is a celebrity. Frankly, I’m very disappointed by the way this tournament is organized and run. It’s going to lose its prestige very quickly if thing doesn’t improve.

The past week has been an intensive leadership discussion week for me. There was the visit of a Distinguish Engineer (DE) from Austin Texas during the first half of the week, and I had a classroom training at the second half of the week. Therefore, I had discussion on leadership all week long, what characterise a leader, how to grow someone to be a leader, how a leader can lead effectively, how important leadership is for this company, and so on.

The first remarkable event happenned during the Tuesday diner at Shu Zhe Hui restaurant. We were 15 people sitting around a huge round table in a private room. The atmosphere was good, we all know each other pretty well, especially the respected DE who has been with us for a week now. At one point, she launched a challenge to all of us. Each person would say one thing (a word or short expression) that characterises leadership, then the next person had to repeat the previous words before providing his/her word, and so on.

At first I worried that we would not find enough words by the time we finish half the table, but then it just went on and on. Eventually everybody had found at least one thing to say about leadership, and there were still words that we hadn’t use. So, here’s what we said about what a leader should have or should be:

• Influence
• Do the right thing
• Change agent
• Visionary
• Special
• Passionate
• Inspire
• Take ownership
• Lead by example
• Optimistic
• Confidence
• Mentor/coach
• Trust
• Risk taking
• Empathy
• Forgiving
• Honesty
• Perseverance

To our surprise, it takes quite a lot to be a good leader, to be a leader that is respected and sought after. And I’m sure that are obvious things that we’ve not thought of.

At Thursday and Friday, I had a classroom training on Technical Leadership Today (TLTP), given by a mature (mentally) and passionate instructor. He skipped most of the official content to focus on the most important material, which I found truely impressive because he mastered the content very well, and tailored it based on the duration of the class and the level of the students. Beside the important lessons that we learned from his experience sharing and the interesting stories shared by classmates, I was really enlightened by two statements from the instructor:

• Excellence is not an act but a habit.
  This is a quote from Aristotle that I’ve not heard before.
• Draw a horizontal line for your IQ level and a vertical line for your passion, your life achievement is the triangle surface covered by joining the horizontal and vertical line!
  In other words, your achievement depends as much on your IQ as on how much passion you have. If you only have great IQ without passion for anything, you won’t go very far in life. If you have average IQ but lots of passion for what you do, you can probably achieve much more than the high IQ guy!

The first statement is logical to me, but hearing it in such a short straightforward sentence make it really strong. The second statement is new to me, I always felt that my IQ is just average so I can’t achieve anything great, but with this enlightening concept inspires and encourages me a great deal, now I know that passion can overcome some of my IQ limite. Yeah! 

The last time I went to Beijing was 5 years ago, during my first trip to China at Summer 2004. Though I can’t say that I was deceived during that trip, it wasn’t so fun in general. We were a big group of +20 people and we were stuck together from 6am to 9pm everyday, that was extremely exhaustive! So, this trip is my 2nd attempt, mostly to show my mother what the capital looks like (she was here from 9/1 to 10/1), but also my 1st visit since the grandiose Olympic contruction all over the capital.

Once again, we booked our trip on ctrip.com, upgraded to a better located hotel right on Xi Dan street [西单街] where all the major shopping malls are found, and just 1 subway station from the Imperial Palace [故宫]. It was really worth the minor cost addition for all the comfort and time saving everyday after the guide tour is over. We had guided tour up to 5pm everyday, sometime earlier, so we had plenty of time to walk around the busy street, actually my mom has done quite some shopping there on her own, while I was skimming through my email inbox. To my surprise, I prefer to walk among the local “cheap shop” rather than the western-look modern malls, because those are all alike everywhere you go, they have the same recognized brands and same products everywhere, nothing special.

What I was mostly pleased with during this trip is the gorgeous clear blue sky, with a bit of pure white cloud hanging around, everyday. Sometime I felt like, staring at the blue sky is already worth the trip, or maybe I left Canada too long time to badly miss a clear sky. Also the weather was dry, around 28C, it was simply the perfect time to travel. I couldn’t ask anything more on this.

I was very pleased to see the great renovation being done on the major touristic attractions, such as the Imperial Palace, the Tian Tan Park [天坛公园], the National Theater [国家大剧院], etc. Photographying those sites was a pure pleasure, plus the good weather in the background, all the sites were at their best appeal in front of my camera! We were in small group, mostly just 4 people (including us) plus the guide. So we had plenty of time to talk and ask questions on the historical relics. Our time was flexible when I need to stop down a minute to take a shot, or waiting for people to clear out.

That was for the old Beijing attractions. The new Olympic attractions are the Bird Nest [鸟巢国家体育场] and Water Cube [水立方国家游泳馆]. I went there to shoot night scene on my own, and was really lucky to have found an excellent spot to shoot the Birt Nest. That photo alone was worth all the troubles and sweat. Unfortunately the Water Cube was not so nice to look at close, nor photographying, because it’s too flat with a messy surrounding, there’s no way to get a clear shot of that building.

To summarize, this trip has totally changed my perception of the capital. The warm reception of my special colleague (Cool) during Saturday night also helped this cause. Enough is to say, last time when I came, I almost swear that I’d never come to live in the capital. But after this time, I feel like I can take this very well, not only that, I’m considering maybe give it a try soon, whenever an opportunity shows up. Just to remind myself again, never say never…

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When Desmond asked if I would be interested in going golfing at St-Andrews, Scotland, together with Henry and Graham. I didn’t hesistate long before agreeing to participate, and I never looked back. That was around the end of May. Then at the beginning of June, Sandra (from Scotland) helped us draft a vacation plan with golf courses suggestion, places to visit, itinerary and B&B (bed & breakfast, or “good motel” in other words).

With that, I thought I would simply pack up and follow the crew and just take photos on the road. Then the next day Desmond asked me to review the plan and give feedbacks to Sandra, coz no one else is gonna do it… I said to myself, ooops, have to do homework after all. So I took a good look at various websites, including Wikipedia, Google map, visitscotland.com, etc. Three days later I had a rough idea of what I’d like to cover in this 7 days trip. So I responded with a proposition to cover a larger area of Scotland, from Edinburgh to St-Andrews to Pitlochry to Banffshire to isle of Skye to Inverness. The good thing about doing the homework is that I didn’t feel lost on the road coz I had some idea about the Scotland geography.

After about a dozen of plan adjustments over 3 weeks, we basically settled down on all aspects of the trip, including itinerary, golf courses, restaurants (for Desmond’s birthday) and B&B, with reservation and everything. In parallel, Henry did much of his part in updating GPS, register the destination addresses and reserve the car for the crew. Graham promised to bring us some unbreakable rain gear as weather forecast was pretty dim.

As we approached the 2^nd July we were all feeling more and more excited to go, while I was just returned from another trip to Shan Xi 4 days ago with colleagues. At the time we had to leave for the airport, Desmond had a business diner that last until the very last moment, then there was unexpected road construction on our way to the airport, traffic was stuck at 9:30pm after the bridge, for a moment we thought seriously that we might miss our flight and call the trip off… Luckily we arrived at the Pudong airport exactly one hour earlier (instead of 2.5hrs as demand) at the check-in counter, no problem, we were in, for sure! Luggages checked in, golf bags checked in, calm was restored among us.

A dozen hours later, fully packed in the KLM budget flight with kids in front and behind our row, we arrived at the Edinburgh airport in relatively good shape despite our inability to get a cup of coffee at the Shiphol airport at Amsterdam because of the very early hour of our flight transfer. Few minutes later we were able to meet Henry in the aiport as it is a quite small place. We had a quick breakfast and a pint of ale while waiting for Graham to arrive two hours later. Beside Graham’s delayed golf bag, everything seems to be aligned for a great trip to get start.

Summer at Scotland could easily be summarized as one word: green! There is greenery everywhere we were, the mountain, the pasture, the highland and the golf course. For this tiny country there are over 500 golf courses, which is more than what the entire China has today! Obviously there is a deeply rooted culture of golfing at Scotland tracing back to 500 years ago, which was first played somewhere around the Old Course that we visited immediately at our arrival at St-Andrews.

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We went to Shan Xi between the 25th to 28th of June, with CK, Rebecca, Kathy, Roger, Max and Estelle. For 4 days of trip we did really lots of things, made a lot of mileage on a “bread car” [面包车] including driver. We basically went from middle of Shanxi to south, then all the way to north and back to middle again. We were lucky to have nice weather mostly, only rained (and hailed) once while we were on the road.

To be honest I didn’t expect a lot from Shanxi, not hearing anything nice from there ever. The only thing people keep saying about Shanxi is the mines, the miners and the boss of the miners [煤老板] who are insanely rich and dumb. In fact I didn’t even know the capital of Shanxi until I have the flight ticket in hands.

What I read in magazine is that Shanxi is a living museum of the Tang [唐朝] and Song [宋朝] dynasties, which are two of the most prosperous dynasties in China history. Unfortunately at the end of Song dynasty is hundred years of long lasting war with the various northern tribes, until it was entirely taken over by the Yuan dynasty [元朝]. That pretty much ended Shanxi’s famed period.

What is left of Shanxi today is a poor province with only one type of natural resource as revenu, coal mine. Not much else as economy, not much agriculture, no trade, no port, no hub. They might be able to count on touristic industry but transportation isn’t fully developped yet based on my observation.

Anyway, pessimistic as I am, we did have a great trip with all those guys. We took lots of photos, had fun in hotel room (that was memorable), and saw amazing historical heritage of ancian time. For 4 days short trip I feel that we’ve gotten much more than what’s worth. On the bus returning to airport at last day, we even had a karaoke and sung for 3 hours, for free!

You can see the entire album here.

As a regular reader of the InformationWeek magazine since 1995, as well as several other publications such as InfoWorld, ComputerWorld, Network Computing, Resellers News, etc, I’ve read hundreds of issues of world CIO ranking, CTO ranking, Top 100 CIO, CIO of the Year, you name it.

Unsurprisingly, the majority of the CIO/CTO in the list are working for american companies (these are american magazines after all), the usual recipients are from Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Fedex, UPS, JPMorgan, Prudential, NASDAQ, Eli Lilly, Pfizer, Shell, 3M, Xerox, IBM, HP, Microsoft, Nike, Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble, Amazon, eBay, Walmart, etc, etc, etc. Those are the world wide recognized innovative companies where their CIO excel in transforming business practices and processes by leveraging cutting edge information technologies. That is what I’m used to read for the past decade and a half, until now…

In the latest Global CIO 50 survey of InformationWeek, I was extremely surprised and delighted to see that there are 7 Chinese CIO in the list, I don’t remember seeing that many in any previous list. Seven mainland Chineses companies have made it into the list of Global CIO 50, that is something worth celebrating, let me explain…

The 7 CIO are:

First of all, the fact Chinese companies show up in the list of an american mainstream IT publication is quite significant to me. Many Chinese companies have been listed on NASDAQ for years without showing up on the radar of the average american investors. Now with globalisation a fact of life in every major industry, some well managed and innovative Chinese companies are having exposure on the international arena, not as a “3rd-world-country-companies picking up on modern technologies” headline, but as an equal peer with the very best of the world like Boeing and Rolls-Royce and IBM! This is one giant step toward the day where people don’t just think of the lead paint in toys and milk scandal when they think about Chinese companies.

Secondly, the fact that some Chinese companies can stand on this list will bring more attention to other companies that might have similar spectacular achievement to be recognized and learned from. Just imagine the gargantuan size of the Bank of China, ICBC, China Telecom, Chinese health care system, social security system, etc. Running those organizations’ IT department certainly have many challenges of their own that no other peer companies in the world could imagine and handle.

More over, these Chinese CIO not only use IT to support the business operation, but they manage to squeeze much competitive advantages out of it. I’m sure many other CIO are doing that too, this is just the beginning of a phase where Chinese companies are forced to become competitive globally to survive, forced to evolve and innovate continuously, just as their counterparts in the West.

I think that, by treating Chinese innovative companies as equal of organizations in the developed world, we can encourage them to try harder to bring their IT usage and infrastructure inline with the developed world, and that means that IBM will have a huge opportunity to capitalize on such movement, and so do I!

You can download the report in PDF here.

Summer is officially here, since yesterday! All the sudden temperature rises to higher than 30°C, Sun light is stronger than ever. The major sites in Shanghai, such as People’s Square and Lujiazhui, have been throughoutly decorated, probably for the Spring and Summer, but most likely as preparation for the Expo 2010 that is only 358 days away from us. Subway TV is showing hourly promotional ads to prepare the citizens’ mind for welcoming people from litterally all around the world. Street signs are being re-translated for proper and standardized English. I once saw a huge billboard on Xietu road showing the Expo pavillion mock ups of many countries, one of them being spelled as Switch, instead of Swiss! Not that people won’t be able to guess it, but if someone could just check the dictionary once this kind of stupid mistakes could be avoided.

It seems to me that today’s People’s Square look more beautiful than last time I visited at Winter, and much better than during 2004. With such wonderful colorful flowers and clear blue sky, I have to say that, it’s easy to get lost on the streets and keep shooting and shooting until my head is burned by the Sun.

Besides flowers popping up from the grown, love couples also popup from their nest for wedding photo shots, en masse! Everytime I see them being posed and photographed on street for the entire day, I couldn’t imagine myself doing that one day, I just can’t stand it…

Anyway, it’ll be fun to hang out at Shanghai this time next year. Click here to see the whole album.

The major automobile industry exhibition hosting alternates between Shanghai and Beijing every year. Two years ago it was at Shanghai but I didn’t go. So this is my first time to the major Shanghai auto show, after last year’s mini show. Actually, the biggest exhibition here wasn’t cars, but female models and mountains of spectators… I went to this one at Friday noon, taking half day off, together with Alan and his friend Marco who just came for vacation from Singapore. It was a rainy day, supposedly there should be less visitors due to the inconvenience.

To avoid missing any golden opportunity, I brought my big camera bag, with both the 24-70mm and 70-200mm lens. I can feel the trouble that I was causing to people’s circulating around me. Everytime I tried to get into a crowd to shoot a model, I was continuously pushed and blocked by visitors extremely eager to shoot every single model they see on their way. I manage, painfully and unthoughtfully, to take more than 200 shots of mostly female models and a handful of car shots. Actually I didn’t see any truely impressive car during the day, or maybe the dense crowd has prevented me from focusing on car details, all that I could easily spot was pretty models, and they were more than 200 of them around, popping up here and there as we visited the 9 sections.

Beside the pretty models, all in high heels and long legs, there were plenty of local Chinese car brands that I’ve never seen on street before. Car design aside, those brands seem so anonymous that I couldn’t remember any one of them as soon as I turned my head around. I think the majority of those local brands were simply copycat of something European or American or Japanese. The most extravagenza of them being a copycat of Rolls Royce, the brand is something ending with GE, which is ironically similar to the short name of General Electrics! Believe me, the car does look like a Rolls Royce if you don’t look at the details! I think more than half of these brands should merge into something more meaningful and trustworthy to the local buyers. With such a mushrooming of small unknown car builders, the local consumers are confused and would prefer to stick with the well known international brands, at least they have the confidence that the car is more reliable on the road. The automobile industry should not make the stupid mistake of the plasma TV industry that have killed profitability and innovation because of too many generic products flooded on the market without clear competitiveness and distinctive elements.

Though it was fun to see so many car and models, I’m hoping that the Shanghai auto exhibition organizer will one day find its raison d’etre, its unique characteristics, and drive innovation around those areas. Like the Frankfurt auto exhibition is known for concept cars, Tokyo is known for small electric cars, Detroit is known for big car show, etc. Shanghai should find its place or it will risk being a female models cat walk instead of car exhibition in the long run!

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Following the trip from Sanqingshan, we drove about 70km to Wuyuan and stayed there for 3 days 2 nights. This was my second time to Jiangxi Wuyuan [江西婺源], last year was also during this season of omnipresent yellow rapeseed fields. With the freedom of driving, our aim this time was to visit a much larger area of this beautiful county once praised by a National Geographic journalist as “The most beautiful village of China”!

With the rise of its reputation across China, the many scenic areas within Wuyuan have gotten together to create a multi-sites pass that costs 180 rmb, linking 12 sites in total. If you go to any of these sites, you have to buy the combo ticket, but you can use it for 5 days as many times as you want. To make sure you don’t resell this to another individual during the valid period, they record your fingerprint in the card during first use, and subsequent uses must be authorized by the same fingerprint. Smart, but potentially troublesome, and I suppose this doesn’t come cheap in equipment and maintenance. I just wonder how much more money are the site owners making in using such system… or maybe the money just go to the county touristic department first and they redistributed to the site owners, in which case I doubt they would receive their full entitlement…….

Well, the first 2 days were cloudy, as typical in the Jiangxi and Anhui provinces. The 3rd day was absolutely blue sky and great weather. During this trip I did see much more of Wuyuan, so much that I felt the villages were repetitive and basically indistinguishable in photos. With the convenience of a car, we drove back and forth among the 3 observation decks of the Jiangling [江岭] scenic area 3 times during the morning. We actually stayed one night on top of the mountain, allowing us to be at the observation deck very early the next morning (7am). But then we realized that people were much more crazy then us, they were there way before we woke up! When we got there, people were already filled up the place with tripods and long lens. Once again, the cloud was thick, sky was blue, what a wonderful world I told myself! Seeing a small village on the mountain dipped in the cloud, I couldn’t stop pressing the camera shutter, on and on and on.

Trying to capture different aspect of Wuyuan this time, I was pleasantly surprised by the Yue Liang Wan [月亮湾] scenic area. We were not aware of this place when we drove cross a crowd of more than 50 amateur photographers lining up beside the river. We decided to pull off and joined the crew, spent more than an hour of truely enjoyable shooting time. It was a really nice discover for me. I feel that I did shoot many different views of Wuyuan this time compared to last year, and I felt more comfortable in shooting with the new camera now. I feel that my framing skills have improved during this year too.

Click here to see the whole album.