I hadn’t been up to Shenzhen for several months and was feeling in desperate need of a massage.  Add to that a friend who is relatively new to Hong Kong and had never been across the border.  And so, yesterday, off we went.  Since he’d never been there at all, I figured it made sense to do some of the usual stuff for his first visit.  Which meant, of course, the Luo Hu shopping mall.

First stop lunch.  I always love to eat at Laurel but we were hungry and I knew that at 1 PM on a Saturday afternoon it would be at least a 30 minute wait for a table, so we picked a different spot in the mall (sorry, I’m spacing on the name) with reasonable quality stuff and average price of around Y10 per dish.  Of course I ordered way too much and we were full before the last dish came.  And since it was a long time in coming, I tried to  cancel it but they wouldn’t let me.   Oh well, at Y38 (fried chili peppers stuffed with minced fish, spicy as hell) I didn’t mind too much.

Walking around the shopping mall, it seemed as if every shop had the same two iPad knock-offs, each of which seemed to have both Windows and Android installed.

As you can probably tell, the boxes look the same (the one on the right has the Android logo on top) and these things seemed relatively okay on first glance.  Note that on the bottom there is a connector port (not Apple’s dock connector) as well as USB and a Micro-SD slot.   The interface seemed like Windows and then you’d tap an arrow and another icon menu would launch featuring Android options, Android 1.6.  The smaller iPad also has a front-facing web cam built in.   Some dealers had taped an Apple logo on the back.   I couldn’t figure out what processor was inside but these suckers were pretty freaking slow.  Asking price everywhere was around Y1200; one shop came down to Y700 and they were trying really hard not to let me leave without buying one, literally hanging on to my arm as I tried to get out of the shop.  But I figured, even if I could get them down another hundred or two (which seemed likely), this was something that I wouldn’t actually use more than a couple of times for novelty or show-off value due to that really slow processor.   Perhaps there are better ones available at Huaquiangbei but we didn’t have time to get over there to check it out.

I did buy a different cute gimmicky thing – a key chain with what looked like the usual set of buttons for locking/unlocking a car but actually had a tiny video cam embedded – for Y80!  Takes Micro-SD cards and seemed to work decently in the shop – tested out this one and it seems to work okay so I’ll be dangerous during the week ahead.

The only other photos of possible interest are these two shots taken from the toilet in Luo Hu looking at the border.  I find the graves on the hillside facing Shenzhen to be of particular interest (sorry, couldn’t get rid of the reflection in the glass) – were these placed there merely because it’s on a hillside facing water or was there some political significance that I don’t know about?  I fantasized that these were people born across the border, came to Hong Kong in 1949 and are hoping that some day their spirits will return to a free China?

The next stop was massage, of course.  I asked around in the mall and the name that came up most often was Queens Spa & Dining so we went back to the train station, found the Queens Spa shop and hopped on their free shuttle bus for the 10 minute ride somewhere near Dong Men.  I thought I’d been there before but everything there was new to me so perhaps it was my first time.

There were six people, all dressed in white, lined up outside to welcome people.  Everything in this place seemed shiny new and immaculately clean.  One floor features a “30,000 square foot water park!” but we hadn’t brought appropriate attire.  The shower area featured three huge baths set at different temperatures with those big stone jacuzzi loungers, very relaxing.

On entering the lounge area, we encountered a Caucasian woman in uniform with a big button that read, “I speak ENGLISH!”  Her name was Natalya, Russian, living in Shenzhen for 10 years.  Actually we encountered a lot more English outside of Luo Hu than I’d encountered in the past – many of the Chinese staff members at the sauna spoke at least some English, at least at a similar level to my Mandarin (probably better), and when we went for our massage later on, one of the two massage girls could speak basic English and told us she was studying at a nearby school on her days off.

We settled into huge lounge chairs in the movie area – big projection TV, the day’s film schedule posted (we watched Four Christmases, Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon, better than I expected) while helping ourselves to drinks and fruit – fancier drinks and food available at extra charge and we did spend Y10 for some popcorn.

When we felt ready for the massage, we were brought to a computer screen where we could choose from baseball-card-like displays of each masseuse, her name and specialties (though only in Chinese) – each one photographed in skin tight outfits looking like pop stars, each one more beautiful than the last, although of course no “extras” are to be had in these kinds of places.  90 minute massages start at Y168 and go up depending on which options you want.  ”Hong Kong style” oil massage was Y188, if memory serves.

Note – if you just want to go there and use the facilities without getting a massage – pool tables, movie and karaoke rooms, mah jong room, water park, food, etc. – the cost is Y98 for 24 hours.  That’s really nice, right?   Walk around Shenzhen, get hot and sticky (no pun intended) and come here and pay 98 yuan for locker, shower, pool and some food, that’s a damned good deal IMHO.

From there, jumped in a taxi to my favorite restaurant, the Luo Hu branch of Sichuan chain Ba Shu Feng.  And for the first time, these guys let me down.  I ordered 4 dishes – 3 of them came relatively soon and were as fiery spicy and wonderfully tasty as ever.  But the 4th dish never showed up.  I kept calling waitresses over, the manager kept coming over, they kept getting on their walkie talkies and asking, they kept telling me it was coming, but it never came.  Finally it was getting close to 11 PM and I told them we had to get back to Hong Kong and didn’t want to miss the train.  As opposed to our lunch experience, this time they were very apologetic and didn’t charge us for the dish that never came.  Which was very nice of them except that fish dish is really freaking tasty and I had been looking forward to it but it was not to be.

So we hopped in a taxi back to the train and very soon we were back across the border in Hong Kong.  One thing I find is that people in Shenzhen are consistently friendly, smiling and helpful – and not just when they’re trying to help themselves to some of the money in your wallet.  Then we came across the border to Hong Kong where no one smiles, everyone’s in a rush and grouchy all the time.  Logic would seem to dictate the opposite should be true.  But these days I find people in Shenzhen to be more laid back and welcoming than the people in Hongkie Town.  My friend’s reaction to his first trip?  He wanted to leave Hong Kong and move there.  Next trip I’ll take him around Dong Men and Shekou and see if he still feels the same way.

Somehow I survived the week.  No, I’m not going to bore you with the details.  Instead, here’s a round-up of stuff that caught my eye over the past several days.

First, from Modern Toss, via Boing Boing, The Periodic Table of Swearing:

Next, from Failblog, this wonderful excerpt from a history book.

Yes, it does say, “walking out from his mother’s Patriotic and Revolutionary Vagina.”  No, source isn’t noted, so no idea where this is from or if it’s for real.

How to opt out of Apple’s iAD data collection.  If you’re using a mobile Apple device, you probably want to do this.  It only works on devices running iOS 4.

How Harry Potter & the Order of the Phoenix grossed $938 million worldwide but Hollywood accounting practices show the film $167 million in the red.

From the SCMP, the China Institute of of City Competitiveness, a non-profit think tank based in Hong Kong that assesses various conditions in cities in the region puts Macau ahead of Hong Kong in government integrity – based on the fact that Hong Kong has “rowdy” protests.  Taiwan ranks ahead of Hong Kong in terms of “competitiveness” (I’m sure it reads better in Chinese).  And Hong Kong is behind both Shanghai and Shenzhen in terms of innovation.  They also say that Hong Kong is not one of the “top ten harmonious cities” to live in – Jinghua, in Zhejiang province, is number 1.  Yet I don’t think I’ll be moving there any time soon.

Speaking of competititititivity,Joyce Lau on her blog posts one of her recent IHT articles discussing how Hong Kong has become a major hub for art auctions yet is unable to produce any world class art locally.    I could probably write an extremely long piece myself on why I think this is but I’ll save that for another time.

Back to Boing Boing, where they have this beautiful photo from JPL of a “Magic Dragon” constellation.  You can see it pretty clearly in the infra-red version of the photo below.  I think I know what my next tattoo is going to be.

Planning a trip to Miami any time soon?  Then you’ll want to read Disco Rick’s Top Ten Strippers Under 40.

Prince declares the Internet is over.  He’s shutting down his web sites and distributing his new CD as a free give away with a British newspaper.  Yes, you can find it online via the usual suspects.

Got an Octopus card?  Ever stop to wonder what they do with all that data they’ve collected about your spending habits?  According to the SCMP, if you’re in the Octopus reward “scheme,” you can opt out of letting them share your data with their “partners.”  This is wrong.  The default should be opt out, not opt in.

A Hong Kong lawyer says it’s suspicious that all the people who bought flats at 39 Conduit Road and then backed out, helping Henderson to inflate the cost of luxury housing in Hong Kong, as if it’s not already high enough, all used the same law firm and all presented documents that used the same words and phrases.  Oh really, Sherlock?  Ya think?  Meanwhile the government has asked Henderson to explain why they refunded deposits after the “sales” of these 20 flats fell through.  Henderscum.

An online gallery of almost all the covers from the great magazine Omni.

Photos and info for the 5 top places for beef brisket noodles in Hong Kong, according to CNNGo.

Last for now, the American Society of Cinematographers polled their members on the best cinematography in film in the past 10 years.  The top 5:

1. Amelie
2. Children of Men
3. Saving Private Ryan
4. There Will Be Blood
5. No Country For Old Men

So how was your week?

From a Flickr gallery by Matthew Lesh, the curtains came off the entrance to Apple’s new store in Shanghai today.   The store opens this Saturday, I believe.

Supposedly there’s an Apple store in Hong Kong’s future as well.  One thing’s for certain, it ain’t gonna be a thing of beauty like this one.

Erosion of freedom seems to be happening in Hong Kong on an almost daily basis.  Sometimes it is the economic freedom that we are denied by the monolithic power of the major real estate companies that really run Hong Kong.  Other times, the freedoms are more basic, such as freedom of speech and access to information.

Former China Premier Li Peng wrote a book detailing events in the inner circle of China leadership from April to June 1989 as the student democracy protest gained traction and attention.  The book reportedly details how China’s leaders, from Deng to Hu, supported the crackdown against the protesters.  The book, in other words, would make China’s leaders very uncomfortable to say the least.

It was scheduled to be published in Hong Kong next week.  Note the word “was” because now it has been pulled.  The publisher told the SCMP:

Bao Pu , founder of New Century Press, yesterday said he was approached by “relevant institutions” which provided him with copyright information.

“Relevant institutions provided information related to the copyright [of Li's diaries] before the publication of the book. According to Hong Kong’s copyright laws, I have to give up my original publication plan,” Bao said. He declined to name the institutions.

Why won’t he name the “institutions?”  If it’s a simple matter of copyright ownership, why can’t he say who they are?  How would he have proceeded up to this point – with the release set for just three days from now, he’s surely spent a lot of money printing up thousands of copies – if it wasn’t clear that he had the rights to do so until now?

To me, if it looks, smells and sounds like censorship, it probably is just that.  One country, two systems, but the hands of the bigger more powerful system have surely grabbed the throat of the smaller less powerful system.    Did they say to him, “If you publish this book, forget about your company doing any business in China?”  I suppose we’ll never know.

But every day, our freedoms are eroding.

Meanwhile, the SCMP reports that somewhere between 70,000 and 120,000 took part in a rally in Victoria Park in support of The Donald’s “reform package.”  How did they find so many people who like this thing?

“I don’t support Tsang’s reform thing,” said a 65-year-old woman. “I just thought an all-day tour with seafood and a free music show for under HK$100 was a nice deal.”

She explained that she and her family had joined a HK$98 city tour featuring a seafood lunch in Sai Kung, a guided jaunt along Hollywood Road, Central, the rally and march.

The issue of seafood dinners for participants has been a sore point for rally organisers since the Hong Kong Quanzhou Association was found to have offered a HK$200 “meal allowance” to each participant.

I suppose one might take comfort in the idea that buying votes is a nice exercise in capitalism.  And there’s no doubt about which side of this debate has the deeper pockets.

Dinky stuff first, let’s see where this ends up.

Having a vacation day on Wednesday just feels weird.  Granted, you avoid Hump Day.  But the end result is a week with two Mondays.  And two Fridays.

WordPress 3.0 is available now.  Go grab it if you have a WordPress blog.  I’ll probably deal with the upgrade tomorrow.

My computer is semi-on-the-fritz again, can’t figure out if the problem lies with my monitor or my video card.  I have an Asus ATI 8450 series card with two outputs, Samsung 24 inch monitor, LG 19 inch monitor.  I think the problem is the Samsung.  Need to update drivers on the card, play around with different configurations, see if I can sort out what’s going south here.  Sunday.

Lord Donald “Boom Boom” Tsang’s televised debate with Audrey “Don’t Call Me Ewwww” Eu on the Reform Package that Offers No Reforms went so badly for him that even he is trying to joke about it now, saying that had it been a football match, he never would have even made it within shooting distance of his opponent’s goal or net or whatever it’s called.  But really, this is not a joking matter.  This is ineptitude on a grand scale, one that I’m sure even Beijing is sitting up and seeing.   I picture Tsang at night, sitting in his whatever, in scenes that play out much like Nixon’s final days, Henry Tang playing the role of Kissinger, “Pray with me Henry, I know you’re a fucking Jew but get down on your knees with me here!”  Tsang’s bow tie loosened, hair disheveled, sweating feverishly, bottle of Mao Tai close at hand, busy burning the tapes and blaming it all on foreign devils.  There’s a movie to be made from all of this, one that probably will not star Donnie Yen but hopefully there’s a role in it for Mavis Pan (aka “Little Shu Qi” though there’s nothing little about her); Fan Bingbing can co-star as Princess Leia.

While I’m at it, recent photos of Megan Fox wearing very little.

Speaking of the Emperor’s New Clothes, the scummy Henderson Land made headlines a few months back when they reported record sales of flats in their new development at 39 Conduit Road.  They reported prices of up to HK$88,000 per square foot with one flat going for HK$439 million.  And now guess what?  All of those sales have “fallen through.”  They were all fake.  They were all undoubtedly done as part of some gonzo marketing scheme to artificially inflate the value of the flats in that building as well as in Hong Kong in general.  And in Hong Kong, this is all legal.

All of this may be a drop in the bucket compared to the shenanigans going on in the real estate market in Hainan.  Over at Business Insider, they’ve got this guy named Vincent Fernando, CFA writing on Asian financial matters.   A financial analyst, we are informed that, “Currently in Taiwan, he enjoys markets, travel, wargames, running, and listening to electronic music. Vincent has passed Thai government exams in spoken and written Thai and has a BS in Biology from Tufts University.”

On June 17th, Fernando wrote a piece on property prices collapsing in Hainan.  ”Hainan property prices just fell nearly 30% in a month.”  And he had some figures to support that.  But he only had half the story.

Later the same day, on the same blog, Mario Cavolo wrote, “Let’s analyze this nonsense a bit closer.”

Prices on Hainan did an orchestrated “pump and dump” jump of 50 to 100% in January….Lord help all those January suckers who let themselves get sucked in like addicted table gamblers in Vegas after the Wenzhou clan smelled money, went in, bought it all up, dumped it and went back home to leave the mom and pop retail buyers holding the bag, no different than the Wall Street game might I add and a sad commentary on greedy ways and fools in just about any country on earth…

I am told by a number of experienced real estate agent that in Ban Shan Ban Dao there are dozens of sellers who all have their properties for sale asking over 40,000rmb per square meter and that there has not been one single transaction there since the January pump and dump.

When the real estate market is being so shameless manipulated without fear of any legal consequences, how can a poor man stand such times and live?

Speaking of China, earlier in the week Sarah Lacy on TechCrunch noted that since Google exited China, the internet playing field has become a whole lot less level.

By essentially handing Baidu a short-term monopoly on keywords, user acquisition costs have gone through the roof …. Market forces—ie, so much venture capital backing so many new Chinese Web ventures—were already making the cost of acquiring traffic through popular online channels in China expensive. (For instance, there are said to be literally hundreds of Groupon-clones in China vying for traffic all of the sudden.) Now, sources say prices are almost totally out of reach for anyone but the most well-funded companies. …

Marc van der Chijs co-founder of Tudou and CEO SpilGamesAsia told me a year ago buying traffic via keywords and listings in directory sites like Baidu-owned Hao123.com was a no-brainer. But he says within the last year, the prices have gone up as much as 10-fold. So high, van der Chijs finally walked away, glad he grabbed some users while they were affordable.

He’s not alone. I talked to about a dozen startups who said they are spending the bunk of their money these days on user acquisition. It’s creating some concern that newer, scrappier ventures are locked out of a market increasingly dominated by Web giants like Sina andTencent.

So for all the people who gave Google a middle finger when they walked out of China, take that finger back because the Chinese companies are giving you ten middle fingers in return.

And now for something completely different.  Over at The Inquisitr, someone has noted that if you take Obama’s signature, flip it 90 degrees and add just one more line, it becomes almost NSFW.

Happy weekend y’all!

Add Foursquare to the ever-growing list of services blocked in China, at least according to TechCrunch, which reports that the government might be nervous about lots of people checking in at Tiananmen Square today.

I know, you’d think that China would actually like Foursquare, that it could know at any moment which bar some dissident is sitting in.  But they’re such a bunch of pussies that even this service scares them, that something that was developed for Starbucks to send you coupons on your mobile could be seen as a threat to social “stability”?  As more and more of these services surface, the list of blocked sites and services is bound to grow so huge that soon all of China will be employed by the GFW.

June 4th is also my mother’s birthday.  She pre-dates the massacre slightly; this year she’s 89.

Two entirely unconnected items in one post.  If you don’t like the first, scroll down for the second!

Today Business Insider had not one but two stories about the possibility of the real estate bubble bursting in China.  Top Chinese Central Banker: Our Property Crisis is Worse That the UK and US Bubbles and And Now Chinese Real Estate Debt is Blowing Up.

I’ve never taken any courses in economics or finance and I’m the first to admit there’s a lot I don’t understand.  So I don’t know how real any of these reports are and I have no idea what the potential impact might be to Hong Kong should things turn south (in a manner of speaking).  Is Hong Kong’s property market sheltered from changes in China or would there be a tsunami effect?  Opinions?

Is Lindy West the best film critic ever?  Just look at this excerpt from her (apparently much-quoted) review of Sex and the City 2:

SATC2 takes everything that I hold dear as a woman and as a human—working hard, contributing to society, not being an entitled cunt like it’s my job—and rapes it to death with a stiletto that costs more than my car. It is 146 minutes long, which means that I entered the theater in the bloom of youth and emerged with a family of field mice living in my long, white mustache.

How do you improve on that?  Perhaps with this closing line:

If this is what modern womanhood means, then just fucking veil me and sew up all my holes. Good night.

No desire to see the movie but I want to read a lot more reviews from Lindy West.

There will be no Zimmy for us.

Back in January, rumors were flying around that Bob Dylan was set to play Hong Kong on April 8th and make other stops in Beijing and Shanghai.  I haven’t seen him live in about 15 years and reportedly his “Never Ending Tour” (roughly 150-200 nights per year going on for about 20 years now) has had very few off nights.

But I was skeptical about China allowing him to perform in the mainland – I couldn’t see much of his earlier material being acceptable to the Chinese censors and wondered if he would still tour if presented with a list of songs that he couldn’t play.   March came and went and I saw no ads for a show and pretty much assumed it wasn’t happening and that turns out to be the case.

The SCMP reports today that the tour is off, that the Chinese Ministry of Culture simply refused to allow him to perform in Beijing and Shanghai.  With those two dates cancelled, Dylan decided to cancel other prospective dates in Hong Kong, Taipei and Seoul.  The promoter says Dylan was mostly interested in coming here to play the mainland and that the tour isn’t financially feasible without those two dates.   He’s just finished performing several weeks in venues all over Japan.

They’re blaming it on Bjork, saying that since she performed a pro-Tibet song in Shanghai two years ago, it’s been more difficult for western acts to gain permission to play China.  So is a country of a billion and a half people with one of the strongest economies on the planet simply scared of a 68 year old Jew in a cowboy hat?

I’ve been lucky enough to count Graham Earnshaw as one of my best friends for more than 15 years.  Graham is one of those people who has packed several lifetimes of adventures and experience into one and he’s still going strong.   A former Asian editor for Reuters and one of the few foreigners to be in Tiananmen Square as the tanks rolled in (you can read his account of that event here), he’s also recorded two albums and owns more businesses in Shanghai than you can shake a stick at.

Graham’s been walking across China.  Every weekend he starts out from the point that he left off the week before, and in 5 years he’s covered more than 1,500 miles, which is even more impressive if you know that he’s got a physical disability that would keep most people from venturing much further than their front door.  Of course he’s been writing and photographing as he goes along and I was privileged to review an early draft of his book in progress – at the time it was called “Walking West” (a title he’s now using for one of the songs on his next album).

So I’m thrilled to see that the good folks at Blacksmith Books will be published The Great Walk of China:  Travels on Foot from Shanghai to Tibet, at the more than reasonable price of HK$130.  (It will be released in North America at the end of the year.)    You can pre-order it now from Blacksmith here or look for it in local shops at the end of February or early March.  I know it will be well worth your time.

This is big news.  Huge. To summarize, Google is saying that there have been attacks against their systems and those of at least 20 other companies based in Silicon Valley.  They say the primary goal has been to access the email accounts of Chinese human rights activists.  Elsewhere, there are hints that Google believes the Chinese government may have been behind the attacks.   Google says they are no longer willing to offer a censored version of their service in China and are willing to exit the country.  To say that it will be interesting to watch this story develop over the next several days would be an understatement.

Here’s today’s entry on Google’s official blog.

A new approach to China

1/12/2010 03:00:00 PM

Like many other well-known organizations, we face cyber attacks of varying degrees on a regular basis. In mid-December, we detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google. However, it soon became clear that what at first appeared to be solely a security incident–albeit a significant one–was something quite different.

First, this attack was not just on Google. As part of our investigation we have discovered that at least twenty other large companies from a wide range of businesses–including the Internet, finance, technology, media and chemical sectors–have been similarly targeted. We are currently in the process of notifying those companies, and we are also working with the relevant U.S. authorities.

Second, we have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Based on our investigation to date we believe their attack did not achieve that objective. Only two Gmail accounts appear to have been accessed, and that activity was limited to account information (such as the date the account was created) and subject line, rather than the content of emails themselves.

Third, as part of this investigation but independent of the attack on Google, we have discovered that the accounts of dozens of U.S.-, China- and Europe-based Gmail users who are advocates of human rights in China appear to have been routinely accessed by third parties. These accounts have not been accessed through any security breach at Google, but most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on the users’ computers.

We have already used information gained from this attack to make infrastructure and architectural improvements that enhance security for Google and for our users. In terms of individual users, we would advise people to deploy reputable anti-virus and anti-spyware programs on their computers, to install patches for their operating systems and to update their web browsers. Always be cautious when clicking on links appearing in instant messages and emails, or when asked to share personal information like passwords online. You can read more here about our cyber-security recommendations. People wanting to learn more about these kinds of attacks can read this U.S. government report (PDF), Nart Villeneuve’s blog and this presentation on the GhostNet spying incident.

We have taken the unusual step of sharing information about these attacks with a broad audience not just because of the security and human rights implications of what we have unearthed, but also because this information goes to the heart of a much bigger global debate about freedom of speech. In the last two decades, China’s economic reform programs and its citizens’ entrepreneurial flair have lifted hundreds of millions of Chinese people out of poverty. Indeed, this great nation is at the heart of much economic progress and development in the world today.

We launched Google.cn in January 2006 in the belief that the benefits of increased access to information for people in China and a more open Internet outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some results. At the time we made clear that “we will carefully monitor conditions in China, including new laws and other restrictions on our services. If we determine that we are unable to achieve the objectives outlined we will not hesitate to reconsider our approach to China.”

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.

The decision to review our business operations in China has been incredibly hard, and we know that it will have potentially far-reaching consequences. We want to make clear that this move was driven by our executives in the United States, without the knowledge or involvement of our employees in China who have worked incredibly hard to make Google.cn the success it is today. We are committed to working responsibly to resolve the very difficult issues raised.

Posted by David Drummond, SVP, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer

For more on this, see:

New York Times report (also linked above)

Scobleizer

GigaOm

TechCrunch

Wall Street Journal

All Things Digital

South China Morning Post?  Nope.  They have yet to cover this.