An entrepreneur capitalizing on millions of World of Warcraft fans within and outside of China, is opening the first unofficial WoW themed restaurant in Beijing, China.

The restaurant plans to have all kinds of WoW paraphenilia and other goodies that should make any fan proud, least of all the themed dishes with a large variety of names recognizable to any basic WoW player.

CCTV International has some pictures and a video of the restaurant in Beijing with the main area called the “Hall of Snow Storms.”

Honestly enough, I am surprised it has taken this long for a thematic restaurant to open up, althoguh I am not surprised about it opening in China with a large population playing (some say “gold-mining”) the game through the many cyber cafes dotting China.

Bookmark To:

I talked briefly before about how NBC’s coverage of the opening ceremonies was done very badly with cutting to commercials and by trying to limit worldwide Internet coverage before NBC would show it within the US. However, the coverage of the competition during the 2008 Beijing Olympics has been very well laid covered and with a large amount of information for people who know little about China.

With each competition, NBC has been talking with many of the athletes and giving background on who they are and what they need without being too boring, too annoying, or too simplistic–a remarkable achievement when most of the media nowadays tries to appeal to the lowest common denominator.

What has me amazed is how positive the coverage has been for China and the Beijing Olympics in general. This may be the result of being gracious to the country hosting the games or due to the earthquake that China suffered. There have been many stories about China and what you can find there along with the history of China and even the interaction of China and the US. Some of these topics have covered:

• Chinese cuisine (both good and strange)
• Chinese Acupuncture
• Nixon going to China
• Kite flying
• Chinese athlete training programs
• Beijing’s monuments and parks
• Etc

What has made it particularly well-done is that they actually brought in journalists to stay and work within a foreign country and provide on-the-ground reports about the country, something that has been in dire need for those interested in international affairs.

Lastly, even many of the commercials have been geared towards China and the Olympics, providing very relevant ads that I think play very well to the audience watching. These relevant ads do far better when I actually enjoy watching them because they are interesting! Many of these ads have been very memorable including the Beijing Olympics Mummy dual TV commercial.

Budweiser, GE, and some Canadian apparel HBC(?)

Bookmark To:

The media (particularly the American Media such as NBC) still does not understand that the Internet generation does not want to sit and wait a full day to know what has happened in the Beijing Olympics. And we certainly do not want them to cut to commercial in the middle of the fracking opening ceremonies (incidently, this is why soccer is a horrible sport to watch on TV in the US, they cut to commercial, a goal is scored, and we completely miss it).

So, what happens when the mainstream media tries to control online content (such as Viacomm and Youtube)? This:

NBC’s decision to delay broadcasting the opening ceremonies by 12 hours sent people across the country to their computers to poke holes in NBC’s technological wall — by finding newsfeeds on foreign broadcasters’ Web sites and by watching clips of the ceremonies on YouTube and other sites.

In response, NBC sent frantic requests to Web sites, asking them to take down the illicit clips and restrict authorized video to host countries. As the four-hour ceremony progressed, a game of digital whack-a-mole took place. Network executives tried to regulate leaks on the Web and shut down unauthorized video, while viewers deftly traded new links on blogs and on the Twitter site, redirecting one another to coverage from, say, Germany, or a site with a grainy Spanish-language video stream.

As the first Summer Games of the broadband age commenced in China, old network habits have never seemed so archaic — or so irrelevant.

To borrow from Eyes East, this is Olympics 2.0, so stop trying to limit us, we will find ways around what you do.

Bookmark To:

A fun article about one of my favorite cities, Shanghai, in the New Yorker titled “Buy Shanghai!” talks about the lifestyle and changes (both good and bad) that the city has gone through in the eyes of the author. I stack up my experiences from 2003 and 2005 against this article along with a few quips of my own.

The assorted finials on the tops of skyscrapers will make you think of a bottle opener, a Jell-O mold, a crown roast, a bamboo steamer, a chuppah, a Mobius strip, a snake that’s swallowed some golf balls, the Eiffel Tower, Lady Liberty’s headpiece, and the spiny back of a stegosaurus. Don’t breathe! The air is smelly with garbage juice. The sun, if visible at all, seems dimmer than the full moon on a hazy night. Need more light? You can see everything better after dusk, when the lunatic neon is switched on.

I would have added a skyscraper face that looks at you from four directions, but beyond that the description is sound.

“You can do business with them,” Helen Noh, a Korean who lives in Shanghai, said, referring to the Chinese. “But you should realize that, in the end, they are always going to win.”

Actually, I would say that this is more specific towards the Shanghainese–no matter how low you can bargain on prices there, if you are not speaking in 上海话 (Shanghai dialect) and are not a 上海本地人 (native Shanghainese), then you’re being ripped off. That’s why I had my friends help bargain for me instead–saved both time and money, and at least I don’t lose as badly, because no matter how good your Chinese or Shanghainese, you are still going to lose. It’s a game, so play it well.

There are markets for everything in Shanghai, including crickets. These come in varieties meant for competitive fighting [...] and for keeping as pets[.]

Now, mind you, I never actually saw a market place for crickets, but rather saw single guys with two loads (one on each side of a stick that he put across his back) that likely had 100+ containers filled with one cricket each in them. You can imagine the noise they made just walking down the sidewalk.

“Beijing’s short and wide. Shanghai’s tall and compact.” “Shanghai is more refined. More attention to detail.” “Shanghai’s female, Beijing’s male.” “Shanghai is New York. Beijing is Washington, D.C.” “Shanghai is New York. Beijing is L.A.” “Shanghai is Tel Aviv. Beijing is Jerusalem.” “Beijing is China. Shanghai is Shanghai.”

One cannot get a closer comparison to Beijing and Shanghai than comparing them to Washington D.C. and New York respectively. Whenever I went to a Beijing store, almost every other salesperson would ask why the US invaded Iraq (2003), whereas those in Shanghai would ask if I was French. Nonetheless, to understand Shanghai, remember the last quote — “Beijing is China. Shanghai is Shanghai.” — to understand the respective views of the Chinese people in the respective cities.

[T]he best deal? The underground eyeglass market near the railway station. In this bazaar, jam-packed with booths, you can get a pair of stylish, albeit no-name frames, complete with lenses ground to your prescription–all for a negotiated price of about $22.

Tempting, but good luck trying to find ones that will fit a European face–I actually lost a pair of my glasses in 2003 and could not for the life of me find any that would fit my “American” face–even in a store called “American Eyes.”

In China, it’s not always easy to know what’s going on, even today. CNN periodically blacks out for twenty seconds or so, and good luck navigating your way around the Great Firewall as you trying to get information online about anything having to do with what are referred to as the three “T”s.

True, although back in 2003 as a foreign exchange student I could often get around this through, and this will be the only time I recommend them, AOL. With their own wall-garden, you can access any of your favorite sites blocked, but good luck finding AOL at any 网吧 (Internet cafe).

As I told my friends on why I went to Shanghai instead of Beijing as a foreign exchange student–I wanted to do more than just study the Chinese language, but also learn about China’s history, culture, and economy. In the end, I believe I came back richer for the experience and luckier in terms of a fabulous wife.

Bookmark To:

北京欢迎你！

Bookmark To:

Looks like Beijing is going to have to try a lot harder with less than a month left:

4/7 days Beijing failed to meet its air pollution standards for the Beijing Olympics which were generous. Only 1/7 days made it if Beijing was not given some slack.

How bad is it? Take a look at what Beijing Olympic Games 2008 has:

That said, there is some hope–if the Chinese government can work overtime to get the pollution down (no cars, stopping all construction, shutting down power plants in Hubei), then it really would look as nice as this:

That is one helluva difference.

Bookmark To:

Bump and Update I (07/02/2008):

Found the Youtube video:

Here I was eating my dinner and watching TV when an ad came on TV that beautifully meshed in The Mummy 3 with the Beijing Olympics for a TV commercial trailer. Now, regardless of what you may think of The Mummy (1 or 2), from an advertising perspective, that was an amazing mesh of two ads into one TV commercial.

The minute I can find the the commercial up on Youtube or the main site, I’ll link to it here.

Well done.

Update II (07/02/2008):

The main site still does not have it and from an SEO perspective–not very friendly.

Bookmark To:

Venture Capital continues to increase to China, particularly in advanced of the Olympics, as $3.2 billion has been put into Chinese companies, an increase from $1.8 billion the previous year according to John Boudreau of the San Jose Mercury News on May 11, 2008 titled Money Pours into China, Despite Challenges.

The innovation of the Silicon Valley and its reputation around the world has sparked interest within China to create its own areas, with most of the money being sent to Beijing or Shanghai metropolitan areas as centers of China’s high-tech world.

It may be easy to get money for start-ups within China, but the brutal secret of business within China is just how competitive the environment is. China may still be the new land of opportunity, but to really make a stable Silicon Valley environment, it will require a stable supply of energy for the industry, strong individualistic sentiments, and lack of government regulations that are often hard to come by in other nations.

Bookmark To: