My baby girl was born on the 17th of November 2008

Guess what? Miah Mii Zhou is now with me. The most wonderful moment has happened to my life. The first minute I saw my baby after she was born, I was speechless and somewhat wet my eyes. That little crying baby is my daughter. She is beautiful and healthly. I cannot believe that I am now a big daddy. Her voice, her body movements and her crying are soo beautiful. From that moment, I have felt that my life has completed its purpose. Now a brand new mission has kicked in.

The new family website has been launched right after her birth. We are going to track every possible moments we can catch and post them on it for our friends and family members. The address for that site is http://www.zwfamily.com

New updates from me!!

Well, it is over!  The long lasting Chinese New Year Holiday is finished.  I am expecting a normal traffic will be kicking back to the city on Monday.  Everybody in town will start their nuts kicking daily work.  The unpleasant facial display will be appearing on the street everywhere but my apartment.  The ever rushing taxi drivers are awaken from their peak money making session.  A standard street fight between the pedestrians and automobiles is back to the stage.  Perhaps I sound here a little bit sarcastic about the city but what I am saying here is what I see everyday ever since I came back to Shanghai nearly 3 years ago.  Well, what hack, I am living here anyways.

 

I remember the last time I was seriously blogging was back in 2006 after I opened a Chinese version blog on BlogCN.  That place seems to be having some heavy population of Chinese bloggers.  Or it is also because at that time my wife was obsessed with some bloggers who kept posting the women interested threads.  I, then so called the new comer to the Chinese blog world, had decided to open a blog for the sake of not be left behind in the Chinese world. So here I am blogging on and off about what is happening in my life and what I see about other’s life here in Shanghai.

 

Back in May last year, I started up my IT consultancy business in Shanghai after a long time preparation.  Just be honest with myself and the ones who love me, this adventure is my dream.  A dream which had been living with me ever since I was 17 years old.  Now the first part of my dream has eventually come true.  Now it is time for me to fulfill the rest of dream.  My wife Beijing is the one who has always been aside to support, encourage and correct me.  Without her, I don’t think the entire thing will happen.

 

This valentine’s day, we both decided not to do anything but staying at home enjoy our little privacy.  She cooked the best of all bests meals for us that night and we really stuffed around 9PM.  Wishes are made and believed will come true.  Another Valentine’s Day has passed.  The love between us has gone on another level for sure.

 

The night before this day, we went out with two of our best friends for a late Chinese New Year get together meal.  The whole thing ended up with many laughter.  She at one point was completely drunk due to the quick pouring.  We had fun.

 

More to come my friend!!

 

      

 

 

Some good updates from Lee

Dear Mr. Gu,

 

It was a pretty good conversation we had this morning.  Short and sweet!  This is a typical way of the US style.  I guess your past life could have been a very successful western merchandiser.  Many things to learn from you for sure. 

 

Anyway, I just came across with a pretty good report on the success rate of our current projects with JieFang Daily.  The actually launching date is set on the 22^nd of Jan 2008, which is next Tuesday.  We are all very excited about this partnership.  From that date, we are going to offer our Chinese citizens a 3 dimensional online newspaper.  The viewers can interact with more than five thousand  legal consultants/lawyers simultaneously via our cutting edge video streaming technology.  This way any average Chinese citizens can quickly get the legal consultations without any useless searching.  At the same time, all of the legal firms here in China will be able to spread their excellent services to the nation for more business opportunity.  We will keep on upgrading this site with better technology to supply the public demands and needs.  Let's rock! 

 

At the same time, as a new born IT firm, we are currently aggressively seeking for new business opportunities in the system integration area as well.  Having said that, our entire company would really like to be part of SVW's selected vendors list.  As a leader of this company, I am very confident in terms of the ability of project delivery, which includes a high standard quality control and client relationship management methodology implementation system.  

 

Give us one chance, we will show you the difference!

 

This is the company slogan we are implementing to the world right now!

 

Again, I do appreciate your long term support!

 

Respectfully yours,

 

 

周南Lee N. Zhou

General Manager

18D Info Tech

546 YuYuan Road, Building No. 4

Suite 401,402,403,404

Shanghai, China 200041

http://www.18dtech.com

Cell: 13818973753

 

The protest in Shanghai for the Meglev! 上海人不要造磁悬浮列车!

By Andrew Torchia

SHANGHAI, Jan 14 (Reuters) - Xiao Weiping, who lives within 50 metres (150 feet) of the planned route of Shanghai's high-speed "maglev" train, says there's a principle behind her decision to risk official displeasure by opposing the project.

"Development is a good thing, and as a Chinese I'm proud of Shanghai's development," the 39-year-old housewife says in her two-bedroom, walk-up apartment in the suburb of Minhang, bought five years ago for 370,00 yuan ($51,000).

"But when you're developing, you have to balance it with the lives of the people. Only when people's lives are stable can you have a stable society."

Demonstrations against the maglev in downtown Shanghai at the weekend, the city's largest public protest since thousands took part in sometimes violent anti-Japanese demonstrations in 2005, present authorities with a new challenge: a growing middle class that wants a say in major decisions on building the city.

Residents along the maglev's planned route are complaining about noise and electromagnetic radiation, rejecting city officials' insistence the line would be no threat to health.

Articulate, well-educated and adept at public relations, the demonstrators may prove harder to handle than the farmers and factory workers who stage thousands of protests against pollution and abuse of power in more remote parts of China every year.

"In the richer parts of China there's an increased willingness of people to make clear their dissatisfaction with the way things have been run," said Arthur Kroeber, managing director at Dragonomics, an independent research firm in Beijing.

The spread of home ownership in big cities, and rising home prices as the economy booms, make people more protective of their property and create "a general awareness that there need to be some checks on power" of city authorities, he said.

The weekend's demonstrations were triggered by Shanghai's plan to extend its magnetic levitation train line by 32 km (20 miles) through the city, to near its domestic airport.

A $1.4 billion, 30 km (19 mile) line from the city outskirts to the international airport, the world's only commercial maglev operation, opened in 2003. Built with German technology, the trains reach speeds above 400 kilometres (250 miles) an hour.

The extension plan was promoted by Chen Liangyu, the city's former Communist Party boss, fond of grandiose public projects to burnish Shanghai's image as a global city.

COMPLAINTS

But public opposition to the plan began growing last year, and increased after officials launched at end-December a three-week period for public comment.

Charging the comment period was too short and lacked transparency, protesters turned to an unauthorised method of expressing opinion -- demonstrations by hundreds of people on one of Shanghai's busiest shopping streets at the weekend.

Unauthorised protests in China involve risks. Police briefly detained dozens of people at Saturday's march, and ended Sunday's demonstration by chasing and manhandling protesters. Several police cars were parked outside Xiao's apartment building at the weekend, monitoring activity there.

But the protesters appear to be calculating Shanghai has changed enough to give them a good chance of succeeding. Chen was sacked as the city's party boss in a corruption scandal in late 2006, casting a political shadow over projects linked to him.

The protest may also benefit from national political trends.

Chinese President Hu Jintao is calling for a "harmonious society" in which the government pays more heed to the cares of common people, a slogan protesters have plastered on banners hanging from their apartment buildings.

Chinese official media have not reported directly on the Shanghai demonstrations. But protesters have had little problem promoting their cause through Internet chat rooms.

They have struck a chord with many people by asking why Shanghai should spend so much money on the maglev instead of improving the creaking public bus system, or its schools.

With state television declining to report the demonstrations, one protester uploaded video of them to YouTube, with subtitles (www.youtube.com/profile?user=tooodou). Others used Google Earth to calculate the distance of their homes from the line.

Kroeber said the comment period for the maglev extension showed authorities were sympathetic to the idea of listening to public opinion. But the process was proving difficult because residents expected to have a clear influence on decision-making.

Authorities "want public consultation while dictating the terms of engagement. That's where the problem comes," he said.

($1=7.25 yuan) (Editing by Jerry Norton)

Time for the after dinner fruit! 饭后水果说!

Well, a lovely dinner just served.  The entire mouth felt pretty oily at this moment.  Beijing suggested to get some fruits for a change.  The outside temperature is close to sub zero, but the motive of getting the fruit hasn't hit that low yet.  The good thing is that the fruit stand isn't that far away from our flat. 

 

During the dinner, a detailed year 2008 FeiSui Telling was address by Beijing after her nearly one day study on the book we just got from the sister.  It looks like that the year 2008 is a very good year for us.  Let's hope this guys is telling the truth.  Beijing is currently reading that bible like book right now.  This is my first time see her being so serious of a book.  The other day, she even didn't know where to start on that book by flipping the pages from the end of the book.  Oops, this book is published in HK, which means it is the traditional Chinese way, not the simplified Chinese way.  How funny that is!

 

Alright, time to for the fruit run now……

 

More to come….

Monday is the day for basically everything! 星期一来了

The day after Sunday usually is the best day of the week.  As far as I can say as a small business owner, because all of my employees are pretty much all awake for the work.  It sounds like a typical capitalist pig, doesn't it!

 

As usual, I got to my office around 10am, everybody but Leon is already hopping on their desks and working on their little big projects.  Leon called in sick this morning before 9am, specifically did it based on the company book.  This is what I like him about.  However, I do believe he must got really sick from that lethal Flu, that's been going around for a long time in the city.  Me and my wife both caught it unfortunately and really suffered from that for at least a week. 

 

今天是星期一, 应该来说是一个非常好的一个开始, 至少对我这么一个小小的公司总经理来说.  每一个员工都会非常的有精力,因为都休息了一个周末了.  我现在感觉到我越来越向一个小资本家靠拢了.  真的希望我的每一个员工都在那里不停的工作.  这样我才会开心……

 

今天还是老样子10点到公司, 每个人都已经来了, Leon病了, 说是感染上了流感….

 

 

 

 

 

Blogging again from Shanghai 我们又开博了!

Well, after years of pausing bloooging, we have decided to ressume bloooooging again. We believe having our blog up again is a good way to meet new friends and perhaps keep up of our tracks for later education :)

经过了长时间的暂停写博客, 我们决定又开始写了.