For almost as long as records have existed being a member of an exclusive club or organisation has been the preserve of the rich elite around the world. As well as giving them access to people and resources, it makes them feel privileged and provides an ideal way to flaunt their wealth among their super-rich peers. In other words somewhere to show off.
The opening-up of China has allowed a small minority of people to become ridiculously rich in a very short period of time and behind this has followed all the trappings of those with more money than sense/taste; luxury cars, designer clothing, holiday villas, expensive electronics, and many other less savory vices.
Entrepreneurs are also lining up to cash in on this new generation of the newly moneyed and in the digital age where everyone is perpetually online what better way to bring together rich yuppies and high-end brands than through an exclusive social network which prides itself on selecting only the affluent and “beautiful”. Enter P1.cn. Below is how their email invitation reads:
P1.CN is a social networking site for exceptional people like you who are ambitious, desirable, fashionable and brilliant.
To ensure the quality of our members, P1.CN is invite only.
Yes, it seriously says this (in both Chinese and English). Most of its members are invited by street photographers / spotters or friends of existing members. Being neither affluent nor beautiful I’m not quite sure how I ended up with an invitation but out of curiosity I signed up. This is what greets you:
Functionality is similar to Facebook and other SNS’s with user profiles, friends, photo galleries, forums, chat, blogs and magazine style editorials (mostly about fashion). Advertising comes courtesy of luxury brands such as Versace, Bentley, TAG Heuer, Hennessy, and Adidas.
Content wise it’s a painful mix of self-indulgent exhibitionalism (“look at me! look at me!”) and blatant materialism (the “what did you buy recently?” forum is very popular). Apparently most of its approximate half-a-million members spend at least 4,000 yuan (£375) a month on clothes, electronics and partying (the majority of which are woman). When you consider this in relation to how Chinese outside the big cities are living it’s really quite grotesque (the average monthly salary is below 2,000 yuan).
Still, if you’re looking for somewhere to swap tips about the best place to buy a Ferrari, pick up a trophy wife, post pics of your pampered pets, or just hang out with a bunch of vapid narcissist’s then this could be the place for you!
Oh China, if only Mao could see you now…
A few random pics from my trip to Shanghai a couple of weeks back:
Gorgeous lighting at the reception desks of Le Royal Meridien Shanghai. I didn’t stay there but it looked pretty nice (although not on the same level as the Park Hyatt). Located very centrally at one end of Nanjing Road (the main shopping street).
I have a bit of a burger fixation which was blissfully fulfilled at New York Style Steak and Burger in Taikang Lu (田子坊). Pictured here is “The Big Bleu” which comprised blue cheese, caramelized shallot jam, crisp bacon and fried onions. Truly heaven in a bun.
Inside Land 274, a tiny bar in Taikang Lu also which was practically empty. Good lychee martinis for those who like their cocktails.
On the Sunday I ventured out the city center to the “Happy Valley” theme park which is basically a Chinese clone of Disney Land. For a weekend it was surprisingly quiet to the point where there were even waiting times to find enough people to meet the minimum requirement for some rides.
The park features some impressive big rides, the best of which is a gigantic dive coaster which includes a 91° drop (beyond vertical). Check out the video below for a taster:
I have to say this is one of the best roller coasters I’ve ever ridden – it’s thrilling but at the same time very smooth and comfortable (unsurprising considering it’s Swiss designed). Avoid the wooden coaster unless you want to get a splitting headache and bruised arms/legs.
A friend of mine noticed something odd while visiting Hong Kong last weekend. Despite Hong Kong not being subject to the heavy internet blocks and censorship on the mainland he still couldn’t get Facebook or Twitter to work on his iPhone (which had international roaming turned on). Hong Kong residents using one of the local providers don’t face any such restrictions and after testing out a few different apps as well as making sure the sites worked fine on a normal laptop we began to become suspicious.
He was roaming using a China Mobile SIM card but surely the blocks couldn’t extend outside the geographic boundaries of their own network? Further investigation was required…
Using the same SIM card we tried switching between many of the local HK networks including: CSL, Vodaphone and the local subsidiary of China Mobile. All refused to let us access sites blocked on the mainland indicating that somehow our traffic was being re-routed by the local Hong Kong carrier back to the motherland. When switching on a VPN connection everything worked fine again.
To prove our theory further we installed a traceroute application on the iPhone and ran traces against the same blocked websites. As can be seen from the screenshots above traffic was indeed being routed back to China hence why the sites were blocked even though we were physically in Hong Kong.
Is it normal practice for cell phone carriers to re-route data traffic back to the original provider for those roaming on their network?
The implications here are massive; in essence it allows the hand of the Chinese government and potentially other regimes wanting to limit the free-flow of information to reach globally. Chinese citizens travelling abroad are being kept in a prison via their phone and it would seem that the cell carriers are complicit in allowing it. I’d love to hear from someone who understands a bit more about how these things work.
Update: Accoring to @WildPixels this is normal routing for data roaming. Apparently using a non-China SIM in China also bypasses the great firewall as well (at high cost).
For young people in China the pressure to get married (and subsequently have a baby) is often strongly exerted by parents who take every opportunity to nag their children about finding a boyfriend/girlfriend. Men are generally expected to get married by 30 and women by their mid 20’s (25 is considered “old”). The older the child gets the stronger the nagging becomes to the point that going home for spring festival and other occasions becomes a source of dread and anxiety for those still single.
The situation is exasperated by the fact that young Chinese adults are expected to work harder than ever to support their parents and themselves so have little time for socializing. In cities like Shanghai and Hong Kong the number of singles living alone has skyrocketed in recent years, with the average marriage age also increasing sharply (now around 29 as opposed to 22 just two decades ago for men).
Some parents have begun to take matters in their own hands and can often be found hanging around public parks in groups exchanging their children’s vital statistics with other parents in the hope of finding a “good match” which can then be introduced (with or without their child’s knowledge!). I came across this bunch in People’s Square (Shanghai) and was even approached by a mother who was keen to marry off her 30 year-old daughter to me! She may have been a doctor but I politely declined 
Job, age, height, education and salary are the key factors under consideration with adverts hung on washing lines, bushes and trees laying out the facts for anyone to browse. Professional matchmakers also loiter around with hand-written lists of potential candidates who have employed them to do the searching. In the 21st century world of online dating it was a bizarre sight.
You would be forgiving for making parallels with the traditional concept of arranged marriages although in this case nobody is being forced into anything – the parents merely find potential “candidates” which the children can then choose whether to pursue – some call it “parental screening”. For the cynically inclined it’s a far cry from the romantic notion of “true love” but in this 24/7 society practicalities and the pressures of tradition often outweigh such dreams.
If you’re Chinese I’d love to hear what you think about parental screening.
I was in Shanghai last weekend for the tail end of a business trip to Wuxi and finally got a chance to ride the experimental high-speed Maglev train from the downtown Longyang Road station to Pudong International Airport. I first wrote about it 4 years ago just after it was built and had been looking forward to trying it out ever since. Despite having been to Shanghai three times previously I always flew from the older Hongqiao Airport and hence didn’t have the chance.
All the speed comes at a hefty 50 RMB ticket price which is pretty steep for China but clearly necessary to pay back the massive investment which was required to build the 30km line – all ¥10 billion ($1.33 bn) of it. Running at an operational top speed of 431 km/h (268 mph) the journey takes only 7 minutes with the world outside passing in a blur.
The Transrapid electromagnetic suspension (EMS) technology is German designed and instead of a traditional engine the trains are propelled by the magnetic field created by the electrified coils in the guideway and track. The trains levitate about 1cm above the guideway creating an extremely low-friction linear movement. As can be seen in the video I took below the ride was a little bumpy compared to conventional trains but not uncomfortable:
At this level of speed domestic travel would be far more convenient and even competitive with flying but the high costs of implementation have so far limited its adoption. New technologies being developed by Germany and Japan should cut the costs but as with all such projects we’re still probably decades away from seeing widespread adoption. If this is the future of train technology then I’m all for it.
