MyChinaStart keeps growing. After having traveled to Yunnan recently a page for the province Yunnan was uavoidable. But also Lijiang, Zhongdian and Dali have found their place now. Some are still in need of more links and if you have any please let me know. © - visit MyChinaStart.com for more great content and links about China.

A girl faints in the street and you try to help her. The police arrive and instead of regarding you as the Good Samaritan you have to explain them you have no relationship with the girl and you have nothing to do with her fainting. What do you do? If you don’t speak Chinese you can call China Help Line. China Help Line started in January 2005 and is a telephone-based interpretation and information service serving the foreigners who live, work, and travel in China. Curious about what they do and how it works I asked Jean Wu to answer some questions. Jean got involved with China Help Line in August 2005 and started as a part-time English interpreter, quickly moved to the Marketing and Business Development area, and then started to manage the company in March 2006. Jean, Can you introduce yourself and tell something about your background and how you ended up working for China Help Line? I grew up in Beijing and spent 15 years in the US before moving back to Shanghai due to my husband’s new job. While in the US, after graduating from the MBA program in Simon Business School in Rochester, NY, I worked five years in FedEx (Memphis, Miami), and 5 years in Gap, Inc. in the Bay area. I have two daughters. I studied English for 10 years before first landing in the U.S. At the time, I still found myself unable to understand what people were saying, and struggled all the time with what’s the most appropriate or simply didn’t know the words. It took me a while to be at ease with chatting about the local news, and able to follow the jokes at the late night shows. My colleagues learned the habit of stop. What is the habit of stop? After my colleagues got familiar with me, whenever I was part of the group discussion, they always paid attention to stop after using a cartoon story in the conversation, and turned around to explain why they used it. It became a habit of theirs. What was it like to move back again to China? With all the relocation experience, and the fact I grew up in China with Chinese as my native language, the relocation back to China was not easy for me. I can imagine, what was the hardest part of adapting again? For me, it’s a different world. China has changed so much compared to 1991, the same with the people. For the same question, there are often many answers, some maybe halfway or wrong-way. And it’s mostly up to you to dig the details and try it out. In the beginning, my local friends laughed at me for things such as how much I paid the ayi (the maid) or that I talked way too nice to the gardener. I could tell right away from people’s face that I didn’t get what they were saying. And I can’t hide behind the language barrier here. That’s interesting; you still talk friendly to the gardener? Well, always the same the first time. If they return with a different way, then, I sometimes find myself sound differently How did you get involved with China Help Line? I discovered China Help Line through Shanghai Expats’ website. I thought it was a very innovative idea with a tremendous potential and a very strong team. I started as a part-time English interpreter, quickly moved to the Marketing and Business Development area, and then started to manage the company in March 2006. What does China Help Line do? China Help Line is a telephone-based interpretation and information service for foreigners in China. All you have to do is to call our nation wide service hotline 4008-808080, press 1 for English, and press 2 for German. Our English-Chinese services have been in the market for 3 years now, and we are the only company in China that provides the German-Chinese interpretation over the phone. In addition, we also offer other traditional translation services such as document translation, on-site interpretation for conferences or tours, virtual personal/office assistance, and concierge services. How did China Help Line get started and why? Two students at Harvard Business School who traveled often to China to visit factories started China Help Line. Although both had studied Chinese previously, neither was fluent. After several language-related mishaps while traveling in Guangdong and Zhejiang, the two tried to find an English-language service they could call when they needed help. Finding no such service anywhere in China, they decided to start China Help Line themselves. I see, they had a problem and they came up with the solution. Where there any hurdles in setting up the business? In the beginning, it was tough to find the right call center. Since most of our customers have a lot of experience with the service standards and quality overseas, we need to provide what they need from here. For example, it was hard to explain to some call centers that we need our specialists to see all the related customer info when the call comes in and then after the call, the call record needs to show up in the customer’s online account right away, with details of charges, length, etc. How many people are working for China Help Line? And are all agents working in the China Help Line office? We have sales teams in Shanghai and Beijing, supervisors, operation and administration team, and 12 full time specialists, and many part-time specialists who will fill in during the peak or work on projects. They all work in either the call center or the China Help Line offices Currently there is the English service and the German service was launched at the beginning of 2007. Which language is next on the schedule? Our customers have asked for Japanese, French, and even Dutch. We will look at the demand for each probably in a couple of months. And which one will be the likeliest to be next on schedule you think? My personal preferences are Japanese and Korean. The web plays an important part in your service. I noticed users have to register online. What’s the benefit? Yes it’s very important. Our goal is to provide a service that is very efficient and easy to access. The online account provides a very important part of it - after registration, when the customer calls with the phone number registered, our specialists will be able to see the customer’s information, for example, their last name, and address them right away on the phone. And after the call, the customer will be able to go to his online account, and check the call record and the exact charge, and call us if he has any questions. It also will enable our customers to pay for our services wherever they are. True, and as we are at the topic of cost, what are the costs involved for a customer? Is it charged by the minute or …? Our retail rate for the English line is RMB 5 per minute, and RMB 6 per minute for the German line. We also offer our corporate customers monthly subscription packages. The rate there represents very good discounts compared to retail. Is the majority of your clients corporate or individuals? Right now, two third of our customers are registered through corporate accounts. What is the average call duration? Some calls are long, such as business conference calls, could be 1-2 hours. Some could be as short as 20 seconds, such as giving directions to the Client’s taxi driver. There is no charge for holding, greeting and ending time. Our specialists are trained to pick up the phone within the 2nd ring. Before we get into a bit more about the users, I have a question about the business model. How does China Help Line make money? Does it get a kick back from the Telco? All payments are sent directly to China Help Line. Currently we are managing the payment process ourselves, not through any other companies such as telecom companies. I understand it’s common in the U.S. , but right now, we haven’t found a better way to manage it. Interesting solution, as you track the total call time and can bill your clients directly instead of having to go through a Telco and see whatever kickback comes out of it. You are using a premium number, nation wide, are there extra cost involved for the caller? Yes, we set up this nationwide hotline so that the customers can call from anywhere in China, and only pay for the local toll charges instead of the long distance. In that sense the cost for a client are his local charges + the 5 Rmb/minute if I’m correct. Yes, however, with this nationwide hotline, for every call from outside of Shanghai, China Help Line needs to pay 0.7 Rmb per minute to the telecom company. Just to completely understand it. The user pays his own phone cost + the additional 5 Rmb/min that is charged through China Help Line. For having one available number in China, China Help Line also pays a fee per minute. Yes, and we also paid a pretty big set up fee for this nationwide number. Some more questions about the users, you mentioned 2/3 is corporate. Are there specific foreigners you target? Business, tourists or ..? The service lines are open to everyone. The most frequent users are corporate expats families and individual entrepreneurs. We even received calls from local Chinese even though we have not yet promoted our services in Chinese. Some more demographics, what is the background of your users, old/young and are there specific nationalities that use the service more? We have a very diverse group. Not many calls from teenagers and small kids. There are people who relocated to China due to a job transfer, want to set up their own ventures, like to find the dream life style, or simply want to live here after retiring. About 40% come from the US, 40% from the EU, and the others are from countries such as India, and Thailand, etc. How many people use it? Can you say something about the number of calls you get on a daily basis? The total numbers of customers is in the thousands. The calls per day are in hundreds. Do you have examples of requests/help you provided, preferably some interesting / entertaining examples? We get a lot of calls from newcomers, and when people are in need, such as when they are about to board the plane but need to have a 5-way conference call when the plane lands. Others are from clients that have locked themselves out or left their wallet in the taxi. What is the future for China Help Line. Do you have plans for new services? With all what is happening in China, especially with the growth of web and telecom technology here, what people need now is a service that can help them first to understand, and secondly to maximize the opportunities that this country can provide. We believe China Help Line provides exactly just that, and in the near future, we will be able to provide more varieties of services for this purpose. Anything you can say about what kind of services? With the current structure, we can help people with a lot of different services, such as personal assistance, travel, etc. I believe the question for us is what we should focus on and become the leading brand name. What are your favorite websites/blogs about China? Websites in China, baidu.com, and Dianping and Dangdang I can get a lot of good books from Dangdang without going through the traffic. I don’t really have time for blogs. I see, busy busy. Is there anything I forgot to ask and you like to mention? Yes, I like to give you more examples of the requests we got. One client wanted us to tell the Ayi not to install anything without her permission even if it is beneficiary to the client. Another client was about to leave home, and the Ayi told her to sneak out so that the baby will not discover that she is leaving. The client firmly requested us to tell the Ayi that she would rather tell the baby directly that ‘mummy is leaving but will definitely come back’. Great examples. Thanks a lot Jean for the interview. In case you Chinese doesn’t cut it, China Help Line may be able to assist you. English service 8am - 12 midnight 5 Rmb/min German Service 8am- 8 pm 6 Rmb/min (after 8 pm it’s 8 Rmb) © - visit MyChinaStart.com for more great content and links about China.

The number of Chinese traveling abroad is increasing every year. Curious about the world beyond the border, Chinese tour groups are now a common sight in Asia and Western touristy spots. The Chinese government even issued guidelines for Chinese travelers on how to behave. Recently I noticed that Roy Graff (I met him several times in Shanghai before) had started a blog about the China Travel Industry. He is the owner of CContact, a market entry specialists company focused on China. Roy has been working in the tourism sector for more than 12 years including 1 year in Taiwan and 3 years in China. In the interview we talk about the kind of Chinese travelers that go abroad, the value of travel statistics and the cultural differences foreign operators have to take into account when selling packages to overseas destinations. Roy’s career in the tourism industry started in 1995, when he went to study in Taipei as well as working part time as the representative of the Israeli Tourist Office. That’s also where the interview begins. What was your job as a representative? My job was promoting tourism from Taiwan to Israel(obviously not masses of people) My promotion work led to a 10-fold increase from 600 to 6000 people within the year. Which is good if you consider Taiwanese had no idea of Israel at all. Being able to speak Chinese was an advantage. I was able to give interviews on radio, TV and magazines about Israel and deal with travel agents directly. There was no budget from the government so we had to be very inventive. And when did you jump the Taiwan Strait? What made you? I went back to London to graduate and then took a job with a tour operator in London, dealing with Chinese groups in Europe. I did return to Taiwan for 1 summer later to work for a travel agent, but after a few years in London, my work moved on to sales areas without a China link. I wanted to get back to China but at the time, I felt it was important to gain other skills in the industry, such as sales, marketing, distribution etc. The company I worked for, GTA (Gullivers Travel Associates), had an office in Taipei, which is how I got the job in London. In 2001 I approached the directors and suggested that they send me to China to develop their business there. It took them a year to plan it, as they had not hired a foreigner in China until then. In the beginning of 2002 I went to Shanghai, after a couple of months traveling in India. At the time they were a private company so it was easy to deal directly with the directors, even though it had almost 2000 employees. I was initially tasked with developing the independent travel division and all online booking systems. GTA works as a wholesaler, selling travel products to travel agents. I spent 2 years in Shanghai and then moved to Beijing as GTA obtained a travel license in Beijing and was launching a WOFE (Wholly Owned Foreign Enterprise) there and set up the head quarters for the division in Beijing to look after all of the China offices. I then launched Octopus travel towards the end of 2004. So I had the twin titles of E-commerce director and country manager Octopustravel.com Already more than a year ago, or is it 2, you went back to London, starting up your own company, Ccontact. Almost 2 years ago, Feb 2005, I returned to London. GTA was sold to Cendant, and they froze all investment in China and elsewhere. I left - also for personal reasons, the birth of our baby. I think I was tired of big corporations at the time and also wanted to have the flexibility to spend time with my family, so working as a consultant appealed and I realized that not many people in Europe understand China and know how to work with Chinese on tourism business. It was an opportunity to develop a niche. The company you started is named Ccontact and your title is market entry specialist for the Chinese tourism industry. What is a market entry specialist for the Chinese tourism industry exactly and what does he do on a daily basis? It changes every day, I offer a service of consultation, training and marketing services in China for our clients. Depending on the project, it can be anything from translation of tourism brochures or setting up an exhibition stand at a China travel trade fair, to setting up a rep office for the client or selling the products and services to travel agents in China. I have organized workshops, forums and seminars on China’s outbound tourism market in Europe and consulted tourism boards such as Visit London on their China strategy. There is no routine really, except the book keeping. . You focus on outbound Chinese travelers if I’m correct. What is the current market like? I focus on the outbound as this is the demand currently. I would like to develop more inbound travel as well. The market is growing rapidly, however we are not talking about huge numbers in Europe now. Although the Chinese tend to concentrate in particular spots so it can seem like there are loads. For example, Paris, Milan, Rome, Cologne, London. In total, about 31 million Chinese went abroad, 85% of that was to Hong Kong and Macau. Inbound travel to China, the number of tourists going to China, is pretty high I thought? It’s about 80 million but they count Hong Kong and Taiwan people in that, and all border crossings by land. All statistics also include workers, so all the day trips Hong Kong - Shenzhen are in there. Statistics cannot really tell us the real numbers of pure tourists. You help foreign travel operators sell their products here in China. What are the biggest challenges /hurdles here? First the hurdle is to educate the Western tour operators or tourism boards about the market and to manage expectations and invest appropriately. What is their biggest gap in education? It’s all big - culture, language, distance. China has been hyped and people think that simply going there once or having a website will get them a chunk of the market. I actually have to educate my potential clients on why they need my services, so it’s not easy. Once they are on-board, helping them to tailor the products to the Chinese market and promote it in China is the easy part - easy for me as I have done it for 3 years hands-on. But of course, it takes time, so companies cannot expect a return on their investment in the first year- building a reputation in China is a process. What is the first thing you teach them? To have patience. I try to explain how the market works and give some case studies of successful entrants. What are the main mistakes foreign travel operators make in attracting/ doing business in. Is it the packages, the program or, asked in a different way, what do Chinese travelers look for at the moment when they venture abroad? Mistakes can be failure to appreciate Chinese are very nervous on their visit abroad, not matching the guide to the group well and leaving itineraries with free time - Chinese do not like to have free time as they feel it is not value for money. There are many small things that can enhance the experience. Like with any market, cultural sensitivity is important but China is still an unknown to most people in Europe and North America. And because of the language barrier, it is not as easy to understand the culture as with other countries Meaning the guide has to be Chinese or …? The guide needs to speak Chinese, but sometimes that is not enough. For example a Taiwanese guide for a mainland Chinese group, or a Cantonese guide. Those are subtle things but for an outsider hard to think of as they probably think a Chinese is a Chinese. I have a couple more questions about Chinese travelers. What kind of Chinese travelers go abroad at the moment? Since the ADS (Approved Destination Status, designates countries that have complied with certain Chinese requirements to facilitate group travel to foreign countries.) policy came into force, you get all kinds of people - families, pensioners, friends, students, still, the male business man is dominant but the market is now very segmented. Different destinations also feature different types of people. There are no reliable statistics so the knowledge comes from observations and talking to operators in different countries. Can you give an example of the latter? The UK attracts many Chinese students and so their parents tend to inspect the schools and also to visit them, and that is a chance to do some sightseeing as well. Germany has many trade fairs so mostly business people in small groups start their tour there and then visit other places in Europe. What do Chinese travelers like to do/see? What is a typical travel package for a Chinese traveler? and related in what stage are Chinese travelers? Is it the first wave that wants to see as many countries as possible? The market is coming in waves. The first wave of visitors saw many countries in a short time and now is returning for a more in-depth visit. Mostly those from Guangdong, Beijing and Shanghai. Then the second wave from other cities started following a similar pattern. Logically they start from places near China and then venture further a field. Typically they want to see cities, popular attractions and are not as interested in the country side and quiet locations. Are there any demographics, age, income etc about the Chinese traveler and what are popular countries they like to travel to? Of course those that travel abroad are from the higher income bracket. The demographics are explained in my book, “China Outbound Travel Handbook” and more in-depth for academics in Prof. Wolfgang Arlt’s work, “China Outbound Tourism”. Popular destinations in Asia are Hong Kong, Thailand, Singapore, in Europe, Germany, Italy, France Are the US & Canada popular? They would be if getting visa was easier. As it is, it’s difficult to get into. How much do Chinese travelers spend abroad? I read, “The average expense by Chinese tourists in Europe and North America is among the highest, standing at about 2,300 Euros per person per week.” Is this in or excluding the travel fare? Or is it what they spend additionally? They spend on average 300 euro a day including tour fare but they spend it more on shopping and save on accommodation What do you see as the next trend in Chinese travel? I think that more countries will start attracting individual Chinese rather than groups and Asia could be ‘flooded’ with Chinese travelers doing it their way, not going in an organized tour group. More people will choose to stay more time in a single country or go on ‘theme’ tours, such as cultural Europe, sports activities etc. Are visa policies still one of the bigger hurdles for travel and are there any western countries that make it easier? It’s certainly a major obstacle, The US takes all 10 digit finer prints from each person. The UK will switch to biometric visas from next year. I thought so, it seems they are all afraid the travelers will stay. Yes You have published the “China Outbound Travel Handbook”. Can you tell me about it? I co-wrote it with a Chinese guy who had been manager of the outbound department of CYTS (China Youth Travel Service) for 10 years. It is intended for travel professionals who want to gain a basic understanding of the sector. Is it updated every year? The handbook was published in 2005, now there is a 2006 version with updated statistics. It is really a simple guide to the sector, not too many confusing statistics, more an entry level user guide but enough to understand how to approach the market. We also have databases of travel agents in China but we do not publish that since it has to be updated constantly. We offer the service of sending out promotions and product news to the Chinese travel industry on behalf of our clients, that way the database is always up to date. I also noticed you started to keep a blog these days. What is it about? The blog, China Travel Industry News, serves as a central place for news and developments on China’s tourism industry. I use it to collect news items from all over the web in one place so people do not have to search for it all over. I also give my own opinions and comments about China related trade events and government policies. It seems like a good niche blog. Do you get feedback on it? I do not receive many comments - I think people just take the information, many subscribe to a monthly newsletter so they get a digest each month with added interviews and editorials. …. and being a blogger yourself now, what are your favorite websites/blogs about China? I wish I had the time to read all of them. I like AccessAsia (a newsletter) and I get stuff off Danwei once in a while. It is more convenient when the info gets to my inbox rather than searching for it on line. The last question, is there anything I forgot to ask and you like to mention? Yes, I am planning to offer ‘webinars’ online using Skype conferencing, to hold China tourism workshops in the New Year. Anyone who is interested can see the details on the CContact home page from January. Ok, we’ll add that:) Thanks a lot for your time Roy and for your answers. © - visit MyChinaStart.com for more great content and links about China.

This week’s msn interview is with Fili. He’s the man behind Chinalyst. Chinalyst is a community for independent English China related blogging. He studies Chinese language and culture with a few other courses in multi-culture research and East Asia business in the East-Asia department at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He also works as an IT consultant in the field of security. The Chinalyst website was build by himself. Let’s start the interview. Can you tell me a bit about yourself and also about your China fascination? My China curiosity started when I left to Asia on 2005. After traveling for a while in SE-Asia, I came across some Chinese influences in Vietnam. Hearing about Chinese culture from fellow travelers and visiting a few places with Chinatown it became obvious that there’s something about Chinese culture that attracts me. I ended up studying Chinese in Taiwan for over a semester, and then it became a significant part of my life. I adore Asia. Can you pinpoint what it is in Chinese culture that attracts you? The most obvious observation is that Chinese culture is very different than anything I’ve ever experienced before. Growing up in a very western country, I found many of the interactions I had with Chinese culture puzzling, intriguing and fascinating. I enjoy differences. While for others it might be frustrating and annoying, for me it was discovering a new world of possibilities. Meeting new people, understanding and sharing their world was a tremendous experience. I honestly believe that the people I’ve met are the real reason. I was fortunate to spend time with wonderful people who really tried to share their life with me. It touched me deep. Let’s talk about Chinalyst, that’s how we got to know each other. Chinalyst reminds me of Livinginchina.com. The project that started off great but died because of egos, at least that’s how I experienced it. Did you have Livinginchina.com in mind when you started Chinalyst? And what moved you to start a China blog community website? I’ve heard quite a lot about Living in China while thinking the concept over with a few fellow bloggers. The main important thing behind Chinalyst is acknowledging that China related blogging is a vital indispensable source of information about life in China. Problem was, and still is, how to make that information available to users. For a few months, I’ve been building my own personal RSS feed list of the main China blogs that I’ve found, usually coming across new blogs through blogrolls and side-bar links. Finding a new good blog was an occasion that didn’t happen often, as the blogs aren’t connected to each other, and using simple web-searches only brings in the very popular websites. A community of China bloggers, where blog information is promoted and exceptional content is highlighted, could bring a significant change. That’s when the idea of Chinalyst came up. Yes, it’s hard to find new blogs, the China Blog List has a lot but without the posts. There are some very interesting projects out there, and the China Blog List is one of them. Another one which I adore is the China-related Digg, called The Hao Hao Report. One might say that Chinalyst is a combination of both with a few added community aggregator features. Chinalyst is very much community centered. What is the value of a community like this and what can visitors get out of it? What is the feedback you get from the currently listed blogs/visitors? The website is still very new, so the most powerful community features are still not being used much. The website provides links to China related blog posts and allows users to discuss and rank all the content. Finding popular and high-ranked blogs and posts is becoming easier. The whole concept of social web with user involvement is a step in the right direction, since users are the most powerful source of information. Positive feedback usually comes from blog owners that have blogs that were hard to find and are now getting quite a few hits and blog subscribers coming from Chinalyst. If I can help blog owners get more readers and help readers find more content that’s interesting for them - then Chinalyst works. That’s all I want. It’s the community focus that makes this possible. Can you tell me about the number of listed blogs and the number of visitors? Sure. I think Chinalyst currently has over 50 blogs registeredI think Chinalyst currently has over 50 blogs registered with a few signing up every week. Chinalyst has about 80 RSS subscribers, and gets about 200+ visits a day. Chinalyst is growing at a very fast rate, much faster than I ever anticipated. I might have to make a few adjustments soon. It still isn’t a lot, but Chinalyst is just starting out, so, we’ll see how that develops over time. It’s not bad either. How is the user participation, do people already comment and vote? Since those voting features were just introduced this month, as part of some feedback and improvements made, participation in voting is still low. I’m hoping that it will pick up soon. It takes time to allow users to feel part of a community so that they will want to take part in it. True and when the number of visitors grows the number of votes will too. It’s only a certain percentage that actually votes in my experience, the same goes with comments. Right, my main challenge is trying to make all those features as easy and comfortable for users as I possibly can. Where do you see the website go, is there any long-term goal you have? And how long will the Beta tag be there? Ah, the beta tag is there as long as this is a hobby of mine done between 02:00am and 04:00am, and not something more stable. I can’t promise my users that it would be a full-scale 100% service, but I’m doing my best, and I think that’s what the “beta” stands for. Maybe, someday, others will join to help build this further and it will become more than just a side-hobby. Great to hear so much about Chinalyst and the other projects, to round it up, what are your favorite websites/blogs about China? I follow most of the famous blogs daily, like ESWN, the Shanghaiist and Danwei (I love their videos). There are some smaller blogs that I enjoy a lot, like Adventures of the Humanaught with his wonderful HaoHao Report website. About the same ones I read, there are too many so in that sense having a place like Chinalyst can make sense. As a first filter. Yeah, Chinalyst has become my starting homepage for China related reading. It wouldn’t be interesting for me otherwise. I’m keeping you already busy for almost an hour so I’ll wrap it up here. Thanks for the interview Fili. Fili has more websites than just the Chinalyst. He keeps the blog fiLi’s world and just released a handy customized China blog search tool. Another of his projects is Chinese Garden. Chinese Garden is aimed at Israeli students studying about Chinese culture and language. He calls it a “very intimate community, as sadly, there aren’t many Israelis interested in China and Chinese culture yet”. © - visit MyChinaStart.com for more great content and links about China.

I’m starting a new series of interviews with people/companies behind China related websites. Some time ago Daniel from Enjoyclassifieds.com contacted me for a listing in MyChinaStart.com and as I was curious about the website and the company behind it, I asked him if he would be willing to tell more. He was. Enjoyclassifieds.com is a classifieds website aimed at Shanghai that weekly publishes a print version with a selection of the online ads. You can pick up a copy in many Expat oriented locations like bars, cafe’s and city supermarket branches. Enjoyclassifieds is part of Enjoy China, the company responsible for the Shanghai Enjoycard. Currently there are working 33 people for Enjoy China. The Enjoycard gives you discounts in 230 venues in Shanghai and some in Hong Kong and Beijing. Other activities of Enjoy are credit card and bank privilege programs for companies like MasterCard Daniel Borin is one of the partners and his main role is as a sales director. Having worked in the IT industry in Australia for 7 years he was ready for a change and ended up in China. We started talking first about the Enjoycard and after that their new website Enjoyclassifieds. Continue reading Daniel, How did the Enjoy Card start and how did you come up with the idea? I met a guy in a bar, invested some money, became a partner and helped launch the first enjoy back in 2004. It was the idea of my partner Aaron Landis. He has been out here in greater China for 8 years and was doing a lot of MarComm [Marketing & Communication], publishing/printing in Hong Kong. He started working on a private privilege program for the Hyatt just before Sars hit and the project was put on hold. He decided to come to Shanghai and try something similar. Was it easy to set up the loyalty program? Did you run into a lot of regulations? It was incredibly hard to set up. We were ok on the regulations side but getting companies involved was tough. It took a lot of hard selling for almost 9 months. It was a new concept for most people so it was hard to wrap their head around. Being a new company as well you also had to establish legitimacy. What was the main thing that made companies wary and what convinced them? Their main fear was whether it would work, that customers would come. What convinced them was passion and enthusiasm, and relentless hassling until they said yes. What do participants pay? There is a standard fee of 10K Rmb for the year. We call it a program fee rather than an advertising fee as its more than just advertising Do most participants stay in the program, what’s their feedback? The feedback is general good. We consistently get more than 50-60% retention year on year Places that have poor offers generally don’t do so well from a Voucher or Card redemption perspective but still receive fantastic continual exposure throughout our membership and beyond (i.e. in store displays etc) We have now about 230 venues and more than 25K members (card holders) I noticed that on the enjoychina.com website there are some links to Beijing, HK. Are you planning to roll out the card in other cities, an Enjoy Beijing Card or an Enjoy Hong Kong Card? For now it’s mainly focused on a Shanghai Base but we have some benefits in other cities, right now we are focusing on growth here. We got in touch through the new Enjoyclassifieds website so let’s talk about that. What is Enjoyclassifieds and why did you start it? Enjoyclassifieds is very simply “the place to find everything you need”. We perceived there to be a need for a consolidated platform here in Shanghai where people can post and find stuff, one that automatically comes to mind for all English speakers. The market has been very fragmented up until now, both in print and online There are already loads of classifieds websites and recently three print versions have been launched, including Enjoyclassifieds. It seemed they were all there at the same moment, not sure whether that was intended. What makes Enjoyclassifieds different and how much space do you think there is in this market? Quite simply, we are totally focused on the user/reader, we believe if we win them over the rest will follow What does that mean? Online - usability first and foremost, speed, ease of use, hassle free posting and browsing. It’s so important, I think others underestimate that aspect In print - real fresh content every week, and loads of it Is there space in the market? Well, I think the market is big enough to sustain a few. Ultimately the one that gets the most readers and posters will win. One of the others may have to fall out for lack of content. Who do you see as your main competitors, on the web as well as for the print version? In print, Adweekly and SH Mags, SH Classifieds are our main competitors. I think we are all quite different though. The content (both quality and quantity) and formats are all quite different There is a long list of online competitors but other than the above-mentioned three we are providing a dual medium, which differentiates us from the rest If I am correct posting is free at the moment, including print. Will this stay and what is the business model behind it? Well, we thrive on the individual, the reader/user/poster, without them you have nothing, so we will endeavor to keep as much of Personals and Buy and Sell free indefinitely. Where things are of more commercial nature, Jobs and Properties, these will eventually be mostly paid for in print. And then obviously image advertising Some of jobs and property is actually paid for already. We have more listings than we can accommodate in print, so we can only guarantee posting for paid ads Ok, I see, does that include the small “I have an apartment for rent” ads? Well, once again, for individuals (not agents) we will keep this free initially. But at the end of the day when our quantity is too large to accommodate we can only guarantee paid ads. How big is the current circulation and do you plan to increase and if yes, what would be a number you think would cover it all? We are distributing 20K copies per week right now. We think that is perfect for a weekly print. It’s important to get in peoples hands fresh and frequent How many ads are posted and what is the ratio online /print published? If you’re interested I have some comparative stats for a short period Online Job postings across 4 sites in the period October 23 - 26: Enjoyclassifieds: 50 Shanghaiexpat: 13 Sh classifieds: 6 Adweekly: 5 Can you tell me how many posts, including all categories, are posted daily and how many make it into print? We are now averaging on a daily basis about this 15-20 jobs 4-5 buy and sell 5 personals 15-20 real estate Some days we blow that out of the water though, this morning about 40 property ads already. About half make it in print Before I’m rounding of with some last questions, is there anything you like to tell and I haven’t asked about? Actually yes, the Enjoycard costs 299RMB and has up to 50K worth of privileges inside. If you buy it now you can extend it the next year for 99 RMB. Just one more personal question. What’s your favorite website about Shanghai? I like Shanghaiist. I like Dan [Washburn, the editor], it’s a good blog and it has interesting content I think that pretty much wraps it up. Thanks a lot for your time and great answers. © - visit MyChinaStart.com for more great content and links about China.

First the news. We’re cleaning up the latest bugs from the “Suggest A Link” feature. You can now suggest websites by going to the relevant page, click “Suggest a Link” in the footer and submit your suggestion. Make sure you select the right section you think the website belongs in. Some good new websites have been added. I like to point out 2 I found today. Two great tools, add-ons for Internet explorer & Firefox have been added in the learn chinese page. Both tools annotate Chinese text. After the installation and activating them all you have to do is go to a page with simplified Chinese and hoover over the text. The best one so far is , besides that it is free (the other, Hanzibar, has a free and a paid version), it is also a tad better. Perapera-kun only works in Firefox, and as we speak of it, that is also a far better browser anyway. If you haven’t installed this browser yet, you should. If you have any link suggestions or other comments let us know. If you think more topics should be added, feel free to email us at mychinastart at mychinastart.com © - visit MyChinaStart.com for more great content and links about China.

Companies come, companies go and it seems websites go sometimes even faster. For some reason people forget to extend their domain name registration. Other ventures just stop their business so it makes sense the website perishes as well. Also the opposite happens. The print version of a magazine ceases publication, the website is still available although not updated anymore. I intend to update on a somewhat regular basis on the ditched websites. The main reason for ditching is the fact that they ceased to exist. Other reasons can be that they haven’t been updated in the last year or their content changed completely. Last but not least there is a whole set of arbitrary regulations that all have to do with upsetting the harmony of my online mind. This week online casualties ( a totally random selection I compiled after cleaning up some pages) Ortho-asia.com - No more Orthodontic treatment and general and restorative dental treatments but you’ll be served with adds from NS1.EXPIREDDOMAINSERVICES.COM mandarin2e-z.com and gatewaymadarin.com stopped teaching Chinese. Part of checking of dead link is finding out some websites have decided to change their url structure. Great:) Well. slightly irritating but sometimes resulting in the fact that the new structure has come with a new design. There is an entirely brand-new edition of the Shenzhen Library website using a new clear url http://www.szlib.gov.cn/english/. Nice. The Suzhou Government decided to ditch their http://www.szgov.com domain and kept only the http://www.suzhou.gov.cn/ active. Great choice but next time just point the old site to the new. It’s called user friendliness and it beats the message “No website is configured at this address.” © - visit MyChinaStart.com for more great content and links about China.

More pages have been added lately and the finetunung stage has started. Next to the already topical pages, like cities and specific subjects like law and media pretty soon MyChinaStart will be open for editors to maintain their own subjects. Check back in a couple of weeks for more news about this. © - visit MyChinaStart.com for more great content and links about China.

It’s still city time. Two new cities have been added. Hangzhou and Ningbo. Both cities are close to Shanghai, it’s a train ride of a couple of hours and you can set foot in the park around the Westlake in Hangzhou. I actually spent only half a day there, coming from a bamboo town on our way to Shanghai. The West Lake and the parks around and within are nice, although crowded in the weekend. Ningbo I haven’t been yet. It’s a coastal city, has a growing port and as far as I know even a Starbucks. © - visit MyChinaStart.com for more great content and links about China.

Three cities and I have been to 2 of them. Xiamen is still on my list, if only for the beach I heard so much about. Xian is probably the most widely known of the three. With it’s Terracotta army it’s one of the main attractions in China. The town itself is pretty nice too. The muslim quarter with the 1250 year old Mosque as well as the nearby city walls. Kunming is one of my favorite cities. Lived there for a couple of years. It’s laid back, almost slow, has great food and the sun almost always shines. Xiamen, as said before, I know less about but from the limited available websites I have found until now it should be worth a visit © - visit MyChinaStart.com for more great content and links about China.