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HiPiHi: The World Exists Because Of You. (Literal translation from Chinese) The name is derived from 3 base words: I, Hi, Hapi (or the phonetically similar “Happy”).

Currently in closed beta testing, HiPiHi has generated some interest on Second Life Insider and debates on whether this will take off in China.

Some key observations (the entire site is written in Chinese, so i play translator here):

• Hipihi was founded way back in October 2005 in Zhongkuanchun, Beijing. Second Life took a long time to be developed too before its launch.
• The founders are mainly Xu Hui and Rao XueWei.
• The founders are guys but everything else in their marketing, including their promo video here, appears to target the female crowd.
• The whole site and virtual world uses Chinese as the main language.
• There are two main products: Hipihi World and Hipihi Home
  • Hipihi World is exactly like Second Life: avatars can fly and modify their own appearances, build houses, explore the land with planes, choppers and hot air balloons, which HipiHi calls public transportation systems. You can also have steering controls over your flight, offering a chance to fly your own plane. Options for parachuting also exists. The World seems to be organized around malls and town squares with socializing at its very core. Of course, avatars can also buy land and build their own houses. I see a lucrative industry coming up.
  • Hipihi Home appears to be modelled after CyWorld. It is positioned as a personal space and private communication platform between friends. Users will own their “living rooms”, procure furniture and be able to invite their friends to their “homes” and attend parties at others too. Whats most interesting is the mention of a convergence between internet and mobile. Could Hipihi be a dual-screen innovation? We will have to wait for the launch
• Like Second Life, Hipihi users will own the property rights to their in-world creations.
• There will also be a in-world currency, implying a virtual economy to facilitate user-to-user transactions. Perhaps the first and Chinese-originated millionaire in Second Life, Anshe Chung, has made virtual world creators think Chinese are the best market for such a product?

Kaiser Kuo, who is accredited for this post, has the following thoughts:

My gut tells me that done right, this could be quite substantial in China, and might have more legs than its U.S. counterpart. For one thing, MMORPG culture is pretty deeply embedded among Chinese netizens, and many players are very used to “repatriating” currency earned in the in-game economy to real life. HiPiHi seems to have made dumbed-down object creation tools available while keeping more advanced options available to the more proficient–don’t quote me on that, I’ve not really played around with it yet.

There’s a definite feminine sensibility to the pitch video, which you can download (.wmv) here: a female narrator and avatar, emphasis on the outfits, the landscaping, the houses. Going after women is probably the right move: there are plenty of online gamers in China, but few of the hack-and-slash MMORPGs really work for women.

The promotional video done by Hipihi is available here. Again, its all narrated in Chinese but it being visual-based video, is self-explanatory enough.

Update: This article, via a syndication on the SGEntrepreneurs blog, has also been picked up by Raph Koster and Gigagamez.

From Macworld UK,

• Apple's iPods are made by mainly female workers who earn as little as £27 per month
• In one of the factories, i.e. Foxconn's Longhua plant,  200,000 workers, a population bigger than Newcastle, is hired to make iPod. 
• The same workers (above) live in dormitories that house 100 people, and…
• visitors from the outside world are not permitted.
• Workers toil for 15-hours a day
• Another factory in Suzhou, Shanghai, makes iPod shuffles. The workers are housed outside the plant, and earn £54 per month - but they must pay for their accommodation and food, "which takes up half their salaries", the report observes.

On a lighthearted note, here's some interesting snippets of Chinese society. No disrespect meant if any of you feel offended. =)

This is a sign for virility inside the Yue Fei Temple. Tourists were flocking to it as it was rumored touching it will bring good luck for those hoping to conceive. However, I saw more middle-aged citizens touching it as the tour guide shrewdly construed the sign to bring luck too for grandparent shopping for grandkids.

But i thot this sign reminded me too much of the "69" instead.

A visit to the silk museum of Hangzhou and the itinerary kicked off with a fashion show to showcase the best and most fashionable of designs out of silk fabric. Most fashionable? I leave you guys to decide in the 2 pics below. Check out the cool "aunties" catwalking as well. lol…

Lets take a short break to more serious issues: the environmental pollution in Shanghai. Yes, i am a sceptical tourist, i peer out to the world from a more cynical pair of human (and digital) lens. I took these pics from the 87th floor of Jinman Tower, which used to be the world's tallest building 3 plus years ago.

The pollution in this one is bad.

This pic below is hilarious. For non-Chinese, Chinese words and characters in the ancient times were written and meant to be read from right to left. What this shopowner did was merely apply the same archaic rule to English too. Note that the English letters ain;t even laterally inverted.

This pic below is taken in the CBD area of SHanghai. I was surprised to notice so many men gathered in small groups of 20 or so listening attentively to usually one person talking passionately about something. At first, i thought they could be religous zealots or political activists. I was wrong and the truth underlined another trait of China's rise — increased stock investing by CHinese citizens in its nation's economic rise. These Sunday public gatherings were free investing seminars by unlicensed, private stock watchers dishing out investment advice and stock tips.

CHina has 1.3 billion people, we know, which also means they have an enormous labor force. But have you wondered about the more oddball jobs some of these millions of CHinese may be engaged in?

Check out the SWAT TEAM. These two workers below work in a canteen in a shopping mega-mall. I would calassify their job to be in the hygiene department. Their job, as I observed over 30minutes, was to…

SWAT and kill HOUSEFLIES.

Highly labor intensive and low tech approach to solve a problem. Installing one of those electronic fly-swatters that relied on frequency transmitters will do the trick. BUT, using such technology will create social problems. In some way, this incident reminded me of how inefficient CHina is. Everywhere I go, I cant help noticing the utter waste of manpower. From the hotel reception staff of 5 taking 30 mins to check in our delegation manually with pen and paper despite their possesion of 2 Dell Computers. Shopping centres that are overstaffed by dozens of saleswomen in ratios of 2 to 3 times more than those seen in US or Singapore. Assuming the same level of complexity in terms of taks performed in these jobs, we hypothesize that jobs in CHina are compartmentalized and segmented into micro-portions to order to justify sufficient differentiation so as to employ different individuals to perform such micro-tasks. If this is true, it might explain the low levels of job satisfaction in CHinese employees, not to mention the chronic low levels of pay in the Chinese job market, especially when 5 persons are employed to do the job of 1 person.

Will the abundance of human labor in CHina impede the adoption and implementation of more modern management techniques that rely on technology? 

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Thought for quite a while before i penned this post. It will actually be easier if not for that Chinese firewall that oprevented my blogging as I had so much to write about during the trip. Now, I simply have so much thoughts floating ard I dunno what to write.
Since the internet is about democratization, and i blogged about democracy twice in my previous 3 posts, i thought i should walk the talk.

So I will be writing down several key topics I learnt about during this trip and let you guys, my dear readers decide what you want to read. I will choose the top 2 or 3 and write in detail about them. I cant promise what i write about will be great stuff but you have my word i will do my best. Having some specific topics actually helps narrow my scope and sharpen my limited memory abilities on the most interesting issues to you.

(in no order of importance)

1. The spirit of private enterprise in Zhejiang Province, a province neglected by the CCP of CHina since PRC's founding because of its proximity to Taiwan. How did this province rise from perennial under-investment by the Central Govt to become an economic hothouse today? Btw, CHiang Kai SHek is a Zhejiang native (Ningbo City if i am not mistaken)
2. My experience in Yiwu City - reputedly the world's Walmart for traders and distributors all over the world. This place is only a friggin 1100 square kilometres. Here, you can buy anything and everything, from socks, shoes, bags, clothes, electronics, TVs, key chains, pens, yougettheidea … I spent a day there and only explored 2 (out of a dozen) sections of 1 megamall there.
3. The entrepreneurial infrastructure in Zhejiang province. VCs, incubators, equity plans et al…
4. The role of government in enterprise and my own experiences socializing with them
5. Opportunities for young, entrepreneurial Singaporeans like myself in Zhejiang province. We are way behind the Taiwanese, Hongkongers, Koreans, Japanese in cracking this market.
6. Tourist attractions in Hangzhou
7. What the hell is this small Hangzhou city and why the hell should I pay attention to it? P.s. THey are building a maglev train from Shanghai to Hangzhou, now ponder why they care spending billions of US$ linking these 2 cities..

Thats about it. Comments and votes from you guys please.. =)

Not really blogging about the trip yet. But its been an enriching first peek at HongKong's economy and culture. Since pictures speak a thousand words, i thought it best to throw a few of my pics here.

Looking picture perfect from the top.

KInda reminds me of those mockups made by architecture firms. Except this pic above is real.

Famous Hongkong human jams. Too many pple, too litlle space. THis one's taken in Mongkok.

HongKong is a marketer's paradise and also hellhole. TOo much advertising opportunities and also too little potential for mindshare and penetration. With so much advertising messages on neon signs, billboards, or sales booths like above, Hongkongers must be really apathetic to all this marketing hogwash thrown at them from all angles and layers of the business community.

Hongkong is not all economic and dollars and cents, unlike Singapore. They have a conscience, some call it political, i call it social. And they offer an outlet of expression for that, in broad daylight with thousands of Hongkongers thronging the streets. This pic above is a protest against the cash-for-human organs scheme and also alludes to some Falungong persecution by the CHinese government. In fact, this garned the most attention due to the dramatization of the whole message with a living human posing as a corpse.

Who can forget FalunGong? The million-member politico-religious movement that is the subject of crackdown within CHina and the source of Hu Jintao's and George Bush's embarrassment during the former's visit to the White House? In the more democratic SAR of Hongkong, we see glimpses of freedom of speech practised by pple with a social conscience.

Headed to the heart of the Asian Economy with NUS delegations.

Will be visiting Hongkong for 5 days and touring several universities (HK University and City University of HK), Bloomberg HK, Singtel HK, HK Monetary Authority, maybe Disneyland and Ocean Park too but to sit through conferences and presentations opposed to enjoying rides, taking pics and other touristy stuff..

Next up is to Hangzhou in Zhejiang Province, for a 2 week immersion in their local entrepreneurial climate. No detailed schedule yet but it looks to be lots of networking sessions, seminars by local professors at the local college (Zhejiang University)

Here's what Wikipedia has to say about Hangzhou,

As one of the most renowned and prosperous cities in China for much of the last 1,000 years, Hangzhou is also well-known for its beautiful natural scenery, with the West Lake (Xī Hú, 西湖) as the most noteworthy location. The GDP per capita was (ca. US$4620), ranked no. 8 among 659 Chinese cities. The 2005 overall rank of Hangzhou among all the Chinese cities is No.5. In 2004, Forbes magazine ranked Hangzhou the number 1 city in China for business.
Hangzhou appears in the Chinese saying

Born in Suzhou, live in Hangzhou, eat in Guangzhou, die in Liuzhou.

Sister City: Boston, Massachusetts

(which is a prosperous touristic and cultural destination in the U.S., as Hangzhou is in China)

Great, I am visiting the "Boston" of China. It was a borefest in the real Boston when i visited, at least there was Cambridge the college town that was the saving grace. I can only hope the contrary is true in Hangzhou.

Wil try to blog more about my trips. This is my 2nd time to CHina, after my 2002 trip to the cities of Beijing, Shanghai and Suzhou. A pity I am lacking cash, or I would have embarked on a week-long hiatus in the mountains of Tibet in a sojourn for spiritual enlightenment. Ah well, perhaps next trip to China eh?

Hu Jintao’s visit to US brought him first to the business community, sidestepping the political maelstrom that awaits him at Washington DC.

“Show me the money!” — thats the not-too-subtle message China is telling America as billion dollar deals are signed with Boeing and Microsoft.

“And screw you with your human rights complaints and currency manipulation accusations, businesses that piss China off will not enjoy priviledged access to the deals struck with Boeing and MS.”

Here’s an excerpt of the CNN article by Lou Dobbs that talks about this:

China’s economy has grown by an average of about 10 percent a year over the past two decades. This year, China moved ahead of Britain and France to become the world’s fourth-largest economy. It’s also changing the global supply chain, becoming the world’s leading buyer of basic commodities, whether grain, meat, coal and steel, and is second to only the United States in consumption of oil. China is buying up American companies and other multinational corporations with almost $900 billion of hard currency reserves. China has now arrived, and we no longer refer to our series on China’s rapid economic and military build-up as “Red Star Rising.” The title of that reporting is now “Red Storm.”

But Dobbs is showing isolationist traits in his rant towards the end of the article. Althought he doesn’t fault China for its rights to economic prowess, he should do well to remember that the fault of US’ economic dependency lies NOT at failed policies in managing unfair, unequal US-Sino trade practices BUT AT the appaling undeveloped human resource infrastructure of middle class America.

Dun blame Walmart for outsourcing to China, dun blame Chinese workers for taking away low-end manufacturing jobs. Blame the inflexible labor laws and the xenophobic mentalities of disaffected, displaced middle class workers who have grown complacent in the excesses of the US domestic labor market.

If you dun cure that, there’s nothing you can do to prevent US corporate leaders to continue scouring the world for cheap labor and deals and please, wake up and smell the roses, its not just the Chinese thats giving you headaches but also Mexican immigrants running across the Texas border of your reigning President’s home state.

The tortoise vs the hare:

Here’s my favourite line that probably summed it up:

that China’s growth is coming via flashy financing (foreign direct investment, the equivalent of VC financing at a startup) while India’s is coming through organic, sustainable growth (the equivalent of revenues).

Click here for link.

Technorati tag: India, China, venture capital, Asia, economic growth

Falungong, an outlawed political-spiritual organization outlawed in China, has resorted to high-tech means to spreading its philosophies in CHina via the Internet. Forbes reports more on how the chief tech specialist was bound, gagged and assaulted in his home in Georgia by Asian men.

“NEW YORK - Peter Yuan Li–a key figure in the Falun Gong’s technologically sophisticated attempt to undermine the Chinese Communist Party–was brutally attacked and beaten in his home in Duluth, Ga., as Forbes was going to press with its cover story on how the spiritual movement is penetrating the Chinese government’s hi-tech censorship. At 11:15 A.M. on Feb. 8, according to the Fulton County Police Department Incident Report, Asian men stormed the house of the Princeton-educated information technology technician, bound and gagged and beat him, before fleeing with two 16-inch Sony laptop computers, Li’s wallet and yet unknown material from his files.”

It appears this Firewall really mirrors what the real Great Wall of China was intended to do — fend off foreign invaders that endanger CHinese territorial (in this case, virtual) interests. There’s a price to pay for subverting the Chinese government and US-owned search engines such as Google should do well to toe the line if they want to survive in this walled garden. But will Google hence be deemed as “committing evil” and becoming fait accompli in the CHinese government’s clampdown on civil liberties and right to free speech? I think so, and with more of such articles that demonstrate the backlash against individuals/ organizations who attempt to crack the “Digital Iron Curtain” of China, even if they are not sponsored by the Chinese government, Google’s “Do No Evil” rhetoric will wear thin. As akin to what has happened in the wake of Google stock falling back from stratospheric numbers to more decent numbers…. Ahhhh… how the mighty always succumb to reality…