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In the Great Firewall Zone

I flew to HK two weeks ago and stayed there for three days before flying back home. The brief thoughts and observations of HK have been posted on my travel blog. My mum happened to be quite free during my stay at home because the printing factory she worked for was under investigation for its sewage pollution. There are quite a number of problems in China. Some happening ones in my hometown are pollution, food safety, ageing population, rapid urbanization, educational resource shortage for the less developed areas, trust between people,etc. Good news is that problems always come with opportunities. People of my generation are working on it to fix the unhealthy nation.

Last Wednesday, I came here to Beijing which is the IT hub of the whole nation. People are striving for survivor. Competition is fierce, even a call taxi app has got several competitors. http://blog.renren.com/blog/253739580/905754705

Behind the Great Firewall, Blogger, Google Drive, Google handout, Facebook, Youtube, Twitter,etc has been blocked. I am using a proxy server in Google App Engine to access these pages.

Some highlights of this week:

1. I watched a movie named “中国合伙人” in PKU-Hall(北大百年讲堂). It is really touching. The movie tells a story of three young men who started an english training school in Beijing and worked together to make it a big business. There are some scenes which I feel so touched. One of the scenes is the moment when the company gets positive revenues and the founders celebrate in a Karaoke room. One founder cannot control his emotion and sing the song “海阔天空” loudly. The lyrics is so touching and I cannot help crying."背离了理想,谁人都可以,哪怕有一天只有你共我". Another moment is when an old lady who gave extra tips to the hero when she saw the store owner pays very few to the hero. The lady said, her(the store owner) life would be like that forever, but young man, you won't be a waiter for your whole life, you've got to move on.  This inspires me when we are treated badly by the boss, we shall believe that we will be more successful than him someday.

2. I stayed in PKU Guanghua management school yesterday and happen to read an article regarding digital publishing in China. http://content.businessvalue.com.cn/post/10864.html I do foresee the trend that self-publishing will be more popular in the future. Even the educational materials can be part of a self-publishing service. Machine is going to replace the work of editors, which is the biggest part of the expenses in a publishing company. When the writers are not the employees any more, the whole business can be almost cost-free.

3. Cat lovers vs Dog lovers. Cat lovers are somewhat more of individualists while Dog lovers are more socially reliant. That sounds quite true. Personally, I seem to love cats more than dogs.

4. I attended the sunday gathering in the Chongwenmen church in Beijing, which is said to be the oldest church in north China.Well, I would say that I believe more on the teaching in bible than the priest or organization. The church is a bit too lady-oriented. The priest is a female, the choir group members are all females. One bad thing I encounter is that the priest asked people to read one bible story(Christ told a lady not to feed dogs with breads of her children), but she didn't really explain the meaning, which is a bit confusing. One good thing is the church members seem to have strong faiths here.

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