Sina’s API is Down
Sina (China’s Twitter) has a public API like twitter does, and GPS Log integrates with it.
Sadly the API is down for maintenance until Monday (from at least 2 days ago). Terrible!
{“Request”: “/ statuses / upload.json”, “error_code”: “400″, “error”: “40070: Error: limited application access api!”}
Thread 1 (not speaking chinese, I had to express myself with emoticons…)
Official response (translated by google): “Sorry, in order to better service for everyone, to strengthen the management of applications, we are upgrading the platform, suspended some interface call is expected to end next Monday, I’m sorry to give us some inconvenience. Please continue to support us.” (不好意思,为了更好的为大家服务,加强对应用的管理,我们目前对平台进行升级,暂停了部分接口的调用,预计到下周一结束,非常抱歉给大家带来了不便.请大家继续支持我们.)
As far as I can gather, no third party Sina applications can post status updates for at least the last 3 days, and apparently for another 3. This is quite pathetic.
“Valid Until” field for Chinese Visas issued on the mainland
What follows is my story, YMMV – always confirm independently.
I renewed my Chinese tourist L visa (technically, I got a new visa) last month. Unlike those issued outside china which give a number of days for your visit, this one has a “Valid Until” field.
See:
Now I plan to actually travel on the date that was listed under Valid Until. So I thought I better confirm whether I could actually leave on that date, and not have to go the day before (I assumed I could – but I have found, particularly with the Chinese Government, always to check ones assumptions).
Checking was much harder than expected. Took me about 5 hours (on and off working on the problem). So if you benefit from my pain, feel free to buy GPS Log for your iPhone ;-)
Calling the Puding “Entry and Exit Administration of the Shanghai Public Security Bureau” turned out to be neigh impossible for an English speaker. It’s hard to find information about it in English, and of the 3 numbers I tried, only 1 worked, I said “hello” in English to the operator and was transferred somewhere, but the phone just kept ringing (I gave up after 10 minutes).
Fiona helped me by calling and speaking Chinese. The number they gave her to call was 68345199. This is the number of the Shanghai Airport Immigration and Inspection division. I.e. the guys who check your passport – so that’s useful.
They have a pre-recorded message seemingly to address my exact question, but actually it was little help, as the message is barely valid english and they just restate “that is the date it is valid until”, without clarifying. Trying to get the English operator failed (maybe you’ll have more luck than me). So Fiona tried this number, and spoke to the Chinese operator – and confirmed my original assumption that you can exit China on the Valid Until day. Still – best you check yourself.
Remember, this experience was with a Visa issued from inside Mainland china. This is NOT how the overseas-issued Visas work (rather, those are based on number of days for each visit).
A tale of 2M
If you want something done right, do it yourself :-/
I moved into this house back in February. It has a 1M unlimited internet connection. I was happy with this at the time, it was better than anything I used throughout 2009, but nevertheless I asked to be upgraded to the best available. The account is in the landlord’s name (in China, the internet is like gas and electricity – they don’t switch it off between tenants which is really freaking smart). So I asked my landlord to make it happen.
It took so long I basically gave up. Until this week, it really started to piss me off (the iPhone SDK is now a whopping 3.5GB which takes a while).
Landlord said he had tried many times to upgrade me at the shop, but they didn’t let it happen. We tried the chinese language hotline and they said I had to go to the office with my ID card and the landlords.
So today I rang the company (10000), got the English hotline, spoke to #9434. Asked to be upgraded. They said sure. Cost is ¥1958 for the year (pro-rated for the remainder of this year as I’d already paid for 1M). Contract is 3 years with a minimum of 1. I asked what happens if I cancelled it within a year – she said I’d have to go to the store for that (???). She then asked me the name of the landlord (I gave her the surname but only knew the english nickname – “close enough” she said). Then she asked me for the ID card number, which fortunately I had from the lease agreement. And now I will have 2M (and still unlimited) internet in 24 hours :)
I also feel the ripe fool. Why didn’t I do this back in Feb? Old assumptions I guess – no Australian teleco would have let me do what I just did. It seems even the chinese ones don’t – unless you ring the English hotline! We get special treatment (probably because they know if we go to the shop an hour of miscommunication would ensue). how nice…
Hope the contract I agreed to on behalf of someone else wasn’t too onerous… :-/ (shouldn’t be… I think).
China Unicom APN Settings
China Unicom 3G cards. Can buy for ¥150, with ¥100 credit.
¥66 base plan with 300MB (two variants, make sure you get the 300MB one), or ¥98 default plan, or more.
Easy to setup, just ring the support number, great english support.
For the iPhone they seem to “just work” (carrier settings seem to be already loaded). For the iPad 3G you may need these settings (under Settings -> Carrier Data -> APN Settings). Tethering works a treat, not extra charge, just comes out of your included data (as it should worldwide!)
APN = uninet
user = guest
pass = guest
Would you steal this bike?
A few months ago, I bought a nice shiny bike in Shanghai, pictured here:
I had it for a whole 7 days before it was stolen from the bike rack in front of my building (the “building gate men” [cannot call them guards, as guard things they do not] proved little deterent).
I had made two mistakes. The first was assuming the 2 free locks I was given from the shop were any good, and the second was that it looked too attractive. The lock issue really pissed me off, especially when I went back to the shop and the guy proceeded to tell me how shit the locks were (he used a scissor snippy motion to show me just how easy it was to cut). It’s one thing to give a guy a free lock, but surely you can give a disclaimer at the same time (and I had a chinese speaking friend with me so it wasn’t a comms issue). He then offered me a $1 discount on a new bike (yes, $1), so I pretty much stormed out of that shop never to return.
Two weeks ago I bought a new bike. Again this one was a shiny red color (unfortunately this model had no other colors, and the other models were granny bikes).
Here it is:
And now with some modifications :]
My plan is this: make the bike look shit, and lock it up with 2 huge-ass locks (ones designed for expensive mopeds).
I think it worked… was at my local coffee shop (yes I found a sweet western style independent coffee shop in my area, how cool is that!?), and one of the customers (they are all fairly affluent) rode up on his shiny black bike. Later someone asked him if my bike was his, and they all had a good laugh. So… show off with it I cannot, but at least it won’t get stolen – and under all the crap, is actually a brand new bike, shimono gears and everything, that rides very smoothly. Even if it looks like your average 10yo grampa rust-bucket.
So far so good… lets hope it lasts.
This is one valid reason for a “crapification” filter (unlike others, looking at you HDCP).
ICBC
Signed up a for a new bank account today, BoC is miles away from my home, no handy ATMs either.
Took a bit longer to signup, this ICBC has a longish queue. Took 3 staff to sign me up, passing paper back and forward (the usual). ¥15 to signup, got internet banking working easily, using the free one-time-pad (presumably used for outgoing transfers). All up, no complaints. The website seems cleaner than BoC. Will see how the wire transfer works.
It seems ICBC is more popular, with my very informal poll, and may have more ATMs. Also two times I have tried to use my BoC card outside Shanghai have failed, once in Hainan (apparently the BoC ATM was out of money?) and another in HZ (maybe the bank ATM was not aligned). The g/f has ICBC too so I guess that makes it easier.
Forex rates are slightly better… so that’s good (better than being slightly worse, at any rate).
ICBC 608.82 17:08:28
AUD:
BOC AUD: 608.25 2010-05-12 17:15:20
Bank of China – Wire Transfer Info
Just spoke with the BoC regarding wire transfers and such.
RMB is not a settlement currency so you cannot wire it directly. Instead, whatever currency you wire will sit in your BoC account, in that currency. Then you must go to the bank with your passport to convert it. USD$50,000 conversion limit applies per year.
The good news is that the conversion rate that applies is basically the market spot-rate. Listed here as “Buying Rate”: this is substantially better than the whopping 3% fee (due to currency spread) you pay at the “Cash Buying Rate” (i.e. over the counter in a money exchange).
There is no fee to receive the money (unlike HSBC in Australia), nor any direct fees on the currency transfer.
BoC hotline is 95566. The lady I spoke to had excellent english, and knew exactly what she was talking about. That’s more than I can say about a lot of operators for Australian banks.
Going the *other* way is more problematic. You cannot transfer RMB out directly (same reason you cannot transfer it in directly). And changing the RMB back to a settlement currency requires you to prove the source of the funds, apparently involving a visit to a government branch (read: PITA). More info on that is apparently here. Then if you do change it back from RMB, you can transfer it out again, for a fee. If you were not physically in China, I don’t know how any of this would be possible.
Net result: I think I’ll just transfer in only what I plan to spend.
From my memory filling out the customs entry forms, limits also apply to the amount of RMB notes you can take in and out of the country. Something like ¥6,000. So that limits you from taking the RMB notes out of the country and converting it elsewhere (unless you are a fan of stuffing money down your underpants).
Too big to ban?
Living behind the Great Firewall, and with Australia planning a Ruddywall of it’s own, I have begun to wonder, are there websites that are simply too big to ban?
Take Facebook for example. First China bans YouTube – annoying, but you can get video content from many places. Twitter is still young, with fewer users here – but Facebook is a giant.
The thing is, you’ve always been able to punch through the Great Firewall using the software originally designed to secure corporate private networks (VPNs). But the average apolitical Joe previously had no need for one (myself included). But like how the anti-Napster ruling helped educate people that you can download music for free, the Facebook ban may educate people that you can visit banned sites. By banning something people have been using on a daily basis (dare I say, addicted too), you educate these users that the firewall exists, and encourage these users to seek ways to get around the ban, which then makes them educated on how to do this. Once you setup your VPN for example, now nothing is banned. All for the sake of Facebook…
So I think it is probably a mistake to ban high-profile sites with millions of users.
Pin Yin input on Mac
This guy has a great writeup on how to get PinYin accents on Mac
Once you have the U.S. Extended keyboard enabled you can use the following key strokes to do the accent marks:
* Alt+a for the first tone – ā
* Alt+e for the second tone – á
* Alt+v for the third tone – ǎ
* Alt+` for the forth tone – à
* To type ü, type Alt+u then u
* To type ü with tone marks, use the same Alt+[aev`] from above for the tone, then type v. For example, to type ǚ, type Alt+v then v – ǜ is Alt+` then v
