All posts by David Feng

Media

Tianjin Satellite TV: The 199 Yuan Phone That’s a Scam

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Tracy was watching Young Bao Qing Tian lately on Tianjin Satellite TV. You’d probably that a centrally-governed municipality that’s about 30 minutes away from the capital by HSR is yet another world-class piece of art, so that Tianjin TV, too, must not suck.

But you’d be fatally mistaken. These guys get rid of lazy afternoons by — airing ten-minute long telemarketing infomercials that force you to buy a cheap, CNY 199.— shanzhai (rip-off) mobile phone. Forget Apple’s iPhone’s tinge of silver on the sides; this is supposedly gold plated. And, oh, its voice recognition system is so good that it knows what you want to do before you finish, if you watched the whole 10 minute spamvertisement in full.

Most incredible is how they try to be “covert” (if at all) about it. Instead of denouncing Apple, they brainwashed the audience with the phone’s copycat features and that “199” thing. Of course, for 199 yuan, one gets a sub-optimal makeshift (make-believe, even) phone. That old adage — “you get what you paid for!” — more than applies here.

I’m just shocked that Tianjin TV has OKed the infomercial. I’m more annoyed that the local company behind the spamvertisement (called “Real” — get real!) decided to use primitive methods at cheating (or attempting to cheat) the audience: by repeating stuff a hundred times or more. They must be fanboys of the notion that lies, repeated a thousand times, become the truth. I’m telling ya, the US does the whole thing much better — even Peking does this better (at times). When you try to manipulate minds by repeating the same thing a thousand times, you’re showing people your lack of confidence and lack of expertise in “propaganda-nomics” or “propaganda-ology” (take your pick).

My end, I’m not going to buy that fake ripoff. I’ve got my iPhones and I’m happy with ’em already.

PS: Onto something else: Anyone else know why on earth my iPhone 4 keeps having the hotspot (even if connected via USB) drop off by itself?…

Media, Trains, Travel

Trains and Media: What Happens When You’re (Not) Informed

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Apart from the all-important first year party of the Beijing-Shanghai HSR entering into service, there’s also something big — in fact, two things that are big:

  1. Trains 6417 and 6418 running their final runs between Beijing and Chengde; and
  2. Longjiaying Railway Station shutting down to passenger traffic

The former received a lot of coverage. I was, in fact, invited to a live show on Beijing Traffic Radio just to tell people that these super-cheap trains in Beijing were running their last runs. (At CNY 1.50 per full price ticket (from Beijing to Beijing East), it’s CNY 0.50 cheaper than the Beijing Subway!) The latter received just about no coverage at all.

And I’m telling ya, there’s a world of difference. What I’ve seen on Weibo recounts of a huge crowd by the Beijing East Railway Station, and tickets from Beijing to Beijing East being fully sold out. Quite on the contrary, there was no coverage of Longjiaying being bid its farewell. No TV crews, not even the random microphone from the local radio station. Nada. Tracy and I boarded Train D4532 — the last HSR service from the station — as totally normal people with no outside media coverage at all.

Most of you might be wondering now just where the heck this Longjiaying is. It’s a railway station between Qinhuangdao and Shanhaiguan stations (which also might not make sense: OK, it’s Beijing’s closest major coastline, beaches included*. It’s so reclusive, in fact, that road signs don’t make reference to this isolated stop at all. To a lot of us, Longjiaying seems to be one of the stations nobody must have any idea of. This yellow-ish station, handled by the QInghuangdao Vehicles Department of Beijing Rail, used to remain hidden to passing riders through to 15 November 2010. Before then, the only trains that’d stop here were those from dedicated railway routes carrying cargo.

This Tier 3 station suddenly became a major stop on and after that date, as Qinhuangdao station nearby underwent a massive expansion effort to accommodate HSR services to and from northeastern China (to come later this year or by spring 2013, latest). A bit further away than Qinhuangdao itself, this station is probably Station 3 of 4 in the massive Beidaihe-Shanhaiguan semi-conurbation, which is just west of the boundary with Liaoning. (Liaoning is already part of northeastern China’s three provinces.) This bit of north-northeastern China sports some very nice coastlines (plus a few crazy donkeys and camels that Tracy forced me onto… heh…)

Longjiaying is going to end service as a passenger station as today (30 June 2012) draws to an end. There are plans to, even if just provisionally, move passenger traffic back to Qinhuangdao (now redone and bigger, with the obligatory skybridge passageway). The only folks who knew this were die-hard train addicts, as well as train crew. They signalled the end of services to the station as, upon arrival, they removed, permanently, destination stickers on the trains. (The platform opposite our arrival platform already sported trains with new stickers indicating their future departure station at the nearby Qinhuangdao station.)

Apart from that, there were no signs from “society at large” that Longjiaying was finishing its final day. It’s pretty obvious, then, that the media plays a big role in this. Make the closure public via media — and you’d get a crowd. Close it covertly — and nobody’d know.

That’s how big the media is these days — even on Weibo (and microblogs in general).

* It’s also where the super-secret political meetings happen in the summers, as the “political bigs” gather in covert locations to determine just what the heck will happen to the Middle Kingdom as the temps get cooler. We know this because as our train pulled into Beidaihe, which is in this region, super-official-looking vehicles were spotted on Platform 1. Of course, there were no photos at all; the mere thought of that might land you one heck of a heavy political hiding!)

Academic Life

Insecurity Kills

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As of late I’ve graduated in semi-stealth with a PhD (or rather, “Doctor of Arts”) in communications (especially social media) from the Communication University of China. (It’s where, supposedly, people must have been taught how to communicate with one other — although I’ll lay off the “making-fun-of-my-alma-mater” for now…)

Seriously, I’ve kept the PhD thing very low key. That’s because there’s a lot of wild academics in China who are wild — because they’ve that PhD thingy themselves. There are cowards with the PhD who will attack up-and-coming authors, established Google executives, and holders of PhDs from diploma mills, but who will never think of muckraking the government — a perfect reason why they’re cowards, buck naked. There are Chinese on the mainland whom, forgetting that the folks “down south” in Hong Kong belong to the same old PRC, denigrate them as “dogs” and “canines” (well, actually, the two are much the same), earning them the ire the mainland madman insulter “deserves”. And then there are those in other lands, whom, they believe, are “armed” with an academic degree, thus “enabling” them to set themselves loose in criticizing society until they’re blue in the face. What I’m trying to get across here is that there are a lot of madmen out there with PhDs, so I wanted to isolate myself from them. I’m very different: I hate academia-ese, have been overseas (lots of local PhD candidates have been mainland-only), and actually have a better idea of how this world’s supposed to work.

For the last three years, I’ve been, instead, travelling by train as much as I can. I wanted to discover, outside classes, the real China. The poor bits. The rich bits. The bits and bobs that are ugly, cruel, crass, but also those that are cool, neat, advanced, “wow”-ish and most importantly, real. I know what these “leaders” so-called get when they visit a village: they get a mock show “insuring” them that all is well. All is not well! There must have been a farmer who lost a member of his or her family because they refused to move for a new übermodern mall to replace their former home in the hinterlands! And I’ve seen how big the government squares in this part of the world can get. The one in Jiaozhou, Shandong, was so big that I felt like I was living a freakin’ nightmare whilst even driving across the whole thing (on the way to the train station, of course).

After three years of the whole PhD show, I can say that not only have I come out with an original dissertation on how to tame social media better (whilst not losing out to either anarchy or authoritarianism), but that I’ve also seen the country — China — much better. I’ve finished a fair load of Habermas’s own works on the public sphere in both German and English, and I’ve come across a few pretty neat and insightful works from Douglas Kellner in the US. I’ve also been to the 2009 Chinese Blogger Conference, where things started on a whimper with a lost academic at the start, but “got noisier” in the end as major online figures came out with their own two pence on society today — even telling participants that “they needed to teach government a lesson”.

Of course. The Deng Xiaoping era was remarkable, and was remembered for one slogan: “To lead is to serve”. Jefferson and Co also were firm believers that if government stank, the people would come out with a remix in no time. So when that happens, nobody’s scared. There’s no insecurity. We’d be blunt and come out with the truth.

But the one big thing about China today is that there’s no real truth the higher you go. We have executives with fake PhD diplomas, bosses-to-be with missing this-and-thats when it comes to the question, “Do you have a Doctor’s degree?”, and academic cowards. Cowards who are full of insecurity, and who, whilst rooting for democracy and free speech, nix anyone online who tweets but the slightest bit of opposition or even asks them a question they don’t like. Cowards who have questionable academic track records; cowards who must obviously have numerous romantic affairs; and cowards who have amassed their own millions, billions even, through grey and shady practises. Chinese society is like a tofu mansion: we’re “waiting” for that Magnitude 9 earthquake when we’ll see a massive house cleaning. It’s time to send the corrupt (morally, economically, and whatever) into what’s known as /dev/null/ in UNIX-speak. It’s time to take a great, big, fat waste bag and clean house (like I said). It’s time to right the wrong (and to make sure no wrongs are righted). It’s time to give Western China 350 km/h HSR, not the crappy 250 km/h variant that’s out of date the moment the test machines roll onto ’em.

As David Feng (sans the “Dr” bit, please), I don’t feel the least insecure. I’ve done my bit, my PhD, the right way. I’ve been a little secretive about it, but that’s so as not to appear as an academic snob. In whatever I’m doing next, I’m sure about one thing: that I’ll use my all to make this planet a better place to live. Whether it means installing toilets closer to the coffee shops (as folks do have a tendency to over-indulge in all that liquid stuff!) or creating less corrupt people, whether it’s about preparing locals better for the wider world or giving students-to-be less crappier classrooms (with, of course, the ventilation working), or making students-to-be talkative by forcing them to the microphone, whatever I’m to do next, I’m gonna make sure that I’m not the winner at the end of the day, because that means nothing to me.

Instead, I’m going to make all of those that I teach, the winners at the end of the day. I’ll just be a guy telling them how to do this and that, or what not to say or touch, and stuff like that. I’m no edu god or any kind of god. I’m just human. I’ve an expiry date only heaven knows. The thing is to right as many wrongs and make the planet as cool and as friendly as possible before I hit that big, fat, ole expiry date.

And if there is indeed a Round Two in all of this, I’m pre-programming this to start in CONTINUE mode. Because the quest for a better world does not have an end, and there’s always a way to make something already cool, even cooler.

Academic Life, David Feng Views

David’s Next Steps…

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I’m telling ya, I haven’t always had good impressions of quite a few textbooks (the one my mum bought me in Hong Kong about maths in primary school was a disaster, with super-crazy names of fictitious people all over the place), but at least I let ’em survive. I did throw away one book — the one I had for my MA in linguistics and media presenting — because the guy that authored it was an arrogant brat. No, seriously.

But as of late, I’ve been taking a good look at a kind of snow — you got that one right — a kind of snow — as in snowstorm — in a campus in central China. Turns out these were books that overworked students ripped out in anger as their university entrance exams were approaching. It was quite a sight.

Seriously, though, this is but the tip of the iceberg in the disaster that has become the Chinese educational world. The edu system in China is a mess. My French teacher told me never to feed on foie gras because those poor ducks were force-fed, and your karma kind of went down the sewer if you fed yourself with gusto on those poor souls with four feet.

Force-fed ducks are tragic enough. Force-fed people are a humanitarian disaster. Or an educational humanitarian disaster, rather: Chinese schools are notorious for force-feeding knowledge down innocent folks. There’s the bit about the students having to know when the “3rd Plenary of the 11th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party” took place (late 1978), and then there’s outright maths madness. It’s awful. The Chinese are ruining their five millennia of top-notch civilisation by producing — exam-sitting machines. I laughed at Tokyo (out of pure innocent lack of knowledge) when I heard about cram schools in classes in Zurich. I shouldn’t have, and I take the naïve laughter back. What you are seeing in China is something that is far worse. These guys are coming out with exam-sitting machines by the millions, “thanks” to them force-feeding knowledge down those innocent kids.

(At age 16, they’re supposed to fall in love. And you wonder why so many “ageing youngsters” by the age of 28-ish to 30 are still single. It’s a mess.)

Worse things happen when these poor souls enter university: they are fed knowledge that they hardly ever process. Once graduated with a BA (or something like that), they “give back” their knowledge to the university — they have no way to use that un-applied knowledge in real life! And then you wonder why they’re yelled at by their money-is-everything bosses. It’s a vicious cycle.

The way I was taught in Switzerland was worlds apart, and I’m really thankful to Helvetia and her world-class international schools. In international schools in Zurich and Zug, we were in classes that had folks from Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas in one roof, in one room. Not only that: I was fortunate to have sat the IGCSE and AP exams (as well as semi-flunk a PSAT, which was odd), so I knew how these things were. I know millions, if not close to a billion, are sitting nationwide university entrance exams. They’re terrible creatures. Let me tell you: our variants in Zurich, especially the IGCSE, meant nearly one to two full months of exams. You’d get maybe one day off for a quick speedboat fix, and then you’d be stuck in the exam centre for the rest of the week. So when 04 June 1998 came around (that was when all my IGCSEs were done), we rented two speedboats and started randomly hurling packs of ice tea into the lake.

It was the end of the worst months in our lives.

So yeah — I fully know what folks our part of the world are going through. I’m totally with you guys.

But in the end, I have to say, after nearly 20 countries and 12 years in Switzerland, that the Swiss grass is a fair bit greener. At least in Switzerland, our lessons are a bit more interactive, and we get the chance to question our teachers. There’s no brainwashing: it is perfectly OK — in fact encouraged of us — to question our teachers (within reason). And I have to say that out of my Facebook friends, there are a few teachers in the mix as well. It’s great: they’re irreplaceable fountains of knowledge that are there for you — both inside and outside the classroom. You don’t feel like you’re talking to a God of sorts, whom you fear not to criticise (of course, insults are most definitely not OK).

And the textbooks in those international schools in Switzerland are also pretty cool. Yeah, at about 1,200 pages a book, they’re monsters all right, but at least you get to be inspired by their knowledge. You get pictures along with the text. This is nearly never the case in China, where you encounter whole chapters of text, text and maybe a quick table, followed by more text, text, text, text. It’s boring! I’ve had some bad days where the teacher was fixed in three positions: she had her mouth in front of the microphone, her eyes on the sunken display, and her hand on the mouse and scroller, and she’d be in this position for the full 90-minute class. It was awful. I’d be reading my Lonely Planet guide about Hong Kong, and we’d get away with it. I’d think it a job as miserably done as, say, making fake money — these people get the same bit of “respect” (indeed, lack of respect) my end. It’s called doing a disservice — and it’s not what I want to do.

The thing with China is that those poor students are made like machines. They’re going through exams, and they swot it up. Then they dump it as soon as they get through (and not fail it). In the West, most study what they want — and probably not what makes them a million. Want Chinese-made talent? Loosen up the stress on the students. They deserve an easier life. Then they might want to talk a little more in class.

I clearly remember the media summer school I did a few years back — there were a load of Chinese students as well as a handful of international people (I was Swiss, so I belonged to the latter). Some of the most active discussions were those that were started by an Indian, a Swiss (me) and an American — I think — or he could have been a German as well. Just about the entire local Chinese student population were mute. Think about that. It was scary as hell… But that’s what you get when you make these poor people force-fed exam-sitting machines…

…that feed on nothing but “knowledge” from teachers and experts. It’s not to say all academics are evil — but we do have a fair share of rotten apples in the barrels. Some academics hate it when their student does better than they are. Some just outright bend their academic interests with their commercial interests. I’ve heard horror stories of sub-par textbooks being printed because of suspect business/academic relationships.

The fact is, as Apple said in an earlier brochure, you’re only given one chance to inspire students. That’s it. It’s a single-ride ticket. It’ll be hard to inspire them again at age 40 when you’ve mucked up at age 14…

Slavish devotion to “experts” and academically shaky “teachers” can be scary. I’ve experienced it myself when I was invited by city government officials twice about solving Beijing’s Chinglish lessons — only to be told that it was more the problem of their “experts” and that, in essence, the group of “experts” OKed a translation that rendered a touch-screen info kiosk in the Beijing Subway system as an “automatic analyser” in perfect Chinglish. The machine doesn’t deserve this. The nation doesn’t deserve this. A land of five proud millennia behind it doesn’t deserve to be led by a bunch of folks who think they know everything — when everything they do says otherwise.

The fact is, being lost in a country where you are told to “be mind your head” and to keep clear of the “bus zhuanyong” lane is pretty much surreal. It’s also insane and can drive you bananas when you run into signs that tell you that “Meng is not driving the vehicle abduction”. I know I’ve seen some sick Chinglish, which is why I did a little book about the phenomenon in Chinese last year. I tried to keep it real and approachable by using lingo that every last farmer out there can understand (so that I’m uniting the readership by the lowest common denominator). I did the book to raise awareness to the issue — it hasn’t made me a millionaire (and I can care less if it could or could not), so I deliberately made it affordable. A good edu guy cares about the results, not about whether or not he’s a stinking-rich millionaire. Further, I made it so that people get the best results while spending the least cash, so the content you’re seeing is the result of late nights wondering how best to translate the Chinglish sign at the local station. The book earnt me a late autumn 2011 invitation to northeastern China to teach “Chinglish” (if you will!) to an audience of hundreds. I’ve also been in the blackboard outside of these times, and I’ve taught anything from primary school kids to adult education lessons, including private tutoring.

Teaching is about inspiring people. I was most honoured at being inspired by multilingual, multicultural content in international school in Switzerland. My 12 years there, as well as my travel experiences to nearly 20 countries and territories, tell the tale. I’ve spent around 20 years as a student, as one that is being inspired, and I’m grateful to all my teachers as well as to my classmates.

Inspirers are those that make tomorrow a better day. Hopefully, fellow students in Hubei will have easier times in the years to come as they resort to preparing for their exams in more practical ways. But I fully understand their ire, and their frustration, as their books were torn to pieces by themselves. I’ve got to change these things, and to inspire others. And I’m willing to, as someone who has just passed his Doctorate dissertation defence, inspire the students of the future. I’m dedicating my total effort to this. You’ve seen how much I’ve dedicated my efforts to the trains. Now I’m at least doubling that effort so that the students I teach and inspire get the future they rightfully deserve.

I’ll stay on the trains, though — it’s a great way to get from home to the schools and to different places on the planet. The trains will continue to take me to new places I’ve never been to at fast and safe speeds. And I’ll continue to be a learner for the rest of my life.

David Feng
08 June 2012
Onboard Chinese HSR Train G123

Personal Projects

Swallowing Beijingology — Whole

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Ai ya. e-Indigestion.

But hey, it’s happened. I’ve managed to do one of the most difficult tasks to perform — merge a popular wiki with a new, up-and-coming train travel site. Just yesterday, I’ve managed to relink Beijingology.com so that it now goes to the new TrackingChina.com — there’s a special page for people coming in from Beijingology.

The old site was a funny mix. Never known for withholding information like the more secretive souls in society, I started the old Beijingology wiki about six years back because I was going all over the place in Beijing and need a kind of an e-clipboard to keep my mileages and where this and that road would take me. (Beijing maps aren’t horribly made, but they won’t help when you need them to!)

Then came along Subway Line 5. I started snapping pictures of the new line, which was revolutionary, because it was the city’s first-ever north-south line. I wasn’t surprised when there was a new Starbucks along Line 5, because that line meant business for the city. But when I got lost at Huixinxijie Beikou station — when, just to get to a supermarket, I took the wrong exit and went through a residential complex and had to go up a footbridge — I made a resolution to make this the best-ever wiki on the Beijing Subway and Beijing transit because I got lost — and I didn’t like seeing anyone else get lost!

While working with the Beijing Planning Exhibition Hall in 2008, I had a lot of free time outside of accompanying political, commercial and educational leaders from nearly 70 countries. What did I do? Apart from twiddling my thumbs, I set out to make Beijingology the most comprehensive guide in the world about the Beijing Subway. At this time, it remained a publicly known internal wiki, where the whole thing appeared super-technical, but was still in English for the world to read.

In 2009, I started making use of Beijingology to create “real life” projects, including what used to be MobileMetro.info. It would be the first iPhone-friendly web site which did not require you to get an App Store account (or an Apple ID). Yep, it sapped up your 3G traffic, but it was an instant, light solution for mobile phones. You’d click a station, find an aspect or a question (like “where’s the exit?”), and I’d give you that straightaway. It was brilliantly designed, but it meant a lot of handcrafted code. Owing to the excess amount of work, I threw in the towel for the moment.

In 2010, I shifted my focus from city rail to national rail. In 2011, I made it big on national media by being one of the very first passengers on the state-of-the-art Beijing-Shanghai HSR, along with my wife. Today, I’ve merged the best of all worlds — HSR, metro and information — into the new Tracking China project.

The future of Beijingology now equates with the future of Tracking China. The infrastructure is totally there to give people the most detailled guide of riding the rails in mainland China.

Folks get around a lot over the summer. By summer 2012, the new site will be home to rail info for traffic between Beijing, Tianjin and Shanghai, as well as the entire Beijing Subway and key Shanghai Metro stations, and by late 2012, like a phoenix revitalized, a great number of the much sought-after info from the old Beijingology wiki will be with you.

The past few weeks chez moi has been filled with activity. Today, I’m sharing this bit with you as a kind of Status Report. I remain committed to making sure that having used my bit on the Web about getting from A to B in China — ideally, you’ll never be lost again.

David Feng Announcement

Important Notice about the Beijingology Site Network

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This notice pertains to both the Beijingology website, as well as the Beijingology community, the Beijing A to B sites, and any test sites for Shanghai, Tianjin and Hebei, as well as to MobileMetro.mobi (referred hereafter as the “Beijingology Site Network”).

The Beijingology Site Network will be merged into the new Tracking China web site with effect from noon (Beijing time) on 18 May 2012. Information about roads and freeways / expressways will be suspended or be updated at a later date, while information about Metros / Subways, trains and high speed rail will be kept. All information will be totally updated.

This notice also serves notification to City Weekend that David Feng does not intend to challenge the use of the Beijingology names in the City Weekend magazines. From David Feng, there is no intention of initiating or proceeding with disputes or name re-ownership procedures. The name Beijingology remains a neutral name, its name being first used on a large scale by David Feng, and has been since used by City Weekend. This fact will not be challenged by the user of the Beijingology name, David Feng.

At Tracking China, we will be happy to welcome all users to the new Beijing Subway line-by-line web pages, which will begin service at the same time (noon, Beijing time, on 18 May 2012). Thank you for trusting the Beijingology Site Network. We will be happy to continue serving you at Tracking China.

China, Current Events

Being in a Censored Environment… Makes You Want to Un-Censor…

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The last few days in China have been total wildness, madness, and everything like that.

They are getting rid of people who are just a mere inch outside of the policies that a certain “central organisation” (as they say here) subscribe to. If they’re not getting rid of these people, they are at least making their lives hell. They are firing people who invite the president over and guarantee that everything is doing great. And they are stripping people of their ranks who have tried (with all measures, sane and insane) to fight “bad people” in the big cities.

And then I wondered:
All the censoring… and demoting… and firing… and stuff like that:
Why with all this negativity?
What is with all this negativity?

I remind myself of things I’ve read. Which, in random bullet form, appear like this:

  • Be confident. Don’t repress people because otherwise you’d appear anything but confident. Censorship is a giveaway that you’re not self-confident. Believe in yourself (but don’t be arrogant either!).
  • Aesop’s Fables… Be like the sun. Get the guy to take off his jacket because you’re accommodating. The wind may be tempting — as in, an attempt to get people to harken to your line using brute force may be tempting. But it isn’t… it did not work with Aesop…
  • We met someone whom I think I hardly ever had a moment which I felt down. (Odd, eh?) Thing is: Humans are not gods, but there are humans who, when you’re with them, inspire you to do things you thought you couldn’t really pull off.

Some of the people I meet on social media will tweet a lot, and they’re positive. At times I have been inspired by this positiveness, which has then resulted me in asking myself questions. Questions like:-

  • When one of these crazy Beijing drivers gets the better of you, do you bang into him (even hit him or kill him), or take down his license number, or just — let it be?
  • If someone wants you to retweet something, will you not do it just because you have (or you think you have) bad blood with just one person that’s mentioned?
  • Do you treat people the same — but to such extremes of “equality” that when you are mad at people, you are as “equally belligerent” to a farmer as you are to the president of a nation?
  • Have you ever been treated so bad that you feel like creating a “sh#t list” of people and then record every single mishap they have done to you?
  • Do you coerce people?… or do you talk them into doing things without making them feel bad?
  • When you get your train tickets at the Beijing South Railway Station, do you kindly request (with a smile) a countryside guy (probably from the poorer interiors of China) to stand in queue — or do you “come down upon him” like the operator of one of those tanks in the square?
  • When the railways start running slower, do you call the present minister an S*B or do you find ways to ameliorate the situation?

I’m hoping that I’ll answer my questions I just posed in a more positive manner from today onwards. Of course, I have been inspired by many positive people. My wife is one. Lotay is another. I think there are a lot of people that can make it to the list.

I’m not expecting 100% miracles, but as long as I have a resolve to be “less of a prick” (as one of my classmates in my teenage years would say), I think I’m a bit closer to being on the right track… I don’t consider today an “epiphany”: more a case of: OK, I’ve gotten my thoughts together — now less of the old and more of the new.

Of course, there are a few principles I’m keeping to:—

  • To “piss less people off” (if you must say it this way), I’m remaining neutral politically and religiously. I have never belonged to any political organisations in China, Switzerland or anywhere and I’d love to keep it this way. In the same vein, I don’t subscribe to religious convictions but as long as a religion is accepted as right and proper, they’ll be afforded respect my end.
  • My stance against intoxication, tobacco, gambling, drugs, porn, infidelity and the endangering of families remain (and by endangering I mean trouble both inside homes and from outsiders who might be threats). I personally believe that these aren’t for me and for my family. As she is part of the family (of course!), the wife subscribes to the same. However, my friends are on more lenient terms. I’ve friends who drink and smoke, or goes to casinoes, and that’s OK — as long as my family isn’t dragged into this. (I don’t unfriend or unfollow people online just because they did a post on, for example, alcohol or gambling.) Still, I prefer to keep my distance away from those of less good character, and it is of course certain that I won’t count drug traffickers, criminals, or porn stars amongst my circle of friends. Everyone has their own principles and I think we ought to respect that.
  • Finally, a solid principle of my career is that everything I do must be to the benefit of society at large. It won’t be a sin for me to get rich, of course, but I can’t live in a luxury castle while not caring about poor kids in, say, sub-Saharan Africa. That’s just not me. I don’t live to get rich or famous, but when one or both happens, I share the goodness — I don’t huddle all those microphones together, so to speak, and by no means egoistically — but I hand them out to people with legitimate needs to get speak out, so that they share their views freely, or I use the “mic power” and media influence to make lives get better.