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China coping with its third major disaster of 2008Tuesday, 17th June 2008 ~ Chris ~ Link ~ Comments (0)
First came the great winter storm of 2008, then the devastating Wenchuan earthquake, whose official death toll now stands at nearly 70,000. Now China is coping with its third major natural disaster of the year as heavy rains and floods batter the country's south. Continuing heavy rains in Yunnan and across southern China since June 6 have led to 57 deaths and 1.27 million people fleeing their homes, with more rain expected throughout the region over the coming days. According to Xinhua reports more than 17 million people have been affected by the flooding with more than 10.6 billion yuan (US$1.5 billion) in damage incurred so far. The rains have led to the swelling of rivers in China's south, with key manufacturing province Guangdong experiencing its worst flooding in 50 years. On Monday, Guangdong's provincial flood control bureau ordered local governments in Guangzhou and eight other cities to reinforce river embankments and make evacuation preparations. Although damage in Yunnan has been relatively light compared to Guangdong and other lower-lying areas including Jiangxi, Guizhou and Hunan provinces and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, rains here are a major concern as many of the flooding rivers – including Guangdong's Pearl River – have their headwaters in Yunnan. China's National Meteorological Center is forecasting more rains in southern parts of the country - including Yunnan - over the next few days. Image: Xinhua Tags: flooding, Guangdong, Guangxi, Guangzhou, Guizhou, Hunan, Pearl River, Wenchuan earthquake, winter storm China's biggest online gambling ring on trial in KunmingThursday, 12th June 2008 ~ Chris ~ Link ~ Comments (1)
China's largest online gambling trial began yesterday at Kunming Intermediate People's Court, with 20 suspects facing charges for involvement in a gambling ring involving more than 8.6 billion yuan (US$1.2 billion) in total wagers and more than 200 million yuan in profits – all illegal. According to a Kunming Daily report the case centers around two Hong Kong brothers Tan Zhiwei (谭志伟) and Tan Zhiman (谭志满), who allegedly established casinos in Myanmar in 1999, laying the foundation for an online betting network. The brothers allegedly built up an empire with more than 3,000 employees plus servers in the cities of Guangzhou and Dongguan in Guangdong province. One of the brothers' gambling sites attracted 5,198 registered users between August 2006 and March 2007, according to state prosecutors. The twenty defendants are charged with the crimes of operating casinos and disrupting social order. It is China's largest online gambling case in terms of the amount of money involved, the amount of people involved and the amount of area covered. It is also noteworthy for being the most technologically advanced online gambling ring broken up to date. One defendant is a former bank official at the Ruili branch of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) who allegedly opened hundreds of bank accounts for the gambling operation. Clients of the illegal operation were able to place bets in Myanmar, via phone calls or online, according to the report. Myanmar casino mobile phone photograph: news.cnnb.com.cn Tags: casinos, Dongguan, Guangzhou, ICBC, Kunming Intermediate People’s Court, law, Myanmar, online gambling, Tan Zhiman, Tan Zhiwei Interview: Answering the call for on-demand interpreting in ChinaThursday, 5th June 2008 ~ Chris ~ Link ~ Comments (1)
Only a decade ago, the number of foreign visitors to China was but a fraction of the 132 million inbound tourists that visited the country last year – aside from a few intrepid business travelers armed with translators, the majority were students, teachers and backpackers winging it in a country with a notoriously difficult language. Fast-forward to 2008: leisure and business travel to China is booming, mobile phones services have caught up to developed world standards and the Olympics, which China is expecting to attract half a million foreign tourists, are two months away. One thing that hasn't changed is the significant linguistic obstacle the Chinese language presents visitors, especially Westerners. The challenges faced by foreign visitors to China have given rise to demand for instant, on-demand interpreting services, rather than hiring a bilingual guide who requires food, lodging and transportation and can become a significant expense on long trips. Hong Kong-based telephone interpreting service provider ChinaONEcall established its Kunming office in January 2007, entering the rapidly growing on-demand interpreting industry in mainland China. After a free trial period given to a group of beta-testers and then a gradual launch to the tourist and expat market, the company – which has operations in China, the UK and US - had its public launch to media and the international business community in London in October 2007. GoKunming sat down with ChinaONEcall Cofounder and Operations Director Greg Sinclair to find out more about this growing industry: GoKunming: Why did you found ChinaONEcall? Greg Sinclair: I've been coming to China for ten years, first teaching English in Qingdao in 1998, and while I am now reasonably able to hold my own in conversation I can still remember how difficult it is for someone who has just arrived and has no knowledge of Chinese. Despite huge developmental advances over the last decade and increasing numbers of English-speakers, a non-Chinese speaker is still hugely handicapped in trying to get by in China. My father found it particularly frustrating a couple of years ago when, after visiting me in Kunming, he got completely lost just outside of Shanghai. The only thing he had to help him was a mobile phone and my number. I managed to find out where he was and how he could get to where he needed to be by speaking to a passer-by who'd been handed my dad's phone. The panic was over but then we both thought this could be a really good idea for a business. GK: Who do your clients tend to be? GS: Our clients include business travelers, tourists, students and even expatriates - basically anyone who wants a little bit more freedom while moving around in China and doesn't want to rely on tour guides and interpreters or burden their Chinese-speaking friends with frequent calls for help. We also have a large number of customers who aren't in China or even planning a trip to China but want an interpreter for a conference call. We have access numbers in the US and UK so people can call us for either local rate or toll-free and we'll connect the call to the person they wish to speak to - for example a factory manager - and provide the interpreting service. We are also getting more and more clients wanting document translation by email rather than just interpreting and we also provide this service. In fact, there will shortly be a site dedicated to this at www.chinaONEtranslate.com GK: What do you see happening to the phone interpreting industry after the Olympics? GS: I'm not really able to speak for the industry as a whole but I assume, like us, they are very interested in the Olympics and are hoping to get a significant volume of business from that and other events in the future such as the Shanghai Expo 2010 and the Asian Games to be held in Guangzhou also in 2010. However our business model is not focused on one event or another. We anticipate our business as ongoing and indeed rising to cover what appears to be an exponential increase in business and leisure travel to China. Obviously it would be foolish not to tap into and take advantage of large international events such as the Olympic Games but equally foolish to assume that we can sit on our laurels because China is playing host to such a prestigious affair. GK: Many companies portray a phone interpreter service as something only used in emergencies, what kind of non-emergency calls do your staff receive? GS: It's true that there are situations where a service like ours can be a real lifeline in an emergency but thankfully these are not as common as some may believe. Of course we get customers who are in stressful and difficult circumstances and we've helped people out of some fairly sticky situations, which is why our staff are all taught useful conflict management and mediation skills, but we also get many calls which are not emergencies at all. People use us in all sorts of situations including haggling over souvenirs, changing money in the bank, and just chatting to strangers on a long train journey. We had one Australian who we helped arrange a date with someone he'd been exchanging smiles with over 36 hours on a train, although I've no idea how that eventually turned out. On the business side we had a British customer who was impressed with a jewelry shop in Lijiang. He took the shop's business card, gave it to his friend in the UK who imports jewelry and we set up a conference call. Some of this Yunnan jewelry is now being sold in London. Of course emergencies happen and our staff are ready to help but most of the time it's really about having the freedom to create and take advantage of opportunities that the language barrier can sometimes make impossible. GK: What are the major opportunities and challenges for the phone interpreting industry in general? GS: Again, it's difficult to speak for the whole industry but from our point of view we see a rising opportunity in the domestic market. We are already talking to Chinese firms that receive a lot of western visitors, particularly in the export and hospitality industries, and have some exciting partnerships in the pipeline. There is also a growing market of Chinese people visiting English-speaking countries and while this is, at present, mostly in tour groups or with face-to-face interpreters it is starting to change. Chinese people in, for example, the US can call our toll-free number to get an interpreter to help them communicate with English speakers. So the whole setup can work just as well in reverse. Challenges include helping people who speak English as a second language or people who have quite strong regional accents. Our team is trained in listening to different accents; one of them has even spent a year in Newcastle, England which to my mind has one of the more difficult regional accents for a non-native English speaker to understand. Another perceived challenge is the rise of electronic translators, some of which are dedicated devices and some of which are software based and can be downloaded to a smart-phone or PDA. I say perceived challenge because at the moment these really can't be compared to having a human-being at the end of the phone line and despite huge advances in technology, true artificial intelligence and electronic interpersonal skills are some way off, if indeed possible at all. Another possible challenge is the rise in foreigners learning Chinese and Chinese people learning English but again I think we are a long way off this trend affecting our industry. GK: Why did you choose Kunming as your base for mainland operations? GS: That's a question I get asked a lot. Apart from the fact that I was living here already and am recently married to a Kunming girl, it's actually a great place to set up a business. You don't have the huge expenses associated with running a business on the coast and because it's a university town there are actually a large number of highly educated and ambitious graduates. Of course it's easier and quicker to find staff in Beijing or Shanghai but the first-tier cities have significant staff retention problems. It takes us a little bit longer and a little bit more effort to find the best people here but we know that having trained them they are going to stay with us for the long haul and have opportunities for promotion within the company. Financially it makes sense too – I'm proud that we are one of the best employers in Kunming – it would be harder to offer such attractive packages to employees in Shanghai. Finally, from the customer's perspective we could be anywhere in China. Our 400 phone number costs no more than a local call from all over China and our team is very well-traveled and knowledgeable about all of the business and tourist destinations in the country. GK: What is the strangest or most memorable call ChinaONEcall has received? GS: That's a tricky one, some of them are probably too sensitive to mention here. However, we once had someone in the US who needed to talk to his Chinese mother-in-law in Canada to arrange a surprise party for his wife. So the call went from North America to China and back to North America again via an IP calling card service. What should have been a very cheerful phone call turned into a screaming row as the wife overheard the conversation and got angry that her husband was secretly talking to her mother. ChinaONEcall can be reached at 4006 88 66 99 Tags: Asian Games, ChinaONEcall, Greg Sinclair, Guangzhou, interpreting, Olympics, Shanghai, telecoms, tourism, translation, UK, US, World Expo
With Chinese New Year just around the corner – this year it lands on February 7 – China is preparing for a major surge in domestic travel. At the beginning of next month, millions of students, soldiers, workers and businesspeople throughout the country will meet up with family and friends to celebrate the end of winter and the coming of spring. More than 22 million air passengers are expected to fly China's skies this holiday - which is known in China as Spring Festival. The General Administration of Civil Aviation of China (CAAC) has announced that it might add temporary domestic flight routes to handle the spike in air travel. CAAC said it will 'strictly control' air traffic in Kunming's Wujiaba International Airport plus other major airports in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Chengdu to ensure everything goes smoothly during the holiday. Air travel may be increasingly popular with Chinese travelers, but the majority of people returning home will get where they're going via China's extensive rail network. China's Ministry of Railways is expecting nearly 179 million rail travelers – almost the population of Brazil – this holiday season. The ministry is adding 311 trains to the normal national rail schedule to absorb the increase in travelers. Kunming's main rail station is anticipating a major influx in ticket buyers this month, to address the demand for train tickets it is building 40 temporary ticket windows in front of the station. The windows will sell tickets 24 hours a day beginning Wednesday of this week and lasting through the holiday. Aside from increased travel, the Chinese New Year season is also a time for higher food and drink prices as a large percentage of China's billion-plus population spend the holidays focused on eating and drinking. This year rising food prices are putting more pressure on holiday budgets than usual. Even beer as well as baijiu and other traditional Chinese wines spirits are feeling the bite of inflation as alcohol prices in China are experiencing unprecedented price hikes, blamed on rising costs for grain, coal and transport. Image: clzg.cn Tags: Beijing, CAAC, Chengdu, Chinese New Year, Guangzhou, Shanghai, trains, travel |
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