Chips, motherboards, cases, batteries, LCD screens, and connectors: neatly displayed like fruit and vegetables i(or should that be exotic spcies?)in store after store in the crowded warrens of Shenzhen’s Huaqiangbei market are all the ingredients you need to build a mobile phone.

Currently, this would in all likelihood be an affordable feature phone rather than a top of the line smartphone, but Android and no doubt Windows 7 mobile based devices are on the way, and, besides, the low cost mobile phone market in both China and emerging countries such as India and Latin America is massive – over 100 million units a year.

During my constitutional morning stroll, I came across the rather grandly named Shenzhen City of Design nearby my hotel.

I say “grandly named” because it’s actually quite a small industrial estate comprised of a few office blocks featuring a rather eclectic mix of images, ranging from the professional stylized artwork of the complex’s logos to huge faces of creative geniuses like Einstein glowering down from the sides of the buildings to inspire us.

Following yesterday’s Lantern Festival, the Chinese New Year celebrations are well and truly over and all the colorful decorations are being cleared away (including these [formerly] auspicious oranges) as China gets back down to serious business.

I can’t help noticing that some “experts” are almost gleefully warning of a Dubai-style property bubble in China as real estate prices continue to rise in various cities throughout the country. But then how would they be able to make money without a crisis?

When I was in India I picked up a copy of William Dalrymple’s Nine Lives, the first travel book he has written in ten years and a welcome return to form.

In Nine Lives, Dalrymple explores the impact that India’s rapid modernization has had on the country’s multi-faceted spiritual life through “a collection of non-fiction short stories,” with each life “intended to act as a keyhole onto the way that each specific religious vocation has been caught and transformed in the vortex of India’s metamorphosis during this rapid period of transition."

Bangalore has always had power problems ever since I started visited it, but this time the situation seems to be much worse than ever.

Every day, the electricity goes off for at least five hours, and although we have a back-up power supply supported by a huge array of car batteries we have to be very careful in how we use it to make sure we can remain operational all day, such as turning off the air conditioning, using laptops rather than desktops wherever possible, and in extreme cases even turning out the lights. It can be a surreal experience typing away on your laptop in semi-darkness. 

The last time I came to Bangalore I managed to break a bone in my foot after ingloriously stepping into a pothole. This time I’m trying to be a lot more careful, though it’s not that easy amid the tremendous amount of construction that is taking place in this part of the city - not to mention the torrential traffic.

Still, when I get back to the hotel in the evening I can escape all the chaos and noise in a room called Xanadu. This may not quite be the “stately pleasure-dome” of Coleridge’s famous poem, but it’s a pleasant enough place to stay in - not least because it has its very own private garden where I can smoke as I enjoy the fresh evening air. (I know that to many people this may sound like an oxymoron.)

I’d like to wish all my readers a happy New Year of the Tiger, which arrives on Sunday 14 February.

As a result of the holiday the VIA offices in Taiwan will be closed all of next week. I’m hoping that the holiday will give me some time to start reinvigorating BrownKnows by adding more content and covering some different subject areas.  

Here are a couple of photos of the new VIA EPIA-P710-D Pico-ITXe expansion module that we announced last Thursday.

The module works in tandem with the Pico-ITXe-based VIA EPIA-P710 board, and features three Mini-PCI Express slots that can be used to integrate a wide variety of Wi-Fi, GSM, 3G/3.5G, GPS and GPRS modules into intelligent vehicle management devices for applications such as fuel management, active scheduling, advanced routing, asset monitoring and the latest emergency, safety and rescue features.

Sorry for the lack of updates this week. It’s been very busy as the old Lunar New Year winds down and everyone gets ready for the coming of the Year of the Tiger.

Here’s a short video showing the sights and sounds of the Beijing Imperial Academy just next to the Confucius Temple. This was where generations of promising young scholars were prepared for the ordeal of taking the incredibly rigorous Imperial Examinations.