What have you been told to do during the SCO Summit?

Someone just sent us this joke (in Chinese) about the upcoming Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Summit in Shanghai. The rough translation is:

A Real Shanghai

The SCO Summit will be held in Shanghai in June 2006.

There are 20 minutes left before the start the meeting but none of the country leaders are here. The journalists are waiting. President Nie of the SCO Summit Committee started dialing numbers:

“Where is Putin?!”

“Mr. Putin is on Yan’an Lu highway heading east. Maoming Lu entrance is closed. land traffic is jammed.”

“Where is Nazarbayev?”

“I have talked to Premier Nazarbayev. We are going to drive to Zhangjiang and take the subway to Lujiazui. Please drive away the thieves and beggars in the metro station!”

“Where is Karimov?”

“President Karimov called a cab but it’s not the right time for taxis to get into Yan’an Lu tunnel. He tried to get through the Fuxing Lu tunnel, but a car has broken down in there now. Please give instructions!"

“Where is Rakhmonov?”

“President Rakhmonov insists to save money by getting a 10 kuai taxi, and we can't find any!”

“F*ck! Tell him all Shanghai taxi start from 11 kuai now! Empiricism really causes trouble! Where is Akayev?”

“President Akayev arrived at the meeting already, but he was stopped and photographed by two citizens when he was jaywalking. Now he is changing foreign currency for the fine. Please inform us of the latest foreign currency rate, we can’t short shrift the traffic police”

2006, a real Shanghai that can’t be seen by Westerners even though all Shanghainese are all free on holiday.

We are not really sure how we should feel after reading this joke. Anyhow, this Shanghaiist was just informed yesterday that the office is going to work until June 13, next Tuesday, and will then be closed for five days starting from June 14-18. This unexpected holiday is all because of the upcoming SCO Summit in Lujiazui. As far as we know, government run enterprises and institutes are all getting this holiday, and there will be traffic control at certain areas (we guess that will be Lujiazui and Hongqiao?) to make sure the summit goes well.

A friend of Shanghaiist, whose office is located in Hongqiao, told us that police just raided their office, warned that they must take off June 14-16. If they really have to work, they have to apply for overtime work with an ID card and a police officer will be sent to the office to oversee this work. Also, they are not allowed to open the window during or hang laundry outside during this time.

Rumours are also flying around that there will be a lot of plainclothes police hanging around Hongqiao area -- more than the usual, already high number -- and anyone doing anything suspicious on the officials' car route ... well ... we are sure he or she will have a nice state-owned room in which to enjoy the "holidays" and many days beyond.