Protest in Guangzhou: Why would you burn garbage?
Barbie Spa: For the cosmopolitan plastic beauty in you
Obama in China: Long gone, and still headlinin'
Lot o' Hotpot: Three Travellers
Cinematheque: Mulan is finally Chinese again! (and other film news)
We didn't end up going to Live Earth Shanghai, but we did manage to find this video on YouTube, where a bunch of Live Earth videos from around the world have been uploaded.
The most internationally famous star we got here in Shanghai was Sarah Brightman (in the video), while the rest of the performers were mostly from the world of Mandopop and Cantopop. We found one Chinese report that said that Sarah Brightman's performance suffered from technical problems, and she was forced to leave the stage until they fixed it. The rain was also a problem, but luckily the organizers had environmentally-friendly rain gear for everyone.
The subhead of that article was in itself quite interesting: 批评者称摇滚明星乘飞机来去，排放了更多温室气体 ("Critics say that the rocks stars flying around create more greenhouse emissions"). Of course, those planes would be flying regardless of whether there were rock stars on them, but anyhow ...
We didn't look at all the Live Earth videos, and maybe this is our particular age and demographic speaking, but we thought this Metallica performance of "Enter Sandman" in London rocked, even though the band members are starting to look their age and frontman James Hetfield's voice seemed precariously close to cracking.
Photo from ent.sina.com
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Although China's top leaders are concerned about global warming, the Chinese themselves seem not to mind a lot. That's the frst impression when i look at the figures: there was nobody. Only a few 1000 people here in SH whereas in the rest of the world it was massive. Or may be they are deeply concerned but they don't understand how concerts like these can change the world. So they don't go there. 70 years ago they used to fight to free China. That helped. But singing? Or may be the night was too expensive. Tickets in a range of 200-1000 rmb are quite high for some youngsters who earn not more than 3000-5000 rmb per month. Or maybe the stars were too commercial and couldn't be associated as really backers of this important citizen cause. Or maybe the organisers didn't cooperate with the local grass roots movement. Or maybe they should have done it in Beijing? Or .....
Around the world attendance and ticket sales were less than impressive, not to mention the chartered jets the stars and general VIPs were using to get around.
BTW, how much energy was required to put on a show to rally people around the global warming cause? Those shows were not light on electricity use.
This was just a big profit take by the global recording and marketing machine.
The Shanghai lineup blowed, it was too expensive and it was raining.
if the comments here are anyhow representative, then our lovely Chinese neighbors weren't so happy about the lineup either.