Why Starbucks has succeeded in China where others have failed
38-year-old self-proclaimed virgin creates website to stop youngsters from having sex
Watch: 79 smuggled turtles seized at Shanghai airport
Last Friday's Kim Jong-un assassination rumours
Air pollution in Shanghai & the rest of China: What you need to know
AP: Cadbury has recalled 11 types of China-made candy in Hong Kong although it has not been confirmed that melamine has been found in those products. Supermarkets have also been pulling Oreo's, M&M's and Snickers off the shelves after Indonesia found traces of melamine in those products. Will these products be taken down in China next? (Update: Cadbury is pulling its chocolates off shelves on the mainland now)
Tony Cheng of Al-Jazeera visits an old woman in Tokay village in Xinjiang who is only now experiencing electricity in her home for the first time in her life, thanks to the new solar cells that have been installed in homes around the region.
"Carrefour SA, Europe's biggest retailer, said its dairy sales in China fell by 50 percent after government tests showed chemical tainting of milk products. "
58 years after Chairman Mao lamented in 1950 that China couldn't even put a potato in space, Chinese astronaut Zhai Zhigang, 41, has successfully completed China's first spacewalk. Blogging for China offers an English translation of the dialogue that went on between the astronauts and the mission control back in Beijing, including the tense moment when they thought the orbital module had caught on fire. Shenzhou 7 has since landed safely back in Inner Mongolia and the next goal now is to build a space station by 2020.
Nine punished for herbicide leak
As we told you earlier, mysterious fumes that turned out to be caused by leaking herbicide, spread through Shanghai earlier this month, sending two women to hospital. The source of it was found to be three hundred kilograms of liquid herbicide, that leaked from a valve at the Shanghai Pesticide Factory. According to Shanghai Daily nine people from the factory including the general manager, have been fired because of this incident. The paper also notes that during the investigation of this case "the Shanghai Commission of Safety Production found 82 unqualified production units, including some plants that are producing dangerous chemicals".
This is just such a classic you'll have to read the entire AP story for yourself:
A news story describing a successful launch of China's long-awaited space mission and including detailed dialogue between astronauts launched on the Internet Thursday, hours before the rocket had even left the ground.more ›
Just when Mengniu's CEO is telling everyone that almost everything is back to normal, two gorillas are suspected of becoming the latest victims of tainted milk. Reuters Newswires quoted a Hangzhou newspaper, reporting that the gorillas, both from Hangzhou Wildlife World in eastern Zhejiang province and aged one and three, had been diagnosed with crystallisation in their urine:
Both had been fed with milk powder made by Sanlu Group, at the heart of the scandal in which four infants have died and thousands have fallen sick with kidney stones.more ›
A 33-year-old Filipino woman has just been arrested Tuesday for trying to smuggle an undisclosed volume of heroin at Pudong airport. This follows last September when a 25-year-old Filipino man was also arrested in Pudong for sneaking into Shanghai with 1.2 kilos of heroin in his hand-carry luggage (!!!). In both instances, suspects boarded Cebu Pacific flight number 5J678 which flies Manila-Shanghai.
Reuters reports that the use of melamine is "rampant among farmers and feed-ingredient manufacturers". The words of Sun Erwu,a feedmill owner in Hebei province, which is at the centre of the milk powder scandal, are enough to send tingles down our spine, and raise questions over what is happening to the entire food chain in China:
"It is like a chain... If cows are fed with poor feed and produce lower-protein milk, dairy plants will not accept the milk, so many add melamine," Sun told Reuters on the sidelines of a grains conference.more ›
The Shanghai Daily reports that a 20 year old man, apparently dissatisfied with his genital surgery killed a 71 year old doctor by stabbing him with a pair of scissors in Zhejiang. He has since been detained after attacking two others in the rampage. The murder was committed at the Hangzhou Changzheng Medical Outpatient Department.
More photos on the Shanghaiist Contribute page. To see your photos on our Contribute page, use Flickr and tag your photos “shanghaiist”. Or you can email your photos to photos@shanghaiist.com and they will automatically appear on our site (and here).
Shanghai couple sues for inauspicious words on wedding photographs
A couple whose wedding photo album came with the characters "no freedom, no future" printed on it has sued the photo studio. According to China Daily, the studio explained their actions by saying that the words "were merely pointing out that some freedoms are lost with marriage and meant no ill will to the marriage". After mediation, the photo studio agreed to pay RMB12,500 to the couple.
We're sure this latest visa report from Reuters will be like music to the ears of some of you who have been waiting a few months to hear this:
Visa curbs on foreigners travelling into China via Hong Kong as part of a security clampdown during the Beijing Olympics will be lifted next month, a major travel industry association said yesterday.more ›
Photo from Marc van der Chijs
France 24 asks if the Beijing Olympics will have any longlasting environmental legacy. The answer may have come earlier than expected: the smog has come back to envelop Beijing almost as soon as the restrictions on drivers and factories were lifted.
Looks like our earlier warning to not eat or drink anything with dairy content for the time being bears repeating. Singapore has now found traces of melamine in White Rabbit candies, wildly popular throughout Asia. The Straits Times reports:
Singapore's Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA) said samples of White Rabbit-brand Creamy Candy imported from China were contaminated with melamine, an industrial chemical that can cause kidney stones and lead to kidney failure.more ›
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We were out and about in the rain all of yesterday and had no idea a "mega thunderstorm" was brewing out there in another part of town and people were getting killed in it. According to Xinhua, this was a "once-in-a-century thunderstorm":
A migrant worker was crushed to death and 14 were injured after a thunderstorm hit part of Shanghai on Saturday afternoon, municipal flood authorities said.more ›
First the tainted milk, now toxic chairs?
Recliners made by the Dongguan-based company Linkwise are causing cases of eczema, stinging allergic rashes and infections among French customers who bought them. The problems were traced to the use of the chemical, dimethyl fumarate, which is used to prevent mould and fungus on the chairs. The French distributor Conforama has since severed its business ties with Linkwise and told its suppliers to stop all use of the chemical. Out of the 38,000 Linkwise chairs it sold, it says customers have returned about 800 so far. A rash of cases has also cropped up in Britain, Sweden and Finland. One British attorney is now representing 1,300 customers and suing Linkwise for compensation. [Source]
The President of China Investment Corp, Gao Xiqing, has made his way to the U.S. with Wei Christianson, CEO and Managing Director of Morgan Stanley China, sparking rumours that the Chinese sovereign wealth fund may buy up to 49% of the beleaguered investment bank. Gao has been scheduled to meet Morgan Stanley executives in San Francisco after the New York-based company plunged 42% after Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy and Merrill Lynch sold itself to Bank of America.
Adding to the list of Chinese social networking service providers like Xiaonei and Tencent, kaixin001.com (开心网) has confirmed to have secured USD4-5million in venture capital today from Northern Light Venture Capital headed by Feng Deng, one of the top 10 Chinese venture capitalists in 2007. Launched in April this year, the SNS that is still a private beta already boasts over 20 million active users. Rick Martin (@pandapassport) reports on CNET that the Chinese Facebook clone includes features such as a photo uploading, blogging & micro-blogging platform, music sharing and 1GB online storage space.
Okay, stop drinking milk now, all of you, or anything that has any form of dairy content in it — unless it comes from some foreign brand. While four babies have already died from Sanlu's tainted milk powder, and over 6,000 remain sick (including over 150 critically ill), the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ) has now announced that liquid milk sold by three top Chinese producers has also been found to be tainted with melamine. From AP:
A report posted on the agency's Web site said test results show nearly 10 per cent of samples taken from Mengniu Dairy Group and Yili Industrial Group - China's two largest dairy companies - contained up to 8.4 milligrammes of melamine per kilogramme.more ›
“I can't explain myself, I'm afraid, Sir, because I'm not myself you see.”
Photo from Chad Ingraham: Has the Shanghai real estate market reached its peak?
Valleywag points us to an interesting article in the Financial Times which highlights five markets in which Google plays second fiddle to local rivals — Russia, the Czech Republic, Japan, Korea and, you guessed it, China.
This Saturday, September the 20th, a temporary permission that allows guide dogs in public places will come to an end. The permission, that dated from June 20th was issued due to the Paralympics. After this date, guide dogs will be regarded as ordinary pets and not allowed on public transportation.
Video: polskipekin follows three groups of artists around Beijing and asks them for their take on what it means to be painting in a rapidly evolving China [h/t Jeremy Goldkorn of Danwei]
- Zhang Zhenling, Sanlu's vice president, has made a public apology (see video on right) but did not explain why the company took so long to take proper measures in letting the public know about the contamination.
- A second baby has died and 1,253 infants have been diagnosed with illnesses linked to the contaminated milk powder. The Health Ministry expects a 'possibly rising' toll. (Update: Three babies have died, more than 6,244 others have fallen ill, with 158 strickened with kidney failure)
- Sanlu Group has sacked Tian Wenhua, the board chairwoman and general manager of the group. Tian has also been stripped from her post as the secretary of the corporation committee of the Communist Party of China.
Mysterious fumes sicken Shanghai
The Shanghai Daily reports that a pungent smell spread through the city yesterday evening, causing nausea among its inhabitants. Two women were taken to hospital after breathing in the fumes. According to eyewitnesses the fumes smelled something like "pesticide or leeks". The source has not yet been discovered, and the Environmental Protection Bureau is still investigating.
Tourists bring nuclear waste souvenir back to China
Three tourists from Xinjiang province returned from their trip to Kyrgyzstan with a lump of depleted uranium. They had bought the radioactive material as a souvenir at a local flea market. This kind of waste can be found at disposal sites left from Soviet-era uranium mining in Kyrgyzstan. After returning to China, they took the uranium to an expert at Tsinghua university to have it identified. The university staff called the police when they realized what it was, however, charges will not be pressed as a the men obviously didn't know what they had bought.
Taiwan-based Israeli blogger Filination records several instances of China-bashing by Israeli TV personalities which he says are signs of a widespread Sinophobia that is "now all over Israeli media". The first instance is a long anti-China tirade by Keren Noybah of Channel 1’s News Today in which she describes the Chinese government as a "dictatorship in the worst possible form" and accuses all who watch the Olympic opening ceremony of "participating in an act of deception". The second instance is a dialogue that involves Avri Gilad (from the same morning show) who had this to say before the Olympics opened:"I wish they would cancel it. I wish no country would participate. It’s outragous for anybody to go to China. It’s the worst scandal possible." The last instance involves TV commentator Oren Nehari who during Channel 1's live telecast of the Olympic opening ceremony noted how the movements of the thousands of performers in the taichi segment of the show reminded him of the Nazis. His comment provoked a stinging rebuke from Professor Wang Yu (王宇), lecturer of Israeli history and culture at the Peking University. While she was right that Oren Nehari made a remark that was uncalled for, we found all her reason lost in the emotionally-charged email and her threats to blow up the matter in the Chinese media if the broadcaster did not make an apology soon.
"The governor of north China's Shanxi province stepped down Sunday over a landslide that killed at least 254, the second time he has fallen from grace over a major scandal."
Anxious parents queue up yesterday afternoon at Sanlu Milk's main distribution centre in Ruzhou, Henan (河南汝州) to return the infant milk powder they bought from the company. The queues spilt over into the streets and caused massive traffic jams.
Burnt man identified
The man who burnt himself to death on the Bund yesterday has been identified. According to Xinhua his name was He Rulong, a retired factory worker. The article gives no direct reason for his action, but mentions the facts that He was divorced, an alcoholic and that he suffered from severe back pains. It also notices that He worked in Xinjiang during the 1960s.
- Kongzhong has released its role playing game "Tian Jie Online" on China Mobile's Mobile Online Game Platform, the first of three mobile online games to be released on China Mobile's new game platform.
- Shanghai doesn't seem the ideal place to buy a MP4 Player, according to a report from Shanghai Administration for Industry and Commerce, 75 percent of MP4 Players on sale are substandard, with inadequate capacity and abnormal radiation leaks.
- Chinese e-trading site Taobao have blocked the search engines of Baidu, Google and Yahoo. According to the site, this move is to protect its customers from fraud. Some online merchants optimize their general search results pages through technical and commercial methods, with the aim of gaining higher rankings and attract consumers to click their links and pages. Taobao hopes to curb this by blocking the search engines.
- In a Beijing-inspired move to reduce traffic, Shanghai civil servants will not be allowed to drive their cars on certain days of the week, decided according to their cars' license plate numbers.
- This Tuesday, government officials declared that more than RMB 4 billion will be invested in a move to improve Pudong New Area, the site for the 2010 World Expo. Among other measures, 200 square meters in 25 old neighborhoods will be "reconstructed", ie., torn down and replaced with skyscrapers.
- In a crackdown this Thursday cabbies who refused to drive customers to destinations in the Lujiazui area were named and shamed, as well as fined and cut off from work for 15 days. Some taxi drivers have avoided driving in this area since the distances are considered too short or because traffic is slow.
From Xinhua News Agency:
"上海市警方确认，9月11日11时许，上海市外滩陈毅广场发生一起自焚事件，自焚者当场死亡。目前，死者身份及自焚原因正在查证之中。The Shanghai police has confirmed a self-immolation incident that happened at Chen Yi Plaza on the Bund at 11am on Sept 11. The self-immolator died on the spot. The identity of the deceased and the reason behind the action is being currently investigated."UPDATE: Xinhua has issued a longer story here. Tim Johnson of China Rises observes:
...censors are blocking all comment on the motives of the man on every website. Was he an activist of the Falun Gong banned movement? Was he a Tibetan Buddhist? How about a disgruntled property rights activist? Whatever the cause, there is a story there, and the government may not want the motive to come out. But at least it’s a step in the right direction to allow Xinhua to report the news.
Bronze medalist windsurfer Shahar Zubari and Israel's only medal recipient at the Beijing Olympics has stirred up a storm of controversy after referring to the Chinese as "scum" in an interview with 7 Yamim, a weekend supplement of the mass-market daily Yedioth Ahronoth. The comments made by the 20 year old athlete led the Chinese embassy in Israel to cancel the party it had planned in honour of Israeli athletes who had participated in the Beijing Games, and sent Israel's Culture, Science and Sport Minister Raleb Majadele scrambling to send an apology to the Chinese ambassador:
"I would like to condemn the irresponsible remarks made by Shahar Zubari," Majadele wrote.more ›
Western news outlets are rife with reports that Chinese officials in the Xinjiang province have imposed a set of heavy-handed restrictions on the observation of the month of Ramadan, the holiest month in the Islamic calendar. The restrictions are said to include, among others, a ban on fasting by government officials, Communist Party members, teachers and students, and measure to have men shave off their beards and women to remove their veils. AFP quotes from the websites of several county governments in the Xinjiang province:
"Faced with recent violent and disruptive activities by religious extremists, separatists and terrorists, we must... step up ideological education of religious leaders and followers," [from the Zhaosu county website]more ›
"Coca-Cola Co plans to seek approval under China's antitrust law for its $2.5 billion bid for top domestic juice maker Huiyuan, the final obstacle to what would be the largest foreign takeover of a local firm."
As we mentioned earlier, the start of school term has been followed by suicide attempts among the city's middle and high school students. Only yesterday, another two high school students attempted to end their lives but were saved.
Baby found in Bird's Nest
Yesterday, a newborn baby girl was discovered by a Paralympics spectator in the restrooms of Beijing's Bird's Nest. The mother, who seemed to have given birth in the bathrooms was not to be found. The baby was taken to hospital and declared to be in good health.
Shanghai to blare first ever city-wide air raid sirens since 1949
Don't be too surprised when Shanghai's air raid sirens sound city-wide for three minutes two Saturdays from now. It's not another national mourning period, but the city's first air raid alert in 59 years. The sirens will wail from 10 a.m. to 10:23 a.m. on September 20, China's National Defence Education Day, to "test equipment and raise public awareness". While drills have been held infrequently since 2000, the municipal government has given a new order for sirens all across the city to be sounded every year on this day. [Xinhua]
As part of the preparations for the Shanghai World Expo, the municipal government has marked the 600 day countdown by publishing a report on "uncivilized behavior" among locals. The report is based on an online survey in which over 5,000 Shanghai citizens were polled on what kind of behavior they consider annoying or rude.
Dalai Lama's brother dies, aged 86
The Dalai Lama's older brother Thubten J. Norbu died Friday in Indiana, USA. In exile in the US since 1959, Norbu had always voiced strong opposition to Chinese rule in Tibet and supported independence, not autonomy, for his homeland. When he was three, Norbu was recognized by a previous Dalai Lama as the reincarnation of the high lama Takster Rinpoche. Despite their stark differences in character, personality and political opinion, Norbu had always referred to his brother as "His Holiness" and leader of the Tibetans in interviews with the media.
Only one (or two) quake orphans adopted
Of the more than 500 children who lost their parents in the May 12th earthquake, only two have been adopted, the Washington Post reports. According to China Daily, however, only one child has been adopted. As many as 88 children are in temporary care, while the rest have moved in with relatives. Despite the earlier outpouring of grief and adoption enquiries after the earthquake, many of the children are unable to find adoptive parents because they are over 10 years of age and handicapped.
This report by France24 throws light on what migrant workers who are resident in big cities like Shanghai and Beijing but lack the proper hukou documents go through to put their children in school. The schools which will accept their children run outside of the state education system and charge a monthly fee of RMB100 — no small sum for parents on migrant worker salaries. Schools like the one featured in this report may soon become a thing of the past though as the government mulls changes to grant children of migrant workers full access to state education.
"Up to 5 percent of homosexuals in the city were infected, compared with 0.5 percent of women sex workers, said He Xiong, the Beijing Centers of Diseases Control and Prevention deputy director."
In a move to prevent suicide among the city's children more than 3.000 sixth grade pupils in 21 of Shanghai's middle schools will be asked to fill out questionnaires mapping their mental health, with the aim of finding out who might be considered potentially unstable. Those who are found to be at risk will receive psychological assistance from the East China Normal University's counseling center.
Murders and student suicides in Shanghai
Shanghai Daily reports a man killed 3 members of his family in a grocery store on Tongzhan Road, in Jiading's Fengbang Town. It appears he killed his wife and in-laws as a result of a domestic dispute and has since turned himself in. Meanwhile, ChinaSmack informs us that within a few days of the start of the new semester, four middle school students in Shanghai have committed suicide.
"Running Fan" motivates the Ministry of Education to change rules
The Peoples Daily reports the Ministry of Education has added new rules for primary school teachers to "take care of their students' safety" and "teachers should pay more attention to the health of students", spurred on by the public condemnation of secondary school teacher Fan Meizhong who ran for his life, leaving behind his students during the May 12 Sichuan quake. No word on what they'll do with errant teachers next. Will all teachers be expected to give up their lives for students when the next earthquake strikes?
UPDATE: The pigs have been banned from the art show.
Shanghai activists rescue 800 cats
About 800 cats escaped the Guangdong dinner tables this weekend, as activists from Shanghai Animal Protection Association freed them from "cat dealers" in Jiaxing, Zhejiang Province. The animals had been locked in small bamboo cages, stacked in a truck, and were to be transported to Guangdong. According to an activist quoted in the Shanghai Daily, about 1500 cats were on the truck, but activists only managed to release around 800 of them.
Tony Cheng of Al-Jazeera pays a visit to Zhongdian County (中甸县) — which was renamed Shangri-La (香格里拉县) in 2001 to attract tourists — and finds that it is far from the mystical, harmonious valley as described by the British author in his 1933 novel Lost Horizon. Although the town is located hundreds of miles away from Lhasa, where riots earlier this year threatened to spoil the show for the Beijing Olympics, a heavy, military presence is on hand to ensure that violence doesn't break out again.
"China has deployed more than 8,000 soldiers and military reservists to help search and rescue efforts in the south-west after an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.8 killed 38 people."
The verdict on accused cop-killer Yang Jia
Yang Jia was sentenced to death today for the murder of six and injuring four police officers. The Beijing resident attacked the Zhabei police station in an act of revenge after being detained for renting a stolen bike. This outcome was expected despite great public sympathy for Yang who was seen as a hero on the Internet and speculation as to whether he would receive a fair trial.
Tech super blog TechCrunch tells us of a rumour swirling around that China Mobile will be "offering the iPhone at a heavily subsidized discount in order to court the massive Chinese population". An article at it.hexun.com which cites a member of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) as its source says:
China Mobile will procure the handsets for their full price, and then on-sell subsidized handsets to consumers. The source explained that China Mobile could buy a 3G iPhone from Apple for USD 299 – an example price – and then sell the handset to users for USD 199, treating the additional USD 100 as compensation to Apple. [Translation by Marbridge Consulting]All fingers (and toes) crossed now that the above rumours are true!
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