Cleaner water coming to Shanghai?Besides all the subways and road renovations, one of the things we can look forward to come Expo time is... cleaner water? According to officials from the local water bureau, the city is about to fulfill a three-year water-purification plan that will produce cleaner rivers and lakes by the end of next year. Since 2000, the city has established 50 sewage plants capable of processing 672 tons of water each day and earlier this year, they began an anti-pollution drive targeting 33,000 local small rivers. All of which means: we might actually be able to touch Suzhou Creek's water one day without turning into slime.
China's military website attacked 230 million times in first monthThese statistics are mind numbing: China's new military website, http://www.mod.gov.cn, was attacked 230 million times by hackers in the first month of operation. The site, which is the government's last attempt at providing a level of transparency regarding their immensely secretive military buildup, was never successfully hacked into. If the numbers are correct, then that means over 5,000 hacks were attempted every minute: if that was just in the first month, how much do you think it's increased since then?
Snowy morning in Shanghai, or so they sayShanghai Daily tells us that earlier this morning, snow sprinkled Shanghai for the first time this winter... just days later than they thought it would. We must've missed it, since by the time we woke up and got out in the street, there was nothing for us but damp sidewalks and dreary clouds. Alas - if anyone took pictures, we'd love to see 'em. But with Shanghai's first snow comes news that the cold front should be passing - temperatures will be rising to 9C and hover at around 10C for the weekend. Yippee.
Shanghai records serious swine flu patient No. 3Shanghai has now recorded its third serious case of swine flu - a 43-year-old local man who is now in stable condition at the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center. According to Shanghai Daily, the city has detected 1,538 cases of H1N1 since the first patient in the city was reported in May. So far, there have been no deaths directly related to the flu, but experts expect an increase in serious cases soon. Altogether, China has recorded 43 deaths and 67,000 infections related to H1N1 thus far, which actually isn't bad when compared to the toll the flu's taken on the United States.
Shanghai puts out a lot of (CO2) gasWhile we've already heard many times over how much carbon dioxide emissions China produces, but we were still shocked by how much comes just from Shanghai. Apparently, our city throws out 5,400 tons of CO2 equivalent a year - as much carbon as two Sydneys and three Tokyos. Granted, we've also got five times the amount of people as Sydney (and twice the amount of Tokyo), but geez louise. Experts from Tongji University's College of Environmental Science and Engineering said that restructuring industry would help lower our footprint, since over 60% of fumes are industry-based.
Leonid meteor shower todayStargazers rejoice: the yearly Leonid meteor shower will be visible in Shanghai, starting at 4PM and ending early Thursday morning. It will be the strongest Leonid shower since 2001, with about three hundred visible falling stars per hour. Remember your telescope, though: many of the meteors won't be visible to the naked eye.
China to subsidize 294 solar power plantsIn more environmental news, the government has decided to subsidize 294 solar power plants which will generate 642 megawatts of power. The subsidies are part of China's "golden sun" plan, a project meant to find alternative energy sources. As Obama made carbon emissions a key point in his town hall meeting with students earlier today, it looks as if Hu Jintao will have some bragging points.
Liu Xiang wins gold at Asian Athletics ChampionshipsLiu Xiang unsuprisingly cruised to victory in the 100m hurdle at yesterday's at yesterday's Asian Athletic Championships. Despite the rain, Liu clocked in his win at 13.5 seconds, securing his position at next year's World Cup in Croatia. If he wins there, he'll have won the "grand slam" of sprinting, making him only the second sprinter to do so. Good job, Golden Boy!
Pakistan admits to receiving weapons-grade Uranium from ChinaThe father of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, has admitted to the Washington Post that the country received enough uranium to make two atomic bombs, as well as blueprints for making them, from China in 1982. The deal had supposedly been arranged by the late Mao Zedong years earlier: though the United States has known about the blatant proliferation for decades (and even confronted China about it once), it has never sought sanctions on China. This news makes an interesting preface to the talks on nuclear proliferation that will be a crucial part of talks between Obama and Hu Jintao.
Obama's town hall in Shanghai questionableObama's short time in our city might be cut a little shorter. The American President has been hoping to make a town hall styled forum with Chinese students a focal point of the trip. However, the government's desire to censor the event has caused problems: the event has been cut from 1,000-1,500 students to a mere 600, media may be banned (excluding CCTV, of course), and the event may not be broadcast live. The event seems close to cancellation: depriving the American President the chance to directly speak with the Chinese people, and making Beijing seem like it wants to keep him under wraps, would make a poor start to Obama's first trip to China.
Shanghai government to release expense budget figuresIn a surprising bid for transparency, the Shanghai government is planning to make its expense budget public for the first time ever. According to the Shanghai Municipal Finance Bureau, all collection, distribution and application of special funds, administrative and institutional unit revenues, as well as the welfare and sports lottery revenues, will be open for viewing by the public. While it's still quite rare, Shanghai's not the first county to lift a veil on their money spending. Guangdong Province recently released their expense budgets for free download by the public. The response was so great, it crashed the government's website.
ObaMao to be shelved while Obama's in townOh no! Remember those lovely mash up shirts of ObaMao, the combination of everyone's favorite pseudo-socialists? Turns out that the government is making stores selling the shirts and swag in Beijing take them off the shelves while the US President is in town. What a shame: we've been dying to know what he would think of them! More importantly, where on earth (specifically in Shanghai) can we find these?
Disneyland Farmers think more buildings = more moneyYeah, it's sad but true: in order to build Disneyland Shanghai, a lot of villagers in Chuangsha will have to be forcibly relocated in order to free up space for the 4.12 square kilometer theme park. Like usual, the government has promised to provide those relocated with monetary compensation, but hasn't revealed exactly how much they'll give out. As a result, farmers have begun to erect new buildings overnight to try to drive up the value of their land. One part entrepreneurial, one part sad: but with the government notoriously bad at providing displaced people with fair settlements, who can blame them?
Man uses human blood plasma to irrigate cropsGross news from around China: netizens and health officials have been in an uproar over a recent post from a farmer in Chengdu who used blood plasma taken from a local hospital to water his fields. Upon visiting a friend in the hospital, the man found a packet of blood plasma discarded in the trash, so he took it home and proudly posted pictures of himself on the internet mixing the plasma with water and claiming that the protein inside will help his crops grow. The Chengdu Health Ministry said it was aware of the situation, and would do its best to find those at fault for improperly disposing of perfectly good plasma. Click the link for disturbing pictures!
Metro Line 7 opening delayed past NovemberAw shucks. Metro Line 7, which was supposed to open sometime this month, will likely have its debut delayed since seven out of the line's 28 stations are still under construction. Metro officials said yesterday that they couldn't “rush to a completion,” but promised that it would be running by Expo time. Line 7 will go from Pudong to Baoshan District and is expected to carry about one million passengers a year.
Shanghai cracking down on piracy, sort ofMuch like China's ongoing efforts against actual piracy, it seems that the government has been taking steps to curb piracy of the intellectual variety. Shifting from targeting individual sellers to wholesalers and manufacturers, Shanghai's "Cultural Inspection Team" has apparently confiscated over 20,000 pirated cds and 5,000 books in 246 "significant" busts in preparation for the Expo. If you do the math, though, that's about 100 cds/books per bust, which doesn't seem that significant to us. As it seems the goods aren't even made in Shanghai, we're not altogether too impressed.
Monitors remind classmates that love is publically unacceptableShanghaiist recently caught on to Forestry University’s attempts to clean up its campus’ ‘lovebird problem', but by what standards does this smooch patrol hold itself? Well, by employing hall monitors whose job is to ruin the mood (in high school we would have been so good at this job), the Communist Youth League has unloaded a heavy task on student volunteers- as if their classmates didn’t hate them enough already - to curb any public kissing, hugging, or even sitting that seems to suggest anything other than “Let’s just study together until we get married ”. However, rather than openly chastising couples and causing everyone involved to lose face, the monitors are instructed to ‘stare silently’ at the canoodling students until they regain their sense of public decency. According to Shanghai Daily “patrol members had been assaulted, either verbally or physically.” Perhaps that’s because couples mistook the monitor’s silent gaze as voyeurism.
North Korean, South Korean navies exchange fireUh oh! Something is afoot - two navy patrol boats from our peninsula-ed friends to the East began shooting at each other near Daecheong-do, an island about 125 miles west of Seoul earlier today. According to South Korean news service Yonhap, fighting erupted when a DPRK navy boat crossed the Northern Limit Line. South Korea issued warning broadcasts, and then fired some warning shots when the broadcasts were ignored. “It was then that the North Korean patrol boat attacked our high-speed patrol boat... Our ship returned the fire," according to the military statement. We wonder what this will do for next weeks bilateral nuclear weapons talks, of which China has a great part.
Is Jay Chou dead again?!?Well, according to Indonesian media he is, but in reality, though, Jay Chou is doing just fine. News sources claimed that the Taiwanese pop singer had died of a drug overdose, but his record label quickly dispelled the rumors: he's just in America filming "The Green Hornet." It's not the first time that Jay Chou has supposedly died: in 2004, a Chinese website claimed that he had been run over by a truck, but that obviously wasn't true either. This attempt wasn't any more convincing: though we love him, we know deep down that Jay Chou is definitely not of death-from-overdose musician status. Shanghaiist's prediction for the next Jay Chou death hoax: death by green hornet sting.
China executes 9 for Xinjiang RiotsNine people were executed yesterday for their involvement in the Xinjiang riots earlier this summer. Among the nine, two were ethnically Han, and the other seven were of Uighur descent. The exiled World Uighur Congress denounced the executions as unfair and unjust, claiming that the government had denied the prisoners a final visit from their families. In addition, twenty more people were indicted in relation to eighteen deaths during the riots.
Pandas need time alone tooOkay, we know we''ve talked about pandas already today, but it's only because we can't get enough of them, and we think that's true for most people in China. But apparently, if you're a panda, you could use some time off, especially if people are constantly expecting you to mate. Researchers at the Wolong Panda Reserve in Sichuan are going to try and separate Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan for a month to see if absence really does make the heart grow fonder. At the very least, they'll live up to their names when they're reunited, as tuanyuan (团圆） means “to reunite.” Maybe that's where they got the idea to separate them from?
Olympic condoms are faster, higher, strongerAttention, all y’all who want to capture some of that Olympic vitality: 5,000 official condoms distributed to athletes during the Beijing Olympics are finding their way to the auction block November 29 for…ahem…hard core collectors. The bidding price for the condoms, in special packages printed with “faster, higher, stronger,” (the Olympic motto), will start at 1RMB. Officials believe that most of the condoms were not in fact used, but taken home by participants as souvenirs - let’s hope these are the ones up for bid.
No Sharks for Yao MingOh no, it looks like Yao Ming hasn’t bought the Shanghai Sharks after all. Instead, all they’ve signed on to be is an “entrusted investor” for the next five years. Despite agreeing in July to transfer stakes in the Sharks to Yao, it seems that those stakes will now be sold on the open market. But those who worry that this just means even more disappointments for Sharks fans needn’t: Yao has said that even though he’s not the owner, he’ll be doing everything he can to improve the team’s performance.
Google Pollution Maps of ChinaA blogger out of Fujian has compiled an open-source google map that places major pollution sites around china. While similar sources have existed in the past, this is the first one that allows other users to contribute sites with pollution problems. The map, which was created by Guo Baofeng, has attracted a lot of interest on Chinese BBS' and Forums: check it out while you still can, because you never know when it could suddenly disappear.
Syphilis boom fueled by richer migrant workersThe Chinese economy boom has helped increase numbers of both great and not-so-great things. On one hand, you've got rising literacy rates, development and internet penetration. On the other hand, you also get more pollution, city overcrowding and... syphilis. According to the World Health Organization, cases of the STD are now growing by 30% a year, and it's all because of migrant workers who now make enough money to hire more prostitutes. All the more reason to take up Zhang Feng's proposal and give them sex toys, eh?
Cold Front almost over alreadyShanghaiist has spent the past few days bundled up inside to avoid the front that has chilled our city virtually overnight. Good news, though: temperatures are supposed to rise to 20 degrees Celsius tomorrow, and should be even warmer by the weekend. It'll be as if this cold spell never really happened, right?
Report: Shanghai Disneyland almost a done deal (again)With the recent news about Beijing giving Disneyland Shanghai the go ahead, it looks like it's only a matter of time before the mouse lands in town. After a recent meeting of the City's International Business Leaders Advisory Council, Mayor Han Zheng declared that a decision could be announced as early as next week. But between the lines, we all know that's code for unequivocal approval, right? After all, it's not like the Shanghai government would announce a greenlight on Disneyland and then snatch it away last minute. Oh wait.
iPhone now in China, whoop de doo.So the iPhone was finally launched in China after much rumor mongering and fanfare and... well, it seems like most everyone who wanted an iPhone already has one. While the launch party in Beijing was a rousing success, actual first day sales were nowhere near as wild as in the U.S. or Japan. About what you could expect, we guess, from a crippled product (no WiFi) that came months and months after it was released elsewhere. Especially if it has turned out to be actually more expensive than its gray market brethren.
Annual disposable income increases by 8% in ShanghaiDespite fears of the great economic recession destroying China's economy with the rest of the world, the average disposable income for Shanghai residents rose 8% since last year to 21,871RMB per person. That only counts for city residents, but even those not lucky enough to have the right hukou have still seen their annual salary raise: the average income for city dwellers is 15,051 RMB, which is 4.4% higher than last year. We've got some ideas, but what do you think all that extra pocket cash is being spent on?
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