Shanghaiist

Extra! Extra! Yang Xianyi, Howard French and Dong Jinyi

Elaine Chow — 2009-11-24T20:00:00+08:00

Photo from Showchina

Renowned Chinese translator Yang Xianyi has died at the age of 94. Yang, with his wife Gladys Taylor, translated such classics as the 18th century "A Dream of Red Mansions." [Associated Press]
According to a poll on the Economist, 88% of people believe that China is showing more leadership than America in fighting climate change. [Economist]
While David Brooks may have been impressed by China's strides into modernity, several New York Times readers were much less pleased. [New York Times]
Here's an advantage to being an old China hand: you could be up next for free inoculation against H1N1. [Global Times]
Columbia Journalism Review has been interviewing Howard French, former Shanghai bureau chief for the New York Times about the media's coverage of Obama's trip to China. Here's the first part, and here's the second. [Columbia Journalism Review]
Melissa Chan reports on how, despite the sweeping crackdown on criminal gangs in Chongqing, for some of the gang's victims, it's too little too late. [Al Jazeera]
GlobalPost interviews Dong Jinyi, the Chinese ambassador to Switzerland, about the Copenhagen Conference on climate change. [Global Post]

Two now executed over melamine milk scandal

Elaine Chow — 2009-11-24T19:30:00+08:00

Zhang Yujun and Geng Jinpin, who were both sentenced to death in January for their roles in the melamine milk scandal, are now executed. Both had tried to appeal their sentences, but had their appeals turned down in March. While the government has been gung-ho about throwing out harsh sentences against various players in the scandal - which sickened scores of infants across the nation and killed at least six - it's been less interested in investigating accusations that news of the tainting had been surpressed for fears of bad publicity during the Beijing Olympics.

China's auto industry booms as fuel demand drops

Cary Hooper — 2009-11-24T15:30:00+08:00

In some of the more baffling news we've heard in a while, it seems that China has enjoyed a large increase in car sales this year while the demand for gas has fallen. How does that work, exactly? Some experts imagine newer, more gas efficient cars are replacing older, less efficient ones, while other question whether the government is buying cars up to pump up the industry. Then again, it seems that national gas consumption statistics only focus on figures from the two major state refiners, which makes the whole situation even more obfuscating. We're wondering: as this trend continues, does this mean there will be more or less traffic jams?

Coming soon to a police checkpoint near you

Naomi Tudhope — 2009-11-24T14:30:00+08:00

Driving home late at night can be a scary experience: as drunk driving is on the rise, we find ourselves wondering: are those erratic cars weaving through traffic all drunk, or just reckless drivers? But fear not: Shanghai Daily informs us of a new invention in the works at Shanghai's Jiao Tong University that will help Shanghai's crackdown on drunk driving.

The invention is a little cap that can read a driver's brain waves, analyze them, and signal the police whether or not the driver is too drunk or tired to drive. If it works, it will revolutionize breathalyzers, and we're pretty confident it will quickly surpass its low-tech brethren as the ultimate party necessity.

Though it won't be completed for another two years, the police are down with the idea: it looks like it's difficult for them to get drunk drivers to take breathalyzer tests. Traffic cop Yu Dalei says "If drivers are unwilling to exhale in the alcohol breath tests, there's nothing we can do." We thought the police had a bit more power, you know, like at least being able to arrest people who resist them? Then again, a traffic cop is a traffic cop, but it's just silly to leave them powerless against drunk drivers.

There is an even grander idea in the works of installing this device into new cars, which could stop automatically if the driver was too impaired to drive. Hopefully these inventions will help todiscourage drunk driving around Shanghai and China, so we can all breathe a little easier on those late night cab rides, which are already life threatening enough as it is.

Shanghaiist Scrabble: Tonight!

Cary Hooper — 2009-11-24T13:30:00+08:00

Okay, let's get a few things straight. We love happy hours: you love happy hours. We love Cotton's: you love Cotton's. We love Scrabble: you love Scrabble, but probably not as much as we do. If we're off on any of that, you can take it up with us tonight as we spend the evening combining all three at our very own Shanghaiist Scrabble @ Cotton's!

As we've been graced with beautiful weather today, why don't you come on down, share a few drinks with us, and try and beat us at our own game of words? Plus, have we mentioned it enough times that you can win 250RMB of Cotton's vouchers? Better yet, you'll be crowned the king of Shanghaiist Scrabble champions??

In case you needed a rehash of the rules, click the jump. We'll see you there?

What: Shanghaiist Scrabble Happy Hour
Where: Cotton's on Xinhua Lu, 294 Xinhua Lu, near Fanyu Lu (新华路294号, 近番禺路)
When: Tuesday, November 24, 6 to 10 p.m.
Drinks: 2 for 1 on selected drinks
Entry: FREE!

Rules:

* Each Happy Hour drink now gets you five tiles. You can wait until you've got a couple orders under your belt - heck, we're not putting a limit on how many tiles you can come up to the board with - but just know that someone might take that triple word score from you if you wait too long.
* We'll be using the SOWPODS dictionary. If you don't know what that means, don't worry too much about it.
* You can come up to the board as many times as you like between 6pm and 10pm. But you can't make words consecutively, you'll have to wait until at least one other person has tried first.
* Team up if you want. We don't have a limit for how many friends you can beg for scrabble tiles, though that 250RMB voucher gets significantly smaller the more people you rope in.
* The person (or team) with the highest cumulative score at the end of the Happy Hour wins!

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Garbage burning protests: The online life of dissent

Cary Hooper — 2009-11-24T13:00:00+08:00

Yesterday's protest against a plan to build a garbage burning plant in the city of Panyu has sparked a lot of interest all over the internet. A fair amount of people showed up, and it seems like Sina has given a pretty optimistic writeup of the town hall event that sparked the protest. Mostly, though, this whole affair has piqued our interest in how the internet has integrated itself into the protests.

First and most interesting is the viral nature of the protests: we were able to both watch live streaming footage and tap into a deluge of tweets from a vast network of Chinese users all intimately interested in the issue at hand. We watched hundreds of tweets and retweets of protesters, some coming it by the hundreds each minute. It's a testament to the incredible power of the Chinese online community to say the least.

Yesterday's protest is also an interesting example of the government's method of censorship. The various articles we've found on Chinese news sources are pretty frank, though anodyne, about the protest and the reasons behind it. At the same time, the government has blocked a number of Twitter interfaces as a result of yesterday's tumult, which has become the method of choice for circumventing China's Great Firewall.

When you look at it, both sides have used the internet to their advantage in a battle that constantly moves on to different battlegrounds: the government blocks social networking platforms only to force netizens to find new ways around the Great Firewall. The western media has a number of write-ups of how enviornmental protests are emblematic of a middle class that's increasingly aware of the power of its own voice. We agree, but we're more fascinated by watching the massive online community come together and use its collective power to voice its opinion as events unfold.

We've found a youtube playlist of footage from the event (which you can also access through the video above), so you can get an idea of the actual protest, and if you can get on Twitter you can follow the ongoing discussions at the related Twitter feed

Extra! Extra! Bongs, booze and financial bubbles

Elaine Chow — 2009-11-23T18:30:00+08:00

Photo by kindsir

In one of the most hilarious pieces of news to hit the weekend, customs officials in Los Angeles stopped a shipment from China that was listed as Christmas ornaments but turned out to be... $2.6 million worth of bongs and pipes. Somebody hit that, man. [LA Times]
Daniel Gross waxes on about how companies in China have decided to solve their lack of export demand problem by *gasp* selling to the Chinese. [Slate]
Ooooh, the U.S. and China are getting cozier and guess what? India's getting J.E.A.L.O.U.S. [Financial Times]
The New Yorker recently profiled Donald St. Pierre Sr., who founded ASC Fine Wines in Beijing and became, "probably the single best-known businessman working in China." (Subscription only) [The New Yorker]
And Jim Boyce, Beijing blogger and drinks enthusiast, had a couple words to add on the subject of Donald. [Grape Wall of China]
Did the Chinese watch Obama's town hall in Shanghai? Apparently yes: of about 200,000 of the White House's live stream requests, 120,000 were from China. [The Atlantic]
Talk about Domino effect! The massive stimulus spending and easy credit lending to mainland Chinese has caused bubbles in its outlying neighbors. Hong Kong's housing prices have risen 30% this year and Macau gambling officials are trying their best to slow growth. [WSJ]
A Chinese dissident who tried to help parents protesting shoddy building practices in Sichuan has now been jailed for three years over allegations of "illegally possessing state secrets." [Reuters]

More tech companies supporting the GFW

Michael Sutich — 2009-11-23T17:30:00+08:00

Google and Yahoo have long been lambasted for the censorship policies they employ in China to appease the CCP, particularly when Yahoo handed over email information to party officials in order to convict a Chinese journalist. Now critics have shifted their attention to Microsoft's Bing search engine.

The site has been accused of sanitizing results - any searches in simplified Chinese are censored, not only in China but in the rest of the world as well. Microsoft first alleged that this was a glitch that has since been fixed, but now admits that it was a result of programmed search algorithms.

Funnily enough, Bing's not the only web app that's been hit with disapproval over its censorship collaboration policies. Just recently, alternative browser Opera has also been accused of kowtowing to the regime.

According to prolific China twitterer @mranti and Shanghai-based technology researcher Carsten Ullrich, Opera used to be a browser you could use to bypass the Great Firewall, since traffic runs over the company's servers. Not anymore. Now users in this country are greeted by a screen welcoming them to download a special China version. What adds insult to injury, at least according to Ullrich is:

...You don't even dare to admit it? No press release, no posting in a blog about that you are now blocking usage of the international version to your Chinese usage.

And the worst thing: you even pretend that this is a good thing! You dare to say that this was done for "better browsing experience". Bah, disgusting.

Indeed. We never really used Bing or Opera in the first place, but in light of these developments we highly doubt we'll be using it in the future.

Obama in China: Long gone, and still headlinin'

Cary Hooper — 2009-11-23T15:00:00+08:00

It's been a week since Obama first arrived in our great city, and we've done so much coverage on his short trip to the PRC that we're thinking we should start marking our time in relation to the president's visit: you know, Before Obama and After Obama.

In week one A.O., we've watched the press capitulate and rage some more for and against the quickly formed recaps and opinion pieces of last week. It's been a lot more rehashing of the same opinions, just with more breadth and depth. Of course, we like SNL news best, but here's some of the other articles on Obama in China making their way around the internet:

Diplomatic words: US Ambassador Jon Huntsman criticized the press for not realizing the actual progress made in the visit.
Tish Durkin of The Bullpen suggests that the Chinese view Obama's visit as successful for a number of reasons, all of which the American press has slighted: "The irony here is that, although the Chinese are the ones who get their information through the twin filters of propaganda and censorship, they are also the ones who seem to have a firmer grasp than Americans on what constitutes a realistic expectation. People in the street — at least those in the malls and market-stalls of Dalian, where I have been living — are giving Obama real credit."
James Fallows of the Atlantic has a five part series on the various aspects of the press' reportage, coming from a range of sources and running the gamut on expectations before and after the visit. It's called "Manufactured Failure," which should give you an inkling about the angle Fallows takes.
Adam Minter has a great article on Shanghai Scrap about the press' strife in the whole affair, and his take is pretty even handed and circumspective: "So why the “new era” revisionism? I’m not a Bush defender. But I do believe that some of the coverage of the Obama trip - and its emphasis on a “new era” (best exemplified by this overwrought piece by Peter Foster in the Daily Telegraph - is motivated by Bush fatigue, and a sympathetic desire to embrace Obama’s unilateralist diplomacy. Fine and good. But let’s be straight about it and - at the same time - not dismiss as “horse race afficionados” those who wonder whether it’s reasonable to expect some immediate benefits for the effort."
The Columbia Journalism Review has an interview with former New York Times Shanghai bureau chief Howard French, who takes a more realistic approach to handling expectations surrounding a presidental visit: "And now you’re in China on a three- or four-day trip and all of a sudden you’re having to weigh in on in important things and you don’t speak any Chinese and you don’t know any Chinese people and you’re in the security bubble of the president and you’re traveling from stop to stop on a stopwatch with the guy and being pumped all the time by the president’s aides—and this is true of all presidents—and subject to their spin and you’ve got these short deadlines and you’ve got to write these things. So they operate within those constraints. It’s a very difficult process, so I’m being critical of the press but I don’t see any obvious ways around that particular piece of things"
Finally, Evan Osnos of the New Yorker's Letter From China Column has a great writeup of the funny follies of the foreign press in China while they weren't fuming about the President.

Win some cash by greenify'n your balcony!

Cary Hooper — 2009-11-23T13:00:00+08:00

In the latest and potentially greatest attempt by the government to spruce up our lovely Shanghai before the expo, the government has started a "most beautiful balcony competition." And the best part? The winner gets 3,000 yuan!

But in case you thought this was just like any other gardening competition, you're in for a surprise. That's right: they have standards. High ones.

From Shanghai Daily:

"It's going to be hard," said Liu Weiguang, official of the bureau. "Judges will be composed of the experts of the city's garden authorities."
Besides the judges' votes, Internet voting will count toward the final result, the bureau said.

In order to make the competition more professional, applicants can get instruction from garden experts.

The contest is open to everyone who lives in Shanghai from now until December 15 and the result will be announced in March.

We actually love the idea: what better incentive could the government give Shanghaiers to care about the facades of their homes than money? Although we sincerely doubt the competition will turn the city into an eco-friendly Eden, we'll take any little bit of greenery we can get

Families protest mine workers' deaths

Cary Hooper — 2009-11-23T12:30:00+08:00

As the death toll from a mine explosion this weekend in Heilongjiang rose to 104, relatives of miners killed have begun to protest outside of the mine entrance. Though China's Coal industry has gotten safer (only 1,175 people died in mines in the first half of this year, down nearly twenty percent from last year), the constant reoccurrence of deaths from poor safety conditions is nothing more than a tragic leitmotif.

Protest in Guangzhou: Why would you burn garbage?

Cary Hooper — 2009-11-23T11:30:00+08:00

As a testament to the increasingly daring nature of Chinese citizens, people have come out in mass to voice their vehement dislike of a recent government policy. Considering China's harsh treatment of large scale public protests and the potential ramifications participating could have on individuals, we figure only the most egregious of political moves could bring together so many people in harmonious dissent. So what happened?

Guangzhou's government announced yesterday that the city was besieged by garbage: every day, the city generates over 12,000 tons of waste, only 7,000 of which can be handled within the municipality. Plus, the Xingfeng dump is going to be full in only two short years, leaving a short span of time to figure out what to do with all that garbage.

As far as we can tell, the reasoning from here goes like this: politicians had heard a lot about going green; someone might have mentioned the word "recycling;" a logical link was ignored; everyone decided to kill two birds with one stone and recycle the garbage by burning it for energy.

As part of the "Eleventh Five Year Plan" for Pearl River Delta development, the government stipulated that no less that 35% of energy be created by burning trash. Apparently the public didn't know about the garbage burning part: with all the vague talk about economic and scientific development in the vein of Jiang Zemin's "three represents," it seems that the average person missed the details on how exactly that change would come about. Or nobody thought it involved burning garbage, at least.

Needless to say, people aren't happy: a massive, angered crowd has formed and is marching towards the municipal government building. Protesters are chanting things like "step down, Lu Zhiyi!" and demanding to speak with high officials. The government has responded, of course, by lining up armed policemen and arresting the head of the village, who we assume organized this protest. So far, our favorite image is the iconic protester wearing a gas mask and holding a sign that says "Oppose garbage burning, protect the environment instead." Click the jump for an incredible live stream of the protest.

We'll provide updates at the story progresses: you can follow the live twittering by searching for the tag #pylj on Twitter.

Image from LEMONed @ Twitter

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This week in Shanghaiist

Elaine Chow — 2009-11-22T18:00:00+08:00

We went to the Jimmy Choo launch at H&M's flagship Huaihai Lu store.
We read up on a physics professor in Kunming who's gung-ho about UFOs.
We oohed and ahhed at the antics of a really great jump rope team in Shanghai.
We talked to Rich Medina before he played to a killer crowd at the Shelter.
We found out that New York City's Sad Panda was a 62-year-old Guangzhou man.
We debated what kind of map could China really be divided into, culturally.
We chatted with a young Shanghai high school girl who was helping Roots & Shoots rock out for tree planting funds.

Extra! Extra! Swine flu shots, press corps history and the almighty yuan

Elaine Chow — 2009-11-20T19:00:00+08:00

Wow, that's a huge amount: 1.5 million people per day are getting innoculated with the swine flu vaccine. [AP]
This year's Chinese Blogger Conference was held in an ancient cave in Lianzhou, Guangdon. Why? You'll have to watch this video to find out. [WSJ]
A government report has said that China's Three Gorges Dam has doubled in cost and has been plagued with multiple problems. Here's a summary of them. [Al Jazeera (on Youtube)]
Back in 1972, when the first U.S. press corps visited China, they got rashes from the toilet seats. This year's press corps got thirty-seven-inch flat-screen televisions and three-hundred-thread-count sheets. [New Yorker]
China is desperately trying to lure back scientists into its fold, and at least so far, it seems like its methods - grants, fat salaries, generous lab funding, but mostly the thrill of building something from the bottom up - are working. [Business Week]
Obama's trip this time around didn't have the hard-hitting aggressiveness some people wanted towards China's human rights record. But will his softball method of confronting the PRC actually work? [New York Times]
We always love a little crazy in our links section, so here's one - a Russian columnist thinks that China can train almost its entire population into a super army, which will then kill 1/3 to 2/3 of Americans, take over their property and use the remaining Americans as servants. [World Tribune]
Paul Krugman recently wrote something about how China severely undervalues its currency and needs to strengthen the yuan to reduce America's trade deficit and spur worldwide recovery. Forbes disagrees. [Forbes]
Bad English is apparently one of the main factors holding Chinese peacekeeping forces from completing their missions well overseas. We say if the world wanted to be peaceful, it'd just learn to speak Chinese already. [Reuters]

Cleaner water coming to Shanghai?

Elaine Chow — 2009-11-20T16:30:00+08:00

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.