Other: October 2009 Archives

    

In Shanghaiist's new Philanthropist feature, we highlight individuals and groups doing interesting things to make the world a little bit of a better place. This week we talk to the organizers of the 8th Annual Charity Carnival.

The Chinese government has kicked itself into gear finding the hundreds (or perhaps thousands) of children that go missing in China each year, thanks probably in part to the sudden media attention the issue garnered last April when hundreds of parents set to the streets in a peaceful march, begging local and national bureaus for help. As part of the government-sponsored efforts, they've set up this website: "Babies Looking for Home", which cycles through pictures of 60 children who were kidnapped from their families and were recently recovered in police stings.

We don't know how long our city's mascot has been on the subway etiquette beat, but we were absolutely delighted to catch him at the People's Square station this afternoon, waving to people as two Expo volunteers reminded everyone that, on the escalator, the right side is for standing and the left side is for walking.

Deceptively beautiful, the water hyacinths have already began their annual terrorization of the waters of Huangpu River and Suzhou Creek, forcing city public sanitation teams to scramble to remove them.

When invited to post thoughts about "which walls still have to come down to make our world a better place!" on a website dedicated to celebrating the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Chinese twitterers replied en mass. In fact, looking on the site right now, it seems that there's barely anyone else besides Chinese twitterers commenting on how much they hate the GFW.

If there's one thing we've learned from Chinasmack, it's that Chinese schoolgirls sure can be violent. But to our surprise and dismay, the most recent shocking teenage beat down video to hit internet forums didn't come from Guangdong. Rather, it takes place in our very own city - Shanghai.

In case you wanted to start out your morning learning a little Shanghainese, mandmx.com, a delightful little site for Chinese language learning, has what they're calling the Top 4 Most Important phrases.

Phillyist watched MLB.com call it too soon before celebrating the Phillies' second consecutive trip to the World Series. Sorry, LAist—but at least you still have one hometown team in contention.

           

As we stepped off bustling Jiaozhou Lu and through the large and heavy wooden gates of URBN, we felt as if we had left Shanghai. The hustle and bustle of Shanghai seemed to have disappeared and already we could feel ourselves loosening up, relaxing. Just through the threshold was a small cobble-stoned, tree-lined courtyard... and to our direct left, decorated with an artful take on bamboo scaffolding, the hotel.

      

To give us some perspective on the massive social and economic impact of pollution throughout China, we've turned to photographer Lu Guang's "Pollution in China" project. Lu won this year's $30,000 W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography from the Asia Society in New York. His project documents families, farmers, industrial districts, rivers, the countryside, cancer patients, children; anyone and everything affected by pollution across China.

When they changed over the system from Maoist Communism to "Socialism with Chinese characteristics" (as Hu Jintao put it during the last 60th anniversary parade), the CCP apparently decided not to tell anyone what the C in their name really meant. At least according to this video by Doing Business in China, which asks a bunch of Chinese people (some of whom are famous) to define "communism" - with dumbfounding results.

Gothamist looked at how some local stores seem to be encouraging little girls to dress in slutty Halloween costumes.

There are certain Western traditions that just don't quite translate - customs that the majority of Chinese people don't understand and indeed do not even try to understand because the tradition itself seems preposterous. One such ritual is Halloween. And yet that hasn't stopped the foreign population (and us!) from celebrating it.

A picture of a deeply submerged Lujiazui has been making the rounds on various internet forums, and it's got Shanghai newspaper Xinmin pretty worked up. The picture shows several Pudong-side waterfront landmarks, including the iconic Pearl Tower, halfway sticking out of the water. The forum titles tend to show the photo with the title that the pictures are from a new study in the U.S. which purports that two thirds of delta regions around the world are at high risk of flooding - including Shanghai.

According to a presentation by MTV about youth and social networking in Asia, China is the only country where people actually have more ONLINE friends than offline friends. We guess that's not so surprising coming from the Land of 1,000 Internet Addiction Camps, but it still makes us want to go all Ogre on these kids. NERDS!!

Torontoist checked out the weird and wonderful sights on their city's newly launched version of Google Street View, including this keeper.

Poppers, the "video head cleaner" that gay men use when they want to get their head cleaned, are now doing brisk business on Taobao, available in 10ml vials under various street names, like Rush, Jungle Juice, Locker Room and so on. These alkyl nitrites (including isobutyl nitrite, butyl nitrite, and amyl nitrite), when inhaled, have the effect of relaxing muscles throughout the body, in particular the sphincter muscles of the anus and the vagina, and have been popular among urban homosexual men and some women since the 70s as a recreational drug during sex and as a club drug.

Yesterday was my first time to Shenyang city. And it was the first time I was so “warmly” welcomed by Shenyang people that I almost slept on the street last night.

• According to this website, Shanghai's planning on building a shanzhai version of the U.S. Pentagon before the World Expo. Like most weirdly shaped complexes in China, It'll be a shopping mall. [非常日報]
• People's Daily looks at the "Bund Origin" program and reflects on the Huangpu area's last 60 years. [People's Daily Online]
• Adam Minter interviews a migrant worker who's working to clean up Shanghai all spiffy like by refreshing the paint on windows. [Shanghai Scrap]

Remember that whole weird internal fight that unfortunately brought down our new favorite VPN? It seems that enough has passed (aka lawsuits have been filed) for Freedur to launch version 2.0 of his product, now available for download on Freedur.net.

Yeesh, speaking of propaganda, it seems that China Daily has an entire section devoted solely to foreign dignitaries wishing China, among other things, a happy birthday and a bright future.

Selling sex may be the oldest profession in history, but selling virginity? That's new. Chinese naughty toys company Gigimo (motto: Let's play!) has advertised an artificual hymen kit throughout the Middle East that has sparked controversy in Egypt.

     

We're fans of anything old timey, and so these photos of Shanghai (and Mongolia, and Beijing) in 1981 have really struck our fancy. Don't worry, despite depicting the 80s, there are no mullets or shoulder pads to be found.

To be fair, it's been about a month since Cary joined us, but now that we know he's going to stick around, we figured it's time to introduce everyone to the newest member of our editor team. We are happy to announce that Cary Hooper is Shanghaiist's junior editor.

Because we know you can't get enough of timelapse videos, here's another one by Shanghai newbie, Joe Nafis, who tells us that he's been in town for just a month and jobless. We're totally amazed that all this was possible with the humble Canon A540. Anyone out there wanna give this guy a job?