The $2.4 billion Venetian Macao Resort Hotel is finally open for business on Macau's Cotai, and can you believe our local Blue Frog is somewhere in that building? Las Vegas Sands claims the 10.5 million square foot Venetian — twice the size of the Las Vegas original — is the largest building in Asia. Sands' next casino in Asia -- which at US$3.6 billion will be one of the costliest casino-resorts ever -- will open up in Singapore. But reports have come in that the development cost will swell by up to US$1.44 billion due to an Indonesian sand ban. Fuelled by strong growth in gaming revenues, the Macau economy has ballooned 28.9% in the first half of the year.

Photo from Gregoire Glachant [Official site].

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Photo from dbmboise.

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Photo from wookiddy.

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Photo from HKmPUA.

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Photo taken at unnamed station along Metro Line #1 from raemin.

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The Shanghai Environmental Protection Bureau has announced that this year's average air quality so far is poorer than the same period last year. Normally, the city's air quality from June to September is the best of the year thanks to the wind direction and tropical cyclones. The worst season is from November to February, the bureau said.

Photo of the Shanghai haze on a typical day from rado gado.

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Typhoon Sepat causes heavy agriculture losses in Taiwan [Xinhuanet]
Typhoon pounds Taiwan, disrupting air, rail travel [Inquirer.net]
Typhoon Sepat Goes Ashore in China's Fujian Province [Bloomberg]
Typhoon forces almost a million Chinese from homes [Canada.com]

Photo of Typhoon Sepat approaching Taiwan from ruei_ke.

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This is a picture of a couple travelling on Haikou's Nanhai Avenue, who have obviously found a very comfortable position travelling in style on their motorbike.

Photo from moobol.com. Thanks to Stephen Frost of CSR-Asia.com.

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Not to get all airport-geek on you, but it pretty much looks like the terminal at Incheon, Korea. Massive glass walls at either end to let in light, and more light coming in through the ceiling. It feels much bigger and cooler than the old terminal, but that could be because there aren’t thousands of people standing around eating cup noodles.

No shops or anything in there yet of course, but the ceiling and floor look finished, loads of check-in desks are almost ready to go, and there’s light and a/c all over the place. The usual rigorous Chinese quality control is being applied to the English signage.

On the right is a powerful photo story of a 16 year old village prostitute, Ah-V, who eloped with her boyfriend Xiaowu from Guizhou to an unnamed province, and to make ends meet, Xiaowu makes Ah-V prostitute herself. Along the way, of course, Ah-V gets pregnant, and has to go for an abortion, but she is so poor that the only thing worth money in her possessions is a broken fan which she got from a rag-and-bone dealer for RMB10. As a result, because she couldn't pay for her hospital bed, they put her on drip by the door of her home.

The photo story continues to offer intimate glimpses and other snapshots of Ah-V's life - her love for her cat, her relationship with Xiaowu, old men lurking around her because they could not afford to pay her, other women of the street, their brief moments of happiness when they meet a cute client, etc. One powerful shot has Ah-V allowing another prostitute Ah-Lan to examine her to see if she has contracted some sexually transmitted disease.

The video clip has been viewed 164,412 times within a day of its release and attracted 730 comments. There is a part of us that really want to believe this story but for now there are many questions in our mind:
1. For how long was the photographer with Ah-V?
2. What was his/her relationship with Ah-V?
3. How did he/she get so far into Ah-V's private life to get such intimate shots?
4. Could the pictures have been stolen from someone's private collection and the words added to them by some raconteur extraordinaire?

Photo from US National Archive and Records Administration via Pingnews.com

From reader Augapfel:

I found this on one of the metro trains in Shanghai this week. It seems official enough and I'm sure was there for good intentions, but seems they may have got it just a bit wrong.

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Photo from Anton Berkovich.

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We found the following email in our mailbox the other day. Apparently it's been making the rounds on the Chinese-language internet:

花都芙蓉璋水库，每年都有好几个人莫明溺水死亡。到最近有个高官的子弟与朋友一起到水库游水溺死亡，才发现惊天秘密！
Each year, a few people will be drowned mysteriously in Huadu's Furong Reservoir. It was not until recently when the brother of a certain official went swimming in the reservoir with his friend and were drowned that the secret was unravelled!

竟然是一条有三米多长，头有一米多宽的吃人唐蚤！宰割唐蚤后，惊人的发现：在其肚中竟然有人的骸骨！
It's a 3 metre long man-eating catfish whose head alone is 1 metre wide! After cutting up the catfish people were surprised to find the remains of a man inside!

由于事件影响大，当地政府怕影响当地的旅游，下令封锁消息，但却有现场的人用手机偷拍的到捕获的吃人鱼！
Because this was a huge incident, and the local government was afraid of the impact on local tourism, they imposed an embargo on the news, but people came away with these pictures taken on their cell phones of the man-eating fish!

现在水库已经严禁有人下水，为恐会有另一条同类的唐蚤鱼在水中！
Swimming in the reservoir is now forbidden because it is feared another similar man-eating catfish is still lurking in the waters.

Now we're not experts on aquatic life and can't confirm to you if that is really some mutant form of the clarius batrachus (walking catfish) as the email suggested (where are the whiskers?), but some netizens have already raised doubts saying this is a whale shark (鲸鲨) instead. Now you decide for yourself: Does it look more like the walking catfish or the whale shark? And if it is the whale shark, which is "vulnerable to extinction" according to Wikipedia, why did they kill it? Well, perhaps because they thought it killed a bunch of people. But how did they find it, and catch it, and why did they kill it and chop it up in such a public manner, we wonder? We bet scientists would have liked to see this alive first (we imagine saltwater whale sharks don't pop up in freshwater reservoirs too often ... nor, we guess, do 30cm catfish regularly turn into three-meter mutants).

But wait. The Huadu government has also made a statement to dissociate itself from the post, saying that the contents of the post do not match the photos. Also, no sighting of any large man-eating fish has been reported, and that no deaths have occurred in the reservoir between 25 July of last year and now.

As we have been accused of doing so in the past, we might choose to side with the government on this one. Seems very likely that these are pics of a random whale shark killing that a prankster decided to spread around masked as the Huadu Reservoir man-eating monster. It would seem the prank was a success.

But you never know ... especially in Chinese waters. Swim at your own risk.

More pictures after the jump. See for yourself the remains of a human body inside the monster!?! Or maybe not. (We are, if you haven't guessed, skeptical.)

Thanks to reader Jonas Chau for the tip! And yes, adding a question mark to the headline grants us "complete blogger immunity."

Photo from Anton Berkovich.

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McDonald's has announced that with effect from next month, it will increase workers' wages in China to levels 12 to 56 percent above local minimum wages. The move comes after a 4-month long controversy which began in April, when Chinese newspapers reported it was paying part-time workers far below local minimums -- eg., 4 yuan (52 cents) per hour in Guangzhou, or just over half the city's minimum. McDonald's is not the only foreign company facing accusations of exploitation. Chinese unions have also criticised the wage policies of Pizza Hut and KFC and may be expected to step up pressure on them next, while Wal-Mart only began to allow its Chinese staff to join unions after the media slammed it for exploiting lower paid workers.

Photo from Viktoria.

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Photo from Laurence Shan, and yes this photo is 483 days old!

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Photo from Tim Wieringa taken today on the corner of Dongping Lu and Wulumuqi Lu.

Update: Looks like the waters have now subsided, and we can go to Tequila Sunrise after all!

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