Results tagged “affairs”



  • “Local authorities are offering lucrative packages to lure leading academics to the city under a new scheme to help boost its competitiveness.”




  • “The ICS programs, covering news, information, fashion, entertainment, foreign TV shows and movies, will be aired in English and Japanese, with Chinese captions, for 19 hours a day.”




  • “The move will make Shanghai GM the third joint venture automaker to deliver a hybrid vehicle in China following Toyota and Honda. Toyota Motor Corp is currently the only carmaker that builds a hybrid car in China.”



  • “China Eastern will resume its twice weekly Shanghai-Saipan flights starting Jan. 11, 2006, close to five months after the charter flights were suspended because of the decline of tourists coming in from China.”




  • “A focus will be the Shanghai dialect … ‘As more and more young people in Shanghai use the dialect to communicate online, and as its vocabulary expands, it will be standardised and promoted as a distinct local language.’”



  • “Amity has churned out 41 million Bibles for Chinese believers at its plant outside … Nanjing, including more than 3 million copies last year. (About nine million copies have been exported to Africa, other parts of Asia and Central Europe.)”
  • “Police have arrested five people alleged to have duped a Swedish man into paying nearly 5,000 yuan ($680) for coffee and whisky during a recent business trip to the city.”
  • “One contestant, Zhang Jincheng, the Guinness record keeper, is a 23-year-old from Wenzhou City, Zhejiang Province. His two challengers are 28-year-old Andorran Xavi Casas and 34-year-old Colombian Javier Zapata.”



  • “The city government issued new rules last week banning road expansion on most of the 144 downtown roads lined with historic houses. The rules also ban tall buildings from being built in conservation areas.”




  • China tech blog worth checking out.




  • Another China tech blog.



  • “Just over a year since their first mashup was released, the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, headed by journalist-environmentalist Ma Jun, has just released its Air Pollution Map, complete with its own BBS and space for feedback forum.”



  • “The 22-year-old flight attendant and world-class schemer outwitted, outplayed and outlasted his competitors for 39 days to be crowned the $1 million winner of the reality show’s 15th edition and the youngest winner in the series’ history.” 15!
  • “Three architectures in Beijing are on the list of 10 best architectural marvels (new and upcoming) selected by the Time magazine to be published on the Dec. 24.” None from Shanghai.
Image of Di Shui Dong menu submitted by Shanghaiist reader Brian Lim.

Above, dear reader, you will see an example par excellence of lazy journalism. The header to this post is about as hackneyed as they come, but then so is the approach of a new periodical we stumbled across this week, the rubbishly titled SLmagazine.

The last time an anchor from our favourite TV channel made it to the news, he created such a brouhaha that culminated in the eviction of one coffee company from the Forbidden City. In the news this time is New Zealand-born anchor Edwin Maher who for many years before arriving in China was a weatherman with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. The Los Angeles Times published a profile of Maher that started it all off. It...

This is not news the government wants to hear in the run-up to the Olympics, but here's a statement that the Beijing-based Foreign Correspondents Club of China (FCCC) just sent out (h/t to the Peking Duck):

Dear Members,

Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao on Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper's meeting with the Dalai Lama [Reuters]:

"It's gross interference in China's internal affairs. The Chinese side expresses its strong dissatisfaction and resolute opposition... This disgusting conduct has seriously hurt the feelings of the Chinese people and undermined Sino-Canadian relations... The Chinese side demands the Canadian side ... correct its mistaken conduct, immediately adopt effective measures to eliminate adverse impact (from the meeting) and stop winking at or supporting anti-Chinese activities by Tibetan forces."

China will offer religious services for foreigners arriving for the 2008 Olympic Games, an official in charge of religious affairs said.

As the economic gap between China and North Korea widens, more and more young Chinese people are traveling to North Korea to see the sort of poverty their parents endured.

A New Zealand-born contestant of the first series of Big Brother Australia, Gordon Sloan, has died in Beijing on a suspected heroin overdose.

... and we thought Xinhua's mistake of illustrating a story on the causes of the debilitating disease multiple sclerosis with an X-ray photo of Homer Simpson's brain was bad!

Colleague: Haha, I understand. I'm not a very good CCP member, and not a very bad one either, but you probably can't say I'm a member anymore. I have not been paying my party membership fees for three years now, and haven't been keeping up with the meetings, so they probably struck my name off the list.

Starting 4:51pm today, Shanghaiist will set aside his blogging, crane his neck out the window, look heavenwards, and try to feel connected to the universe and discover his cosmic purpose. (And we invite you to put aside all the mundane affairs of daily life and join us in this spiritual exercise, wherever you are.) For that, according to the Shanghai Observatory, is exactly when the first phase of tonight's lunar eclipse will start. It is expected to last 3 hours and 33 minutes.

Are there any Living Buddhas among the enlightened readership of this blog? You have been informed: With immediate effect, all your reincarnations must receive government approval, and if not, they will be deemed "illegal or invalid" by the State Administration for Religious Affairs (SARA).

PLUS brolly-toting Premier Wen and X-ray of Homer Simpson's brain!

I turned to several government departments, including the local police station and the Shanghai Civil Affairs Bureau Yangpu District branch, but no one would solve the problem. I know the residence problem will affect my daughter's whole life, so I still asked authorities for help, but I was shocked by the result. They suggested I send her to an orphanage.

Picture of Chinese soldiers from tigeranger1971.

Tamil Nadu, India - Officials in southern India are investigating claims that a couple, who are both doctors, let their 15-year-old son perform surgery to get into Guinness World Records as the world's youngest surgeon.

The first rule that many foreigners hear about doing anything in China is that you will need guanxi - relationships that help you clear the jungly bureaucracy, receive preferential tax treatment, or "free" land. Of course, the follow-up rule that is never stated in polite company is that guanxi means money, a greased palm, a sop, and a board seat. However, as useful as some relationships can be, they frequently outlive their usefulness and become nothing more than baggage.

Our weekly round-up of some of the highlights from China's English-language blogosphere:

China's hospitals and in particular, Chinese hospital food, do not necessarily have the highest of reputations. Now the whole scare factor of heading off to a Sino hospital has just raised that little bit more with the recent story that a poisoner is at large in a Harbin hospital restaurant.

You all know that that Martin Scorsese finally won an Oscar for The Departed, based on the Hong Kong film Infernal Affairs (无间道), and as they say, if it ain't broke ... so the folks in Hollywood are eying another film by the same Hong Kong crew (Andrew Lau, et. al.) — Confessions of Pain (伤城) for yet another remake.

The Blood of Yingzhou District, a film tha follows the lives of childen in Anhui who have lost their parents to AIDS, won the Oscar for best documentary short earlier today. We haven't seen the film, and doubt it will be showing up in Shanghai theaters ... well, ever. Doesn't seem like the type of thing our friendly local DVD vendors would carry either, although we have been surprised before. Has anyone seen it?



  • "Professors at East China Normal University estimated that about 300 million people - equivalent to more than 30% of the adult population - followed Buddhist, Taoist, Christian, Muslim or other beliefs."




  • "Baidu's movie relased before its landing on Nasdaq."




  • "'Baidu PK Google, what will happen?"




  • "Here is an unusal list of Chinese officials who are involved in muder or suicide cases, via Yulun Jiandu (translated by CDT)."




  • "Really not much new in this story except for who got burned, which is very interesting. This list includes Saks, Disney, and Citibank. I think the only person who will really get into trouble is Vincent Lo."




  • "Authorities have approved a Chinese film about a massage parlor boss and one of his workers to compete at the Berlin International Film Festival after five revisions, the movie's producer said."




  • "Taiwan removed Chiang Kai Shek's statue from its military police headquarters, angering the Kuomingtang Party. Chiang's legacy of oppression and violence is being re-examined."




  • "With accusations of racism swirling around its board of directors, the sacking of its charismatic frontman and writers taking sides, the row has convulsed Asia's normally sedate literary scene."




  • "He then beat his son with a ruler for failing to conform to his daily exercise routine. ... He claimed he devised the exercise regimen as a means of 'family fun' and told the court it was for the good of the boy's health."




  • "China’s quality supervision bureau has suspended operations of two domestic cosmetic firms and halted sales of six of their lipsticks because they contained the industrial and cancer-causing Sudan I, II and IV dyes."




  • "With a location near Duolun Road, you can shop for antiques and handicrafts when you get sick of swimming or dancing in the column-free ballroom. ... And it's probably bes to wait until it really turns 5-star."




  • "Authorities revoked the licence of the Shanghai Consonancy Hospital after finding it had breached rules on medical treatment, equipment sterilisation and waste management, the reports said."




  • "Companies are turning to banks for loans to repay money borrowed from a Shanghai pension fund, reports said Wednesday, as city government advisers called for more public information to be released regarding a corruption probe linked to those loans."




  • "The fall of Mr. Chen, who not only ran the city but sat in China's ruling Politburo, was China's biggest political shakeup in a generation. But more than the ouster of one official, it amounted to an indictment of the business model known as Shanghai Inc."




  • "Water shortages in China are reaching "incredible" proportions, a British environmental expert said Monday night, citing Shanghai as a particularly vulnerable location unless drastic action is taken quickly."




  • "K. Wah Center has some idiosyncrasies, including apparently being named after some kind of hip-hop infant. Among these are the world's shrillest elevators."




  • "Sitting in the lounge at Pudong airport now, with free wifi. Just find the tp-link wifi connection and enter password tp-link. Always a good feeling when you can check an reply all your mails before boarding."




  • "Shaanxi Jialong Science and Technology subsidiary ALONG Mobile Technologies announced that it will deploy over 1,000 Wi-Fi hotspots in Xi'an this year and plans to develop Xi'an into a 'Wi-Fi City', reports 163.com."




  • "Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council said that users in the populous Pearl River Delta and other parts of China over the past two weeks had accessed previously blocked Web sites run by the China Times (news.chinatimes.com) and the and the United Daily News (http://udn.com/NEWS/)"




  • "Rural villages in Shanghai will be connected to the city's broadband Internet network within two years, Shanghai Telecom said yesterday."




  • "In China, a genre of self-help books purports to tell the secrets of making money 'the Jewish way.'"




  • "As the lunar new year is approaching, the spring travel started. The central government announced earlier that the train ticket’s price will remain the same. However, most of the tickets fall into the pocket of various ticket agents, and they sell the tickets to the black marketeers."




  • "No other Internet company in the world — not even Google — has achieved the kind of dominance in its home market that Tencent commands in China."


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    Photo by shanghaidragonrider found via the Shanghaiist Contribute page.



  • "After seven days spent re-editing the adult drama 'Lost in Beijing,' producer Fang Li said Friday that he and director Li Yu have agreed on 65% of the cuts requested by China's Film Bureau. The movie is scheduled for a February 16 premiere at the Berlin Film Festival."




  • "Craig chatted with fans and signed autographs at the cinema in Beijing's fashionable Wangfujing shopping district which laid out a red carpet welcome for him and Green, who plays Vesper Lynd, a prickly official at the British Treasury."




  • "It's the United States vs. China again, this time in the Four Nations tournament in southern China. Germany faces England in the other game Tuesday in the 80,000-seat Guangdong stadium, a warmup for China's World Cup in September."




  • "Although Mr Han, who is also the city's acting party secretary, gave no details of how much money had been returned to the city or how it was recovered, his comments were an attempt to draw a line under the scandal."




  • "The actual photos load fine. Fortunately most of the site navigation is text, but the little buttons above each image are image files, and none of them display."




  • "The garden was built in 1924 and originally named Columbia Plant. It sits on 15,000 square meters and is one of the oldest gardens in the city."




  • "The Shanghai Sunshine Community Youth Affairs Center has teamed up with the Yangpu District government to set up a hip-hop club for youngsters." For ages 15 and under.




  • "If you deal with China, pigs are part of the deal, but they play a different role from elsewhere. Anthropologists duel over why peoples in the ancient Middle East (not just the Jewish pastoralists) avoided the 'abominable pig.' This is a puzzle."




  • "Some articles smelled like real advertorials, and that might explain why I did not find any ads in this magazine."




  • "News Corporation's MySpace made its strongest move toward the Chinese mainland during the past few days, and www.myspace.cn has now posted a message saying, 'China's leading Web2.0 website is under construction.'"




  • "The website, www.blshe.com, targets Chinese intellectuals and aims to become an on-line platform of communication, social contacts and business, said the founder Mao Xiaolin."




  • "In this textbook, terms like 'our country,' 'this country' and 'the mainland' have been changed to 'China' to indicate that Taiwan is not part of China, the daily said."




  • "Ronaldo is suing the Chinese company for using an unauthorized photograph of him in its huge advertising campaign. The lozenge maker invited him to a banquet in 2003 (and paid him a handsome sum for him to attend), but apparently never mentioned how all of the pictures taken that night would be used."




  • "Check it out: www.myspace.cn is active, and now belongs to a company called Mai Sibei (my space, geddit? or 北京麦斯贝信息技术有限公司)."




  • "China, still working on its long-delayed homegrown third-generation wireless standard, has leapfrogged itself by launching the world's first fourth-generation standard, state media said on Monday."


  • For more del.icio.us links, visit the Shanghaiist Contribute page, which is updated throughout the day.

    Photo by Shanghai Sky found via the Shanghaiist Contribute page.

    Officially, at least. Although anyone in Shanghai who wanted to see The Departed already has seen it on a pretty high-quality DVD, news outlets are reporting that the movie will never be shown in China's theaters. Here are the reasons according to one anonymous government source:

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    China announced yesterday it is tightening its adoption rules for foreigners. Starting May 1, the following groups of people will not be allowed to take home a Chinese child:

    Photo by 2dogs taken from 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.

    On Saturday, November 11, New York Times Foreign Affairs Columnist Thomas L. Friedman spoke at Three On The Bund as part of the Three Talk Lecture Series which was co-hosted by the Penguin Group, publisher of Friedman's bestseller The World Is Flat (TWIF). When the globe-trotter, Friedman comes to Shanghai, it is clear how much he travels by the fact that he seems to be unsure of exactly where he is, as in one instance, he spoke of Three On The Bund "here in Beijing." In all, Friedman spoke on his book for about 52 minutes and then followed with a 36 minute Q&A session at the conclusion of which he was presented with a bizarre statuette of himself standing atop a flat world with the words "GEO GREEN" affixed to a pink base and surrounded by the twelve animals of the Chinese zodiac.

    The good and the not-so-good from the previous several days

    Zhu said that after 10 minutes of treatment Bai's lung cancer had been cured and he would recover quickly.

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