Results tagged “bush”

Photo from Laurence&Annie

You go first... no you go first! One might imagine this kind of bickering taking place near the swings during recess, but at a gathering of world leaders? According to PBS's Thirteen/WNET, that is exactly what is happening at this year's G8 discussions.

China and India say it is up to the developed world — the biggest polluters — to take the lead in the fight against climate change. But President Bush has said that developing nations must also sign on to make any global deal work.

Yesterday's copy of the Wall Street Journal has a very interesting observation: that few of China's top political and business leaders these days have white hair:

It is possible that could have something to do with genes, but something else is involved, too. For aging men of influence here, the dye job appears to have become as commonplace as the Mao suit once was.

Continue reading "WSJ: Nary a white strand of hair in the Politburo Standing Committee"

Shanghaiist has been living in this town for five years now, and while we often get the "哇！你是老上海了！“ ("Wow, you're an old Shanghai hand") remark, there are days when we think we actually moved here too late (sadistic thought, some might say). Although we have witnessed some pretty breathtaking changes ourselves, we have to defer to the experience of Chris Devonshire-Ellis of China Briefing who founded his own law firm 15 years ago in his...

Photos from powerprints, beatdrifter, and David Feng.

Many thanks to Ken Yip and Jack of Shanghai Studio for the pictures. More pictures from the wonderful guys at EnjoyClassifieds here. For those of you with more pictures of people making a fool of themselves that you'd like to share with us, put them up on Flickr and tag them shanghaiist or add them on on our Facebook group (remember to tag yourself in the pictures!). There is still a wonderful video coming up so stay tuned!

"Son preference" is a deep-seated, widespread problem in many cultures, but in China, the problem takes on a frightfully larger scope when "son preference" meets the notorious One Child policy, says Michael Fragoso.

According to Bloomberg News, finance ministers of the G7 nations, currently meeting in Washington are once again expected to issue a strongly worded statement prodding China to do more with an undervalued yuan. The traditionally US championed trade tussle is getting some very vocal support from the Europeans and the Canadians this time around.

Georgia Popplewell of Global Voices Online has offered a great summary of reactions from the international blogosphere to Friday's announcement that former US vice president Al Gore and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have won this year's Nobel Peace Prize.

So in the meanwhile, it's become kind of fashionable to blame Beijing for the mess in "Myanmar". Sure, Russia and India have gotten some of the blame for failing to rein in Burma's ruthless junta. ASEAN has also been put to shame for its impotence in handling Burma, and even Singapore's conservative Straits Times (subscription required) has begun to wonder aloud if it's not the right time to suspend Burma's membership in ASEAN, admitting that the "1997 Asean decision to admit Myanmar under the current military leadership without any conditionality was a mistake".

This latest ad from the British Council (h/t to Danwei) should appeal to the scores of English teachers in Shanghai who are looking for a change in environment, and the pay looks good too! --

The British Council/Foreign and Commonwealth Office English language project in the DPRK aims to deliver quality programmes in teacher/trainer training and to develop the curriculum and related materials as well as assessment systems at leading institutions in Pyongyang. This high-profile project has been running since 2000, and we are now seeking three experienced English language teaching professionals to fill the above posts, which will be based at these institutions.

Image of mass games in Pyongyang from wkenney.

Celebrated American writer and critic Gore Vidal was interviewed by former New South Wales Premier Bob Carr on Sunday at Glamour Bar before a full audience as the opening speaker for the 2007 Shanghai International Literary Festival. Over his career which spans more than 60 years, Vidal has produced novels, plays, screenplays, and numerous essays and pamphlets, and most recently, he published his memoirs, Point-to-Point Navigation.

It's funny all the flap that was made here about the lyrical content of certain Rolling Stones and Eric Clapton songs, not to mention visa/vulgarity issues for Jay-Z and others, yet Roger Waters slips under the radar and delivers a long, loud set full of blatant references to just about everything that the authorities were presumably guarding against. Who knows, perhaps his lyrics were screened and his set-list given the thumbs up. For the sake of future tours, we hope that's the case.

While the rest of the world is wondering how George W. Bush will further fuck up Iraq and where Becks and Posh are going to settle in L.A., we came across a report about a concert event in Las Vegas:

Didn’t take long for our first new year wish to get squashed. On Tuesday, United Airlines won preliminary approval from the US Department of Transportation to operate a daily non-stop flight between Washington, D.C. and Beijing starting this March, beating out proposals from fellow carriers Northwest (Detroit to Shanghai), American (Dallas to Beijing) and our favorite, Continental (Newark to Shanghai).

Happy Holidays!

This was not a very happy week for the -ist network as one of our own, Phillyist co-editor Star C. Foster, passed away early in the week. Her wit, intelligence, and good nature shone through the site, making Phillyist an immensely fun read. She was loved by many and will be missed by all.

We just came across a report about foreign inmates in a Shanghai prison taking the HSK test, commonly known as the Chinese TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language). Many of Shanghai's foreign prisoners are kept in Qingpu, which has now become the first prison in Shanghai, and probably China, where the foreign inmates are allowed to take Chinese classes and then participate in the test. This time around, the inmates that took the test hailed from countries such as Australia, Korea and Singapore.

Video clip from ttudou.com

Judging from the comments on our first post on Chinabounder's now infamous Sex and Shanghai blog, there seems to be some who believe that the entire thing is a hoax. Everyone, it seems, wants to know who Chinabounder is -- even the BBC，which emailed Shanghaiist's editor asking for the scoop on Chinabounder. Bloggers often seem omniscient, but we're not, or at least not in the way that God is.

Gothamist gets us started with "Law & Order", muppet style. Oh, you know what isn't a crime? Taking pictures on the MTA. So, why are cops stopping photographers? In other Gotham crime, a group of Asian men was attacked by a group of white guys in Queens. Finally, Boy George reports for his court mandated community service. Sweet.

We understand it's kind of sad, but we have to admit to getting a little excited when we learn of new foreign beers arriving on the Shanghai market. So we read with curious interest these two stories about two New Zealand beers that have washed up on our shores. The brewery is DB Breweries, a big outfit that owns the likes of Heineken and Amstel. The beers they are sending to Shanghai are Tui and Monteith's Original Ale. Here are the commercial descriptions for the two beers:

Austinist makes it easy for us, with Candidate on a Civic Building, Blank on a Blank, and Penguins on a Freeway (warning: sad).

Torontoist (where it's 75 degrees F as of this writing) is keeping things cool this summer, nudity and blood optional. Less cool are the comments in this post about a hipster auctioning off crap so she can buy a house. And no summer would be complete without the twin guilty pleasures of crap dining and crap TV: get them both with Torontoist's interview with "Rockstar: Supernova" star Lucas Rossi and a look at the safety ratings of some of Toronto's favorite greasy spoons.

Business execs all over American are quoting Chinese sayings. All the attention that China receives is getting some people really worried, such as people from India. But worry not, subcontinental friends, because Mumbai need not be Shanghai. In fact, India is in many ways better off than is Shanghai. Yasheng Huang, a Chinese economics expert says:

Sometimes you need to clean yourself up, get serious, and move in with daddie for a few months before you head to Latin America for a new gig. The District bid's Jenna Bush adios. D.C.-based television shows have an elderly audience and DCist has some suggestions to fix that. They're also throwing Butterstick the panda bear a birthday bash.

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