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Photo by jules_shanghai found via the Shanghaiist Contribute page.
For more del.icio.us links, visit the Shanghaiist Contribute page, which is updated throughout the day.
Via Boing Boing, we learned of a great China blog called Virtual China. The post that caught Boing Boing's eye is entitled "what's on the BBS today: the inventiveness of farmers" and it highlights some of the "DIY projects" China's farmers are undertaking (likely with all the free time they have thanks to a land-grab). Two of their efforts are pictured.
Did anyone watch the Oscars rebroadcast (in English, with Chinese subtitles) on CCTV-6? We tried but had to give up -- the editing was awful, awful, awful. Much like trying to watch Brokeback Mountain in a Chinese theater, we assume. They tried to turn three-plus hours into less than 90 minutes, so you had acceptance speeches like, "Oh, there are so many people to thank ..." Cut. They eliminated huge chunks of the show. The dubbed version they showed in the morning was much better. That's when we heard host Jon Stewart butcher Zhang Ziyi's name. Zooey Zhang? "Sounded almost French," said one of our friends. (Zhang, by the way, is the first Chinese to twice present awards at the Oscars. Here is what she wore.)
Bloomberg reports that Focus Media -- responsible for many of the flat LCD screens airing ads throughout the city -- has plans to turn parts of Shanghai into Times Square. Actually, not just Shanghai. Focus Media will "install giant screens of light-emitting diodes in Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou." The first such illuminated advertising wall, 16 stories tall, appeared in Shanghai in 2003 on the Aurora Building, a skyscraper that appears in many a Pudong skyline photo. Focus Media's LED screens wouldn't be 16 stories, but they would be huge -- 500 square meters, costing 50,000 RMB per square meter.
A Shanghai woman has apparently succeeded in her attempt to stop a factory from polluting her Pudong neighborhood, and she didn't need the help of a peasant revolt to do it. She just took the company to court.