Results tagged “howardfrench”

We were great fans of (now ex-)New York Times Shanghai bureau chief Howard W. French's 2006 photo exhibit in Berlin, which documented "Disappearing Shanghai," the alleys and homes being torn down for redevelopment back then. Now he's ready with a sequel.

The observations by two veteran photographers of a rapidly changing Shanghai over ten-plus years should be reason enough to traipse over to Moganshan Road. Van der Hilst’s color Kodachrome works will allow us a glimpse into Shanghai on the brink of transformation in the early 1990s (good opportunity for some of us who had been in primary schools back then, too busy figuring out multiplication tables to notice) while French, the New York Times' Shanghai correspondent delves into the more recent past with his black-and-white documentation of life in Shanghai’s back alleys during the last five years.

If you've been browsing the DVD shops lately, you might have already come across Nanking, a documentary—of sorts—about the Nanjing massacre of 1937. The film consists of three elements: first-person accounts from survivors and eye witnesses, including Chinese civilians and soldiers as well as Japanese soldiers. These are all real people, telling their stories on film. Then there actors portraying some of the people, mostly Europeans and Americans, that played a role in setting up...

What if Beijing is right? [IHT] What if the doubters have been wrong all along? What if big government and an all-powerful state are good, not bad? What if the business cycle, hitherto thought to be inevitable, if completely unpredictable, could be repealed? These are the questions that Howard French of the IHT asks in his latest Letter from China.China's 1st lunar probe to reach moon orbit Monday morning [Xinhua] China's first lunar probe, Chang'e-1,...

Hu in new bid to tighten screws on rival faction, by Chua Chin Hon of the Straits Times:

One has died from an undisclosed illness while another is already behind bars on corruption charges. But there appears to be no let-up in Chinese President Hu Jintao's attempts to put the squeeze on members of the rival Shanghai faction, a group of senior leaders and officials allied with his predecessor Jiang Zemin.

Continue reading "Snippets: The Shanghai faction, counterfeit and corruption"

Last August you might have read Howard French's New York Times article on Chinese subtitle teams, which explains who these seemingly anonymous people, who offer Chinese viewers timely, subtitled versions of popular TV shows such as "Desperate Housewives," "Prison Break," and "Lost." The NYT article got a lot of attention from Chinese netizens as well as the media, for example in this recent Chinese article delves further into this subject and works as a good follow-up to French's article.

Photo by Peijin Chen 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.

Shanghaiist has always been intrigued by the bits of Western history and culture that seep into the Chinese mainstream — the terrifying, ungodly mix of Buicks, Kenny G, and Da Shan gives us a headache, but is fascinating to behold. Though not quite as fascinating as washing your hair with birth control pills.

Photo by Shanghai Sky taken from the Shanghaiist photos page. To see your photos on our photos 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.

Photo by Captain Video taken from the Shanghaiist photos page. To see your photos on our photos 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.

Shanghaiist remembers when they first appeared on street corners throughout the city. Shanghai's crossing guards look like lost UPS workers with whistles. And we've always felt kind of sorry for them. Because they have no real power -- they can't issue tickets, or even official warnings -- and everyone knows this. So pedestrians ignore them. And all the crossing guards can do is blow their whistles louder. Shanghaiist was a crossing guard in elementary school. Back then, in the mid 1980s, it was the cool thing to do for an 11-year-old. Not the case for a 40- or 50-year-old in Shanghai, as Howard French points out in the International Herald Tribune: