Results tagged “rat”

Sina.com had a survey up about the recent Christie's auction, in which two bronze animal heads looted from the Summer Palace in the 1719th century fetched 15.7 million euros. The survey results, translated into English, were thus:

By Kate Ray

The Telegraph recently released a story saying that a man in Fujian had caught a giant rat, allegedly swooping it up after seeing a big crowd of people surrounding it in on the street.

“Above is heaven, below is Hangzhou", as the Chinese saying goes (上有天堂，下有苏杭), but if you're unfortunate enough to be a wild boar in the lake-endowed city, you may find yourself snuffling up to the big trough in the sky sooner than you hoped. Yes, after indiscriminate killing so effectively solved the feral dog and water logged rat infestations China has suffered of late, open season has been declared on Hangzhou's tuskiest residents. Apparently, the not-so-wee...

OK, we all know about the Great Wall, the Great Firewall and the Great Green Wall. All that is old news now. Get this: China is now building a 6 million yuan, 40-kilometer (25-mile) long, 1 meter (3.3 feet) high wall around Dongting Lake in Hunan Province to guard against the 2 billion field mice that have been on the run from the flooded Yangtse River. Already, the mice have destroyed about 520,000 hectares (1.3 million acres) of crop land when rising water drove them from their burrows. And even the enterprising businessmen in Guangdong who sought to help by bringing the mice en masse to the dinner table did little to mitigate the situation.

Whenever there is a crisis or a natural calamity, there are the people who lose money and then there are the entrepreneurs. It seems enterprising businessmen have decided to cash in on an outbreak of rodents in the Dongting Lake area in Hunan province which saw an estimated 2 billion mice on the run from the flooded Yangtse River by taking the matter into their own hands - literally.

The term 'food poisoning' is taken to the next level in China, with reports that not only have ingredients from China been killing pets, but have now killed up to 365 humans too. The New York Times reports that a safe additive used in cough syrup was substituted with diethylene glycol (an industrial solvent and a prime ingredient in anti-freeze) by Chinese companies. When exported from China, the syrup was labelled as 99.5 percent pure glycerin (a safe ingredient). It passed over three continents without being quality tested, and arrived in Panama to be used in cough medicine. Most of the victims have been children, unwittingly poisoned by their parents.

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.

Several Chinese reports have come out about Shanghai's new policy for dealing with its supposed "dog problem": using retired military dogs to police the other dogs. If you have no idea what the hell that means, join the club. It is some idea that came out of various political meetings in Shanghai, where officials discussed the dog issue. It seems that there are still lots of unregistered dogs, enough to outnumber the number of registered dogs. The registration numbers are increasing, up 20% from last year, for a total of 130,000.

Here at Shanghaiist, we think the Letters from China blog has been busy carving their own blogging niche by reporting on yet another novelty condom available here in China. Not content with sharing the news that police warrant card and Lei Feng frangers were to be found in China, they have now identified the big bopper — Chairman Mao condoms:

Several months ago, we heard about a Shandong woman named Wang Jing who created a website denouncing her own father as an adulterer (report in Chinese). On Feb. 5, a local court ruled that the website, which contained writings denouncing Wang's father Wang Zhihua and his alleged mistress Li Cuilian, was "insulting" and ordered that Wang Jing take it down. In August, Li had filed a lawsuit against the younger Wang. The "insulting" verdict is, we think, less serious an offense than libel. However, the court did order the website to be taken down and the younger Wang placed under some kind of supervision (and we don't know what that "supervision" entails), unless the younger Wang decides to file an appeal.

At the risk of becoming Kunmingist for the day, we wanted to pass along info on a Kunming rapper who looks like he could be China's answer to Digable Planets (are we showing our age?). Here's a snippet from GoKunming's profile of Hu Xuan:

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:

Out of this world, exquisite, unbelievably good-tasting meat on a stick. This is not your two-a-penny BBQ vendor to be found peddling rat meat outside VIP Room at 3am, the food at Naughty Barbecue (táo qì shāo kǎo - 淘气烧烤) will blow your head off. Better yet, the owner, Hán Lóng, and his girlfriend, Polly (Zhū Mǐn), are so friendly and cool that you’ll be happy to spend as much money here as you can, which still won’t be very much.

This morning we came across two pieces of news, both about sex and sexuality in China, one interesting, the other depressing.

The post's conclusion: Shanghai's subway system is cleaner than New York's.

• It's "rat breeding season" in Shanghai and the city is running a "rat sweep" campaign through November 11. "Businesses and residents will be able to get information about rats, how to control, catch and kill them, from their local health campaign office." Lovely.
• The first Miss Hooters China was crowned recently -- and there are three of them. "I can meet new friends, broaden my mind and have fun," said Zhou Shouya, one of the winners who has a chance to join the 10th annual Hooters International Swimsuit Pageant in Las Vegas next year. "Hooters makes me happy. I can't change the weather but I can change my mood."
• A man in Baoshan District agreed to buy an apartment there, but now he wants out of the contract. Why? The previous owner murdered his lover and dismembered her body there. For some reason, the real estate agent neglected to mention this.

Shanghaiist's gym is moving. And since we found out about this rather abruptly -- and there's a decent chance it might be your gym, as well -- we figured we'd spread the word. We go to the Megafit on the corner of Huaihai Zhong Lu and Danshui Lu, not too far from the Huangpi Nan Lu metro stop. Not a bad gym. Spacious and clean (well, save for that rat we saw there a little more than a year ago). Shanghaiist chose Megafit for its windows, a big wall of them overlooking Huaihai. Time goes by faster on the elliptical machine when you can watch one almost-accident after another down on the busy street.