Well, then: Oops. What last month we said was going to happen, this month was made official. China has scrapped May holiday, one of its three Golden Weeks, and turned three traditional festivals into national holidays. Here's how your official 2008 Chinese holiday schedule now looks:
EastSouthWestNorth has translated an excellent story on the translation crisis in China that first appeared in Phoenix Weekly. It talks about the more than 1,000 foreign literary works that are translated and published in China each year (and we assume that number is still growing). The story laments over the "awfulness of the translations, the crudeness of the translators and the absence of critical reflection on what is happening". It then looks into why translation...
Newsday.com brings our attention to Ellie Su, a 27 year old finance official from Dongguan who found a US$282.6 million error in the 2008 budget of the Nassau County Legislature barely 2 weeks into her internship there. On the page for debt service, it is reported, Su noticed one item that read $31.4 million instead of $314 million.
Have you ever wished out loud for the central bank to come up with RMB500 or RMB1000 notes some day? We have, and were told by people supposedly in the know that that is unlikely to happen anytime soon because RMB500 could be the monthly salary of an entire family in rural China and the demand for counterfeit cash would swell many times overnight.
Pioniers, a minor league team in Amsterdam, Netherlands. In 2007, he was signed by the Beijing Tigers of the China Baseball League (more info here). The CBL season already over, Kim recently answered some of our questions via email.
The couple promised to pay Ma 100,000 yuan as reward for a child and 150,000 yuan if there were twins and they paid Ma 3000 yuan every month after they made the agreement. Ma tried artificial insemination in October 2006 but this failed and the doctors said she was probably not suitable. However the doctors said they would try once again later.
Our round-up of some of last week's highlights from China's English-language blogosphere:
Like Donna Summer once said, "He works hard for the money, so hard for it honey." All right, Donna was actually referring to a woman. But the message of Donna's 1983 hit could also be applied to an American guy living in Fuzhou named Benjamin Ross. Perhaps you are thinking, "Who cares? There are 57,000+ foreigners working in Shanghai alone." Ben's story is unique because, since the beginning of May, he's been working at a...
From wodingg.com we discovered that Google China (soon to be China Google?) has come out with a new search engine function called Google Sheng Huo (生活), which you can use to search for stuff like housing, jobs, and stuff to buy. Basically what it does is to gather results from other websites and search engines.
Virtual China introduces us to a new bilingual job website called MeiJob.com: "An AJAX-powered job search engine, with personal and company profiles, email alerts, notes, and a really, really shiny logo."
Just recently, we came across a report from December 2006 about the lives of seven individuals, each making 1,000 yuan (US$128) per month, living in seven different Chinese cities. The cities included Beijing, Shenzhen, Xi'an, Changchun, etc., as well as our own city of Shanghai. The following is our translation of the interview with Xiao Nao, who lives in Shanghai. Although it was published in December, some of the references (like taxi fares) lets you know the interview took place some time before that:
Photo from Shanghai Sky.
Probably not the best word choice by Xinhua for their headline, but they do list the highest-paid Chinese actresses, based on annual salary (they say their source was cfi.net.cn). Here's the list (figures in USD):
Peking University, known colloquially as Bei Da, is generally considered China's most prestigious and elite university. Less well-known is how much assistant professors get paid there. If you've been following some of the debates surrounding higher education in China you might have heard complaints that all professors care about these days is money. They are perfunctory about their teaching duties and spend most of their time doing things -- be it teaching at private institutions or lucrative research -- that make them money.
As a kid, Shanghaiist was a video arcade fiend. Looking fondly back on that Golden Age of video game entertainment, plenty of hard earned allowance and Chinese New Year money would have been better off being saved in a bank account rather than being flushed down a coin slot. The Mortal Kombat bloodlust was just too strong to resist! Remember that ego-inflating boost of self-esteem that came with whupping someone's ass for only 25 cents? If you are in need of a reminder, then it would be wise to make your way to the newly opened Sega Player's Arena in People's Square (as previously mentioned).
Compiled by Peijin Chen and Dan Washburn
The China Daily reports that more middle-class Chinese are concerned with image than ever before, giving birth to a small but growing corpus of image consultants:
It finally happened. Sometime between the early evening last night and this afternoon, Shanghaiist's bicycle was stolen. Yes, it was locked. Twice. And no, we did not bring it into our apartment, to the collective shock and incredulity of our landlord and the retired woman that minds the front entrance of our apartment block. Shanghaiist had naively believed that the four flights of stairs we schlepped the thing every time we used it (almost daily) would be enough to deter what few opportunists found their way into our building in a “safe” part of town. But ultimately, one of the immutable truths of Shanghai life prevailed. Your bike WILL get stolen.
This Xinmin Evening News story (in Chinese) tells of Mr. Zhang, a labourer from outside of Shanghai, who arrived in our blurry city to find work. He correctly thought it was pretty cool to be a security guard, even if there is an element of risk involved. The recruitment methods of one company caught his eye, which effectively rents out guard dogs to other security companies and guards. If you are an employee of this company, you can earn an extra 200 RMB by simply recommending other people to fill positions as security guards. (Our pal Mr. Zhang earned 600 RMB this way.)
Increasing amounts of Shanghainese residents are employing spies to spy on prospective spouses of their presumably spoilt sprogs.
That's Shanghai magazine is looking for two Senior Editors:
In the context of ever-increasing divorce rates, and with Chinese parents placing pressure on their offpsring to marry, a "Lightning Round" of marriages is the next crazy attempt at finding a VW Passat, an unfurnished apartment in Pu Dong and someone else to help make paper money to burn for your deceased relatives happiness (article in Chinese). It seems that 100 people arrived in order to meet a partner, decide in a matter of minutes if they are "the one", and then marry each other there and then.
62 year old Guangzhou man is New York City's Sad Panda
China: Nine nations in one?
Midweek Music Preview: Free tickets to Au Revoir Simone, Gaslamp Killer
Electrolist: Berlin 8-bit retroblaster tonight
Interview: Rich Medina funks up the Shelter
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