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: New Year's Day: January 1Spring Festival: February 6,7 and 8 (Wednesday-Friday)Tomb Sweeping Day (Qingming Jie, 清明节): April 4 (Friday)Labor Day: May 1 (Thursday)Dragon Boat Festival (Duanwu Jie, 端午節): June......

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. And what does Su's boss think of her?Su would be a bargain even if she were on......

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. Well just the other day after waiting what seemed like forever......

Gil Kim is a professional baseball player from Pottsville, Pennsylvania, which we are sure you all know is the home of Yuengling Lager (and is not too far from Bloomsburg, which we are sure you know is home to the Bloomsburg Fair). After graduating from Vanderbilt University, where he was "primarily a role player," Kim spent 2006 playing with the Omron Pioniers, a minor league team in Amsterdam, Netherlands. In 2007, he was signed by......

We must admit that Shanghai Daily has some of the most curious captions around, but some of them do actually entice us to read on further! In this story entitled, Prison for a sleeping pill beauty cheat, we read of a 25 year old girl, Ma Jing, from Sichuan who was imprisoned yesterday by the Jing'an District People's Court for 10 years for robbing an elderly couple that had hired her to have a baby......

Our round-up of some of last week's highlights from China's English-language blogosphere: Ben Ross, an ethnographer who has decided to work for one month as a trainee in a Fuzhou hair salon, continues his near daily account of his ongoing experiment. Here, he is surprised to find corruption seeping down into businesses as basic as hair salons. In this post, he breaks down the money flow and salary system of his coworkers, and estimates that......

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. For example, if you want a job, you select the criterion (place, industry, salary, date information was released, etc.) and......

A round-up of BBS posts on the Shanghai metro: People's Square concrete drying... and drying... Poster SanNiu British Teacakes noticed yesterday that the yellow metal floor protectors place in front of the glass safety doors on the People's Square Line 1 platform have been moved around as the floor is repaired following the safety door installation process. Line 7 to perform "double crossing" of Suzhou CreekThe Metro Line 7 will perform a over-and-under double crossing......

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." And while MeiJob may have all the latest technological bells and whistles, it's good to see they still support more traditional Chinese hiring practices, like discriminatory language in job ads. Here is a "Translator" job listing: above college degree, majored in English of Science......

Rumor: Chinese Xbox 360 in "next few months" - Joystiq Microsoft is in talks with Chinese internet providers and government ministries for a possible Chinese New Year launch. (tags: Microsoft Xbox360 games gaming internet computers China) Foreigners working in Shanghai might get new government health care service The city government is considering offering health insurance to foreigners working in Shanghai, alleviating problems for those whose work does not offer health insurance or who are......

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......

Yes, it's real. Yes, his RMB 50 is now worth USD 6.37. The yuan has appreciated 5.31% since July of last year. So if you're an expat earning in USD, you just got a slight salary deduction this year. And the outlook doesn't look any better for next year, either. Photo from Shanghai Sky. Shanghaiist features a "Photo of the Day", daily pictures of life around the city. We want you to share how you......

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): Zhang Ziyi (pictured): 15 million Maggie Cheung: 13.75 million Gong Li: 11.3 million Carina Lau: 11.3 million Cecilia Cheung: 9.4 million Zhao Wei: 7 million Lin Xinru: 5.6 million Liu Xiaoqing: 4 million Hsu Chi: 3.6 million Zhou Xun: 1.9......

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......

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?......

A new traffic website and hotline is going to help drivers avoid the places where traffic is snarled up. Yet 10,000 more cars hit the road every month.Liu Xiang could probably have run the distance from our home to our dinner appointment in less time than it takes for us to get there by bus or taxi. He just set a new world record in the 110 meter hurdles at 12.88.Rental rates at the top......

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: For 2,600 yuan (325 dollars) -- at least three months' salary to most blue collar workers in Beijing -- the image center advises clients on what colors and style of clothes look good on them, how to apply makeup and what hair style suits their face. Style savants can......

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)......

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......

Increasing amounts of Shanghainese residents are employing spies to spy on prospective spouses of their presumably spoilt sprogs. Detectives will look into a potential spouse's education, criminal record, finances, family background, health and even talk to friends and co-workers to learn about the person's personality. An investigation usually lasts one to two weeks depending on the client's requirements. The parents say they want to find the dull and sycophantic 'Mr. Predictable' with a 'stable salary'......

That's Shanghai magazine is looking for two Senior Editors: Required qualifications: - Native English speaker - Editorial experience, preferably with a wire service - Well read and with a wide base of general knowledge - Attention to details and respect for deadlines Please send cover letter, including salary expectations, resume and clippings to johnmiller(at)thatssh.com. All applications will be treated in the strictest confidence. The only thing that sticks out to us is the "wire service"......

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......