Results tagged “subways”

Image of Japanese prostitute's application papers from China Daily.

Two bits of transportation news from random sources:

Though it sounds like a high school-student-and-soon-to-be-cocaine-addict's dream come true, in China, there is a real market for people with an acute sense of smell and masochistic tendencies! From the unlinkable without a proxy or psychic powers BBC:

China is about to unleash a new weapon in the battle against illegal polluters - humans trained to sniff out foul gases, according to Chinese media.

Continue reading "Sniffing fumes ... for a living"

Yesterday, we read with interest a few news stories about the approval of a 15.3 billion yuan (US$1.9 billion) expansion of the Hongqiao Airport. By 2010 (of course) there should be a new runway, a new 250,000 square meter terminal, and access to high-speed trains, inter-city trains and subways all at the airport. This all sounds great: Shanghai's most conveniently located airport gets even more convenient (hopefully they do something about the long taxi lines, too). But nowhere in the stories did we see what we really wanted to see — that Hongqiao would once again start living up to the word "International" that still appears on some of its signs. Ninety-five percent of the time we fly in or out of Shanghai we have to schlep all the way to the fun vacuum that is Pudong International. Shanghaiist would like to start a grassroots civic campaign (China loves those, right?) to make Pudong the city's domestic airport and newly improved Hongqiao the international hub, or at least encourage them to share. Anyone want to sign our petition?

Just what exactly is the attitude of people in Shanghai towards luxury items? It seems, from some reports, that China is the third largest market for luxury items after the US and Japan, with the added benefit of less taxes to "curb barbaric luxury consumption." Once the province of super-rich (men), luxury goods consumption in China is now in part being driven by women. Another interesting phenomenon is that people in Shanghai are more cynical towards brand-names than are people in second-tier cities, who are now the hard-core true believers.

Torontoist has some awesome, cutting edge news: A movie is being made about a gay hockey player - filmmakers even got approval from the NHL and the Toronto Maple Leafs! Also awesome: Toronto's "Do the Sneeze Sleeve Campaign". And most awesome is this dreamy photograph of Toronto's skyline in fog.

We just came across an interesting New York Times article about art, design and architecture in China. Much of it deals with the work of Ai Weiwei, an artist and designer (and son of famed poet Ai Qing), who has created a number of interesting living spaces, such as loft complexes, where the living space is near to or combined with gallery space:

For detailed looks at the Shanghai metro system, try here and here. There also could be some kind of interesting Google Earth/Shanghai Metro mashup thing available, but Shanghaiist uses an Apple, so no Google Earth for us we were wrong (see comment) and just downloaded it.

Shanghai Daily says that we ought to expect to see some famous British poems adorning our city's subways in the near future. From the report:

Since information about the WTO protests in Hong Kong this past week was fairly scant in local publications, check out Western media sources such as this, or this (in English) or Chinese reports from Hong Kong such as this or this (may be inaccessible in China) to get a sense of what all those Korean peasants and Third World rabble-rousers are making such a fuss about. (Or you could have gone down there to witness it first hand, as Shanghaiist did.)

It’s official, subway prices will rise as of next week to 3 yuan for “short trips” reports the Shanghai Daily. The city's English-language mouthpiece explains that the increase in fares is to discourage people from “jamming into overcrowded subway cars” and instead jam into overcrowded buses. The paper also states that the current metro lines carry 25 percent more people then they were designed for, which makes us wonder -- are these subways safe? Shanghaiist agrees that encouraging public transportation use such as buses is a good idea, but at the same time this city needs to start taking real measures to curb private car use. We suggest that instead of increasing fares on public transportation, the city increase parking fees for private cars in the city -- they can start with the dick that parks his Benz S600 right in front of our office entrance every morning like he owns the place.

What is Shanghai's answer to an overcrowded subway system? Make the poor people walk!