China's top quality watchdog has done it again, protecting us from substandard food products that foreign mercenaries are trying to put in our mouths. Mineral water from Evian and Volvic have been named among 420 imported food and cosmetic items that failed quality inspection tests on entry into China: more ›

Record rains have caused serious floods in Guizhou, Sichuan, Shaanxi and Henan provinces, affecting a grand total of 12.3 million people according to the AFP, 12.3 million people were affected. 57 people have died so far and another 29 are missing. Here's a look at the situation in Guizhou. Don't miss the treacherous rescue operation toward the later part of the video. more ›

During a spot check by the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ), six different types of bottled water were discovered to contain elevated amounts of the chemical compound bromate, a byproduct of the water sterilization process which, in excess, could lead to cancer. Among the water producers that are feeding you cancer water are Harbin Pharmaceutical Group and Jingyou Honghu Mineral Products Co Ltd. According to stuff we've read, excessive consumption of bromate may result in symptoms such as "nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and abdominal pain" as well as other scary stuff. 18 other brands of bottled/barelled water failed to meet general quality standards, as AQSIQ found high levels of not only bacteria (something we've worried about before) but free chlorine and strontium as well. A total of 220 different bottled/barreled water from 211 companies in Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei Province were tested during the spot check. more ›

Sales have been halted on 31 brands of bottled water in Beijing after failed safety tests revealed bacterial levels of up to 9,000 times above safety standards! WHAT? Is nothing sacred?! Fortunately it didn't include small individual bottles, but rather "large barrels." We're hoping that means some kind of industrial-sized tank, and not water cooler jugs. Apparently the cause of the contamination was poor sanitation standards at factories, where filters and pipes were inadequately cleaned. more ›

Water gushes out from the Xiaolangdi (小浪底) Dam on the Yellow River in Jiyuan, Henan Province, in an operation to clear out sand and silt deposits:
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Flood waters have broken through several dykes and inundated a total of 21 villages in Zhuji city in Zhejiang province. With more rain forecast for the next few days, the local government has been left scrambling for improved flood control and another round of disaster relief. more ›

"SHANGHAI'S drinking water supply should not be affected by the pollution in the Xin'an River in the east Zhejiang Province, officials said yesterday after residents expressed fears. Chen Guoguang, senior engineer of Shanghai's water supply monitoring center, said the city's water was mainly taken at the mouth of the Yangtze River and part of the Huangpu River, far from the Xin'an River where the carbolic acid leak occurred." [Shanghai Daily] more ›

Once upon a time, the Dongting Lake, a flood-basin of the Yangtse River, was China's largest freshwater lake. Now it's in danger of drying up. Is the Three Gorges Dam to blame?
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There propably won't be any stampedes for salt in the near future, as people in Shanghai only have to turn on their water to get some. Momentarily, Shanghai's fresh water supplies are threatened, as the drought that has troubled China for months now still lingers, causing salt tides. The drought halved the water volume at the Yangtze River mouth, resulting in seawater backing up into the river, mixing with freshwater and making it undrinkable. more ›

It pains us to say that the scourge of drought that began earlier this year has yet to abate. more ›

Via NoCommentTV: "Huitong County in Huaihua, Hunan Province was hit by rainstorm [last Thursday night]. Within 10 hours, the rainfall was over 100 millimeters in the county town. Landslides and road collapses occurred in several villages and towns, with many houses destroyed or damaged." more ›

Check out this nifty machine bought recently by the fire department of Luoyang in Henan province. It's a little monster that Shanghai should have had to fight against that catastrophic Jingan fire late last year. Built especially to fight high-rise fires, the RMB3 million ($456,000) jet-powered water cannon can spew up to 4 tonnes of water per minute at a range of 50 metres. If the city had invested in this little machine ahead of time, imagine how many more lives we would have been able to save? more ›

The last time we were in Hangzhou, a friendly maitre-d named Luke posed a very thought-provoking question to us: where on earth is the Nongfu Spring, and how big could it possibly be to fill so many darn bottles of water? Of course, we know that the fabled spring of Nongfu is just a metaphorical figment of our collective, commercialized imaginations, but it still made us want to check out their corporate headquarters to see what was really up. more ›

Besides all the subways and road renovations, one of the things we can look forward to come Expo time is... cleaner water? According to officials from the local water bureau, the city is about to fulfill a three-year water-purification plan that will produce cleaner rivers and lakes by the end of next year. Since 2000, the city has established 50 sewage plants capable of processing 672 tons of water each day and earlier this year, they began an anti-pollution drive targeting 33,000 local small rivers. All of which means: we might actually be able to touch Suzhou Creek's water one day without turning into slime. more ›

• China's Worsening Water Crisis [Forbes] "China is facing an extremely severe water resources problem. This year, northern China is experiencing a huge drought, and it is a warning bell. Solving our worsening water problem is a difficult undertaking the Chinese government and people can no longer avoid. Since entering a period of rapid economic growth 30 years ago, China has had at its disposal only 7% of the world's arable land to meet the needs of 20% of the world's population. It has had to utilize these scare land resources with relatively low average per-capita water supplies and backward technology."
• A conversation with China's young Communists [CNN] "When we requested an interview with members of the Communist Youth League, I expected an army of suits with well-rehearsed answers. Instead, we met three students casually dressed in jeans, just 18 to 23 years old.The interview was arranged by the State Council Information Office, in advance of the upcoming 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China."
• Beijing gets ready for H1N1 inoculations [China Daily] "Beijing is gearing up for a mass H1N1 flu inoculation of young students as its previous vaccination of hundreds of thousands of Chinese nationwide proved to be safe. No "serious adverse reactions" were detected among the recipients, the country's health minister, Chen Zhu, said Monday at a press conference, without elaborating on the definition of serious adverse reaction."

We don't know if this is what happens every summer in this city, but it seems like this month there have been a lot of really depressing stories about children drowning. First, there was the woman who allegedly threw a two-month-old infant into the river. She has been detained and is rumored to be suffering from post-partum depression. Then a little boy fell into the river near the Yangjia Bridge last week. He has yet to be found. And now Shanghai Daily tells us that a toddler has drowned in a freak septic tank accident in Baoshan District. Someone left the top of a septic tank open and a 5-year-old girl fell in and wasn't discovered til two days later. Good god. So keep an eye on your kids, parents, especially if they happen to be playing anywhere near water. more ›

More photos on 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 (and here). more ›

Michael Zhao of the New York-based Asia Society emailed us with this 3-min trailer video introducing their new project China Green and informs us:

As the source of most of the major river systems in Asia from China to Pakistan, including the Yellow, the Yangtze, the Mekong, the Salween, the Brahmaputra, the Ganges and the Indus, the Tibetan Plateau has become an epicenter of crisis. With the retreating of its glaciers - what glaciologist Lonnie Thompson has called the "fresh water bank account" of Asia - rivers and lakes have started running lower, pastures have become drier, deserts larger, weather patterns more unpredictable. Indeed, the whole ecosystem of the Tibetan Plateau and its hinterland are now slipping toward a catastrophic environmental disaster which will have continental implications far beyond the plateau itself.

Xinhua reports:

More than 1.17 million people have been affected in south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region by floods triggered by continuous heavy rain that started on Saturday. more ›

More photos on 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 (and here). more ›

Is water the new oil? Current TV takes us around China for a look at the reservoirs that have dried up, the arable land that's turned into large swathes of desert, rivers in urban spaces that have become dumps for human and chemical waste and the people's lives that have been affected. It also highlights the army of environmental NGO's that have sprung up only recently and their battle against time. more ›

Got photos of this morning's storm or the flooding that followed it that you'd like to share? Email them to photos@shanghaiist.com and they will automatically show up on our Contribute Page. Flickr users, simply tag your photos "shanghaiist". more ›

• The city's environmental work now focuses on drinking water. In one year, if things work out according to plan, Shanghai's water is supposed to be good enough to drink directly from the tap. City officials say that this vision will realized with the completion of the biggest reservoir in Shanghai, the Qingcaosha Reservoir, close to Chongming Island and a new pipe network. Could this be the beginning of the end for bottled water?
• A campaign to get more expats to donate blood has been started by the The Shanghai Blood Centre in a move to build up reserves of uncommon blood types. Rare types such as Rh negative are more common among Westerners than Chinese, and stocks of this blood type are often scarce. So if you know you have a rare blood type, donate ! If you don't, do it anyways.
• Chinese universities are gaining in status, though none of them have yet reached the world's top 100 list. At the top of this year's Top 100 Asia Pacific list, however, we find Shanghai's well known Jiaotong University, up from a previous 14th place.

A student after a school performance washing the make up from his face. more ›

Share with us how you see Shanghai, or China! Post your photos on Flickr, tag them with "shanghaiist", and we'll select one favorite image per day. Or you can simply email your photos to photos at shanghaiist.com. more ›

The Yangtze River just can't seem to cut a break these days. Earlier this year we reported that the river was in its death throes and now it's being hit by droughts. This week the Yangtze River hit a 142-year record low, a plight expected to have some serious environmental and economic repercussion, particularly in our humble delta region. more ›

The Lanzhou Morning Post (兰州晨报) reports that a growing desert is closing in on Dunhuang, Gansu Province's oasis town [translation by CDT]:

Xihu National Nature Preserve (西湖国家级自然保护区) sits in between Dunhuang (敦煌), Gansu's oasis town, and China's sixth largest desert, the Kum-tagh (库姆塔格). The 660,000-hectare region is the only green belt that shields lands to the east from marching sands coming out of the west. Wetlands in the preserve are shrinking, the result of dropping water tables and decreasing water supply from glaciers on Qilian and Altun (阿尔金) mountains. The region's Shule (疏勒河) and Dang (党河) Rivers have gone nearly dry in laces, reducing above-ground water supplies to both Dunhuang and Xihu. The expansion of agriculture around Dunhuang and a boom in logging of Euphrates poplar forests (胡杨林) for construction have made the water shortage worse.