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Mistresses, a group considered scandalous in Chinese society, have set up their own official websites, associations to protect their rights, and even an annual festival.

They share their experiences of being financially supported by married men and even exchange their "lovers" on online.

A Shanghai Daily investigation uncovered one online forum - www.xeixe.com - apparently operated by "China's Association for Mistresses."

The forum, which has been online for more than seven months, is only accessible by its 700-plus paid-up female members, all of whom claim to be mistresses of married men.

The mistresses publish links to their posts on the front page of the website and describe their relationships with wealthy men as well as the expensive gifts they receive: 20,000 to 30,000 yuan (US$4,560.8) a month in pocket money, luxury products, cars and even apartments.

Some ask others about how much money they can get from their lovers and what methods could be used to "squeeze more money out of them."

They call themselves "new-age professional mistresses" who are young, bold, shameless, not shackled by Chinese traditional values and who don't have to work a single day because their lovers pay them a higher salary than they could ever earn.

Their work is simple - to maintain secret sexual relationships with married men to satisfy their desires. They describe having sex as "rolling on the bed sheets."

The topics most discussed on the forum include shopping, making friends, sharing experiences and even breast enhancement. Some of the mistresses offer free online courses on training to be the perfect lover - someone who should be sexy and witty and "totally different from a man's ordinary wife."

The forum hosted an online chat, inviting several men to be interviewed on their attitudes to mistresses, and what kinds of women they would look for to have an affair.

Continue reading "China's mistresses come out from under the covers" »

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In December the world watched (and giggled) as panda researchers donned panda suits for the good of the species, in an effort to reduce human contact and prepare them for the wild. This time they dressed up for the transfer of Cao Cao and her cub Cao Gen to the outer ring of the Wuloong Panda Reserve in Sichuan.

Cao Cao began her training in preparation for release into the wild last year, which is when she gave birth to Cao Gen. The move this week is kind of a big deal, as Cao Gen will be the first cub born in a semi-natural environment to be released into the not-quite-wild.

When they aren't moving the pandas, researches make as little contact as possible, observing them via an extensive video surveillance system instead. Cao Cao and her cub's new environment is 40,000 square meters large at an elevation of 2,200 meters above sea level.

Researchers decided to move the pandas after reports that Cao Gen had been exhibiting wild instincts, snarling at humans during his physical examinations. This is a good thing, as it is an important instinct in the face of predators such as leopards in the wild.

And it's soon to get even better than panda suits, if you can believe it. The reserve's directors recently accepted a suggestion made by 82-year-old leading panda expert Hu Jinchu, who argued that the panda keepers should dress up like leopards and roar in order to encourage survival instinct. We'll be keeping our eyes peeled for photos. (Videos after the jump!)

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A surge in passenger is testing China's railway capacity as millions head home ahead of the Spring Festival on Thursday.

China began its 40-day Spring Festival travel rush on Jan. 19. Some 2.85 billion passenger trips are expected to be made.

The Spring Festival, or Chinese Lunar New Year, is the most important Chinese holiday. It is a time for family reunions.

An average 2,265 train are transporting 6.2 million passengers daily, up 12.5 percent from last year.

Authorities have also stepped up the crackdown on tickets scalping, with police arresting 1,800 scalpers and confiscating over 14,000 train tickets.

"China's railway capacity has improved much over the years but it is still far from meeting the surge in passenger trips," Wang Yongping, a railways ministry spokesman said.

Trains tickets are hard to buy, Wang said.

Xu, a middle-aged man, bought a ticket at Beijing West Railway Station for his trip home to the southwest China province of Sichuan after queuing an entire day and a night.

"You'd better call it a fight rather than ticket-buying," he said.

Despite the hard "fight," Xu felt lucky because he did, in the end, get a ticket.

"Now I have to buy something to eat," he said while carefully tucking the ticket into his jacket's inner pocket.

Unable to get train tickets, over 100,000 migrant workers in southern Guangdong Province, a major manufacturing base, are going home by motorcycle.

Continue reading "Spring Festival travel rush tests China's railway system" »

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Italian supercar-maker Ferrari is celebrating its 999th car sold in China, with a special show in Shanghai. Ferrari just couldn't wait till 1000.

15 of Ferrari's luxury sports cars are on display, no doubt attracting attention from the growing ranks of affluent Chinese.

Models ranged from classics like the Spider and Modena, to limited editions like the Enzo. With a top speed of 350 kmh, just 400 of the Enzos were built. Other top performance cars include the 430 Scuderia and the GTB599 Fiorano. All aimed squarely at China's growing ranks of affluent Chinese, in particular the younger generation like Johnson Zhang who spent about $590,000 on his 458 Italian. Zhang owns the 999th Ferrari sold in China.

Johnson Zhang, The 999th Ferrari car owner said "Thank you Ferrari for allowing me to realise my dream as a man -- to own a 458 Italian. The figure nine has very good meaning in Chinese. It means long-lasting, perfection and sustainability".

Ferrari CEO Amedeo Felisa is aiming to sell 600 cars in the next two or three years.

Amedeo Felisa, Ferrari CEO said "That means to position China as the second market in the world just behind U.S."

Ferrari set up its China branch in 2004 and has witnessed the growth of the world's most populous nation into the world's biggest car market. Ferrari is one of the country's best known luxury car brands, with many like Li Wei aspiring to own one someday.

Li Wei, 29-year-old tourist said "It's too expensive but I still like it very much. For example, the limited edition art model, the 599GTB Fiorano, which costs around 11 million yuan (1.6 million USD) was bought by a Shanghai buyer. I hope one day I would be able to own a car like that."

China is set to become the world's biggest luxury market in five to seven years, according to a Boston Consulting survey conducted last year.

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The 27th Harbin Ice and Snow Festival — which opened on January 5, 2011 and will last to February 28 — has teamed up with Disney to develop its ice and snow brand.

This year's festival was jointly hosted by the National Tourism Administration, Heilongjiang provincial government, and Harbin municipal government.

Themed "Happy Snow, Passionate City", the 27th Harbin Ice and Snow Festival consists of five parts and more than 100 activities, such as ice and snow themed tours, art, trade, and culture. The event is aimed to becoming an international grand festival.

The event has five main exhibition areas, namely Harbin Ice and Snow World, Ice Lantern Garden Party, Sun Island Scenic Area, Yabuli International Ski Resort, and Zhaolin Park, covering 40 ski fields and three grand ice and snow scenic areas.

This year, the Harbin Ice and Snow World will team up with Disney to jointly develop the world's top ice and snow tour brand.

The Harbin International Ice and Snow Festival is held annually from January 5 and lasts for more than one month. It has become one of the world's four major ice and snow festivals, together with Japan's Sapporo Snow Festival, Cananda's Quebec City Winter Carnival, and Norway's Ski Festival.

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Just because China has embraced Christmas does not mean the country is becoming Western. Looks can be deceiving.

Christmas tunes play on radio stations. Every Grade A and Grade B office building in Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou is decked out with holiday displays. Christmas music is piped into elevators far and wide, even in Communist Party buildings. Santa, Frosty the Snowman and Rudolf, are ubiquitous. Department stores never used to have Christmas sales. Now they all do.

What's going on? One thing for is sure: the Chinese have not discovered Jesus. The meaning behind Christmas - the birth of God's son who died for our sins - can be articulated by a small percentage of the population. True, evangelical Christianity is spreading, particularly in the countryside where adherents can be quite passionate -- and brave -- as they proselytize the word of Christ. But, as a rule, mainland Chinese know very little about the deeper meaning of his teachings. In the eyes of most, China's Jesus is, more often than not, interchangeable with China's Buddha. He is someone to pray to, someone to turn to particularly in periods of uncertainty or fear. The idea of having a relationship with Jesus through acceptance of his "golden rule" in exchange for salvation is a nuanced abstraction. It is not a powerful offer for today's pragmatic, ambitious, worldly new generation of Chinese. In the PRC, morality is relative; standards shift based on ever-morphing external circumstances. But Christian morality is absolute. Jesus' word - charity to others, including the weak, particularly strangers - is non-negotiable. The tenets of Occidental Christianity are poorly understood and, frankly, unattractive as a consumer proposition. (By the way, most Chinese do not know the difference between Jews and Christians, let alone the difference between Catholics who acknowledge the Pope and Protestants who do not.)

Continue reading "Merry Christmas, China!" »

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China's consumer price index (CPI), the main gauge of inflation, rose to a 25-month high of 4.4 percent in October. The hike was mainly due to a 10.1-percent surge in food prices. Food prices have a one-third weighting in China's CPI calculation.

Though Gao is slightly exaggerating his hardship during the current inflation, price rises, particularly of life necessities such as grains and vegetables, do force Chinese low-income groups into a rough time.

Jiang Peng's family is hard-hit, as he and his wife both are laid-off workers and have two daughters in college. Jiang, however, has a new job, working as a janitor in Jinan-based Shandong Economic University.

Jiang's family makes some 24,000 yuan ($3,600) a year, half of which goes to paying tuition for their two college girls, with the majority of the rest covering their daughters' living expenses.

"We spend each penny carefully, because we try to save as much as possible for the kids. Now as price goes up, we find it increasingly difficult to make ends meet," said Jiang.

The only vegetable Jiang and his wife have these days is cabbage, since it is the cheapest of all vegetables.

Jiang said prices have dropped slightly due to government price control efforts, but it is not making a big difference yet, and prices of some daily necessities remain high, not showing signs of a decrease.

"We have fried dough sticks for breakfast, and even its price rose from 3.5 yuan per half a kilogram to 4 yuan, never falling again," said Jiang

Continue reading "Low-income groups feel the pinch under soaring prices" »

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After a one year hiatus, Delta Airlines have announced that they will be resuming their direct flights between Shanghai and their hometown - Atlanta.

Delta first launched this route in 2008 offering daily flights between the two cities. After a year’s worth of hype, passengers on the inaugural flight in March 2008 were treated to a Blues band and a 10 course meal. Economic woes and a jaded demand (apparently following the H1N1 outbreak), however, resulted in the airline cutting back to fewer flights a week until they eventually discontinued the route all together in 2009. They previously offered daily flights, but learning from their mistakes, Delta is re-entering the market cautiously--offering only twice weekly flights beginning June 2011.

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When the Shanghai-based stand-up comedian Zhou Libo emphasized his "expensive taste" as a coffee drinker and mocked the Beijing crosstalk comedian Guo Degang as a garlic eater - thereby emphasizing the price disparity between the two products - he could never have foreseen that just months later the roles would be reversed.

The price of "soft" commodities such as garlic, mung beans, sugar, cotton, soybeans, bean oil and even apples has jumped month-on-month, making agricultural produce a major target for investors.

The price of sugar has increased 100 percent since the start of the year, while the price of garlic has surged nearly 10 times in some regions.

In Shandong province, a place famous for flavorings, the price of ginger has risen 4.5 yuan (67 US cents) per kilogram since July, making it 228.6 percent more expensive than the same period last year, according to a report in Beijing Youth Daily newspaper.

Data released by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) on Tuesday shows that nearly 80 percent of food products in 36 major cities in China saw price increases in October from the month before.

The rising price of foodstuffs is creating inflationary pressure as previously undervalued agricultural products move toward normal levels, said Zhou Wangjun, deputy director of the NDRC's price division. Foodstuffs account for about one-third of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) weighting.

"During the process of industrialization and urbanization, the flow of labor and capital into cities accelerated, and led to a lack of production resources in rural areas, which now need price rises to compensate," he said.

Continue reading "Food prices fuel inflation concerns" »

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China is all set to launch its second lunar probe, Chang'e-2, by early October, which would be the 58th satellite to be launched from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in the country.

According to China Daily, the probe is likely to blast off from the No 2 launch pad on October 1 this year.

Chang'e-2 would test key soft-landing technologies for the Chang'e-3 and provide high-resolution photographs of the landing area, space authorities said.

"It is estimated Chang'e-2 can reach lunar orbit within five days, compared to 13 days, 14 hours and 19 minutes for Chang'e-1," the paper quoted Ouyang Ziyuan, chief scientist at the China Lunar Exploration Project, as saying.

Chang'e-2 will also orbit 100 kilometres closer to the moon and carry a higher resolution camera, he added.

China launched its first lunar probe, Chang'e-1, named after China's mythical Moon Goddess, on October 24, 2007. Its 16-month mission ended on March 1, 2009, when it crashed into the moon's surface.

According to China's three-phase moon exploration road map, the country will launch the Chang'e-2 lunar orbiter and then land Chang'e-3 on the moon in 2013. It is hoped that a sample of moon rock can be brought back to Earth in 2017.

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Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are throwing a charity banquet in Beijing. On September 29th, the two American tycoons will host a dinner for China’s wealthiest magnates to convince them to give their monies away to charity. This event has caused a stir in the Chinese world. Everyone from movie stars to industry moguls is involved. Doonesbury is talking about it. Some billionaires have publicly declined to dine with the dynamic duo, wondering aloud if the event was planned to publicly part them from their new fortunes. Their response has called into question China’s “charitable impulse” and given rise to questions about China’s ability to “do philanthropy.”

Headlines in the international press have sharpened this controversy. The Financial Times’ “US Tycoons Take Philanthropy to Chinese Peers” [editor’s note: the headline has since been changed to “Buffett and Gates on Chinese mission”]; the Global Times’ “Uncaring rich may stifle Buffett-Gates”; or the NYT’s “Chinese Attitudes Towards Generosity are Tested” portray the visit as an American effort to bring an enlightened stance on giving to a nation of billionaires badly in need of tutelage.

Though Gates’ and Buffett’s efforts are certainly well meaning, in fact the Chinese do not need Americans to teach them about philanthropy. China has a centuries-old tradition of charitable work, funding education, cleaning up after natural disasters, and helping the poor and elderly. My own work on the Chinese Red Cross Society, founded in 1904 by dedicated Chinese philanthropists—the billionaires of the age—shows that the Chinese have been engaged in these kinds of activities, as well as feeding the hungry, clothing the destitute, caring for the sick and burying the dead, through well articulated networks of charitable giving long before America was even born.

A growing literature on China’s charitable traditions (Joanna Handlin Smith on the late Ming, Nara Dillon and Jean Oi on the 1930s and 40s, Vivienne Shue in the contemporary period (see Stanley Katz’s Philanthropy in the World’s Traditions)) confirms these findings, and the topic has rightly become a hot one in academic circles. While Mao’s Communist experiment did indeed interrupt the normal course of Chinese philanthropy for five or six decades, this hiatus is trivial in light of the five or six centuries that China’s wealthy have been caring for their poor in China and beyond.

Continue reading "Bill and Warren's Excellent (Chinese) Adventure" »

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Guo Degang (郭德纲), one of China’s most popular performers of xiangsheng (相声), a form of stand-up comedy also known as crosstalk, is no longer welcome in the capital, as a scuffle between one of his students and a TV reporter has swept him up in a newly-launched anti-vulgarity campaign.

Guo’s troubles began when he was accused of expanding his personal property onto public land. On August 1, one of his students, Li Hebiao, physically attacked a Beijing TV reporter, Zhou Guangfu, who had come to Guo’s house seeking an interview.

Guo, who was not home at the time, defended Li by pointing out that Zhou had entered without invitation, had repeatedly claimed not to be filming, and had selectively edited the video for broadcast. Zhou’s paparazzi-style interview tactics notwithstanding, Li eventually was compelled to apologize and is currently spending a week in jail.

Guo’s mocking attack on BTV was not welcomed by official media. On August 5, CCTV’s Live News broadcast condemned Guo (without mentioning him by name) in a segment titled “Public Individuals Must Assume More Social Responsibility”:

Continue reading "Launching a people's war against crosstalker Guo Degang" »

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Looking at the scattered house tops emerging from the muddy floodwater, Wang Mubao, of Wangjiacun village in Fuzhou city, East China's Jiangxi province, prayed for help and for his family from the roof of his two-storied house.

After spending one and a half days in the outdoors waiting for aid to arrive, and only eating a single meal during that period, the fragile 66-year-old was finally rescued by the first boat to arrive, along with more than 20 other lucky villagers

"The water rose so quickly that I did not have time to take any food. In one and a half days, no boats could be seen from my roof," Wang told China Daily.

He was fortunate, compared to the remaining 1,000 villagers who have spent more than two days on their roofs without food or fresh water to drink.

Meanwhile, the floodwater continued to rise after a dyke in the nearby Fuhe River was breached overnight, spreading out from an area of 60 meters to 400 meters by Tuesday morning as the rainstorms continued to batter South China.

Continue reading "Floods breach dyke in river as rain persists" »

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A Chinese supercomputer has been ranked as the world’s second-fastest machine, surpassing European and Japanese systems and underscoring China’s aggressive commitment to science and technology.

The Dawning Nebulae, based at the National Supercomputing Center in Shenzhen, China, has achieved a sustained computing speed of 1.27 petaflops — the equivalent of one thousand trillion mathematical operations a second — in the latest semiannual ranking of the world’s fastest 500 computers.

The newest ranking was made public on Monday at the International Supercomputer Conference in Hamburg, Germany. Supercomputers are used for scientific and engineering problems as diverse as climate simulation and automotive design.

The Chinese machine is actually now ranked as the world’s fastest in terms of theoretical peak performance, but that is considered a less significant measure than the actual computing speed achieved on a standardized computing test.

The world’s fastest computer remains the Cray Jaguar supercomputer, based at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. Last November it was measured at 1.75 petaflops.

In the previous year’s ranking, the Chinese had the fifth-fastest computer, a system that was based at a National Supercomputing Center in Tianjin, China. That machine has now dropped to seventh place.

The United States continues to be the dominant maker of supercomputers, and is the nation with the most machines in the top 500. The United States has 282 of the world’s fastest 500 computers on the new list, an increase from 277 when the rankings were compiled in November.

But China appears intent on challenging American dominance. There had been some expectation that China would make an effort to complete a system based on Chinese-designed components in time for the June ranking. The Nebulae is based on chips from Intel and Nvidia.

Continue reading "Chinese Supercomputer becomes world's second-fastest machine" »

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If there's anything we've learned from Expo so far, it's that crowd control is clearly a necessity. Expo officials have heard complaints loud and clear, and are now in the process of changing up set ups of some pavilions to better manage crowds and long lines.

From the sounds of it, organizers were caught off-guard with the number of daily visitors (their target income of 6 billion yuan has almost been met) and which pavilions they would visit - Hong Hao, director general of the Bureau of Shanghai World Expo Coordination, admitted they didn't expect so many people to be queuing at Saudi Arabia or Japan. The tentative plan as of yesterday is to have the lesser-visited pavilions add attractions, and the popular ones get rid of some (the China pavilion won't be the first to make this move, though).

Expo organizers might also be looking to save some face after the surge of K-pop fans nearly caused a stampede on Sunday. Hong clarified that no one was trampled to death, and stated that organizers are in the midst of coming up with emergency safety plans for when entertainers or athletes make appearances.

However, in order to accommodate the staggering attendance rates (a reported 505,000 people were there on Saturday), and to discourage more creative means of getting into pavilions, organizers recommend buying night tickets as most of the visitors leave at 5 pm. All pavilions have been told to stay open until 10:30 (some were closing at 9 if there weren't enough visitors).

A friend at the Canadian pavilion seconds this tip: Visit the Expo at around 8 pm. It won't be as crowded, it won't be as hot, and heck, it might be even prettier - by that time, all the pavilions will be all lit up.

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A recent survey conducted by Beijing-based Horizon Research, though by no means comprehensive, should sound alarms that China and India need to do more to deepen mutual understanding, especially at the people-to-people level.

According to the survey, 45 percent of Chinese view India favorably, while 43 percent of Indian respondents view China as a partner. More disturbingly, most Chinese still perceive India, along with the US and Japan, as posing the most threat to China.

Findings about whether Indians perceive China as a threat are unavailable. But there is ample evidence that a considerable number of Indians do consider China a threat. Suspicion and even hostility toward China also run rampant in Indian society.

The plight of Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh offers an immediate example of this judgment. No sooner had he made some remarks in favor of China during his visit to Beijing earlier this month than the Indian official came under immediate attacks from his own countrymen.

The common practice of India applying stricter terms on imports from China than from Western countries also bears witness to the country’s distrust of its neighbor to the north. Many Chinese experts believe trade protectionism is behind India’s suspension of importing telecom equipment from China.

Continue reading "Bridging the China-India gap" »

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Continue reading "Visitor numbers soar in Shanghai Expo" »

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While U.S. and European schools have been haunted by repeated school shootings in the past decade, it seems like a rash of violent attacks is continuing to plague schools around China in recent months. The latest in a series of attacks on Chinese schoolchildren occurred on Tuesday morning in Shaanxi Province’s rural Nanzheng County. Seven children and a teacher were hacked to death and at least 20 children were wounded in an attack on a kindergarten, reports Xinhua. The attacker later killed himself, police officials reported. No further details of the incident have been given so far.

This attack is the fifth such one against school children in less than two months. In April, a hammer-wielding man set himself on fire after injuring five children and a teacher in Shandong province. In Guangdong Province, a teacher stabbed and wounded 16 students and a teacher with a knife at a primary school. In March, eight children were stabbed to death in Fujian Province by a man suspected of having mental health problems.

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It's been a roller coaster ride for the Shanghai Expo in terms of attendance so far. While the state media has been dutifully trumpeting the amazing ticket sales (apparently 33 million tickets have been sold, that's almost half the target of 70 million!), all that hasn't quite translated into real attendance yet. As you can see in the graph above which we found on the Shanghai Expo website, attendance has been mostly below 200,000, and on May 5, less than 100,000 visitors entered the Expo grounds.

Just how many visitors does the Expo need on site daily to hit its 70 million target? Global Times has done all the math for us -- 380,000, or almost twice as many as we saw on opening day.

And how much money will the government stand to lose if the people don't come? Over at the China Economic Review, Malcolm Moore extrapolates current attendance figures and based on an estimated two thirds paying customers, comes up with a potential 4 billion yuan shortfall -- a figure we have to respectfully disagree with because he doesn't take into account ticket buyers who eventually don't show up.

There's no doubt that Expo organisers will be able to sell 70 million tickets, or more if they so wished. Word on the street is that state-owned enterprises may be "encouraged" to pick up the slack -- but getting all those ticket holders to show up? That will require more than just a bit of magic.

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In the wake of recent natural disasters, such as the Qinghai earthquake, our minds are all a little geared towards charity work and philanthropic tidings. Well Chinese billionaire, Yu Pengnian, really blew these altruistic vibes out of the water yesterday when he announced that he was handing over his entire fortune to charity.

The Shenzhen real estate and hotel tycoon will donate 470 million dollars in cash and property assets to the charity with his namesake: the Yu Pengnian Foundation. This most recent donation will bring Yu’s total to a whopping 1.2 billion dollars in personal contributions—the entire worth of his fortune--and elevate him to the first mainland philanthropist to break the billion-US-dollar barrier in donations.

Yu tells China Daily: “This will be my last donation. I have nothing more to give away.”

As Yu is 88 years-old, his selfless gift is perhaps not too surprising as giving-back can often be the lasting ticket to immortality. But what about Yu’s remaining family? Yu tells reporters he doesn't care:

“…I have a point of view that is very different from others, I will not leave my fortune to my children. […] If my children are more capable than me, it's not necessary to leave a lot of money to them. If they are incompetent, a lot of money will only be harmful to them."

Continue reading "Chinese billionaire donates entire fortune to charity" »

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Rarely would one associate the words 'paradise' with 'dictatorship'. However, North Korea, at least if its pavilion at the upcoming Expo is anything to go by, would care to differ. Thanks to Shanghai Scrap's Adam Minter, we've been treated to a few inside shots of a building whose walls bear the title 'Paradise for People.' Readers, judge for yourselves whether the interior matches up to your ideas of Pyongyang.

Plus, for those visitors who were particularly moved by the 'Axis of Evil' rhetoric of George W. Bush, there is now the chance to see the Axis itself in one space. As we documented earlier this month, sitting right next door to the North Korean pavilion is none other than the Iranian pavilion. We can only agree with Minter that the Expo's master planner must have one hell of a sense of humour.

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Shanghai World Expo Park is going on trial operation from Tuesday to Sunday, with five comprehensive drills to be performed during the period, the Yangtse Evening Post reported Tuesday.

The first comprehensive drill started on Tuesday, with an estimated 200,000 people participating. The Expo Park is to open at 9:00 am and close at 8:00 pm during the trial operation.

The city's subways saw their first comprehensive drill Tuesday for the World Expo with passengers on board. The drill is expected to enhance the subway system's capability of handling huge passenger flows and sudden failures.

A total of 118 Expo volunteers from Shanghai-based Fudan University have also started their work Tuesday. They are the first batch of volunteers to serve the Shanghai World Expo, according to the newspaper.

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Now is the time to plan your visit to this year's World Expo and the best way to enjoy it is by selecting the right ticket combination. There are many options that allow you to avoid crowds and heat and give discounts. Yang Jian weighs them up.

Buying the right tickets to World Expo 2010 Shanghai can help make your visit to the massive fair more efficient and also save money.

The Expo organizer has designed six main kinds of tickets with different prices to meet the needs of most people.

Sales have started of the ordinary tickets (160 yuan, US$23.46) and peak-day tickets (200 yuan).

Since last Friday, people are able to buy three- (400 yuan) and seven-day (900 yuan) tickets that will allow repeated visits to Expo.

Discounted tickets cheaper by nearly 40 percent are also available.

After the Expo starts in May, people can buy cheaper night tickets (90 yuan) at the entrance.

Which ticket will be the most suitable for you? Who can enjoy the discounts? Why are the peak-day tickets more expensive?

The multi-day tickets are an innovation at Shanghai World Expo. They will be good for any three- or seven-day period during the event, which runs from May 1 to October 31, apart from holidays and other peak periods.

The tickets - with an average price of about 130 yuan per day - will be suitable for travelers who have several days in Shanghai to attend Expo.

They can divide the Expo site into different regions according to countries to facilitate a visit to one region each day.

The main areas of the Expo site cover 3.22 square kilometers in Pudong and 0.75 square kilometers in Puxi, so three-day ticket holders can spend two days in Pudong and another in Puxi.

However, people in Shanghai can buy tickets and choose days in different months to watch the different events.

The organizer is planting different trees and flowers to make the site distinctive in different months. Foreign pavilions will also change their exhibitions from time to time.

For example, a three-day-ticket holder can go to the Expo site one day in May to see the grand opening of various pavilions, another day at the beginning of October to watch the climax of the event and the last day at the end of Expo to buy discounted products from foreign pavilions.

Since a single multi-day ticket will enable different people to visit the Expo site on different days, people can also buy tickets with friends and family members and attend Expo in turns.

The night tickets, which will only be available during Expo, will be suitable for those who mainly want to see the exotic pavilion designs and who prefer a cooler environment.

Night-ticket holders will be able to enter the Expo site from 5pm to 12am. All the pavilions will open until 10:30pm but the lights will stay on until later.

The pavilions will be more beautiful under lights at night. Many pavilions will even have special events - the Norway Pavilion will have a polar light show on the rooftop of its pavilion, and the Korean Corporate Pavilion will launch snow shows every night.

Those who dislike crowds and sunshine can buy night tickets for June or September, expected to have the least number of visitors, to enjoy both less-crowded spaces and a cooler climate.

However, night tickets will allow only brief visits to the inside of pavilions and limits might be set on quantity when the Expo site is over-crowded, says Chen Xianjin, deputy director-general of the Bureau of Shanghai World Expo Coordination.

The peak-day tickets have been hot items. The 200-yuan ticket for 17 days that are expected to be especially crowded, including May Day and National Day holidays and the last week of Expo (October 25 to 31), have been extremely popular since sales began on March 27 last year.

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Following the spectacular box office revenues of Hollywood's "Avatar" (1.3 billion RMB) and "Alice in Wonderland" (168.6 million RMB in 12 days), it seems that Chinese movie makers are gearing up to take a slice of the lucrative 3D pie.

Xinhua and the Global Times report that China's leading film-makers are lining up 3D movie projects. The China Film Group Corporation has two animated 3D films in the works according to spokesman Weng Li, and consider China's film makers well on the way to producing 3D films able to compete on an international scale. An unnamed senior manager at CFGC has predicted that "The huge potential for 3D movies is luring more investment and it will take only one or two years for Chinese studios to mature in 3D production."

This 3D craze isn't the only change China's movie landscape is going through. It will be importing its first R-rated film, Spain's "El orfanato", set to premiere in mid-April. CFGC, who will be distributing the film, has said they will ask cinemas to require a parent or adult guardian to accompany under 17's to see it.

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The Spring is late this year in Shanghai. With temperatures well below the average for March, the thousands of Haibaos, the blue mascots shaped like 人 (person) that stand on every intersection of the city, must be feeling the chill.

Starting May 1, the Expo is just over a month away now, but Shanghai continues to live its busy life, and the locals are slow to warm up to the idea.

Despite breathy reports from advertising agents indicating that Chinese people are excited about the Expo, it is hard to find anyone seriously for or against it in Shanghai.

The mood is of Shanghainese aloofness, and even the controversy about the impact on housing prices (this year's hot social issue) has failed to catch on. Online, popular Shanghai-based forums like KDS still don't have any Expo threads among the hot topics.

Surely nobody is missing the ugly politicization that preceded the 2008 Olympics, nor the lamentable scenes seen during the torch run. But sometimes bad press is better than no press, and it is hard to avoid the feeling that a bit more of controversy might help to kick start the fever.

Continue reading "Shanghai slowly warming up to the Expo" »

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Liu Xiang (刘翔) and his coach Sun Haiping are putting a positive spin on the once world champion hurdler's seventh-place performance at World Indoor Championships in Doha, Qatar, over the weekend. Liu clocked a time of 7.65 seconds in the 60-meter hurdles, in his first major international competition since he limped off the track at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. Olympic champion Dayron Robles of Cuba came in first, and the USA's Terrence Trammell was second.

Liu had set a goal of making the finals at Doha, which he accomplished, and Sun said the competition had not done any further damage to his runner's surgically repaired Achilles tendon.

Liu now has about a year and a half to prepare for the next IAAF World Championships in Athletics, scheduled to begin August 27, 2011 in Daegu, Korea. Before that, he will no doubt be expected to bring home a gold medal for China at the Asian Games in Guangzhou this coming November.

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With the Obama administration’s recent decision to pull the plug on NASA’s moon mission program, “Constellation,” the lunar torch has officially been passed and China seems next in line.

Already among the leading extraterrestrial exploring countries, China became the 3rd nation to independently send a human into space with the launch of astronaut Yang Liwei aboard Shenzhou 5 in 2003. One year later in 2004, government officials announced the unmanned lunar exploration program which would probe rock samples and conditions on the moon. Today, China’s official space program CNSA already has plans to launch a second lunar probe in October--this time scanning the moon’s surface for prospective parking spaces for its future landing.

But, alas, China is not alone in shooting for the moon: the mission for another human touch-down on the lunar surface is simultaneously sought out by India (who plans to launch its first astronaut in 2016), and Japan (who already sent a satellite to the moon to capture astonishing footage of its surface).

All this man-on-the-moon talk makes it seem like it's the 1957 space-race all over again. But this time the moon's video footage comes crystal clear in HD quality and that Taikonaut is texting on his iPhone.

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China will never have its voice heard on the international stage unless the government loosens its tight grip over the media and film industry, the CEO of the country's No. 2 Internet portal said Wednesday.

Charles Zhang, the often outspoken chief executive of Sohu.com Inc, told a forum in Beijing that plans to create global Chinese media giants were doomed to fail if the government did not relax controls.

"Chinese newspapers and television stations completely lack meaningful competition, and have no independent personality ... so they have no authority or respect," Zhang said, according to a transcript of the speech posted on the company's website.

"If the Wall Street Journal or New York Times report something, the whole world pays attention, and believes it," he added. "China's right to speak in the world is totally lacking because it has no media organizations which can win respect."

China has tried to get its voice heard more globally mainly via the English-language channel CCTV-9, but has achieved little success despite pouring money into the venture.

The ruling Communist Party has prescribed a mix of commercial reforms and continued state control and censorship for the media and publishing sectors, while drawing a red line under issues directly challenging key policies.

China also wants to harness commercial forces to create media that can project Chinese ideas and values to a changing public and a wider world.

Zhang said these reforms risked creating media companies with no competitiveness, a "tiger's head with a snake's tail" -- a Chinese expression meaning to start well but end poorly.

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That’s a problem. Here’s one Chinese college’s attempt to reverse the trend, and comments from Chinese netizens on the effort. Enjoy; -Rand.

There always seem to be  problems with China’s college education area. Sometimes people criticize on the general system; sometimes colleges disgust their students; parents blame universities for being too nice or too mean on their babies; when school authorities decide to do something for change, it’s just not good enough.

Before reading through the following post from qq.com, let’s get to know some factors on Chinese university students employment issue. As experts concluded, China’s graduates employment is facing three major problems:

1. On supply aspect, China’s higher education has entered to a popular level. Domestic annual graduates increased from 2.12 millions in 2003, 4.13 millions in 2006 to 6.11 millions in 2009. And this number is 6 times to 2001, when colleges first applied enrollment expansion – 1 million graduates only.

2.  On demand aspect, globalization and tech development form the time-background. Globalization and knowledge economy require graduates to be high-standard, diverse and flexible, which college graduates can’t adapt to in time.

3. Integrate the above two aspects, structural unemployment furthers employability issue. Gallup Market Research showed that in 2007, only 70% graduates are able to meet their jobs’ requirement. Seller’s market is gradually changing into buyer’s one.

Continue reading "Forcing Chinese College Students to Think" »

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Coupled with Zheng Jie's (郑洁) quarterfinal win yesterday, Li Na's upset victory setups the possibility of an all-Chinese final this weekend.

The semifinal matches (draw here) will take place tomorrow. Li Na will play Serena Williams, the number one player in the world. In the other semifinal, unseeded Zheng Jie will play another unseeded player and former number one in the world, Justine Henin of Belgium. Both Li and Zheng will be considered underdogs in their respective semifinal matches.

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Avatar has taken the shine off Chinese blockbusters. The movie soon swept the world to earn $1.1 billion. But Chinese film makers only made 6.2 billion yuan after using all kinds of marketing tricks.

It is reported that Chinese film makers fell silent after watching Avatar, with almost nobody wanting to make a comment.

The Chinese film market has experienced a period of prosperity in these years since the box office incomes have increased at more than 20 percent each year. Both the number and revenue of our domestic films have constantly broken records. It is said that altogether 50 films will premiere during the Chinese New Year.

Moreover, the Huayi Brothers Media Group successfully went public in 2009 to lead in solving the financing problem that has disturbed the Chinese film industry for years.

However, the release of Avatar was a major blow to the confidence of Chinese film makers. One critical reason why Avatar was shown in China two weeks later than overseas was that the publisher China Film Group Corporation aimed to help its own movie Bodyguards and Assassins.

But Avatar still had proved to overshadow the domestic blockbusters. Some time ago, the main opinion in the Chinese film industry was "the box office has the final say on a film". We don't know if the Chinese directors have acknowledged their defeat now that Avatar has gained tremendous popularity in China, with box office incomes reaching $100 million.

In fact, the quality of a film is not necessarily judged by the box office as film directors and audiences all have their own judgment. Although the plot of Avatar is not new, the production is unprecedentedly sophisticated. It can be imagined that we could not see a splendid planet-Pandora without extremely careful production.

Thus, Avatar has not only set a good example for the Chinese film industry but also embarrassed our directors, who lack professional ethics. They are not ashamed of making poor films. Instead, they take pride in playing jokes on their audiences.

We don't expect our Chinese directors can become models of artistic innovation overnight. Maybe they should learn from James Cameron for his conscientious work attitude as well as his innovative spirit in promoting the technical development. Avatar would be a good motivation for them to learn.

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A Beijing company has purchased a shopping mall in the US, marking the largest overseas acquisition of commercial property by a Chinese enterprise to date.

Beijing's Toward Group said it will open the mall in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in August 2010 when 40 percent of tenants are expected to have moved in. The company announced its acquisition of the property on Dec 24.

"August is the warmest and most beautiful month in Wisconsin," Wu Li, CEO of Toward, told METRO. "For the first six months, we will waive the rent for our tenants."

More than 200 retailers are expected to open shops in the center, most coming from Beijing and Ningbo, a coastal city in Zhejiang province, Wu said.

The mall will be called "Amesia Plaza".

Continue reading "Beijinger to open shopping mall in Milwaukee" »

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Amid a widening wealth gap between rich and poor, a new survey has found that 96 percent of the public said they feel resentful toward the rich.

The latest survey, released by the Zhejiang Academy of Social Sciences, also shows that 70 percent of 1,159 respondents said they feel "a big gap" between the rich and poor in China now, with more than half of the people saying the gap will become bigger.

The survey, launched in the first half of the year, was based on questionnaires handed out to 10 social groups including public servants, entrepreneurs and farmers.

"I believe that the wealth gap is a much more serious problem nationwide," said Qiu Liping, a professor of social stratification at Shanghai University.

"Our society is in dire need of a platform for dialogue between the rich and poor," he said. Such a platform, he said, will minimize the resentment against the rich.

"People do not always hate the rich. People hate those who are immorally rich," he said.

But most of time, people do not make that distinction. Cherry Chang, an editor of a luxury magazine in Shanghai, said her car, a red Porsche, has been vandalized three times in the past two weeks.

Her friend's Lamborghini fared no better. "I think there are many people in this city who harbor a deep resentment against the rich," she said.

The wrath aimed at the wealthy has been a hot-button issue recently, and can go past vandalism to include kidnapping and even murder.

Yi Zhao, a civil servant from Guangdong province, admitted that he dislikes the rich.

"Most of them collect wealth at the expense of the poor. Take those real-estate manipulators for example. They control the property market aiming for a higher price and a considerable profit," he said.

"On the other hand, I simply can't accept the skyrocketing prices. Isn't it unfair to the majority who are unable to afford an apartment, even if we squeeze together the savings of three generations? "

However, Xiao Xiaowei, a 24-year-old self-employed from Wuhan, capital of Hubei province, said she actually respects the rich, especially billionaires.

Continue reading "Class wars in China: Everybody hates rich people" »

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Although China—like the rest of the world—care a lot less about the Winter Olympics than they do about the summer games, there is indeed an Olympics coming up. Olympic gold medals are a huge source of national pride in China, so the Vancouver 2010 Olympics will be watched more closely here than in most countries.

Here's a rundown of some facts and figures on China's Winter Olympic history:

• China's Winter Olympic debut: Lake Placid, 1980. China's best result was an 18th place finish in women's slalom ski. In 1984, matters only got worse, as China's top finish was 19 in the women's slalom ski.
  
• China's first Olympic medal: 1992, Albertville, 2 silvers in women's speed skating, 500 meters and 1,000 meters, for Ye Qiaobao (was the first year in the program for speed skating)
  
• First Winter Olympic gold: 2002, Yang Yang won the women's 500 m and 1,000 m in short track speed skating.
  
• China's rank in medals from Torino 2006: 11 (2 gold, 4 silver, 5 bronze). All were in speed skating except for one gold in men's freestyle skiing aerials (Han Xiaopeng) and silver in women's freestyle skiing aerials (Li Nina)
  
• China's historical Winter Olympic medals: 4 gold, 16 silver, 13 bronze, 33 total
  

Also worthy of note: China has historically been very strong in speed skating--it accounts for 25, or almost 80 percent, of China's winter Olympic medals. Its other Olympic medals have come in figure skating (5) and skiing (3).

China's best shot at the elusive team sports gold is in curling. The Chinese women's team became national heroes when they brought home the world championship earlier this year. The women's ice hockey team has also improved rapidly, but despite their number 7 world ranking, they have very little hope of medaling this time around. Powerhouses USA, Canada, Sweden, Finland and Russia are too dominant.

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Hawaii, California and Las Vegas are among American tourist destinations vying fiercely for a vast and largely untapped new market segment.

Yes, to be a Chinese tourist these days is to be a widely-sought traveler.

Hawaii has beaches and its famed "aloha spirit" as its siren call. Las Vegas offers gambling and its entertainment-oriented attractions. San Francisco can boast high-end shopping and the Golden Gate Bridge.

Beset by one of the worst recessions in decades, the U.S. destinations are spending significant sums on marketing campaigns in China's most populous regions, and are urging U.S. embassy officials and Chinese airlines to ease the logistical burdens of flying to the United States.

The payoff could be substantial — particularly in Hawaii, the closest U.S. destination to China but which is, at least for now, harder for the Chinese to reach by air.

"It could be huge" for Hawaii, said Ted Sturdivant, who has long published a Hawaii travel guide for Chinese, Japanese and other foreign tourists.

Attracting more Chinese tourists "will bring back a lot of jobs" to Hawaii, Gov. Linda Lingle said recently, after returning from a tourism and economic mission to China.

About a half-million Chinese traveled to all U.S. destinations last year, and that number is expected to grow by double digits in each of the next four years mainly because of China's growing economy and new wealth, according to the U.S. Travel Association. Tourism officials note that the Chinese middle and upper classes each rivals the size of the entire U.S. population, so luring just a fraction would produce huge numbers.

"Everybody looks at China and sees a country with 1.3 billion people and a growing economy, and they say, 'Oh my God, it's the greatest travel market that ever was,'" said Frank Haas, an instructor at the School of Travel Industry Management at the University of Hawaii.

Continue reading "U.S. destinations target affluent Chinese tourists" »

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SEXUAL transmission was the cause of about 72 percent of new HIV/AIDS cases in China last year, while infection among gay and bisexual men has increased to 32 percent of new cases.

These alarming figures were released in Shanghai yesterday by officials from the World Health Organization and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, or UNAIDS.

The actual numbers could be much greater as the statistics only include cases reported by medical facilities.

By October 31, China had reported 319,877 cases of HIV/AIDS, including 102,323 AIDS patients.

The Ministry of Health and UNAIDS estimated that there will be up to 920,000 Chinese people living with HIV by the end of this year.

About 48,000 people were infected with the virus this year in China, according to official estimates.

Between January and September last year, the ministry reported 44,839 new HIV/AIDS cases.
The officials unveiled the 2009 AIDS Epidemic Update and UNAIDS Outlook Report 2010, the first time the annual reports have been formally released in China.

UNAIDS officials said though new HIV infections were down 17 percent over the past eight years, the epidemic had gone in new directions.

Prevention efforts were not keeping pace with this shift, including the rise of HIV/AIDS due to unprotected sex and the spreading even among people with stable sex partners, they said.

"For instance, it is an important statistic that men who have sex with men have accounted for 32 percent of the new HIV/AIDS cases in China, while heterosexual groups covered 40 percent," said Michel Sidibe, executive director of UNAIDS.

He said these things must be considered while launching HIV prevention initiatives.

Continue reading "Sexual transmission of AIDS clearly leads spread in China" »

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On his first visit to China, Barack Obama has won hearts and minds with a simple gesture – by carrying his own umbrella.

He had it clasped firmly in his left hand, a large black umbrella protecting him from a downpour as he stepped off Air Force One on arrival in Shanghai on Sunday evening. In a country where officials often have flunkeys to hold their umbrellas, the image of a U.S. president keeping his own head dry was poignant. Xinhua and other prominent Chinese media all captured the moment.

“I felt unaccustomed to this — Obama holding the umbrella on his own,” said a commentator on the Web site of the Wuhan-based Changjiang Daily. “There was nobody crowding round. The Chinese public puts up with a culture in which government officials have their umbrellas held for them. Officials enjoying themselves under an umbrella don’t even think they are doing anything wrong.”

“Why don’t we learn from the spirit of umbrella-holding by Obama?” asked a blogger called Nanshan Fangma. “The United States is not a heaven, nor is it a hell. At least there are some examples we can learn from at this stage”.

Continue reading "Obama’s Umbrella Habits Set a Standard" »

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Mickey Mouse and friends are on their way to Shanghai after long-awaited plans for a Disney theme park near China's financial hub got the thumbs-up from central authorities

The news was announced yesterday by both the company and Shanghai's municipal government.

The United States-based company and its Chinese partners will now begin detailed talks about the project, which will be based in Pudong New District, the government's information office said in a statement.

Walt Disney Co welcomed the news.

"China is one of the most dynamic, exciting and important countries in the world, and this approval marks a very significant milestone," said Robert A. Iger, the company's president and CEO.

The approval paves the way for Disney and its Shanghai partners to nail down a final agreement, detailing the construction and operation of the park, the company said.

The first phase of the project will include a "Magic Kingdom-style theme park with characteristics tailored to the Shanghai region and other amenities consistent with Disney's destination resorts worldwide", the company added in its statement.

Zhang Huiming, an economist at Fudan University, said the upcoming visit of US President Barack Obama will help promote the project.

"For the US, it's a matter of the export of American culture," Zhang said.

And, on the streets of Shanghai, Donald Duck and gang already have their supporters.

Continue reading "BeiJing buys ticket for Disney Shanghai" »

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More than a year after the Beijing Olympics, the Bird's Nest stadium has been placed under Chinese government management in an effort to stem financial losses, state media said Wednesday.

"Each time a major event is held at the Bird's Nest, there is pressure to prevent the venue from becoming a white elephant," the China Daily quoted Zhou Bin, the stadium's director of research and development, as saying.

"It is not an easy time for us... we are wracking our brains almost every day," he said.

An unnamed state-owned financial institution "quietly" took over management of the venue in August from CITIC Investment Holdings, which previously owned full rights to the stadium's commercial operations, the newspaper reported.

Operating costs for the stadium, the centrepiece of the Beijing Games, total 70 million yuan (10.3 million dollars) annually, or about 200,000 yuan a day, it said.

Only a handful of events have taken place at the Bird's Nest since the Olympics, including an Italian football match, a concert by Hong Kong superstar Jackie Chan, and an eight-day run of Zhang Yimou's staging of "Turandot."

This week, the stadium has been turned into a track for the Race of Champions, featuring the world's top drivers, including seven-time Formula One champion Michael Schumacher.

Continue reading "Bird's Nest stadium plans to stem losses" »

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If you've been to Beijing, chances are you've been dragged to the Summer Palace at some point during your tourist rounds. Even if you've never been there, chances are you've heard of Empress Dowager Cixi's famous marble boat. If not, the story goes that Cixi embezzled funds meant to build a Navy to protect China from foreign invaders, and built an immobile boat out of marble for the imperial retreat. The Empress made her point, but since then the boat has become a symbol of China's underdeveloped Navy. Which is a reputation that China has been working diligently to reverse. And what better way to symbolize that turnaround, of course, than to build an aircraft carrier out of cement?

Wacky, but what we're proposing will be called "President Hu Jintao's cement aircraft carrier" for adoring masses of the future symbolizes China's desire to get a real, live floating aircraft carrier on the seas within five years. Of course, building an aircraft carrier is no easy task: projections by other countries' military experts assume it will take the better part of half a century to complete. Till then, we've got one made out of cement at least.

couple of overseas media and scholars abroad have speculated on the same popular topic concerning China's aircraft carriers. In late March, a media unit in South Korea once again troted out the "aircraft career threat" theory with a reportage that China is expected to build a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier of the 90000-ton class and will go into service in 2020.

As a matter of fact, such allegations on Chinese aircraft carriers have emerged repeatedly from the beginning of 2006.

To date, Senior Colonel Li Jie, an ace researcher with the Institute of Naval Military Affairs in China, has clarified the subject in his interview with the China Central Television or known popularly as CCTV.

Some allegations on the "aircraft carrier threat" theory are based solely on the "Minsk" and "Kiev" carriers anchored offshore respectively in south China's Shenzhen city and the industrial and business city of Tianjin in north China, the two decommissioned aircraft carriers China had purchased are currently for travelers to visit at scenic sites. Meanwhile, a defense affairs journal in Canada went so far as to hype a cement-structured facility modeled on the carrier vessel in an outlying Shanghai park, and took it as an evidence to prove China is currently building its own aircraft carriers.

"The carrier mock-up comes complete with flight deck, ramp and tower, all atop what looks like a low-rise brick office building. A fighter plane and helicopter, draped in dark cloth, are parked on the blue-tiled deck.

The Wuhan ship will not be taking to the seas any time soon. But some day in the future, China's first homegrown aircraft carrier will sail out of Shanghai's Changxing Shipyard and into the Pacific, loaded with jet fighters and protected by state-of-the-art support ships and submarines."

Continue reading "China builds a cement aircraft carrier" »

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China's champion hurdler, who withdrew from the Beijing Olympics with a foot injury thirteen months ago, finished second in a photo-finish at the Shanghai Golden Grand Prix. Both Liu and winner Terrence Trammell clocked times of 13.15 seconds.

Liu's performance exceeded expectations, and his return to racing was heralded by triumphal headlines in many of today's newspapers.

Still, Liu's trainers were impressed with his results, and expect a full return to health and glory in the near future. We're excited, Liu Xiang's sponsors are excited,so is Liu. Is it just us, or does his Christ-like pose seem like it's heralding the second coming?

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With only a week and a half left before the 60th anniversary of the PRC, it seems the whole country has caught National Day fever. Capturing the excitement, Boston.com has a wonderful collection of photos from various sources depicting many different preparations around China. We particularly like the military parade pictures: those outfits are fabulous! But amidst all the hoopla, it's a difficult time to be in Beijing.

With parade rehearsals and preparations, security has been taken to draconian heights, even surpassing the efforts made for the Olympics. Anti-explosive containers have been placed in subways, streets and subway lines around Tiananmen square have been cordoned off, and even pigeons have been grounded. All this commotion has caused so much disruption that the government was forced to cancel the final National Day parade rehearsal out of concern for the incredibly inconvenienced public. As if it wasn't hard enough to drive around Chang'an already.

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We've been busy doing our hair...monuments and popping popcorn one kernel at a time for the Sept. 17th release of the blockbuster film "The Great Cause of China's Foundation," but up until today, we've been left in the dark about China's plans.

Fortunately, the government has quite a show in store for such a massive milestone in the history of the PRC. This year, National Day will be commemorated by a massive display of Chinese pride and, well, population: among more traditional festivities of speech-giving and banquet-setting, this year's celebration will involve a military parade and a pageant big enough to make North Korea's Mass Games seem like a junior high talent show.

The spectacle will start with a parade on October 1 showcasing China's achievements in bolstering it's military power - a celebration with the dual intent of proving China's "resolution to safeguard world and regional peace and stability."

The pageant, which will include around 200,000 citizens and 60 floats, is centered around the humorously literal theme "Motherland and I Marching Together". Finally, on National Day Evening, a gala will be held in Tian'anmen Square, featuring party cadres, senior government officials, and fireworks all on display.

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Foreign reporters this week got a rare peek inside an infantry base of the People's Liberation Army (PLA). At the same time, officials were reportedly putting the final touches to a bilingual PLA website that is due to go live on Aug. 1, the 82nd anniversary of its foundation.

Taken together, these efforts are designed to signal greater transparency by a 2.3 million-strong military whose rapid expansion has stirred unease among other foreign powers, including Japan and the United States. But these baby steps seem unlikely to silence the debate over China's military capacity and how it intends to use it in future.

On Tuesday, Adm. Timothy Keating, who commands US forces in Asia, said the US and China would soon resume military talks that had been suspended last October over US arms sales to Taiwan. Speaking after two days of bilateral meetings in Washington, he said the overall atmosphere had improved between the two countries.

That same day, Col. Leng Jie Song, commander of the PLA's 3rd Guard Division, welcomed two busloads of foreign visitors to its base outside Beijing. He said the PLA was gradually opening its doors to outsiders to build trust and to avoid any "misunderstanding" between militaries.

Continue reading "Chinese Army opens (small) window on operations" »

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Roller coasters have a special place in our hearts usually shared with cotton candy, summer vacation, and Mickey Mouse. And since Mickey Mouse in Shanghai might be nothing more than a dream anymore, we are more than a little excited for next week's opening of Shanghai Happy Valley (上海欢乐谷), soon to be China's largest amusement park.

After several years of waiting since construction began in late 2006, the enormous 900,000 square-meter park will open its doors in Sheshan, 40 km southwest from the center of Shanghai next Saturday, on August 8th, according to the park's website.

To add to the excitement, the park will be offering discounted admission prices until September 12th. Full price tickets will run 160 RMB per person per day, a 40 RMB discount from the normal price. However, we found their criteria for reduced price tickets a little strange: persons less than 140 cm tall can enter for only 80 RMB/person, which is pretty standard. But while women age 65 or older also get entry under the discounted price, men have to be 70 years or older in order to qualify. Sexism, anyone?

Still, unfair policies aren't going to stop us from being super psyched about a lot of their rides. Sure, they have plenty of kids' stuff, which we'll probably just pass on by, but we're looking forward to their several roller coasters (mostly imported from Europe/North America). According to People's Daily Online, these include a mine coaster, a diving coaster, and of course, China's first wooden roller coaster, Fireball (More pictures here).

The park will also feature a crazy part-underground eco-hotel made out of a former quarry; however, construction on the hotel has unfortunately not yet started. Look forward to construction beginning sometime next month.

The park is easily accessible by metro: simply take line 9 south to the first Sheshan stop (佘山旅游渡假区站) and take the park's shuttle bus from across the street. More transportation info can be found here (in Chinese).

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Here's a change: the biggest NBA news in China right now isn't about Yao Ming or Kobe, but rather their 7-foot-1 compatriot, Shaq. The Cleveland Cavs center arrived in China on Monday on a promotional tour, but made an unplanned stop at the Shaolin Temple in Henan Province, claiming, "I always wanted to know if Shaolin kung fu was real or not. Now, at last I know - the Chinese kung fu I saw on television, it was all real."

Yep, it was so real that the notoriously Twitter-happy Shaq was moved to tweet, in typical Shaq-ese,

Ive been alotta place but being at the shaolin temple n china has brouhht a tear to my eye buddha blessed

Shaq also met with the abbot of the temple to discuss the origins of Zen Buddhism, watch kungfu performances by the monks, and learn a bit about Snake Style and Drunken Style kung fu. (We at Shanghaiist also know a thing or two about Drunken Style kung fu, if Shaq wants to pop down to Shanghai and have a gander.)

Props also to Shaq for playing the good guest as he gifted the abbot with a signed pair of basketball shoes. In return, he received a statue of Bodhidarma, the founder of Shaolin Kungfu, and some special sticking plaster, which is probably useless believed to help in healing.

Shaq left his mark in the temple by signing, "I love you very much. Peace be with you", and said he plans to introduce mixed martial arts into his basketball game back in Cleveland. He also stated, "When I retire, I hope to come back to the Shaolin Temple to study for a year. To come here just this one time is not enough." If that's true, we expect basketball's popularity to continue in China, as well as Shaq's. Who knows, maybe Shaq will be the next next Karate Kid.

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The good: The iPhone could be available via China Unicom in as little as three months, and 3G support has already been approved.

The bad: It may not come wifi-enabled. The phone submitted to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technologies had that function disabled, and Apple has been unwilling to tweak the phone to support WAPI, a China-specific wifi security protocol that may or may not let the government drop in and spy on you.

Wifi capability has long been a key sticking point between the two sides; the Chinese have been firmly against opening (government-owned) carriers up to the threat of cell phone users making VoIP calls, and Apple has (until now) been equally against introducing anything other than a fully-functional phone.

If you just can't wait to get your hands on the new phone (or if you value your wifi), we've heard that the 3GS can be had for about RMB4,800 at your favorite electronics market

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As the NBA draft approached, the grim truth about Yao Ming’s(notes) broken left foot hung like an anvil over the Houston Rockets. The fear isn’t that he’s just lost for next season, but longer.

The Rockets and Yao’s reps are frightened over his future, and the concern is the most base of all: Does Yao Ming ever play again?

“The realization has hit them that this is grave,” one NBA general manager said.

For now, the Rockets have privately told league peers it could be a full season before Yao might be able to return to basketball. Multiple league executives, officials close to Yao and two doctors with knowledge of the diagnoses are describing a troubling re-fracture of his navicular bone. Three pins were inserted a year ago, but the foot cracked in the playoffs and isn’t healing.

“It sounds like he’s missing most of next season, if not the entire 82 games,” one league executive who has had recent discussions with the Houston front office told Yahoo! Sports. “That’s all that [the Rockets] will concede quietly, but they know it’s probably much worse.”

After Yahoo! Sports first reported the severity of Yao’s injury, Rockets team physician Tom Clanton conceded franchise’s fears to the Houston Chronicle.

“At this point, the injury has the potential for him missing this next season and could be career threatening,” Clanton said. “One of the things we are trying to get is a consensus opinion on that, to make certain there is no option we are overlooking that would provide an earlier return or would be an option for treatment that he would prefer rather than doing additional surgery.”

Houston general manager Daryl Morey refused comment on Monday and a team spokesman said the Rockets will not have further comment until Yao undergoes additional medical tests.

There’s no reason for the Rockets to disclose the severity of the injury, nor the uncertainty over Yao’s future. Before the Rockets confirm a dire diagnosis, they plan to send him to three more specialists this week, a source said. For now, the Rockets have season tickets and sponsorships to sell.

Continue reading "The danger of basketball players" »

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Tickets for the World Expo officially went on sale at 9am yesterday and already, peak-day tickets (tickets for the first three days and for the National Day holidays) had completely sold out.

The first ticket sold was bought through telephone by a person who called at 00:09 on July 1. The first ticket sold in person was to a 74-year-old man who had waited in line since 3am. Wow! We know old people wake up earlier, but that's pretty crazy (and we would think unhealthy) for a senior citizen.

He said he intended to go to the Expo with his wife and daughter and told reporters that "We have to see the things that will make life even better."

While you guys probably won't come close to experiencing the Expo fanaticism local Shanghainese are going through, it is probably a good idea to still book your tickets as early as possible - especially if you want to visit during a peak day, since there are now daily limits on the number of peak day tickets outlets are willing to sell.

A single-day regular time ticket will cost around 140RMB. Peak day tickets are a little more expensive at 180RMB. Both will be on sale until September 31.

You can buy them at almost any outlet of China Mobile, China Telecom, Bank of Communications or the China Post. Apparently there are 2,796 locations in the city and you're bound to live near one. If you're too busy (or lazy) to go in person, you should visit the Expo's official website at www.expo2010china.com or dial the Expo hotline: 962010. Some outlets will give you free delivery if you order more than three tickets at a time.

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A flurry of recent activity regarding the US Pavilion at next year's Expo has resulted in US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton confirming the United States' participation in the Expo after the USA Pavilion organizers announced PepsiCo signing on in a US$5 million deal.

However, even with Clinton's support and PepsiCo laying down the cash, it is still unclear exactly how the US plans to finance and implement its plans for the pavilion, which is due at the opening of the Shanghai World Expo in 310 days. The future of the US's involvement in the 2010 Expo has been in doubt for quite a while, as private funding has so far failed to meet the total budget of US$61 million set by the pavilion organizers.

Continue reading "US confirms participation in Expo, but funding still unclear" »

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The first anniversary of the massive May 12 earthquake has prompted several charity events in Shanghai.

More than 10,000 children from Gansu Province are expected to draw their dreams on postcards. The postcards will be published and sold for charity in an event organized by the Narada Foundation and the M50 Creative Garden. The organizers are currently collecting children's drawings. The postcards will be exhibited from May 23 to June 6. People can also buy the postcards on M50's Website (www.m50.cn).

Yesterday, a charity auction of Chinese paintings was held to collect money for quake-hit areas. More than 30 paintings by around 20 artists such as Fu Baoshi and Wu Guanzhong were auctioned. Five percent of the proceeds will go to quake-hit areas via the Shanghai Charity Foundation, organizers said.

More than 50 local firms along with 45 companies from Dujiangyan held a job fair yesterday in the earthquake-ravaged city to offer positions to quake victims.

More than 2,200 jobs offered at the fair attracted about 4,000 applicants, the Shanghai Human Resources and Social Security Bureau said. A total of 460 passed first-round interviews at the fair.

Chen Wenting, a Sichuan Normal University graduate who majored in preschool education, said she applied for a position as a management assistant in a Shanghai medicine company.

Meanwhile, all new schools, hospitals and other public facilities built in Shanghai from next year will be designed to higher earthquake-resistant standards, according a draft of anti-earthquake rules.

Officials said the new legislation will require local government facilities, key businesses and institutes to hold earthquake drills.

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The clock marking the dwindling days until the Shanghai World Expo kicks off was put into motion at Tian'anmen Square on May 1 by top legislator Wu Bangguo.

Wu, chairman of the National People's Congress Standing Committee, called the expo "a big aspiration for all Chinese people," and said the government will spare no effort in preparations for the gala, which kicks off May 1 next year.

Wu said he looks forward to experiencing technological advances and sharing achievements of human civilization with friends from across the world.

Pavel Antonin Stehlik, the Czech commissioner general to the Shanghai World Expo, earlier said the event "is going to become a symbol of the worldwide economic revival".

Masood Khan, Pakistan's ambassador to China and the country's expo commissioner general, said he believed the gala itself is a "confidence building measure and indeed a stimulus package for the world economy" currently buffeted by a financial crisis.

"Shanghai's expo will help us look beyond the international financial crisis and prepare for better, robust economies," Khan said.

Continue reading "World Expo year-long countdown starts" »

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China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) kicked off a grand maritime ceremony to mark the 60th anniversary of its navy at 6 p.m. Monday off the coast of the eastern city of Qingdao, Shandong province.

PLA Navy Commander Admiral Wu Shengli announced the start of the four-day festivities, which would include seminars, a sampan race and a fleet parade.

The PLA Navy was founded on April 23, 1949 with nine warships and 17 boats obtained after a unit of the Kuomintang's second coastal defense fleet defected to the PLA.

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Forbes has released its list of the Top 10 Chinese celebrities, which surveys the who's who of China to rank them based on personal income, public influence, internet reach and commercial value.

Thanks to Olympics fervor, sports stars were especially represented this year, with four of the five top spots belonging to athletes. The rankings and Forbes' reasonings below:

1.姚明 Yao Ming (Basketball)

Yao ranked No. 1 on our list for the sixth consecutive time, bolstered by exposure from the Olympics and a bevy of endorsement deals that included Visa and McDonald's. On the basketball court, the seven-and-a-half-footer led China's squad to finish among the final eight teams.

2.章子怡 Zhang Ziyi (Acting)

Actress Zhang Ziyi, 30, ranked No. 2 in part because of her success in Forever Enthralled, a tribute to opera singer Mei Lanfang directed by heavyweight Chen Kaige. But she also attracted attention because of her romantic ties to Vivi Nevo, the low-profile Israeli media and entertainment industry investor.

3.易建联 Yi Jianlian (Basketball)

Another Olympic basketball team member and NBA star, New York Nets forward Yi Jianlian, ranked No. 3, up from No. 4 last year. Off the court, he added to his fame with appearances in ads for Nike and McDonald's.

Continue reading "Athletes, starlets top Forbes China celebrities list" »

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U.S.-based ladmag Complex has compiled a list of what they consider the Nine Hottest Chinese Women. While we're not ones to argue whether the women compiled in the list are actually hot, we were a little surprised by some of the inclusions (Christy who?). We were also a little bemused by how many pictures involved the women getting sprayed with liquids. Apparently Asia is one giant wet t-shirt contest.

Their list:

9. 刘亦菲 (Liu Yifei): Also known as Crystal Liu. Famous for her role as the teenage love interest in that Jackie Chan + Jet Li flop Forbidden Kingdom
8. 赵薇 (Zhao Wei): Also known as Vicky Zhao. Was most recently in Painted Skin. Once had feces smeared on her face by a fan upset over her posing in a Japanese flag.
7. 黄圣依 (Huang Shengyi): The mute lollipop-loving girl in Kung Fu Hustle. We really haven't seen her in anything else, though her Wiki page says she's Shanghainese! 上海人 represent!
6. 徐若瑄 (Xu Ruoxuan): Also known as Vivian Hsu. She's apparently an actress, a model, and was part of some sort of girlie pop group in Japan. Our fondest memories are of seeing her in a shoe commercial in the subway.
5. 钟丽缇 (Zhong Liti): Christy Chung. We've never heard of this Canadian-born Chinese Vietnamese mix, but supposedly her career as a sex symbol suffered when she had her first baby. She ought to take a couple tips from Heidi Klum.
4. 舒淇 (Shu Qi): Adorable, transportable and previously a porn star.
3. 章子怡 (Zhang Ziyi): Those sexy photos earlier this year couldn't keep her out of our hearts. Chinese netizens angry at her engagement to a white man may never admit it, but they'd die for a chance to engage in some butt sniffing antics.
2. 张曼玉 (Zhang Manyu): More famously known as Maggie Cheung, she's starred in over 70 films since beginning her career in 1983. Fun fact - Her wiki page says she's Shanghainese too!

and the award for hottest Chinese woman named in an American metrosexual magazine is...

1. 巩俐 (Gong Li): Yep, the woman who broke China's heart when she renounced her citizenship and became a Singaporean came in first. Viva la used-to-be Chinese.

Thoughts? Comments? Heartfelt rants against Complex for not including your favorite, much more deserving Chinese starlet?

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China Tuesday demanded the auction of two looted historic bronze sculptures in Paris be canceled, saying it broke international conventions.

The auction seriously violates the country's cultural rights and interests, and hurts national sentiment, it said.

A Paris court on Monday ruled against stopping the sale of the sculptures, rejecting an appeal filed by the Association for the Protection of Chinese Art in Europe.

The sculptures, of rat and rabbit heads, are part of an art collection from the estate of French fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent, which went on sale at a Christie's auction that started in Paris on Monday.

Continue reading "China fights to stop sale of looted relics" »

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    "A film rating system is very essential in China, but it will not allow to screen movies rated Level Three," Tong Gang, director of Motion Picture Bureau with the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) was quoted as saying by a report on Web site of Ministry of Culture.

    Level Three, or III, is one of the three-tier ratings used for movies containing sex or violent contents in China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. No one under 18 years old is permitted to rent, purchase or watch such a film in movie theater.

    A movie rating system in China has been discussed for years since the people have begun to an enjoy an increasing number imported films and a booming domestic film market.

    The system was expected to launch in 2005 as a part of the draft law, but the National People's Congress, top legislature, had not passed such a law.

    The director said the draft of the law had recently been finished and was submitted by the SARFT to the State Council, China's cabinet. He did not reveal that whether the NPC's annual session this year would review or approve the draft law.

Continue reading "China completes motion picture law, banning porn, violence contents" »

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The 31-year-old sales manager works in Ningbo, Zhejiang province, and has posted a notice on a bulletin board of cnool.net, the largest Web portal in the province.

The offer: 6,000 yuan ($878) for five days.

The reason: to present her before his parents in his hometown of Xuzhou, Jiangsu province, to stop them from pestering him to find a girlfriend and get married.

"My parents have been pushing me for a long time to find a girlfriend and asked me to bring her home for Spring Festival," Liu says.

He has left his personal information and blog address on the website. "It's always better to be honest," he says. "My price is competitive," though.

Nearly 400 applicants have responded within three days, he says. "Many girls have contacted me and want to meet me."

As for his blog, it has attracted more than 20,000 browsers.

Liu says the ideal candidate should have "a kind heart, high level of personal integrity, and good communication skills".

He has worked out an agreement, too, which includes "project" content, daily schedules, payment method and safety precautions. "Both parties should act according to the provisions of the agreement," he says.

The Lunar New Year holiday is the most important family holiday. It can be the most trying times for some eligible singles, too.

Continue reading "Man offers 6000RMB for fake girlfriend to take home this Spring Festival" »

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A panda at the Beijing zoo bit his third tourist in two years - and this time, his jaws had to be forced open to free the man, who had jumped in to retrieve his son's toy.

Gu Gu, a 240-pound (110-kilogram) panda, mauled the man's legs and refused to let go until zookeepers pried his jaws open with tools, said a zoo spokeswoman surnamed Gong. She would not give her full name, as is common among Chinese officials.

Gu Gu first made news in 2007 when he bit a drunken tourist who jumped into his pen and tried to hug him. The tourist retaliated by biting the panda in the back.

In October, Gu Gu viciously bit a teenager who climbed into his exercise area out of curiosity.

Continue reading "Panda attacks in China" »

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As most foreign residents of China can attest, just about every Chinese knows who Dashan is. Dashan, or “Big Mountain,” is the Chinese name of Mark Rowswell, a Canadian who has mastered Mandarin to an enviable degree.

Last week, Rowswell was one of dozens of Canadians to become members of the Order of Canada, the highest honor the nation bestows.

Dashan is beloved among China. He first came to the attention of Chinese in late 1988 when he appeared on a New Year’s Gala program on CCTV because some that Wikipedia says might have been seen by 550 million people. He has since parlayed that into a business of emceeing TV shows, promoting products, teaching Chinese on state televisions and having his mug pasted in ads all over China (see photo for example).

Continue reading "China's best known foreigner" »

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According to research firm TNS, which recently surveyed roughly 2500 Web users in each of 16 countries around the world, including the U.S., U.K., China, Japan, Korea and Australia.

According to survey results, China’s Internet users are more likely than their counterparts anywhere else to describe as “fun” a whole array of Web-based activities, including blogs, message boards, forums, online video and wikis.

Chinese Web users are also very active in their online participation, especially when compared to Westerners.

“Web 2.0 is far more advanced in Asia, and in China, than in the U.S. and Europe,” says Bernice Klaassen, head of interactive research at TNS Singapore. In Western countries, about 1% of users create online content, about 10% participate through methods like comments or discussions and the rest are lurkers,” he says. Meanwhile, in China, Mr. Klaassen says the proportion of active participants is closer to 50%, with a significantly greater share of Web users blogging regularly, participating in online forums, and sharing video and music.

Perhaps not surprisingly, being so active takes more time. On average, respondents from China said they spend 44% of their free time online. Americans only spent an average of 30% of their leisure time using the Internet.

Continue reading "Chinese Web Users Have More Fun" »

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Walking through my neighborhood last night I passed an old couple walking a large, shaggy chow. Another neighbor gave it a look, paused and asked, “What do you call it?”

“We call it, ‘big bear,'” one of the owners said.

“Oh, I was going to say, it looks just like a bear,” the neighbor replied.

Names, especially nicknames, pet names and the like, can be incredibly literal things in China. If you are fat, there's a good chance people will call you “fatty.” If you have a big beard, people will call you “big beard.”

The same goes for iconic structures. The Great Wall (or literally, the “long wall”) doesn't leave a lot of doubt as to what it is. Many of the famous new buildings that have gone up in Beijing recently have been given their own tags by the people. The National Center for the Performing Arts is known as the “Duck Egg.” The National Stadium is known as the “Bird's Nest.” They're both humble yet fitting names for these grand edifices.

The people at China Central Television are apparently not so happy with the public's nickname for their gleaming new headquarters. The building, which was designed by Rem Koolhaas and Ole Scheeren, consists of two slanting towers that are joined by sections on the ground and two horizontal sections at the top to form a continuous loop. It is an architectural and engineering marvel. To the people of Beijing it is simply, “Big Underpants.”

That name is not yet as common as “Bird's Nest” or “Duck Egg,” and CCTV seems intent on thwarting the rise of the admittedly inelegant Big Underpants. The state-run broadcaster has asked for alternatives from staff members, according to a report in the Chinese press, but so far they've had little luck coming up with a popular substitute.

Centuries ago Confucius spoke about the “rectification of names,” which, somewhat ironically, is a highfalutin way of saying you need to call things what they are. Perhaps CCTV should heed the wisdom of the sage, and the people of Beijing, and go with Big Underpants. It could be worse. One possible substitute floated in the Chinese press was the “Wisdom Window.” Nice try, but as some online commenters have noted, in Chinese it's a homonym for “hemorrhoids.”

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China is undergoing an urbanization the scale of which the world has never seen. By 2025, China will have added 350 million urban residents to its population (more than the entire population of the U.S. today), and five years later will have a total city population of more than 1 billion. That will boost the portion of its gross domestic product produced by cities from 75% today to around 95%, estimates the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI).

To house all those new urban residents (240 million of whom will be migrants from the countryside), China will pave 5 billion square meters of road, add up to 170 mass transit systems, and build 40 billion square meters of floor space. All told, China will have 221 cities with more than 1 million residents, and eight megacities, each with a population of more than 10 million. The Chinese government is hoping to pull off the unprecedented urban transformation with a special emphasis on ensuring stable and equitable cities, said delegates at the World Urban Forum held in early November by U.N. Habitat in Nanjing. "Building harmonious cities is our vision," said Jiang Hongkun, the mayor of Nanjing.

Continue reading "China Prepares for Urban Revolution" »

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This is what Wilson has to say about Shanghai:

Where to experience the next great expat city? Those with an eye to the future might consider Shanghai. With the inexorable rise of the Chinese economy, Shanghai is a good bet to become the financial capital of the 21st century.

Shanghai’s dynamism can be seen in the layering of the futuristic skyline, colonial facades, and the teeming, gritty street life. This energy is percolating down to Moganshan Road’s gallery and warehouse studio scene, regarded as the epicenter of contemporary Chinese art.

The only mainland Chinese city to crack the top 100 of the Mercer livable cities index, Shanghai already provides a good mixture of affordability, opportunity, nightlife, and culture.
Unlike Buenos Aires, work is not difficult to come by in Shanghai. ESL teachers are in demand, and entrepreneurial spirits can take advantage of Shanghai’s [Economist] ranking as the best place to do business in China.

Perhaps in time, Shanghai’s tapestry of contrast will inspire the next great expat novel.

Continue reading "Shanghai one of 5 best places to live overseas for 2008" »

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The first Chinese astronaut is likely to walk in space around 4:30 pm on Friday, a day after spacecraft Shenzhou VII lifts off, the commander-in-chief of the mission's ground operation has said.

The historic moment will be broadcast live across the world, xinhua.net quoted Cui Jijun as having said on Tuesday, and the space environment is expected to be fine for the mission.

Shenzhou VII is scheduled to blast off from Jiuquan in Gansu province tomorrow night. The exact time will be announced on Wednesday.

The Shenzhou-VII mission entered the countdown stage after the final check on the spacecraft, the carrier rocket and the ground operation system was completed Tuesday morning.

Scientists simulated the ignition of the rocket and the in-flight moves of the capsule to test how the observation, control and communication systems at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center work.

Continue reading "First Chinese to spacewalk on Friday" »

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Forget the skimpily clad cheerleaders. The immaculate hostesses handing out medals at the Olympics have won the spectator vote for glamour.

Wearing Chinese silk dresses with their hair pulled back tightly into neat buns, the hostesses are beautiful, elegant and their eyes are three-tenths the length of their faces.

"They are so pretty and precise. They smile continuously," said Debra Sinex, a tourist from Atlanta, Georgia, in Beijing for the Olympics.

At every medal ceremony six or more hostesses are on duty.

Two wearing "cheongsam", or long dresses, stand either side of the podium while three or more in knee-length dresses hold platters bearing the medals and bouquets of nine red roses, with red a lucky colour in China and nine meaning everlasting.

But although the role looks simple these hostesses have been meticulously chosen and trained.

Continue reading "Perfect hostesses outclass sexy cheerleaders" »

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Tonight I can write the saddest lines. This Pablo Neruda line so truly describes the feeling of every heart that beat in China on Sunday night.

Even the skies couldn't hold back their tears – but they made sure to cry in silence as the last dawn broke over the Beijing Games. They realized immediately, though, that it's not in the right spirit to say goodbye with tears in the eyes, and saved the rest for some other day.
Tears are natural at the end of a grand get together. But the guests who had gathered in Beijing from all over the world to enjoy the 17 days deserved to be seen off with a smile.

This is exactly what the closing ceremony, with its bright fireworks display and mixture of Eastern and Western elements, did, It heralded the end of what a journalist who spent the past 17 days in the Olympics Village described as "a party that took a long time coming but was over in a jiffy".

The village was still bubbling with faces, of athletes and officials and journalists before the closing ceremony. Jerseys and country colors were exchanged, messages of love and affection shared and goodbyes said with the hope of meeting again.

Continue reading "Goodbye, Beijing. Hello, London" »

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Former Olympic gold medalist hurdler and golden boy for millions of Chinese, Liu Xiang, limped off the track today, taking away with him the hopes of defending the gold and reclaiming his world record from Cuba's Dayron Robles.

Within minutes there were already 8000 Chinese commenting on the shocking turn of events. Some understanding, others, not so much. Perhaps among the angry ones are those who placed their bets on Liu and failed to pay heed to his hamstring injuries that were reported last month.

Continue reading "Liu Xiang pulls out of Beijing Olympics" »

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Swimmer Michael Phelps is doing his best to make sure that Chinese fans have access to information about him. He had his personal Web site, Michaelphelps.com, built in just two languages—English and simplified Chinese.

Phelps, four gold medals into his attempt to win an unprecedented 8 Olympic swimming titles in Beijing, is a hot topic in China right now and it looks like his efforts to keep it that way extend beyond the pool. Smart man.

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Beijing is praying for the mercy of Mother Nature this Friday, as the latest weather forecast calls for rain and thunderstorms on the day of the Opening Ceremony.

"We may see a cloudy sky on August 8, and it will probably also meet scattered showers or thunderstorms," said Wang Jianjie, deputy director of the Beijing Meteorological Bureau. "The highest temperature may be between 30 and 32 C."

Wang spoke to reporters at a press conference August 3, 2008, but refused to give details on when and where the rain is expected to fall.

Continue reading "It could be wet but can't dampen spirit" »

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A list of ticket booths is below. The BBC's Olympic venue map is a great place to start if you don't know the location of an Olympic site. For a map that's less geographically detailed but includes the venues' Mandarin names, check out ChinesePod's Olympics site, where you can also pick up some last-minute Olympic-themed language lessons.

Get there early, and bring your passport and your patience. Cash and Visa cards are the only two forms of payment that will be accepted. The box offices close at 6 p.m., but it's a safe bet that tickets will be sold out long before then.

Continue reading "Venue maps and the last round of Olympic tickets" »

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Center Wang Zhizhi was China's top scorer with 18 points. The first Chinese player to play in the NBA, Wang's opportunities will likely dwindle once Yao returns to full strength, forcing him to come off the bench. Yi Jianlian was the team's third leading scorer with 14

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A study released Tuesday by a U.S. research group concluded that China's economy will overtake that of the U.S. by 2035. The report, by economist Albert Keidel of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, also announced that China's economy will be twice the size of the U.S. economy by 2050. Under current market estimates, China's GDP now stands at about $3 trillion, compared to the U.S.'s $14 trillion, reports Rob Lever of AFP. Keidel, a former World Bank economist and U.S. Treasury official, predicts that

Continue reading "China's economy to overtake U.S.'s by 2035?" »

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This Wall Street Journal report says an agreement was reached Wednesday that will allow broadcasters to air coverage live from Tiananmen from 6 to 10 a.m. and from 9 to 11 p.m. The agreement also will allow NBC, CBC and others to "roam freely with satellite trucks around Beijing and other cities co-hosting the Games," according to the Journal.

For those of you who like to count things, NBC, the network that owns Olympic rights for the U.S. market, will carry 2,900 hours of Olympic coverage. According to math whiz and USA Today reporter Michael Hiestand, "Those live hours, spread across NBC and its cable TV outlets, top the total U.S. TV hours — 2,562 — for all previous Summer Games combined."

NBC will be distributing programming across its stable of channels, including Oxygen (female-oriented), MSNBC (business-focused) and Telemundo (Spanish broadcast). It will be using the Olympics as a test ground for new media, experimenting with updates and broadcasts via mobile and online platforms. U.S. Olympic coverage has historically been loaded with heartwarming profile stories that can frustrate die-hard sports fans who would rather watch actual games than a tearjerker piece about an athlete's childhood. Maybe all this coverage will allow viewers to see more of what they want.

Also announced, and of more interest to those of us on the mainland, CCTV's Olympic channel says it will air its coverage without its usual 30-second delay, so it can coordinate with global feeds.

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Zheng was again the unseeded underdog, this time facing the 15th seeded player. She notched only two aces to Szavay's five. But she was patient, precise and unflappable, coming back from a 4-1 deficit to win the second set. On the last point of the match, she volleyed her opponent deep into her forehand corner before laying a hard shot to Szavay's backhand side.

Continue reading "Chinese player making waves at Wimbledon" »

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Mickey Mouse and his friends could be welcoming visitors to the city's own Disneyland as early as 2012, a Hong Kong newspaper reported over the weekend.

The theme park, with an estimated cost of 40 billion yuan ($5.8 billion), will be located on the east bank of Shanghai's Huangpu River, bordering Pudong district's Chuansha town and Nanhui district, Wen Wei Po quoted an unnamed source close to the Shanghai government as saying.

Shanghai Disneyland, 20 minutes' drive from Pudong International Airport, will be eight times larger than the one in Hong Kong - the first in China.

The source told the paper that 10 sq km of land has been set aside for the park.

The agreement on the location of the park was made after 10 years of tough negotiations, with Beijing and Tianjin also vying to host the park.

The Shanghai government had wanted the theme park to be built on Chongming Island, an area that has failed to keep pace with the city's rapid economic development.

The cost, excluding the land, was first set at around 30 billion yuan ($4.4 billion) but increased to 40 billion yuan ($5.8 billion) due to inflation.

Continue reading "Shanghai Disneyland 'may open by 2012'" »

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Beijinger Meng Xuegen's retirement dream is to see the world.

From France to Switzerland to Russia, the 67-year-old has traveled with his wife to every destination on their must-go list except for one: the United States.

But that country too will soon be crossed out.

Setting off tomorrow, Meng is among the first group of Chinese tourists going to the US after the two governments signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) last December, which allows Chinese tourist groups to travel in the US.

The MOU saw the US granted "Approved Destination Status" after years of negotiation, making it the 134th country on China's approved list.

"I am going to the States to see the 'paper tiger'," Meng joked

Continue reading "Group tour travelers set their sights on the US" »

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As China rapidly climbs to world economic power, some enterprising individuals are emigrating here in the hopes of finding a new version of the American Dream. Blogging For China translates an article from the Southern Metropolis Daily on African traders who move to China (notably the city of Guangzhou, which currently holds an estimated 100,000 Africans) with the same burning desire of an earlier generation who emigrated to America: a better life. Many of them face strong prejudice against blacks in China and struggle to integrate themselves into their villages. The reporter follows one Liberian trader as he greets Chinese store-owners in his neighborhood:

He’ll loudly greet them, “Friend, how are you recently?” His “friends” don’t respond. Some pull out a cell phone and intentionally ignore him. Others impatiently wave at him, and say in a combination of Chinese and English: “If you’re not buying anything, then go… quickly GO!”

It seems friendship only exists between the Africans.

Continue reading "The Chinese Dream?" »

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In Napa Valley, the most hallowed of America's wine regions, a young Shanghai billionaire has tongues wagging.

David Li, 32, was the top bidder at last weekend's Auction Napa Valley, one of the biggest charity wine auctions in the United States, dethroning the big bidders from Silicon Valley.

Li told Reuters that he spent "a little bit" at Saturday's live auction, but wouldn't elaborate. What he did say, however, is that he has $3.5 billion from the sale last year of his Internet company and he plans to use his windfall to add to his 120,000-bottle wine cellar.

He spent $500,000 for the Screaming Eagle lot of six magnum bottles of 1992 Cabernet Sauvignon, the first vintage, donated by the cult boutique winery of the same name. The lot includes dinner for eight in the vineyard.

"I love Screaming Eagle. It's the best wine in the world," said Li.

Continue reading "Young Shanghai billionaire soaks up Napa Cabernet" »

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but China says priority will be given to domestic adoption

adoption agencies across the United States, particularly the China-only agencies are experiencing a great surge in enquiries after thousands of children were orphaned by the Sichuan earthquake:

"There's lots of interest," says Joshua Zhong, co-founder of Chinese Children Adoption International, one of the largest China-only agencies in the USA.

He says inquiries have more than tripled since the May 12 quake, which has killed at least 68,109 people and left an estimated 4,000 children without parents.

Zhong's agency and others, however, are trying to lower callers' expectations. They cite two reasons: Many of the children may not be orphans once parents or other relatives are found, and more Chinese people are adopting children.

Continue reading "Adoption inquiries soar in the US after Sichuan earthquake" »

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How to help:

Those who want to adopt orphans of the quake can contact the Beijing Community Service Network by dialing 96165 to register.

Applicants are reminded they should think carefully about adopting children and the practice is subject to law. Interested parties can also help by providing subsidies for the children.

In Beijing

Some young earthquake survivors from Beichuan have arrived in Beijing with the support from the China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation. Those interested in helping the children with subsidies can call 010-6255-6356 and 6252-6424.

Additional hotlines

China Children and Teenagers' Fund hotlines: 6510-3495, 6510-3491, 8511-5407 (24 hours in both Chinese and English)

Requirements for temporary foster parents

1. Fixed place of residence

2. Stable income

3. Main caretaker should be aged between 25 and 60, healthy and experienced in caring for children. The person should guarantee the safety and physical health of the foster child and be able to provide emotional support and appropriate education.

4. Foster families should have someone accompanying the foster child at all times.

5. Foster family members should not suffer from mental illness and other diseases that may harm the child.

6. Foster parents should not have criminal records or undesirable hobbies. The foster family should be harmonious, well-educated and maintain a good relationship with neighbors.

Continue reading "Tips about Adopting a Quake Orphan" »

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After hovering for five minutes over Wenchuan, Li Xiang finally found a tiny landing spot for his helicopter on a hill near the quake-devastated county.

Li, deputy commander of the Aviation Regiment of the Chengdu Military Area Command, then made a soft landing and waited as his crew unloaded supplies of food and medicine.

Unable to approach the aircraft because of the wind from the blades, the grateful crowds of people knelt down, put their hands together and cried: "Thank you, soldiers! Finally, we have hope."

Although deeply moved, Li managed to hold back his tears and took off once the unloading was completed.

"At that moment, there was no time for tears," he said, recalling the first flight into Wenchuan after the earthquake.

"Every minute costs a life."

After the deadly quake, Li's regiment was the first to fly into the isolated counties and towns such as Wenchuan, Maoxian, Yingxiu, Beichuan.

After struggling with heavy winds, poor visibility and rough terrain, the regiment provided a lifeline from the sky for the people who they would otherwise have been unable to reach.

At 2:28 pm on May 12, a heavy tremor woke up the pilots who were taking a nap before a night drill. Feeling the magnitude of the quake, the regiment assembled immediately, cancelled the drill and readied their helicopters.

At 2:48 pm, the order to fly to the earthquake-stricken area came. And Li's regiment embarked on the largest rescue operation in its history.

Continue reading "They carry a lifeline through the air" »

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As reported earlier, the epicenter of the Sichuan earthquake was not only near the city of Wenchuan, but it was also very close to the Wolong Panda Reserve. Xinhua informed us that some pandas at other facilities were safe, but the status of the Wolong pandas was still known.

Luckily we have good news. We received this email from Karen Rose, Chairman of Pandas International:

We have a report from the Bifengxia Panda Base that they received a satellite phone call from the Wolong area.

 

The caller reported that the pandas at the Wolong Breeding Center are safe ( about 80 adults plus cubs) and the staff is safe. The caller reported that 20 people are dead in the Wolong area. That was before the last large aftershocks.

We also know that the chief veterinarian and assistant director for Wolong was at the Chengdu Panda Base at the time of the earthquake and he has emailed that he is safe.

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"I've heard some news about that," Yi said through an interpreter Thursday, one day after completing his rookie season with the NBA's Milwaukee Bucks. "Right now, I'm not too worried about it. I still have full confidence that these kinds of protests are not going to influence the Beijing Olympics in any way."

Will he be asked to carry the torch?

"I hope so," Yi said, bypassing his interpreter to speak in English.

After an up-and-down rookie season with the Bucks, Yi said he was looking forward to the Olympics.

"I'm very excited," Yi said, through his interpreter. "Often, I catch myself thinking and imagining about the Olympics right now. And right now, to play and have the Olympics right at our front door and look and see across the stadium and it's all Chinese fans, this is something I'm really excited about."

Continue reading "Yi hopes to carry Olympic torch" »

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People in Shanghai are to be able to access broadband wireless networks in the city through Shanghai Mobile's services at a lower cost than at present, the city's biggest mobile phone operator said yesterday after signing agreements with the city agency for IT industry promotion.

Shanghai Mobile is to establish 666 additional Wi-Fi base stations at the Olympic Games and World Expo sites. At present, it has about 100 to 200 Wi-Fi sites at hotels and airports.

Meanwhile, Shanghai Mobile plans to establish a total of 3,000 3G base stations to cover the region within the Outer Ring Road, which will also provide wireless broadband services besides mobile communications functions. "As a modern city, Shanghai should have a wireless Internet network without the limit of space and time.

Continue reading "Cheaper Wi-Fi access on way" »

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President Hu Jintao lit a cauldron with the Olympic torch in Beijing's Tian'anmen Square Monday morning, launching the official start of the worldwide torch relay of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

Hu then passed the torch to hurdler Liu Xiang, the men's 110m Olympic and world champion, who ran across the Golden Water Bridge in front of Tian'anmen Rostrum.

Thousands of spectators gathered at the world's largest square to welcome the arrival of the flame with a grand celebration which included the performance of Peking opera, folk acrobatics and ethnic dances.

The flame was ignited in ancient Olympia on March 24 and after a torch relay in Greece, was handed over to the hosts in Athens on Sunday. It was carried back on a specially-chartered Air China plane to the capital at around 9 am yesterday.

Vice-President Xi Jinping expressed his best wishes to the Olympic torch relay and the Olympic Games at the welcome ceremony.

Continue reading "Torch takes off on global odyssey" »

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Chinese basketball All-star Yao Ming may become the mainland's first torchbearer, Xinhua revealed on its website Thursday.

The Olympic flame, which will be lit on March 24 in Olympia, Greece, is expected to arrive in Sanya, Southwest China's Hainan Province on May 3 after touring 21 countries and regions outside the mainland.

Yao is a shoe-in to be the first to run a 200m stretch with the torch. Fellow player Yi Jianlian will be Yao's backup torchbearer, Xinhuanet cited a Sanya local government official as saying.

"Yao, who represents China's sporting celebrities, has the honor of being the mainland's first relay runner," said official Liao Minsheng.

During the 2004 Olympic Torch Relay, Yao was the mainland's final torchbearer who ran in Kunming, Southwest China's Yunnan Province.

The NBA center, who led the Chinese team to the quarter-finals of the Athens Olympics, had a successful operation earlier this month after he was diagnosed with a stress fracture in his left foot. He will recuperate for up to four months before making the decision to participate in the Games.

Liao also told Xinhuanet that the Sanya leg, which is the torch's first stop on its mainland tour, will be a highlight and some of the relay runners are celebrities. TV hostess Yang Lan, movie stars Zhang Ziyi, Jackie Chan and Maggie Cheung will each carry the torch on Hainan Island.

Continue reading "Yao may become mainland's first relay runner" »

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Too much spam on your mobile phone? You're not the only one being hit or getting angry. 30 NPC delegates are thinking of enacting a PRC Information Security Protection Law, which would provide a heavy deterrent to spammers.

No details have been released regarding the law under discussion. However, Chinese law now officially forbids people from sending pornographic or "otherwise disturbing or irritating" messages via SMS text message. There have been cases where sexual harassment in the form of text messages have landed the offender punishment.

Continue reading "China mulls Information Security Protection Law; Target: Spammers" »

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The Olympic torch relay will stop for two hours at Tian'anmen Square in central Beijing on the eve of the Olympic Games, a Chinese official said on Thursday.

A ceremony would be held on the square when the torch arrived after circling the world and going through every province and region of China, said Jiang Gongmin, head of the Beijing Bureau of Culture.

He said that the torch would circle half the square, which is the world's largest, spanning 440,000 square meters, or larger than 50 football fields. Afterwards, a fire-lighting ceremony and art performance would be staged.

Tian'anmen Square will be the last leg of the relay before the torch enters the National Stadium. It will also be the starting spot of the marathon event of the Games.

The relay is to have 21,880 Chinese and foreign torch bearers along the 137,000-kilometer route, which will include the world's highest mountain, Mount Qomolangma.

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American pension and mutual fund money is being invested in the Chinese coal industry.

The biggest Chinese coal company is China Shenhua Energy Co. of Beijing, which produces about 170 million tons of coal a year from 21 mines and builds power plants. While about 80 percent of the company's stock is owned by Shenhua Group in Beijing, the rest of its shareholders reads like a who's who of US investors: Fidelity Investments, OppenheimerFunds, Merrill Lynch, even the Teachers Retirement System of Texas.

The performance of Shenhua's Hong Kong-listed shares explains why US investors love Chinese coal. Shenhua gained almost 65 percent from July through September, while Peabody -- a favorite of analysts who follow US coal companies -- lost more than 3 percent over the same period. Shenhua's initial public offering in Shanghai in September raised $8.9 billion, a record for Chinese mainland.

Continue reading "US investors, business eye China coal" »

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The dragon at Beijing Capital International Airport came to life on Friday. Everyone who walks into the dragon-shaped Terminal 3 (T3) will see the flattery heaped upon it before it opened was no deception.

The new terminal wasn't even half as crowded as the two older ones around noon, when this reporter walked in. No lines in front of check-in desks, no passenger running down the passages, no arguments in hushed or loud tones, No strains, at all. That's should be good news for those traveling to and from Beijing for the Olympic Games.

Continue reading "Terminal lifts Beijing into the high-flying club" »

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Wu Shaogang, a manager from manufacturer Lemote Technology has said the first batch of 80 computers powered by home-grown Chinese CPUs are undergoing user tests. This means the home-made chip, Godson II E, is out of the lab and moving into at least a small commercial operation followed by the big time.

Lemote, which is based in Changshu in China’s Jiangsu Province, hopes to get a thousand PCs out on to the market in China before the Chinese New Year. Which means that we will see them in the rest of the world before the end of the year.

The PCs will use Linux, have a 40-gigabyte hard drive and 256 megs of memory.  Price in China will be RMB1,599 ($200) to which you have to add a monitor and a keyboard. Probably come in at around $250 in the first instance.

So it is not that much less expensive than a standard PC. But it is made in China, uses Linux, is more that adequately specced and will undoubtedly find a market.

The chip which powers it, Godson II E was developed by the Institute of Computing Technology (ICT) under the Chinese Academy of Sciences. China started CPU research and development in 2001, and the first chip, Godson I, came out in September 2002. Since when there have been three more generations of the Godson — Godson II B, Godson II C and Godson II E. The latter models tripled the computing speed of the previous ones.

Continue reading "China making own PCs with own CPU and Linux" »

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Now that the People's Liberation Army has been called in to battle the snow and the terms "war", "disaster" and "national crisis" are being used in association with the present weather conditions, we're feeling guilty for making a snowman yesterday in the park and secretly loving every flake.

From (Xinhua):

The Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) has ordered its troops to go all out to combat the lingering heavy snow in the southern part of the country. The PLA's Department of General Staff and General Political Department issued a joint decree on Monday, ordering troops in the affected areas to join in the anti-snow battle in collaboration with local governments. The troops should give whatever assistance local governments require for fighting disaster and in rescuing people, the order said. So far, 158,000 PLA troops and the Chinese People's Armed Police (PAP) and 303,000 paramilitary members have joined the anti-snow campaign. The current heavy snowfall has caused unexpected difficulties to local life, production and transport in the affected areas and the country as a whole. So far, heavy snow and rain have left at least 24 dead and caused enormous financial and property loss.

Continue reading "Chinese army fight the flakes" »

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China Daily columnist Kang Bing thinks Beijing is being unfairly criticized by overseas media in the lead-up to the Games:

“… some overseas media are demonizing Beijing's air pollution and traffic problems...”

“… the Chinese capital would be lucky if criticism against it ended just there. Beijing has kept its promise to the IOC on press freedom, but some media seem to be asking the host to adopt freedom and democracy according to their understanding and explanation. When not satisfied, they threaten to call for a boycott of the Games.”

He also thinks that:

“Beijing seems to have received more criticism than other hosts.”

As Kang notes, all host cities are attacked for different reasons, but it simply isn't accurate to claim that Beijing has come in for more criticism than the rest. For one, Beijing hasn't copped it nearly as much as Athens, which set a new Olympic record when it comes to being criticized. Athens also suffered the ignominy of the IOC warning that a new host country could be chosen if the construction of Olympic sports facilities couldn't be completed in time. Some of the Athens organizers' harshest critics were among the local Greek media. This, from daily Athens newspaper Eleftherotypia (as reported by Xinhua in October 2000):

Continue reading "Foreign-media Olympic coverage: fair or not?" »

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Continue reading "Christmas in China" »

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As the book business goes, Amity Printing is not unusually prolific. In the last 20 years it has printed some 50 million books; some publishers churn out that many in a year. But Amity focuses on one title — the Bible — and primarily one market, China. It is the largest printer of Christian literature in the officially atheist country, where freedom of religion remains weak; up until 1979, when Deng Xiaoping began undoing the social strictures of the Mao Zedong era, the mere possession of a Bible could get a person into serious trouble.

Continue reading "China's New Bestseller: The Bible" »

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In an unusual move to secure a gymnastics golden harvest at next year's Olympic Games, Chinese gymnasts and their coaches will sign contracts with the sport's state governing center to ensure everyone in the 2008 lineup will be injury free and drug free, a top team official said.

Continue reading "Chinese gymnasts promise to be injury-free and drug-free" »

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The Chinese government will invest 1.35 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) each year for the next three years in environmental protection, or 200 billion RMB (US$27 billion), the State Council announced Monday.

As we have reported somewhat breathlessly before, China is already spending billions on eco clean-up. In October, the State Council announced it would pay RMB 100 billion, or $14 billion, on cleaning up Lake Tai. In fact, separate from the Lake Tai clean-up, the government already spends roughly 200 billion on environmental cleaning each year.

Continue reading "Is 27 Billion Dollars Enough to Clean Up China?" »

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With 20 million Muslims around China, it is only in recent years that they have been able to go on the yearly pilgrimage to Mecca, Islam's holiest city, in substantial numbers. Thanks to rising affluence, growing numbers of Chinese Muslims are now able to fulfill their spiritual obligations of performing the Haj at least once in their lifetime, and this year, a record 10,700 of them are expected to do so. Five departure ports for non-stop charter flights to Saudi Arabia have been offered — Yinchuan, Beijing, Urumqi, Lanzhou and Kunming. The first batch of pilgrims have just left on flights operated by China Eastern from Yinchuan to Medina, with more to follow.

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The benchmarks in some major cities at the upper end are: 8,900 yuan ($1,194) in Macao, 5,350 yuan ($717) in Shanghai, 5,280 yuan ($708) in Shenzhen of Guangdong Province, 4,980 yuan ($668) in Hangzhou of Zhejiang Province and 4,750 yuan ($637) in Guangzhou of Guangdong Province.

From the blogosphere, we found a report that suggests that for a person without a city hukou, it takes an extra 1800 RMB to achieve the same standard of living. Thus, if 5000 RMB is enough to be white-collar in Beijing for a person with a Beijing residence permit, someone lacking that same permit is going to have to make 6800 to maintain the same standard of living. We don't know about the methodology involved, but it obviously makes sense that you would need more money if you didn't have the resident permit because of the extra costs and lack of benefits that make it easier for those that possess the permits to achieve a certain standard of living. There are unconfirmed reports that Yunnan province will eliminate the hukou system, which we hope will inspire the rest of China to slowly follow suit: because things would just be so much more harmonious that way.

Continue reading "What it takes to whiten your collar in China" »

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China has outpaced India in science in two decades and acquired a staggering lead that keeps widening, the most comprehensive analysis yet of Indian and Chinese research has said.

Chinese research output has increased a hundred-fold since 1980 but India’s has only a little more than doubled, shows the analysis published today in Current Science, a journal of the Indian Academy of Sciences.

First of all, there's something inherently disturbing about the way that they talk about scientific/scholarly output as if it were some mass-produced widget on an assembly line. But more importantly, we wonder if whoever did this research and wrote this article really has any clue about what is behind China's "great scientific leap" forward. Both the Chinese and, to a lesser extent, the English language media has been rife with reports of academic corruption in China—plagiarism, padding the resume, the publish or perish attitude, and perhaps most seriously, the overly politicized nature of academe itself.

The Calcutta Times article talks about how many scholarly articles and citations Chinese scientists and academics are getting, but many within China seem to realize that there's not too much quality behind all this quantity. Sending the same paper to several journals doesn't really increase the amount of quality work being published, and is also a violation of academic ethics. The pressure to publish also means that, contrary to established academic standards, there are often more than two principal authors on certain papers, again making Chinese academics seem much more prolific than they really are.

Continue reading "India's China envy" »

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This painting is called Execution. Along the entire backdrop is a long, red wall which reminds one of the wall outside the Forbidden City. Yet Yue Minjun, the artist, who is based in Beijing, insists his painting should not be seen as depicting that unspeakable event of 1989.

Billed by Sotheby's as "among the most historically important paintings of the Chinese avant-garde ever to appear at auction", the painting had apparently been sold a decade ago "under condition that the painting not be shown in public because of its subject matter".

Apparently the auction held in London had other exciting moments, including the unexpected outburst from a man who shouted "Shame on all of you! You're spending millions of pounds on art and the world is falling apart!" (see video). He was quickly escorted away, and the sale went on.

The record sale of 2.9 million British pounds ($5.9 million) smashed the previous record for the most expensive work of Chinese contemporary art ever sold, also held by Yue for his "The Pope" sold for nearly 2.15 million British pounds ($4.37 million). Earlier this week at yet another Sotheby's auction in Hong Kong, another of Yue's works "The Massacre at Chios," sold for nearly $4.1 million. With such rising fortunes, the artist definitely has good reason to be laughing. Now you know why you've been seeing so many of his works all around town. They're all fakes.

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Not surprisingly, surging food prices is the main culprit behind the latest headline number, up a staggering 18.2 percent: Fresh vegetable up 22.5 percent, eggs up 23.6 percent, cooking oil up 34.6 percent and pork/poultry up 49 percent. Ouch! Prices in other sectors are faring much better, with most to the upside, but less than 5 percent: Rent up 3.9 percent, utility up 2.2 percent and healthcare up 2.3 percent

Continue reading "China inflation reading hits ten year high" »

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1. Promote the relationship between China and other parts of the world in their professional fields of economics and trade, politics, culture, sports, or science and technology;
2. Love Chinese culture and history;
3. Be devoted to communicate information of a real China to their native countries;
4. Uphold the Olympic spirit of constant exploration and pursuing excellence; and
5. Contribute to the building of a harmonious society.

An Internet vote will pick out 100 candidates who will then proceed to the next round to be determined by a selection panel.

Continue reading "Your chance to be an Olympic torch bearer!" »

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The high-living, high-pressure lifestyles of China's wealthy are catching up with their health, according to a  recent survey that shows many are paying a high cost for their affluence.

The survey of medical checks of 183 middle-aged company owners showed they were suffering from disproportionate diets and a lack of exercise.

The checks of 123 men and 60 women from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou showed all had at least one health problem. Each of the entrepreneurs surveyed owns assets worth more than 10 million yuan (US$1.31 million).

The survey, conducted by Ciming Health Physical Examination Company, showed 41.5 percent suffered from hyperlipidemia, or excess fats in the bloodstream, 21.8 percent from high blood pressure and 12.5 percent from hyperglycemia, or high blood sugar.

The figure for hyperlipidemia was 20 percentage points above the national average, while those for hyperglycemia and high blood pressure were each ten percent above the national average.

The electrocardiogram tests of 33.8 percent of the entrepreneurs were found to record abnormalities, while 62.8 percent suffered cervical spondylosis, or neck pain due to wear and tear of vertebrae, and 32.2 percent had too much fat in their livers.

Continue reading "China's new rich not healthy: survey" »

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On 14 September, the most expensive Japanese movie in history, Japan Sinks, will premiere in China. This is a remake of the 1973 original, which was adapted from Sakyo Komatsu's disaster novel. The story: several brilliant, righteous oceanographers discover signs that the Japanese archipelago is sinking. When the news gets out, the entire country panics. Amid continual earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions, people begin to transfer their property overseas with the thought of fleeing the country. The government drafts a plan to migrate people to other parts of the world, only to meet fierce opposition and countermeasures from other countries. The story ends as the islands of Japan slip beneath the waves.

This movie, with its mission of awakening and strengthening Japan's sense of urgency and awareness of early-warnings, is too alarmist for many of us; can the Japanese people, who have lived peaceful, affluent lives for the better half of a century, possibly accept such a film? The answer is yes. People who have been to Japan's book stores know that this kind of book can be found all over: books like Japan Crisis, Japan Faces Challenges, Japan's Tragedy, Japan's Coming Collapse, and Whither Japan?. Japan is an island nation, surrounded on all sides by the ocean. The country is like a raft that can capsize at any time. Add to this the earthquakes, frequent volcanic eruptions, scarcity of natural resources, and a dense population....the people lack a sense of security, and this feeling naturally fosters a deep-seated sense of urgency and early-warning awareness. Japan Sinks exists against this backdrop.

C