Somehow I doubt that Shanghai will ever considered an international financial capital. It's hard to take it seriously compared to New York.
Shanghai bull from a business center on Nan Dan Dong Lu. Wall Street bull image stolen from here.
One of the things I noticed about Shanghai was a lack of Communist-inspired monuments. They are here. but generally remain in places where it is expected. A more common sight are the modern statues that appear in the city's retail and business districts. Capitalism rules!
The men with briefcases is in the Pudong area, just a short stroll from the the Jin Mao tower, the first one - a woman using a cell phone - is near my office in Xujiahui. Other similar works are scattered throughout the city. I've seen couples with baby carriages and various poses of men doing business.
In Singapore, there were similar statues of everyday life - although they were renditions of of times past. Via my little odd forest's and Jean Snow's flickr photostreams come the following.:
Along the Singapore Riverwalk and surrounding the Esplanade, there are statues of things such as shirtless old men squatting on stools (as opposed to sitting) and playing mahjong and Chinese laborers toiling.
In Shanghai, you don't have statues of such things - but you don't have to go far to see laborers toiling or old men squatting on park benches.
In either city, it's pretty normal to see women on cell phones or men with briefcases , but in Singapore it would seem odd to immortalize the commonplace. I'm guessing that the absence of older lifestyle statues in Shanghai is based on the same logic.
A statue of an emaciated laborer isn't needed in Shanghai because such things aren't yet a rarity.
Inspired by Backstroke of the West, Myrick offers Batman of the East.
We saw our first in-cinema movie here just before going on vacation; checking "Batman Begins" at the cinema in Xintandi. The tickets were 70 yuan each, making it 140 yuan for the two of us (not including snacks). You can buy the DVD on the street for 7 yuan. This is one of the reasons why people don't go to movies in China (another is that the authorities only allow a handful of decent films in each year).
Still, as a fan, paying US$17 for two tickets rather than less than a buck for a bootleg DVD wasn't a big issue. What was an issue was that three times during the showing, sloppy edits in the film ruined my experience.
Naturally, I picked up the DVD to see what I was missing.
The censored Chinese cinema version of the film cuts out scenes of (a) Bruce Wayne robbing one of Wayne Industries China outposts, (b) Bruce kicking the snot out of prisoners in a Chinese work camp, (c) Bruce and Alfred ordering defective helmets from China.
These scenes were all available on the DVD. About a third of the movie wasn't, the Russian bootleggers neglected to add a reel, but I only picked it up for the censored scenes, so it was decent enough for filling in the blanks.
As the DVD was a new release, the bootleggers didn't have time to translate the script into subtitles though. So they just borrowed an existing track from errr... the Intrepreter, perhaps.
Among the highlights.:
Ra's Al Ghul is more Zen, or something.
His offer to turn Bruce evil is a lot more attractive, or it would be if Bruce wasn't already a billionaire. Still, this does provide some insight to the motivation for all of the other henchmen.
Carmine Falcone is a lot more vulgar.
Bruce's initial impression of the Batmobile is much more excited and off-the-cuff.
Bruce uses Japanese when he fires Earle.
Probably due to the success of the X-Men films, the producers decided Batman could use Wolverine's keen sense of smell.
He's also more violent; he keeps the "no-gun" rule, but nukes are seemingly ok.
Myrick, now a married man, has returned to Shanghai. I'm more active on AsiaPundit, and I encourage everyone to visit, but I will try to keep this site active with at least one post a week. I warn you though, all posts here will be self-indulgent crap.
While I was back in Canada, people often said things like this to me: "You're a foreign correspondent? In Shanghai? Wow, that must be pretty exciting!"
Indeed, it is. My life is filled with excitement and danger.
But there is also "glamor and glitz." For instance, I'll be spending tomorrow evening with a Star. Or at least a former star.
Ha! Aren't you all jealous? I'm going to meet Jeremy Miller! This guy knows Alan Thicke!
It should be a fun evening. It's an open secret that all former child stars are party animals.
As Doogie Howser said in Harold and Kumar.. Laaap Daaance!
Sign from a Shanghai Mexican bar.:
(via Kenny Sia)
SinoEye is a new find, today the author argues that, environmental concerns aside, killing whales or sharks is no worse than killing most of the animals used in Western dishes.:
Killing is an ugly thing. Animals kill and eat each other. Humans unnecessarily kill and eat animals, this happens all over the world. More attention should be paid as to how these foods are processed, and enforcing control to prevent extinction of any species. Chinese and Japanese people have seen the documentaries too - more and more they are becoming aware of the issue. Just like how western people see their McLibel documentaries, some many decide not to eat this stuff anymore, or at least make more informed choices.....
Whaling and shark-finning may be an environmental and animal rights issue, but it should not be used to vilify Asian culture.
I'm a pescetarian (see Dan for the definition of that) so I sympathize with vegetarian arguments. Still, I I have tried weird food in Asia that is non-pescetarian and non-vegetarian simply because I wanted a different experience. Thankfully in Shanghai I can eat really weird stuff without having to touch mammalian meat.:
Tomorrow, for instance we will eat these "vegetarian hedgehog hydnum balls." There's decent Chinese vegetarian food in Shanghai - which is an improvement over both Singapore and Hong Kong. Plus, where else can you find vegetarian hedgehog hydnum balls? I have never seen real hedgehog hydnum balls offered at a restaurant. If I did I would likely try them just for the sake of experimentation. But now, I'll be able to resist that temptation because I've had mock hedgehog hydnum balls.
It's amazing what can be done with soy protein. And it's healthy wonderful stuff too.
Wait... what's that Japundit?
A fertility expert in London is claiming that consuming too much soya can interfere with human conception.
Has anyone bothered telling China about this?
Crap! Sorry Lisa, no mock hedgehog balls for you.
(crossposted to AsiaPundit)
I haven't been blogging here lately - I've been elsewhere. (go visit)
I will get around to responding to Chris Taylor's book tag. But first some news.
Our world-travelling cat Dee Dee is now infinite cat number 953.
And yes, Dee Dee is a boy's name.
My coworker laughed when he read the US and Japanese consular warnings for Shanghai. "The Shanghainese don't protest against the Japanese because we are almost like the Japanese. That's one of the reasons why everyone else in China hates Shanghai - because they think we're trying to be Tokyo."
I took that at face value, I wasn't expecting today's protests to be anything serious.
During last week's anti-Japanese protests across China, Shanghai was spared any serious incidents. There was an alleged hate crime - where one Japanese male was beaten - though it's my understanding that this incident was about a girl and not a hate crime. A Japanese journalist today explained to me that there was only one person hospitalized, and he was beaten because he was dating a Chinese girl that the assailant was interested in. Nationalism/racism may have played a role - but jealousy and drunkenness were bigger factors.
When I was greeted by the protest march after leaving the dentist, it seemed relatively innocuous. There were smiling protesters, waving, giving the 'thumbs up' and flashing peace signs. Sure, they stopped in front of every sushi bar and pelted it with small rocks and plastic water bottles - but none of this seemed to be doing any sort of serious damage.
Things didn't turn ugly until after the marchers reached the zone of the Japanese consulate in the Hongqiao area. I spent most of the day watching the consulate being pelted with bricks, water bottles and paint-filled projectiles. The facade of the front of the building was a mess - but it's nothing compared to what was done to some of the 'Japanese-linked' private property in the area.
The protesters had a very broad view of what it meant for a business to be 'Japanese-linked.' Most of the time it meant it was serving Japanese food. But it didn't seem to matter whether or not it was Japanese owned. For one Chinese hot-pot restaurant, the only offense seemed to be that it had Japanese script on its signage.
I'll post something more detailed on today's events later. For now, the below photos will have to suffice.
Boycott Japanese brands (even though most of these companies make things in China).
You could not get through this police 'roadblock' - you needed to walk an extra 10 meters to go around it. There were a few thousand police and anti-riot troops standing around in similar formations elsewhere. They didn't seem to mind the vandalism though.
From early in the day, many of the protesters were - thankfully - like this.
From early in the day, most of the protesters were - thankfully - cuter than this.
Non-violent protester, who perhaps fails to understand that most Americans don't think the Hiroshima bombing was anything for which to apologize. Great initiative on the outfit though.
More later.
UPDATE: 17 April 12:17 pm
I've uploaded additional photos (+100) here (click past the autoshow pics). Most are very raw. I'll put up a longer post later including some of the better ones and some interviews with a few of the protesters. My fiancee just arrived from Singapore on Friday and I hadn't been able to take her on a tour yet due to work and the protest (which I was also covering for work).
There's good coverage of the protests in several posts at Banana Oil.
Philippe Roy, whom I had met earlier in the march, has further photos.
Dan Washburn saw a mostly peaceful side of the protests.
Fons has a decent wrap-up of the event.
Apologies for my week-long absence, and for my slow response at correcting errors in previous posts pointed out by Andrea and Rajan. I’ll more thoroughly fact check all of my future postings. Never again will you see erroneous information on this page.
I would have fixed things earlier, but was I disconnected for most of the past week. Not any more, the ‘internet’ has finally come to my home. The ADSL line was installed a few days ago. Now, all I need is furniture and appliances – all of which are now packed in a crate somewhere at the Singapore port.
In spite of its Spartan nature, the flat is great. It’s Latin Quarter French Concession 1941 property, newly refurnished with new plumbing and air conditioning.
I’ve few complaints, and the ones that I do have are mostly minor: the heating leaves something to be desired, but it will be summer soon. You can hear the neighbors upstairs, but they retire well before I do.
The only serious problem is the fucking pandas.
People in the West think pandas are these huge cute Chinese bears. Westerners are wrong. They don’t know the horrible truth about pandas. Firstly, they are not even bears. They are huge freakin’ raccoons!
This a reasonably well-known fact.
What’s not well known outside of China is that pandas also act like raccoons. Most people think raccoons are cute, but anyone who lives in a raccoon-infected part of North America will testify that raccoons are vermin.
I stayed with my sister once while she was living in Ottawa. There was a raccoon problem in her neighborhood. Raccoons would regularly wake her in the middle of the night. They would jump along rooftops tearing off shingles as they did. They would rummage through the garbage bins at all hours.
Suburban Ottawa is noisier than a war zone. It also reeks of government bureaucrats. Never, ever, go there!
Raccoons are also vicious. The sharp-clawed and huge-fanged beasts are usually rabid. Rabies is incredibly common among raccoons – it’s epizootic! Few people have survived an alleyway encounter with one of these hell-spawned scavengers without a few scars or stitches to show for it. Pandas are essentially the same, but 10 times bigger.
To my horror, I woke Tuesday night to the sound of a panda rummaging through the dumpster. If I were in the States this wouldn’t have been a problem: firstly, there are no pandas; second, I’d own a gun. China, however, has both pandas and gun control. Each on their own is bad: together they are often deadly.
Lacking proper arms, I quickly boiled a pot of water, went outside and threw it at the beast - pot and all. As the scalding water penetrated its fur, it shrieked its horrible giant-raccoon scream. The neighbors awoke.
Suddenly, I was greeted by the clanging of pots and pans, drums and fireworks. The entire neighborhood, all of whom were still strangers to me, came out to chase away that damn panda. Although it was just my immediate neighbors, the din was far louder than anything I had ever heard at a Chinese New Year celebration in either Singapore or Hong Kong.
Sensing danger, the panda fled down HuaiHai road toward the high street area.
While people in Beijing would deride the Shanghainese as being self interested, money-grubbing souls without a sense of poetry, what I saw on that Tuesday night should put paid to that notion. Never in my travels of the Middle East and Asia have I ever seen such a spontaneous outbreak of community spirit.
Thankfully things ended without violence. The AP picture on the right shows residents of a Chengdu neighborhood forcibly trying to evict a street panda. The men on the far right and far left were mauled shortly after the shot was taken. Only one survived and he lost his right ear and half his jaw.
The pandas were once peaceful beasts, living in and feeding off of the dense bamboo forests. But that was many decades ago. Maoist industrial policies, collective farming and state-run enterprises denuded much of the pandas’ natural habitat. The new regime of capitalism socialism with Chinese characteristics hasn’t yet helped much.
With an absence of bamboo in the countryside, pandas have increasingly invaded urban areas. Some, like the cheerful bear giant raccoon on the left, have had some success at blending in. Most of his genetic brethren are simply a menace.
Bamboo is now more plentiful in the cities than it is in the countryside. It is used for decorative purposes, in cooking and as scaffolding on construction sites. China’s high number of construction site fatalities is, in fact, largely panda related. The beasts eat the scaffolding at night. They prefer to eat only the shoots and leaves, but hungry urban pandas can’t afford to be as picky. This kills hundreds of migrant construction workers every year.
China has suppressed most of the information on the panda plague and it's low-key measures to stomp it out. Mercantlism is still the ruling principle among the cadres. After witnessing the way that animal-rights activists were able to damage the economies of seal-hunting Newfoundland, wolf-culling Alaska and Kangaroo-culling Oz, they didn’t want to risk the adverse publicity.
It was especially worrying for the authorities since the animal has been adopted as a mascot by the World Wildlife Fund (an NGO so powerful it was even able to take on the World Wrestling Federation Entertainment). I fear my blog may be shut down for breaking the silence.
This may be the only post you ever see on the panda plague.
I hate pandas. They’re worse than the fucking koalas.
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