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I don’t usually write about expat-specific topics in this column, as I prefer to focus on broader issues of interest to everyone here in Shanghai. But a recent news story on the difficulties faced by an expat who obtained a rare Chinese green card seemed like a good opportunity to look at the bureaucracy that affects all of us here as we go about our daily lives. Read Full Post…
Most people probably haven’t felt too charitable towards China’s major airlines this past week, following numerous flight delays and cancellations at the end of the National Day holiday due to huge downpours during Typhoon Fitow. I’m personally not a big fan in either of Shanghai’s 2 biggest carriers, China Eastern (HKEx: 670; Shanghai: 600115; NYSE: CEA) and Spring Airlines, mostly due to past bad experiences with both. Read Full Post…
I had to look to my dictionary for answers for this week’s Street View, after reading a local report that Shanghai has banned several exotic animals from sale in local markets and restaurants for health reasons. It turns out the ban applies to some seafood varieties that weren’t quite as exotic as I’d expected, including a type of hairy clams and a popular marinated shrimp dish. The reasons for the ban were simple, as these particular creatures, when improperly or even properly prepared, can pose health hazards. Read Full Post…
I must admit I have little interest in or time for the legions of workers who regularly sweep up the dust and litter on Shanghai’s many streets. Perhaps part of the reason is snobbery, although I don’t have any particular bad feelings for these actual workers, whose trademark pastel blue smocks with florescent yellow stripes makes them hard to miss.
Instead, my lack of interest in these sweepers is mostly because they represent a lingering relic of China’s wasteful and inefficient socialist past, where keeping people employed was more important than actual productivity. Read Full Post…
I’m a big fan of hairy crabs, not so much because I think they taste good but because the delicacy represents a storied Shanghai tradition that can attract headlines not only locally but also from across China and even around the world. Shanghai has far too few of these homegrown major headline-grabbers outside the world of finance, where it has no problem making front page news. Read Full Post…
This week’s Street View shines a spotlight on Shanghai’s hyperactive real estate market, centered on the tale of an unlucky out-of-towner who got caught faking a marriage just so he could buy an apartment in the city. The story is at once humorous but also a little sad, as it exposes how ridiculous Shanghai’s real estate market has become. It also highlights some of the tactics the city has taken to try to cool the market, sometimes resorting to measures that seem both strange and unfair. Read Full Post…
Many expats in Shanghai will be pleased to hear about a new campaign to standardize the local use of English and other foreign languages to make the city friendlier to foreigners. Such a drive is long overdue, even though it may come as a minor disappointment to lovers of “Chinglish”, the Sinofied version of sometimes comical and often unintelligible English one often finds at many shops, restaurants and other public venues. Read Full Post…
This week’s Street View takes us underground to Shanghai’s vast subway system, where metro police are in the midst of a crackdown on people who ride the trains without paying. I’m fully supportive of this crackdown, as it irks me to no end whenever I see someone jump over or duck under the subway turnstiles without paying when they think no one is looking. Still, based on the big numbers of these fare dodgers I see all the time, I have serious doubts about whether this latest campaign will work. Read Full Post…
Shanghai’s endless summer heat wave has taken over the city for more than a month now, monopolizing everything from the latest headlines to ordinary conversation. It’s difficult to pick up a copy of the Shanghai Daily or Oriental Morning Post these days without reading about the latest scorching temperatures splashed across the front page. The guard at my building inevitably greets me each day with his latest comments on the heat, and many conversations with friends start the same way. Read Full Post…
Gross! That was my first reaction on reading about the latest food safety scandal in Shanghai, which involved the recycling of paste used to fill the famous mooncakes given out give out en masse each year during the Mid Autumn Festival. I’m not a big fan of mooncakes anyhow, but this latest revelation in the never-ending series of food scandals across China certainly won’t make me any more likely to eat these unavoidable treats that suddenly appear in stores every September or October. Read Full Post…
Everyone is looking for ways to keep cool as Shanghai bakes under a nonstop summer heat wave, and retirees are particularly vulnerable to the high temperatures due to their advanced age. But recent reports of thrifty senior citizens clogging up air conditioned public spaces to escape the heat points to a larger social problem, prompting me to look more closely at this phenomenon that can be annoying to ordinary people and even a safety hazard.
This tendency for elders to economize in every possible way certainly isn’t unique to China, as such people live on very limited incomes throughout the world and thus need to watch their spending. But in China the issue seems rather extreme, the result of an ultra conservative mentality among elders who grew up in far less prosperous times. My advice to these elders is: Stop skimping and spend some of your hard-earned money to enjoy a few basic simple pleasures like air conditioning on a hot summer day. Read Full Post…
