The latest food safety scandal involving one of our city’s largest meat suppliers has been consuming headlines for the last week, as the story unfolds about unsavory things that happened at Shanghai Husi Food. It turns out the list of companies that were buying meat from Husi reads like a who’s-who of major foreign restaurant operators in China, including such big names as KFC, Pizza Hut, McDonald’s and Starbucks, just to name a few.
But from the perspective of a veteran journalist like myself, one of the more interesting and untold stories beyond the bigger news is the way this latest scandal was exposed. The news wasn’t broken by any of the usual suspects, including city food inspectors or investigative reporters from deep-pocketed giants like CCTV or Caijing magazine. Instead, the revelations came from an investigative reporting team here in our very own Shanghai, based out of local TV giant SMG. Read Full Post…
This week’s Street View takes us to Shanghai’s rapidly aging Maglev train, which was once the city’s pride and joy when it first opened in 2004 offering the world’s fastest speeds in a commercial rail service. The Maglev celebrated its 10th anniversary this year, even as debate grows about a technology that has been overtaken by slower but less costly high speed rail trains in the last few years. Read Full Post…
A major overhaul of China’s railway timetables has been in the news these last few days, part of an ongoing transformation that is changing the nature of how people use trains in this country. Amid all the adjustments making headlines, one report on the retirement of a 30-year-old route between Shanghai and Beijing caught my attention as it nicely summarized the huge changes that have occurred here over the last decade. Read Full Post…
This week’s Street View takes us to Tianshan Road in the Changning district, where a group of mothers stirred up controversy by holding a charity event where they breast fed their young children in public. To an American who has lived in China for more than a decade, this kind of event seems tame by western standards. But it also seems quite bold for this ultra conservative country where public discussion of sex is still largely taboo and often extremely awkward. Read Full Post…
This week’s Street View takes us for a stroll through the city’s parks, many of which will extend their opening hours under a trial program to improve access to Shanghai’s open spaces. As a westerner, I find the idea of limited access and operating hours for city parks a bit strange, since most US parks are “open” all the time and have no barriers or fences to limit public access.
Accordingly, I hope this trial program will ultimately lead to the removal of fences and other barriers that now surround are city’s parks in the next few years, providing much-need open spaces to offset the rapid encroachment of skyscrapers and other tall buildings. Read Full Post…
Following the recent completion of this year’s national college entrance exam, or gaokao, and the coming end of the academic year, I thought I’d take a look this week at the concept of cheating and its place in the academic worlds of both China and the US. I was drawn to the subject after reading about the extraordinary measures that test centers took in Shanghai to prevent high-tech cheating during this year’s recent gaokao.
As a university teacher myself, I also have strong views and experience with the matter, though nothing surprises me much these days after 4 nearly years teaching both undergraduates and graduate students. Read Full Post…
In brand-obsessed China, it seems that even something as abstract and esoteric as a free trade zone (FTZ) can become a mingpai, or famous brand. That’s my quick assessment, on reading that our city’s highly hyped FTZ is getting ready to embark on a nationwide campaign to spread its name and business model as it approaches its first anniversary.
More broadly speaking, this move by the Shanghai FTZ shines a spotlight on the Chinese obsession with famous brands. As a China resident of many years, I’ve noted this fascination with mingpai has a long history in modern China dating back to well before the current reform era. But this latest move to create a “brand” around the new FTZ seems a bit extreme, and perhaps indicates it’s time for China to tone down its obsession with famous names. Read Full Post…
Shanghai Daily loses veteran editor to Chinese immigration laws
Shanghai has won kudos for hosting a major regional summit these past few days, but the situation was far more somber in the newsroom at the Shanghai Daily, publisher of my weekly Street View column. That’s because after more than 8 years in China, one of my longtime editors and a personal friend was spending her final week at the newspaper, including her last day on Friday. Read Full Post…
Shanghai doesn’t get the chance to host many global events, so it’s understandable that city officials are quite excited about a major upcoming conference that will see attendance by the likes of President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin. But that said, the massive security drive now underway is getting a bit out of control, literally reaching new heights with word that kite flying will be banned as part of the safety effort during the event. Read Full Post…
Most of us have certain dates that we dread, either for personal or cultural reasons. Many westerners worry about bad luck on Friday the 13th, and Chinese avoid celebrations on unlucky days like the Qing Ming and winter solstice festivals. Those dates are common to everyone, though many of us also have dates we dread for our own individual reasons.
For me my most dreaded date came just this past week, on May 5 to be exact, which was when my official Shanghai residence permit was set to expire. Expiration of official documents is always a hassle, as it means you have to go to government offices or fill out burdensome online forms to apply for new ones. In China the situation is worse, since the government requires most foreigners to get numerous permits and other official forms to legally live and work in the country. Read Full Post…
My 50th birthday is just 2 weeks away, so I thought I would give myself an early gift by making a few wishes for some of the things I would change about daily life in China if I could. When I first came to this country for the first time in 1986, I had no idea I would someday spend my 50th birthday here 28 years later.
Of course the China of today is completely different from the place I first visited all those years ago. But the point of my birthday wish list wasn’t to talk about all the changes from the last quarter century, but rather propose a few small ideas that could improve life for everyone. Read Full Post…
