Shanghai China Snippets Observations about living in Shanghai and China in general

It’s one of those ordinary days. Typhoon Khanun (Jackfruit in Thai) passed by here in Shanghai last night but seems to be gone as construction workers outside are working again. It’s not the first as Matsa also paid a visit before.

Maybe all this wind and rain has cleared some minds.

China will no longer regard the death toll in natural disasters as a state secret, the official Xinhua news agency said on Monday, as part of government efforts to improve transparency.

Whether this transparency will also be retrospectively be applied is not clear yet though

source: Reuters – China says disaster tolls no more a state secret

Traffic is hot here. New subway lines are being build while cars are doing their best to clog up every road there is. I remember being on my way to the airport a few weeks ago and actually being stopped from entering the ring road. Road closed, too many cars was the message.

It will get safer on the new line 4 (opens in the end of the year) in Shanghai as all stations get safety partitions. (source: Xinhua)

There is supposed to be a new Shanghai traffic website where you can find the best route of the day. In good Chinese tradition the mentioned website (probably using Chinese language), operational since yesterday, is inactive at the moment. Too many traffic jams I guess but in case they will be able to revive it, here is the address.

Interestingly enough the domain was registered many years ago, 1999 to be exact so they were thinking long term at the time. If they would have done the same with the real highways it would have been even better.

(source: Shanghai Daily)

Update: It’s weekend and the website is reachable. I guess less traffic helped (Site is only in Chinese by the way)