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

MI 3 and Laundry
The always amazing [tag]SARFT[/tag] (State Administration of Radio, Film & Television, search for it on Google and you’ll find more highlights of this small club that decides what is appropriate to view in [tag]China[/tag]) is not so happy yet with the new movie of T. Cruise, [tag]MI3[/tag].

It was filmed for a big part in [tag]Shanghai[/tag] with approval and so on.

Why, you may ask. Well, there are scenes cluttered with laundry hanging in the streets of Shanghai. A pretty normal thing but not something we want to show the rest of the world as it could hurt the Shanghai Image.

Coming soon is a series of the best hanging laundry pics in Shanghai.

The National [tag]May[/tag] holiday is almost at its end. Friends in [tag]China[/tag] send sms messages to wish eachother a happy holiday. Many of them consist of a funny short story that make light of life. It happens that the more popular ones are received more than once as everyone forwards them.

Here a translation of one of them (my translation so a rather bad one)

I wish,

Your joy becomes more and more, just like fake goods do

Your sorrow becomes less and less, just like interest does (interest from the bank)

Your income increases very fast, just like the price of oil

Happiness surrounds you tightly, just like advertisements surround you everywhere

Relations with your family become just as strong as the way you are stuck in the stock market

Bad luck disappears forever just like Binladen

[tag]Google China[/tag] has a new name and the linguists are still out on the right meaning.

The current translations are “Valley Song”, Harvesting Song, [tag]Song[/tag] of the Grain, Song of the harvest of grain and even Happy Song. Eric Smidt, CEO of [tag]Google[/tag], calls it a “Fruitful and happy song”.

The whole renaming seems to be aimed at re-branding Google in [tag]China[/tag]. A bit silly to chinafy a brand name that is pretty much well known already by about 100 % of the average [tag]Chinese[/tag] internet users.

Will more people start using Google search because they will feel more comfortable using an [tag]esoteric [/tag][tag]valley song[/tag]? Time will tell, but probably not.

[tag]Google blog[/tag] China has a flash movie where the name is introduced.

It’s a dreamy, stylish movie based on the average [tag]Chinese calendar[/tag].

The text is used to introduce the new name, [tag]Guge[/tag]’s mission and that in the face of information everybody is equal and that links are votes.

I added (my pretty bad) translation to the flash movie so the non-Chinese readers among us can have an idea about Google [tag]marketing[/tag] in China.

Click here to see the flash movie with the translated text of the Google Valley Song Presentation (pop-up).

The name isn’t received everywhere in the Chinese society with heaps of joy. There is already a No Guge website where Google fans vent their opinion. Some of the quotes:

“The name “GuGe” makes us feel ill! Even more, it makes us disappointed!”

“It’s a bird name, a poor peasant busy doing the spring plowing”

One thing is for sure, it has given GuGe a lot of free publicity.

Sources: Virtual China, Google Blogoscoped, RConversations, Google China Blog, No GuGe

In a drive to purify the internet even further the leading [tag]Internet[/tag] portals (among them [tag]Sina[/tag].com, [tag]Sohu[/tag].com, [tag]Baidu[/tag].com, and [tag]Yahoo'[/tag]s [tag]Chinese[/tag] Website) have drawn up a joint proposal to stem “unhealthy Internet cultures.”

“No indecent texts and photos, no search agents for such contents, no links to unhealthy websites, and no carrying games with sex and violence contents,” it proposed.

[tag]China[/tag]daily is not mentioned as part of the websites to join this admirable form of progress. I wonder why if you see their pic galleries.

Source: Joint proposal to stem “unhealthy Internet cultures.”
More pictures: More fashion No nipple A goat

P.S.: And don’t forget, in Shanghai there are plans to set up a citizen advisory panel to prevent advertisers from erecting billboards featuring scantily clad women and other images that might offend local sensibilities.
Source: SH Daily

[tag]CCTV[/tag] has a new website for all [tag]English[/tag] speaking people around the world.

The [tag]American[/tag] [tag]Fox[/tag] Cable network is one of the partners which seems a match made in heaven.

Biased + Biased makes Unbiased?

I have visited the site a couple of times and at least half of the time pages don’t render.

Their slogan is “Your window on [tag]China[/tag] and the [tag]World[/tag]”.

Source: CCTV Link

[tag]Search engines[/tag] have been in the news lately for their preference to filter their results to please the [tag]Chinese[/tag] government.

I don’t want to go into that discussion again.

I want to point you to a nice project by Mark Meiss and Fillippo Menczer from the University of Indiana School of [tag]Informatics[/tag].

They have created a search tool where users can compare search results for Google and Yahoo in different countries.

One of these countries is .. well yeah, [tag]China[/tag], and to see the difference of reality, type in the name of a certain square and you’ll see what I mean.

Check out Censearship

A Ni Hao to Seomoz where I read this first.

It’s Wednesday morning, March 15, and it seems things are back to normal, as far as that means anything.

Update 2:

Down, Down, Down

Update:

It’s 10 minutes after my post and guess what… G is there again…

It’s one of these days. [tag]Gmail[/tag]….. no access, [tag]Google.com[/tag] … no access. [tag]Google.cn[/tag] … yes, that’s soo available I start thinking it’s almost intentional. Has Shanghai kicked the international version of the big G out?

From what I hear [tag]Beijing[/tag] and other parts of [tag]China[/tag] still have access. Even more, Beijing seems to be more open than ever, as asiapundit has found out.

Let’s hope it’s a glitch in the network…

And something else, for some weird reason my visitors have doubled today as there are a lot of people searching on Google for “nude marriage photos in China” and similar searches.

I have added a nice pic, wouldn’t like anyone to be disappointed when they get here.

I thought I was the only one with too much time.