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

I just asked her if she felt less happy after US bank Lehman Brother’s went bankrupt in september 2008.

Yes, of course, was her answer. Since that moment my happiness index plummeted to very low levels. Before all was ok, also thanks to Lehman Brothers but now….

“What’s the exact score now”, I asked. Well, at most 45. And before? “Well, at minimum 78”.

I followed up with, “Would you still marry me now, you know, considering the financial crisis and so..?”

“No, of course not. Don’t you know, foreigners don’t care about saving. They just spend it, they’re not responsible, they don’t want long term wealth”

“So what now”, I asked. “Well, better to divorce”, she said. “A score of 45 is less than 50 so no good.”

Yes, it’s hard but luckily fiction based on a brilliant article in the local waste paper aka Shanghai Daily that quotes research from the website Hongniang.com.

And so life in China continues to be lived in stereo types. Better think twice before marrying that foreigner!! (unspecified if he’s Asian, European, North/South American, African or god forbid Oceanic)

By the way, We’re still happy.

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Thanks to a tweet of http://twitter.com/fonstuinstra retweeting http://twitter.com/niubi
(Next article will be based on a tweet of a retweet of a retweet)

If you want to read the full article, proceed hereafter. (more…)

Products from China are lately in the limelight. Toothpaste that kills, food for kittens that kills, fake water in the water coolers in Beijing and now steamed pork buns (baozi) made from cardboard have popped up.

A bakery in Beijing sold pork buns that were made of 60% cardboard and 40% pork. Customers don’t taste the difference the owner told an uncover journalist. He added though he didn’t eat themselves. Well, I can imagine that:)

Here’s their secret recipe:

Squares of cardboard picked from the ground are first soaked to a pulp in a plastic basin of caustic soda — a chemical base commonly used in manufacturing paper and soap — then chopped into tiny morsels with a cleaver. Fatty pork and powdered seasoning are stirred in.

Soon, steaming servings of the buns appear on-screen.

Bon appetit

Food and water, both rather important to survive. But where to buy….

Source: Newsvine

The Humanaught has a nice find. He quotes an article from the China Daily that Baseball is a Chinese invention

Baseball a Chinese invention

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2007-04-01 08:35

Though long thought to have evolved from the UK-created rounders, new evidence suggests that the sport of baseball’s origins extend back nearly 500 years to China’s Ming Dynasty (c1368-1644).

Li Gang, of the National Council of History and Culture (NCHC), recently announced findings from a year-long study into the origins of various sporting events thought to have Chinese roots. (more…)

Over at Shanghaiist an article about the 81 year old American writer Gore Vidal’s appearance/interview at the 2007 Shanghai International Literary Festival. Vidal it reads, is an outspoken, opinionated writer.

He was posed a question about the freedom of speech.

His answer can be summed up by one one of the phrases he used “they’ll work it out, as they intend to do, somehow.”

The Shanghaiist writer comments that:

We can be fairly certain that he is either being polite, afraid, or is just ignorant. Certainly, we don’t expect Vidal to export his brand of dissidence to China, and the fact that Vidal has freedoms that he may take for granted in no way discredits his other arguments.

However, it is always interesting to hear the tone of westerners — particularly liberal intellectuals — change when they find themselves in a context where they perceive that they have no legal protection.

One of the better sentences I read in a while.

In the category weird:

Have you ever considered advertising on the Internet for a stand-in mistress that can be roughed up by your wife. Well, a Chinese businessman beat you to it? Or maybe you’re looking for a job that pays you 300 Rmb/minute?

A Chinese businessman has advertised on the Internet for a stand-in mistress to be beaten up by his wife to vent her anger and to protect his real mistress, Chinese media reported on Monday.

“When the woman found out her husband had a mistress, she insisted on beating her up,” the Beijing Youth Daily said, citing the advertisement posted on a popular online jobs forum on sina.com.

More than 10 people had applied for the job, the newspaper said. The “successful” candidate would be 35 and originally from northeastern China and would be paid 3,000 yuan ($400) per 10 minutes, it said.

Having a mistress is rather popular these days among Chinese businessmen and officials. Maybe this job advertisement will set a new trend for disgruntled wifes.

Souce: Mangalorean News

When I first saw Ronaldo holding a lozenge and stupidly grinning on Chinese TV I was wondering who the hell the director director was that made this terrible excuse for an advertisement. Then again, I see similar bad advertisements on CCTV 9 so not that surprised actually.

I got used to it and figured that Ronaldo Luis Nazário de Lima got a nice buck for doing this.

Wrong again. Invited to dinner in 2003 by the Guangxi Golden Throat Group (What a great brand name by the way) the poor chap had posed for a picture holding the now famous lozenge package. Why would a drug maker want you to pose with their product…. well, Ronaldo probably grinned like he did because he was wondering that himself as well.

It took a Chinese competitor to wake up Ronaldo’s management more than 3 years later.

From the China Daily:

Ronaldo decided to go to court when another Chinese drug maker wanted a deal with him with a precondition: he must terminate the contract with Guangxi Golden Throat Group.

He did not realize until then that he missed as many as seven chances to sign contracts with Chinese enterprises because of the “Golden Throat” ad. Each contract could have fetched him 3.2 million euros a year.

Of course this is a great example of infringement of image rights etc, etc. On the other hand it’s also very cunning from the Golden Throat Group to trick one of the most popular football players in the world and let him make their product famous all over China. And they will even get more (free) publicity now.

Even if Ronaldo wins the case he will never get the millions he could have got.

Maybe the China Law Blog can help out and give an estimation on how much he can/will get.

Pandas are one of China’s hot commodities.

Doing a search showed me that there is a connection between Pandas and diseases, at least according to Google.