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

It’s amazing where you can run into Mao’s picture these days. It even found its way into the Dutch Big Brother Show. For those of you who haven’t heard of one of the best selling Dutch quality export TV formats ever, picture this.

You put 12 strangers in a House that has been inundated with camera’s to spot each and every fart. The contestants are observed by the rest of the Dutch population like animals in the zoo.

Each week one of the inhabitants has to leave the house. Three contestants are selected and the TV audience decides by voting (by sms and phone) which poor soul has to go back in anonimity.

To get into the house contenstants have to go through a strenuous selection process to make sure they will be nice fodder for TV and have an IQ that resonates well with the average IQ of the audience. At times it’s great tv, most of the time it’s as boring as life itself.

Last weekend there was a nice shot of Dido, a girl that likes fashionable clothes. Her shirt had a picture of Mao on it which made one of the above audience IQ contestants question her choice. “Don’t you know who Mao is”, he asked. “How am I supposed to know who Mao is” she retorted. “I don’t even know the guy”.

After some explanation she vanished into her bedroom and changed her shirt.

Probably this one scene, seen by more than one million viewers, will have improved historical awareness more than any history lesson in school ever could have achieved. Thank god for TV.

More on Mao – Answers
Big Brother – In case you want to apply for the US version

Tip: As Wikipedia is still blocked, Answers.com is a nice backup source.

According to a test by the Dutch Car Consumer Association (ANWB) and it’s European counter parts driving the new Chinese SUV Jiangling Landwind gives another meaning to knocking the front screen.

With the moderate speed of 65 Kilometres bumping frontally into another car or enduring a nice side-impact crash will result in one thing. Death.

The Dutch Car Consumer Association emphasizes they have been crash testing cars for some time now and in more than 20 years it hasn’t seen such a sad result.

The German Car Consumer Association (ADAD) makes a possible buyer experience more vivid. Click “Gefährlicher Import aus China: Landwind” and enjoy your ride.

Source: Nu.nl – ANWB: Chinese terreinauto levensgevaarlijk (Dutch)
Extra links: The manufacturer of this crash verhicle(Chinese)

I read it in China’s English mouthpiece, I read it on international news websites and even in Dutch Newspapers which quoted, probably verbatim, Xinhua, another great source of information.

What did I read. Something totally remarkable and irrelevant.

China, the world’s biggest market for cigarettes, ratified an international treaty aimed curbing tobacco-related deaths, announcing immediately afterwards a ban on tobacco vending machines

As long as I live in China I have never, really never encountered a cigarette vending machine. Not in Kunming, not in Beijing, not in Xian, not in Lijiang, not in.. any place I visited or lived and believe me, I used to smoke more than the average Chinese man.

So where do you buy your cigarettes then if there aren’t any vending machines around the corner, you may ask.

Small shops like the flowerist, the phonecard salesman, the 24-hrs shop, supermarkets big and small, “real” cigarette shops that are plastered on every corner, actually any shop that sells anything definitely also sells cigarettes.

It’s so easy to get cigarettes I actually quit.

sources:

China Daily
China ratifies WHO anti-tobacco treaty

Forbes
China ratifies anti-tobacco treaty, to ban tobacco vending machines

I paraphrased the title of an article in the China Daily that reads “China to ‘vaccinate’ kids against corruption”

China plans to ‘vaccinate’ the younger generation against the evil of corruption by teaching a new class, as part of the on-going nationwide anti-corruption campaign.

So far so good, actually I would say it is about time. Hold on, I read on and the real reason pops up.

The new education program is aimed at protecting the young from the “bad influence” of certain corruptive concepts and phenomena from the West, says a document from the Ministry of Education (MOE). “It is of vital importance for students of all levels to bear anti-corruption in mind and fight against corruption,” it says.

Right, that’s it.. The West is corrupt. It’s a – let’s pump some more lies into those innocent heads – campaign. Almost thought there would be some reflection.

Luckily the article gives a bit of space to a different voice. Writer Guo Songmin was quoted as saying.

“The changing situation is not key to the corruption problem. The essence of corruption lies in the answer to the question: ‘Who’ has been corrupt deeds and set a bad example for young students?”

Thanks god, reason is still allowed for now.

It reminds me of a game we used to play when we were kids. We would sit in circle and one of us would start-off.

“I go to the moon and I take a .. toothbrush. ” The next one in the circle then continued by saying “I go to the moon and I take a toothbrush and some water.” Now the third one is on. “I go to the moon and I take a toothbrush, some water and some pig sperm.”

Photo by Kodoma

With its next space mission “China plans to bring animal seeds to the outer space for the first time in its second manned mission” according to Source: Xinhua

It is also not ordinary pig sperm. After a long selection process it has been decided “The sperms will come from two carefully chosen Rongchang pigs”
(more…)

Some names seem to be missing in the mapping team,
which names, …. , I have no clue ..

It’s raining and while I am cleaning up my mail I came across these nice snippets collected by Google news alerts.

Instead of drinking baijiu (some very hard liquor) during negotiations a healthier alternative is making inroads in Shanghai, Feet Massage.

The number of divorces is on the rise since the government decided that it was not up to the company or elders in your living quarters to decide about one’s love life. To counter this trend youngsters are now being educated.

Chinese Birds scream in Chinese, American birds scream in … , so buying an American scream machine to scare away the birds at Beijing airport didn’t work.