One of my favorite advertising methods in Shanghai is the advertising boat that pollutes my view when I have a coffee in Starbucks on the Lujiazui side.
As there seems to lack of number of advertisers a whole Haibao cartoon is shown these days. Haibao as you may have heard is the mascot of the Shanghai Expo 2010.
February 24, 2008
Haibao Advertising
January 15, 2008
Expensive China
Yesterday I was baffled when the sales lady at my local Alldays convenience store told me the price of a 5 liter water container. The day before it was priced more than 5% less. She said that all prices in the store had increased. It’s inflation galore at the moment.
For the majority of the Chinese this cuts hard in their budgets and I don’t see it stop anytime soon.
Sexybeijing has an nice item on the rising of the prices.
[youtube width=”408″ height=”360″]zIVcJKwudMo[/youtube]
December 31, 2007
Historic Buildings Shanghai
Sometime ago I saw this cartoon in the Shanghai Daily and I was positively surprised. It was the first time I saw a cartoon that was slightly critical of the way China is handling it’s historic sites in it’s constant drive to build new, ugly real estate.
Sure, it’s in the Shanghai Daily, aimed at us crazy foreigners but still.
I like history, I like old buildings and my hope for 2008 is that most of them will make it to 2009.
Happy New Year!
December 26, 2007
Christmas in a Chinese Boarding School
My step daughter is in boarding school, a Chinese boarding school.
She told us before that the school had decided not to pay any attention to Christmas as it’s a Western holiday.
Chinese students should be focused on traditional Chinese holidays is the idea which is something the government is trying to promote very actively.
It makes sense as I can’t remember the last time I celebrated the Muslim Sugar Festival or the Jewish Hanukkah and I definitely never went out for dinner for Chinese New Year when I lived in Holland.
We called her last night, as we do a couple of times a week, to see how things were. She said she was going to have a Christmas party in her dorm with her classmates, they even had smuggled in some beer and snacks.
Globalization of a holiday that the strict Chinese boarding schools won’t be able to stop.
December 25, 2007
Chinese Online Shop Fraud
I got a comment in an old post, the one about the Internet Police, about being ripped off by a Chinese online shop offering electronic goods for great prices.
I don’t know the exact details but I did a quick search to see what info is available. It seems the commenter isn’t the only one who didn’t get his stuff from Storehot. And it appears there are a lot of so-called online shops that love to take your money but don’t deliver. You can find an extensive list here. (more…)
December 21, 2007
Shanghai World Expo Mascot Shows Teeth
What is it with mascots? They always look like being drawn by a retard that is still watching season one of Sponge Bob, which is actually a cool cartoon character aimed at kids.
After the Beijing Friendlies that went through a name makeover and became the Fuwa’s, now Shanghai has come up with as Imagethief puts it “a crossbreed of plastic TV-legend Gumby and …with Izzy, the 1996 Atlanta Olympic mascot”. Both characters I already forgot about.
This is what the geniuses of originality have come up with, Haibao (the treasure of the sea):
The Chinese have this to say (basic translations thanks to Google): (more…)
December 19, 2007
CCTV.com gets Internet rights for 2008 Beijing Olympics
There was a tender and no surprise CCTV, the national broadcaster who has already the tv rights, is the lucky one.
It’s unknown who else placed bids but even if any party did I’m pretty sure it was decided beforehand that it should be CCTV to be the one to get them.
Let’s see how “digital” CCTV will turn out to be.
Source: Olympic.org