Shanghai Scrap

At roughly 3:20 PM, Christmas Eve, I left my apartment at GaoAn Road to go to the post office. But, as I completed the first of seven flights of stairs to the lobby and entrance of my building, I realized that I had forgotten the envelope that I needed to mail. So I backtracked, grabbed the envelope, and began descending again, when, suddenly, just above the fourth floor (I think), I heard a tremendous crash come through the walls of the stairwell. It sounded metallic and fierce, as if scaffolding had fallen.

Seconds later I turned the corner out of the stairwell and saw this wreckage in the front doorway of my building:

By shear coincidence, I had a digital camera in my pocket (I was wearing the coat that I usually take on assignment), and I snapped this photo. The front office receptionist and I stood next to each other, and I think we pretty much figured it out simultaneously: the radio signal tower that sat atop my twenty-five story apartment building had toppled. Why, we didn’t know. But that was the radio tower, no question.

There were several electrical wires hanging loose in the area as a result of the collapse, but I shimmied down the steps and – from my perspective – it looked as if nobody had been crushed by the collapse. This was a small miracle: the space in front of my building is a favorite conversation pit for the many senior citizens who live in the area. (more…)

According to Xinhua: Beginning next month, international passengers will no longer need to fill out a quarantine form upon entering China. If you’ve been an international arrival at any of China’s airports over the last four years, you know the routine: it’s the little white photocopied sheet (in Shanghai, at least) requiring that you disclose whether you’re physically sick, psychotic (really), or whether you’ve been exposed to anybody – or thing – with those particular symptoms. And it is/was, a total waste of time: it’s hard to imagine anybody with a fever, or someone undergoing a psychotic episode, actually admitting it on a form required to enter China — after, say, a fifteen hour trip that cost close to US$1000 (Minneapolis to Shanghai: US$980 this week).

If memory serves me well, the quarantine form originated during the SARS crisis in 2003, and it was merely a small part of a much larger routine. Back then, incoming passengers were subjected to a far more detailed questionnaire (asking, for example, whether they had traveled to Toronto, Hanoi, or Singapore in the last ten days), which was then examined by someone in a white lab coat while someone else – also in a white lab coat – jammed a thermometer into the incoming passenger’s ear. Below, a photo of that routine as it took place at Shanghai Pudong Airport on the evening of April 28, 2003.

[And, for that matter, a brief account I wrote of what it was like to fly back to China in April 2003.]

In 2003, this was, all in all, a very good idea. And, had China decided to maintain the strict quarantine/inspection procedures that it instituted during SARS, that would have been justifiable: protecting China’s population from imported disease is in the national interest, under any definition. But, no surprise, as SARS ebbed, so did the strict quarantine procedures, and eventually – say, within a year of SARS – those procedures had been reduced to the quarantine forms. Since then, everybody – including China’s health authorities – has realized that that the quarantine forms are silly. It was just a matter of finding the right excuse to get rid of them. (more…)

On Sunday I found myself in Suzhou with a few hours to kill, and so I decided to spend a little time at the I.M. Pei-designed Suzhou Museum. Opened in October 2006, the building has received mostly warm reviews partly predicated (I believe) on the belief that the structure might be Pei’s last commission. At the same time, the Museum complex was designed to complement – and update – the traditional white stucco walls and gray tile roofs that define Suzhou’s unique architectural heritage. As Pei told the International Herald Tribune:

Instead of gray tile roofs, I needed something that would develop volumes … [S]o I let the walls climb onto the roof. If the walls were stucco, why not the roof?

The result looks like this:

On Sunday, I paused beside those stucco-like walls, ran my hand along their surface, and – sensing something weird – I knocked upon them with my knuckles, as if I was knocking on a door. The response was a hollow, sharp, thump – the very sound that I’d expect if I was knocking on a large sheet of wood hung over an empty space. To say the least, this was an unexpected result. And, just to make sure that it wasn’t an anomalous one, I walked around the museum, knocked on exterior and interior walls (I know: I must have looked nuts), and found the same result throughout the structure. That is to say: the exterior and interior walls of I.M. Pei’s Suzhou Museum aren’t made of stucco, brick, concrete, or any of the other classic materials and methods used for centuries in Suzhou. Instead, they’re mostly likely made of some kind of painted fiberboard (there isn’t a tree outside of California’s national parks capable of providing solid sheets big enough for those walls) that is anchored to a solid core by some kind of bracketing.

This is odd. After all, as anyone who has lived in China can attest, poured concrete is the building material of choice in China. It’s cheap (as a a method and material) and it’s been utilized for centuries. In Suzhou, where masonry is a design principle and a way of life, it’s hard to find a building that isn’t built from poured concrete walls and/or simple masonry – especially those that are of traditional design, or derived from it. So why on Earth wasn’t the Suzhou Museum built that way, too? (more…)

And in the rain, no less. Back tomorrow, with thoughts on the relative merits of drywall v. concrete.

[UPDATED at the end of the post]

I’m a fan of the Beijing Olympic Committee’s regular press releases, if only because – amongst the hail of platitudes – you occasionally get a gem like the one issued on November 9. Entitled “Chinese cuisine to highlight Olympic menu,” it then spent two paragraphs explaining why it probably wouldn’t:

“The menu designers will fully consider the different cultural background, dietary habits, diets and behavioral patterns of the athletes … and meet their demands with dishes of different styles, while offering the best Chinese dishes …”

Alas, no hints were offered as to what will represent the “best Chinese dishes.” So I wondered: would it be classic canteen affair? Fried noodles, say, and some sort of mushy dumpling? Or would the Olympic village go high end, with shark’s fin and abalone served beside bird’s nest? At a minimum, I hoped (from a journalist’s standpoint) that we might learn the sorts of diets fed to China’s own carefully trained Olympians. Were those diets – as I’ve long suspected – decidedly Western (on a nutritional basis)?

I slipped this one into my “follow story” folder and thought nothing more of it until yesterday, when – quietly – Xinhua announced: “Not much Chinese food in Beijing Olympic Village.” If you’re a Chinese nationalist, it doesn’t get much worse than this:

“Asian-style food including Chinese, Japanese and Korean dishes would together account for 30 percent of the menu designed for athletes in the Olympic Village,” said Xiang Ping, deputy director in charge of the Games Service Department of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (BOCOG).

She said that a preliminary menu had been drawn up and sent for expert appraisal, with results expected next month. “Western food will comprise most of the menu,” she said.

Enter Xinhua’s well-worn sense of (well-earned) national (culinary) pride. It seems that someone – an editor? a reporter? – senses a cover-up:

She did not disclose whether the famous Beijing roasted duck or Kung Pao Chicken (diced chicken with peanuts) would appear on the menu. (more…)

It’s cold here. Cold and wet (my Beijing readers should focus on the latter). US trade negotiators are in Beijing (meaning, further declines in the dollar – and the value of my income). And no, I wasn’t one of the winners in the Led Zeppelin reunion concert ticket lottery. So what’s a down expat to do on what can only be described as a Bad China Day?

Go. Eat. Hunan. Food.

That’s right, I took my self-pitying self and a good Hunanese friend down to Xiang-E Qing [that's what's on the business card, so please, no pinyin slapdowns for the 'E'] and we ordered up the spicy duck jerky as an appetizer. For the record, my Hunanese dinner companion has a spice consumption capacity second to none; she’s been known (by me, at least) to eat spoonfuls of hot sauce right out of the jar as if it’s, well, ice cream. So I was a bit taken aback when I saw tears in her eyes (joy? pain?) as she tested the jerky. “Well?” I asked. To which she answered, in between nibbles and tears: “It’s the spiciest thing I’ve ever eaten.” Me, I couldn’t say: one bite of the stuff and I had to spit it out. Lawsuits have been filed for lesser hazards. The dish in question, below:

Anyway, Xiang-E Qing has nineteen locations in China, most of them in Beijing. The sole Shanghai location is at the intersection of Yueyang Road and Zhaojiabang Road.

[Very light posting as of late. I'm in the midst of a new - and very large - project. More on that soon.]

Inflation is up and this time, darn it, Beijing is serious about making sure things don’t get out of control. Arguably, of course, they already are: in November, food prices were up 18.2%, year-on-year. Some of this run-up is surely exacerbated by companies (some, state-owned) who choose to horde key commodities in anticipation that they’ll rise even further in price (fuel, for example). Fortunately, Beijing has made clear that it won’t tolerate that kind of business, and last month it specifically prohibited edible oil manufacturers from hoarding product as a means of running up prices.

The idea being, of course, that hoarding in an inflationary economy is only going to make things worse.

So, I take it as a less than positive sign that, today, Beijing instructed 36 of  China’s largest cities to begin maintaining …

… a minimum 10-day reserve of food and cooking oil supplies, as part of its measures to ensure market stability during the current period of rising food prices.

In other words, as of today, there will be an additional thirty-six major buyers of food and cooking oil on the Chinese market, all with the mandate to purchase a ten-day supply of the listed commodities in sufficient volumes to supply hundreds of millions of people. Anybody want to guess how that’ll influence the December inflation statistics?

In other inflation-panic news, this morning Beijing announced that it would resume imports from six American pork producers that had been de-listed due to growth-factors fed to their hogs. I found the story on SCMP [subscriber only], where it’s depicted as a concession in the ongoing trade row between the US and China. I think it’s reasonable to assume, though, that there’s a far more pressing domestic reason for the shift.

Below, a photo of a Christmas ornament workshop in Zhejiang Province. Statistics are difficult to come by, but this workshop is located in a section of Zhejiang known for producing a very large percentage of China’s Christmas exports (the country is reportedly the source for 80% of the world’s Christmas ornaments and accessories). And, according to the photographer (actually the videographer), my friend Chen Hangfeng, this particular workshop is quite representative of the industry’s poor working conditions and total disregard for environmental standards. In case the image is unclear: it shows two women dipping unpainted ornaments into a blue dye.

Though the photo appears to have been taken through a peephole facing the workshop, it was actually taken through a peephole drilled into a giftbox located in the lobby of the Radisson Hotel Pudong Century Park. “You can only see the truth from a small hole …” explains Hangfeng, on a label next to the box, which is actually an artwork he calls “Santa’s Little Helper.” And that artwork is part of an exhibition entitled “Christ MASS Production,” which Hangfeng describes as a “playful meditation on the globalization of Christmas … bringing into relief its cultural, economic and environmental implications in China.”

I have no idea whether anyone else has documented the conditions in Zhejiang’s Christmas workshops. Whether they have or not, I give a great deal of credit to Hangfeng for having the determination to find them on his own (he prefers not to disclose precise locations). For now, I’d like to touch on the obvious journalistic merit in this project (the obvious artistic merit is left to the descriptive skills of other writers). A quick note, though: the nine minute video documenting the workshop is part of an artwork, and the artist – Hangfeng – is understandably reluctant to show it, or stills from it, outside of the intended context. As a result, I shot photos of the video through the gift box peephole (with Hangfeng’s consent). Obviously, this was a bit tricky, so if the images aren’t exactly clear, that’s why. In either case, more images after the jump … (more…)

For those who don’t follow the intricacies of the international iron ore trade, here’s the deal: BHP Billiton, the world’s second largest iron ore supplier recently announced an unsolicited, US$130 billion bid for Rio Tinto, the world’s third largest iron ore supplier (both are Australian). Combined, the two companies would control roughly 40% of the world’s iron ore market. China, as the world’s largest steel maker and iron ore importer, is worried. As things currently stand, Rio, BHP and CVRD (the world’s largest iron ore supplier) function as an effective cartel, setting benchmark prices that rise annually for a hand-picked group of steel makers – including Bao. So, the mere prospect that the cartel of three could be reduced to two has the Chinese steel industry in a panic.

For example: earlier this week, Xe Lejiang, Chairman of Bao Steel, disclosed to a reporter (in an elevator!) that Bao would “very likely” make its own bid for Rio Tinto, and that such a bid would most likely exceed US$200 billion. A few days later, Xu emerged to retract his ill-advised leak, claiming: “I did not say this. It is a fabrication of the media.” Then, today, Fang Xiaodong, senior manager of strategy and planning at Baosteel, offered this nugget to Australia’s ABC radio: “I think the Australian government should take some anti-monopoly action to prevent the merger of BHP and Rio because this kind of behavior will damage free competition.” Not to read too much into this, but – it’s a pretty sure sign of a Beijing flip-out when the state-owned enterprises start talking like free trade advocates.

And on that note, some unsolicited opinions: (more…)

The other night I was startled by the smell of burnt rubber wafting into my living room. I immediately went sniffing for the source, and after a very brief search I noticed smoke coming from the electrical socket connected to the space heater in my bedroom. The cable was hot as I pulled it from the wall, and when I looked at the plug, this is what I found:

[I've blacked out information that identifies the manufacturer]

I’m no electrician, but I know a defective plug and cable when I smell one. More likely than not, some impurity in the copper used to manufacture the cable or plug raised the electrical resistance so that it began to overheat (and yes, I tried a different appliance in the outlet – and there was no problem).

As it happens, three weeks before this near-death experience, I attended (and addressed) a recycling conference in Guangzhou. Among the speakers was Huang Chongqi, deputy chief engineer with the Shanghai Electric Cable Institute. Now, that didn’t sound exciting to me, either, but one never knows, and so I decided to listen to the introduction and then go from there. I ended up listening to the entire presentation and, as a result, I preemptively understood why my space heater nearly killed me, and why I – and many others – will continue to be threatened by Chinese manufactured space heaters (or, at least, the sub-contracted cables and plugs attached to them) for years to come … explanation after the jump. (more…)

I’ve been meaning to mention that Recycling International has published the second part of my very long journey into Vietnam’s developing scrap markets. Meanwhile, Scrap magazine has the entire article in its current issue. Neither magazine has made the text available online, though Scrap will add it to the magazine’s online archives in a few months. In October I posted a brief excerpt from part I (as edited by Recycling International) on Shanghai Scrap. An excerpt from part II (again, as edited by Recycling International) can be found below.

Briefly, though …

Over the last few years I’ve had the benefit of two editors – Kent Kiser at Scrap, and Manfred Beck at Recycling International – who have trusted me to spend extended periods of time (and money) investigating the flow of waste and recyclables through Asian developing countries. It’s been an honor and an education, and over the next year I plan to assemble those collected experiences into a format that (I hope!) conveys them to readers interested in one of the lesser understood aspects of globalization.

And now, that part II excerpt: (more…)

According to Xinhua, a senior Chinese scientist has announced that the country’s first Mars probe will be launched in 2009, and will arrive at Mars in 2010 for an expected year-long mission. Now, I’ve always been a bit of a space buff, and so I couldn’t be more pleased at the news. The more (countries in space), the merrier, I say. However, as much as I admire China’s commitment to Mars exploration, I feel obliged to point out the following: the Yinghuo-1 probe looks like a solar-powered refrigerator with a satellite dish grafted to the top. Consider, for example, the camel-operated CFS49IS vaccine refrigerator, manufactured by Naps:

And now compare it to the proposed design for Yinghuo-1 (as provided by Xinhua):

Or, for that matter, compare Yinghuo-1 to the explosive alien grenade used in “The Golden Man” episode of Lost in Space (1965-68).

In other words, Yinghuo-1 isn’t cool at all. Of course, space exploration and the quest for knowledge shouldn’t just be about cool space probes. But in an age of short attention spans and increasingly fabulous science fiction film making, cool has the potential to inspire – if not entertain. Though I’m merely speculating here, I’d guess that even a passionate space buff like Wen Jiabao knows that a cool Mars probe matters if you’re trying to inspire students to go into the sciences – or at least assure the world “that the Chinese people have the will, the ambition and the capability to compose more shining new chapters while ascending the science and technology summit.”

[UPDATE: In response to a phone call just received in regard to this post: yes, I realize that the Chinese scientists probably haven't finalized their probe design, yet, and so probably posted the most generic image available. At the same time, consider the US space agency NASA, and the posted design for its new Mars probe, also to be launched in 2009, for 2010 arrival.]

Tied down with deadlines for another day or so, but will be back with some sensible blogging tomorrow. Until then, a photo of some real manufacturing (and work), at the Jiangxi Copper facility in Qingyuan, Guangdong.