Shanghai Scrap

You don’t think twice about sliding past the so-called “protective” fencing:

Only to find yourself on the other side with a pair of these: (more…)

Truly, I never imagined that I’d have the chance to see it snow in Shanghai again. In five years here, this is the third time (that I’ve seen), and the first in more than three years. Alas, my photos didn’t do justice to the big cotton-y clumps that fell during the mid-afternoon. But take my word for it: this was a beauty. Below, a photo of the flyover walkway in Xujiahui Park – one of the few places where I saw actual accumulation.

Via Shanghaiist we learn that the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory is relocating to Anji, in Zhejiang Province due to light pollution. The only surprise in this news is that it didn’t happen sooner: even on clear nights, a person can count on two hands the number of stars bright enough to shine in Shanghai’s heavily illuminated skies.

But if it’s not worth mourning on a scientific basis, it is worth mourning on a historical basis: That telescope and observatory is one of Shanghai’s last links to the great Jesuit scientists responsible for many of the city’s most important institutions, including many of its universities (including, indirectly, Fudan), hospitals, museums (including the much-maligned Natural History Museum), and public laboratories. In contemporary Shanghai, these origins are mostly unknown and increasingly irrelevant; but sixty years ago they were not only relevant, but pertinent: the Jesuits were the key piece in the city’s scientific establishment.

Famously, Jesuit priests had served as astronomers and meteorologists at the Ming and Qing courts, and – at the end of the Ming – they even built an observatory in Nanjing. In 1841, soon after missionaries were allowed to return to China, a Jesuit Father named Gotteland was directed to build an observatory south of the Yangtze. For reasons that I can’t dig up, the building was not completed until 1873. In either case, that building stood on the banks of Zhaojiabang Creek (yes, the filled-in site of today’s Zhaojiabang Road) in Xujiahui, and was replaced with a better, bigger building in 1901. From the beginning, the Observatory had four departments: astronomy, meteorology, seismology, and magnetic science. The Astronomy department moved out to Sheshan (21 miles from Xujiahui) in 1890, and occupied the (now closed) Observatory on Sheshan Hill. Below, a photo of the first scientific telescope in China, commissioned, installed, and used at the Shanghai Observatory (I’m afraid that I don’t have precise dates for it, though).

Those Jesuits were serious, publishing internationally regarded journals (The Sheshan Astronomical Journal, most notably), making key longitudinal observations (Shanghai was one of the world’s three original “longitudinal bases”), and serving as a key station in what was then the world’s largest private meteorological network (there were some seventy Jesuit weather stations in Asia – with Shanghai being the hub). (more…)

[Title updated at the request of two messages in my inbox.]

Say you’re a new Chinese stock market investor. You’ve done well with your job over the last couple of years. You’ve scrimped and saved. With the help of your parents, you made the down payment on that new condo in Minhang District, and – with some careful planning – you’ve actually managed to accrue a small nest egg worthy of investing in the Shanghai stock markets. It’s been mostly good. Until this week, at least, it’s been the best financial decision of your life. Sure, those occasional breath-taking drops in the Shanghai composite index give you indigestion, but – let’s face it – who can argue with the otherwise steady march of progress and ever-increasing stock prices?

But then, much to your horror (not to mention, that of your parents) the Shanghai composite drops 5% on Monday, and another 7% on Tuesday. On Wednesday you go to work, sinking feeling in your stomach (“now how am I going to cover the interest indexed payments on my mortgage???”) in search of solace. Any solace. And so, while waiting among the crowds at the increasingly crowded Xinzhuang station (each feeling the same indexed mortgage indigestion), you happen to glance at the morning edition of Shanghai Daily. Sure, it’s been awhile since you’ve exercised your high school English, but you’re desperate enough for financial solace that you actually bother to try and decipher the pull quote below the headline, this year’s nominee for “Dumbest Use of Nationalism by a State-Owned Newspaper”:

In case that’s not clear, the quote from Peng Yunliang, an “analyst at Shanghai Securities,” is enlarged here:

Feel better?

I’ve been tied up with overlapping deadlines for the last several days, and so I’ve only just gotten around to reading Caitlin Fitzsimmons’ widely touted South China Morning Post feature on Chinese emigrants to Senegal, published Thursday [subscriber only]. It’s a great piece, in that it not only covers the tensions between the Senegalese locals and the roughly 1000 Chinese in Dakar, but also the considerable and occasionally violent tensions that flare between the Chinese themselves. Still, to my eye, the most interesting news in the Fitzsimmons article comes down to a single sentence:

Many shopkeepers in Centenaire came from Hunan province and say they received funding from the Chinese authorities to move to Senegal.

Wow.

In September I blogged about a speech given by Li Ruogu, head of China’s Import-Export Bank, in which he suggested that China’s landless farmers should relocate to Africa and become landlords (with a special emphasis on the “12 million” who will need to be relocated in the next decade). No details were offered on how this mass relocation is going to proceed, nor the incentives that are being offered to achieve it. In fact, Li’s speech was so overarching in its ambitions that I hesitated to blog about it (though I did). Thus, I was both grateful and floored by the Fitzsimmons article and its single spectacular sentence on paid Hunanese emigrants – grateful that someone had broken this nut, and floored that the person who broke it wrote only a single sentence on the subject. That’s right: Fitzsimmons had nothing more – not a single sentence or even a trifling clause – to say about this. (more…)

[Bicentennial-themed update, after the jump.]

A couple of weeks ago I was riding shotgun in a delivery truck driving from Wuxi to Changzhou when I saw this “barn” at the edge of a field.

My camera wasn’t ready then, but later – heading back to Wuxi – I had it in my lap. Problem was, I couldn’t remember exactly where I saw the flag-draped structure, and the driver who was kind enough to let me ride with him was neither keen to help or – once I finally saw it again – stop to allow for a proper photo. So, alas, this image was taken at a relatively high (truck) speed. The road between Changzhou and Wuxi is highly traveled and, for now at least (Wuxi is sprawling fast), there are many small plastic-covered farm structures along the way. So far as I could tell, this was the only one with Old Glory displayed on its side.

I’d completely forgotten about this image until this morning, while reviewing the photos from that work-related trip. (more…)

The name of this blog is Shanghai Scrap, and if you didn’t bother to read or visit Shanghai Scrap you might be excused for thinking that – instead of hosting a blog – shanghaiscrap.com actually hosts a Shanghai-based scrap trading company. Of course, you’d only make that error if you didn’t bother to look at the actual content available here.

So it was a bit of a surprise when – quite suddenly, over the last month – scrap traders from around the world began bombarding Shanghai Scrap (via the handy contact form) with offers to buy and sell scrap. For example, this afternoon I received:

Dear Sir: Our Company wants to import T-shirt Scrap from China to india. Please let us know the Email and contact nos of the company. Manoj ****

Just to be clear: yesterday, at the very time that Manoj sent his T-shirt inquiry, the most current post on Shanghai Scrap was concerned with the rising cost of potato chips. Could Manoj have failed to notice the photo of the bag of Lay’s? Did it suggest “Dirty T-shirts for sale?” in a way that I did not intend?

Or take this Pakistani example, also from today: (more…)

Earlier in the week Beijing announced that it was going to start imposing price controls on key commodities in advance of Chinese New Year. Today, they laid down the law. According to Xinhua, it goes something like this: feel free to raise your prices, but make sure to send us an application for the price hike after you hike it. After that:

The government should notify the enterprises within seven work days after it gets the applications from the enterprises whether to approve or reject the schemes on the basis of whether the price rise range is reasonable, noted the circular.

Then, after seven days, the business may be required to roll-back the price-hike, either partially, or totally. In other words, Chinese wholesalers and retailers now have nothing but incentives to run up their prices, testing whether Beijing will approve the hikes (how many people are reviewing these applications at the NDRC?), and then running them up some more. The madness will stop, I believe, only after the lifting of the price controls. And, in a Shanghai Scrap worldwide exclusive, I have definitive proof that this is exactly what is happening. Exhibit #1:

Yesterday, this innocuous bag of “American Classic Flavor” potato chips cost me RMB 3.2 (or US$.44, by today’s declining exhange rate) at the neighborhood chain convenience store where I typically buy this sort of thing

This evening, while at the chain convenience store for something else (I don’t indulge that often), I couldn’t help but notice that the price had risen to RMB3.6 (US$.49). That’s right: in my neighborhood, at least, the price of potato chips went up 11% overnight (I double-checked with the cashiers). By the current government circular, this convenience store (actually, its home office) must file an application explaining this price hike within 24 hours. I would dearly like to see that application, and I’ll gladly offer a reward – something of value – to anyone who can produce it. In the meantime, it’s time to start hording (potato chips).

Flying in China, apparently. According to Xinhua:

China’s civil aviation industry achieved a clean sheet in safety last year and notched up 3.7 million hours of flight, both cargo and passenger, a 15.4 percent year-on-year increase.

More people, more flights, no crashes. Who would have bet on that? In fact, according to Xinhua, there hasn’t been a “severe” civil aviation accident in China since 2004. Now, who would have bet on that? In all seriousness, this does seem to be the supreme counter-example to the ongoing meme among foreigners in China- and English-language blogs in China – implying that China is incapable of bringing order to its (perceived) chaos.

Deep thoughts aside, I’ll admit: I’ve taken my shots at Chinese aviation over the last year. But, in light of this story, I want to concede that I was often unfair while, at the same time, offering the Chinese civil aviation authorities my sincere congratulations – and thanks! – for not killing me. Let 2008 bring similar good tidings.

Every once in a while Shanghai Scrap needs to show its enthusiasm for continued exploration of the universe. Like today: in a few hours the first images from the MESSENGER flyby of Mercury should start streaming back to Earth, and we’ll all have our first close-up view of the innermost planet in 33 years. Me, I can’t wait.

On Sunday, MESSENGER Project Scientist Ralph McNutt, Jr., posted a brief but eloquent reflection on the importance of the flyby, and of human exploration, to the mission website. In an age when many scientists feel little need to communicate with the wider public, I was really heartened to read this mission placed in such humanistic terms:

Robotic emissaries now in orbit about Saturn, Mars, Venus, and our Moon have been enabled and are now operated by thousands of engineers, scientists, and space agency staffers from several continents and many nations. The twin Voyager spacecraft are nearing the interstellar void, and New Horizons is en route to the first views of Pluto and other Kuiper Belt objects beyond the orbit of Neptune. Everyone on this planet continues by proxy to feel the push of Robert Browning: “Ah, a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, Or what’s a heaven for?”

The complete text can be found here.

On May 4, 2007, Jeffrey Weidenhamer and Michael L. Clement of Ashland University in Ohio published “Leaded electronic waste is a possible source material for lead-contaminated jewelry” in Chemosphere, a scientific journal “related to the environment and human health.” The paper is technical, but the hypothesis it attempts to prove is straightforward. According to the authors, if their data is correct, then: “recycled circuit board solders are being used to produce some of the heavily leaded imported jewelry sold in the United States.”

I won’t go into the details of the analysis, but suffice it to say that the authors’ lab purchased and tested the chemical components of toy jewelery manufactured in China, and sold in the United States, and compared it to lead solder samples collected from an e-scrap workshop in Taizhou, Zhejiang, by Greenpeace and a US advocacy group. Weidenhamer and Clement’s paper concluded with this modest suggestion: (more…)

Yesterday, according to the Guardian and other publications, the World Customs Organization [WCO] in Brussels announced that they will be imprisoning Olympic spectators who have the temerity – or bad luck – to bring counterfeit Olympic souvenirs back from China. I say “bad luck” because – if, like me – you’ve purchased fake Olympic goods under the impression that they were real (it all washes out in the laundry, doesn’t it?), this could make for an unexpected welcome.

Small-time smugglers, take note: Christophe Zimmermann, head of the WCO’s counterfeiting and piracy unit isn’t playing games: “Even if you are found with the smallest item, even just one item, you will face at least a fine.” To facilitate this oddly-timed bit of thuggery, he claims that the WCO will track flights originating from Asia, and institute more thorough – meaning, more invasive – incoming baggage checks. Now, you may ask, why are they bothering to do this for the Olympics? It turns out that Zimmermann is a humanitarian, and he’s doing it for the children:

But also I ask them [buyers of fakes] to think of where the product has come from such as sweat shops made by underage children and where the money is going. This is organised crime.

Raises the stakes a bit on the certification process for manufacturing in China and elsewhere in Asia, doesn’t it? No surprise, this quote didn’t make the version of the story that ran in China Daily.

[We interrupt our regularly scheduled deadline to bring you the story that I would rather be working on ...]

This evening, the Chinese Basketball Association took the unprecedented move of kicking Xinjiang Gunaghui (the league’s second-ranked team) out of the league playoffs after it was determined that the team broke league rules by playing three foreign players during the regular season. CBA rules allow each team only two foreign players per season in the interest of promoting – and developing – Chinese players.

The offending player in question – Guan Xiuchang – turns out to be Song Sun-Cou, an American citizen of Vietnamese descent. According to a just-issued Xinhua report, his (now known to be fake) Chinese ID card identified him as a native of Heilongjiang Province and, on that basis, he played a starring role in eighteen of Xinjiang’s regular season games. This was no small feat, as China Daily reported earlier in the day:

… Xinjiang have refused all interview requests regarding Guan and have declined to answer the question of why Guan, a player from Heilongjiang Province according to his registered information before the season, cannot speak a single word of Chinese.

[I can't remember the last time that I laughed myself to tears on the basis of a single sentence in a newspaper.]

As it happens, this purported Chinese citizen’s lack of Chinese language skills was not the only clue that something was amiss. According to the only information that I can dig up on this guy, the entire CBA managed to forget the fact that – in 2004 – Guan played two games for Yunnan Honghe under the name Ma Xiuchang. Presumably, he didn’t know any Chinese then, either.

Guan Xiuchang/Ma Xiuchang/Song Sun-Cou returned to the United States on December 26. (more…)

Especially when he’s on deadline.