Shanghai Scrap

[Part I in this series, including photos of SARS-era airport health screenings, can be found here.]

News reports to the effect that Mexico is largely being shut down for the long May Day Holiday have, once again, put me in mind of SARS and 2003. May 1, 2003, marked my first Chinese May Day, and my friends and neighbors encouraged me to join the festivities by taking a stroll down Nanjing Road where, they assured me, Shanghai’s families would throw-off months of SARS-related seclusion and go shopping – just like they’re supposed to do on May Day. Not that my friends and neigbors encouraging me to go to Nanjing Road were going to join me – no, they were still holing up in their apartments, boiling vinegar (the smell that – forever more – I’ll associate with the word SARS).

So I took an empty subway to People’s Square, crossed the street and – after walking for a few blocks – took the photo below (almost at noon, according to the time stamp). People who know Shanghai, and China, will immediately recognize two things in that image. First, it is astonishingly barren of people. And second, the sky is unusually blue.

For those readers unfamiliar with Shanghai, then, a couple of points. On weekends and holidays – especially holidays – Nanjing East Road might very well be the most crowded shopping street in China, if not Asia. Think of Times Square on New Year’s Eve, combined with the human currents of Bourbon Street (minus alcohol – admittedly, difficult to subtract) during Mardi Gras, and you’ve sort of got it. That’s normal. Then, the blue sky: we’ve had a nice spell of weather here lately, and the sky has been relatively blue. But during SARS, it wasn’t unlike the blue skies of my Minnesota youth – largely because of the near cessation of economic activity in China.

One other SARS-era May Day memory: the SARS ‘speakeasies.’ The authories had rightfully cracked down on public gatherings, and those included the expatriate bars. But Shanghai being Shanghai, and China being China, the bars pulled their curtains, ‘pretended’ to be closed, and then let customers in through the proverbial back doors and kitchen entrances. By May Day, the restrictions had lightened up. And yet, quite clearly, I remember going for a late-night May Day/night meal and drink and having to enter through an alley. Good times.

[Leonard Cohen's take on "The Future" felt right back then, and even more so now. First four lines/:30, especially.]

In late March, Infowar Monitor revealed the existence of GhostNet, a computer spying network that had inflitrated at least 1295 hosts in 103 countries. According to the report issued by the investigators, ownership of the network was unclear, but “circumstantially” pointed to China. For media more accustomed to reporting on computers than China, “China” in the case of GhostNet, meant the Chinese government. And so, in the weeks following the report, it became a truism in some corners of the media and internet that the Chinese government was operating a vast computer spying network.

However, among a smaller, more knowledgeable group of researchers and reporters, a much different story was being told. And that story had nothing to do with the Chinese government, and everything to do with a half-decade’s worth of research into independently operating patriotic hackers in China. However, telling such a story is complicated: not only does it require a certain level of technical understanding, but – if done well – it requires some understanding of how Chinese people interact with the Chinese government, and at least a cursory knowledge of China’s young nationalists (not to mention, the ability to read Chinese hacker blogs). My friend Mara Hvistendahl, a Shanghai-based correspondent who writes for Science, Scientific American, the Chronicle of Higher Education, the New Republic and other publications, is just that reporter.

Late last week, Popular Science published Hvistendahl’s “Hackers: the China Syndrome,” a carefully reported story that focuses on Scott Henderson, a private researcher with an expertise on the Chinese hacking community. The story was completed before the GhostNet investigation was revealed, but the reporting is no less relevant and interesting for its very clear picture of how and why China’s ‘patriotic’ hackers operate, and what – structurally – they might look like. Highly recommended.

Over the weekend Mara answered a few of my questions about the PopSci piece, Chinese “patriotic” hackers, and the challenges and risks inherent in doing this kind of reporting (especially if you don’t know what you’re doing). She’s one of the very best and most original reporters working in China today, and I think her answers are a worthy read, both in their own right, and as a supplement to the PopSci piece.

Q. In the aftermath of the “GhostNet” report, people were quick to point their fingers at “China” – with the idea, I think, that some aspect of the Chinese government was behind it. However, your article seems to suggest that such an approach might be misguided, and that investigators need to be paying more attention to independent operators sympathetic to, but not necessarily part of, nation states. To me, this sounds a bit like the readjustment that the US Defense Department had to make when dealing with al-Qaeda as opposed to national entities. Is that a fair assessment? (more…)

Now that swine flu hysteria is close to full bloom, I dug into the old photo archive and pulled up this classic set of instructional posters from SARS-era Shanghai. For a couple of months during Winter/Spring 2003, these were pasted everywhere – every spare wall (anybody out there remember if these showed up in other Chinese cities? or were there different posters?). The Shanghai posters became hot collectors items after the pandemic fears subsided. And, to this day, I regret not grabbing a set for myself.

[In case the photo isn't clear, the English captions read (left to right) ... Wash your hands often; Ventilate your rooms often; Don't spit; Don't sneeze at others.]

Two additional SARS-related recollections after the jump … (more…)

If you happen to be in Beijing on Sunday, April 26, allow me to recommend the opening of ‘Paper Skin,’ a new exhibition by my friend Peng Wei, at Gallery ARTSIDE, Space II, at 5 PM (that’s this Sunday). Address and contact info, here.

I should probably do a longer post about Peng Wei at some point. But, for now, suffice to say that – in this blogger’s opinion – she’s one of the most interesting painters to emerge from Beijing in the last decade. Among collectors (as it happens: two fine ink paintings on the wall behind me), she’s best known for her delicate ink paintings of women’s shoes, and her monumental, fictionalized images of classical Chinese robes. Her imagination is boundless; her technique is peerless.

To be sure, Peng Wei could spend her life painting shoes and robes for happy collectors . But what’s encouraging, and right, is that she’s beginning to explore works in three dimensions, among which are works that will be displayed at ARTSIDE. It’s the rare artist willing to buck her audience and market, but that’s Peng Wei, and that’s among the many reasons to go and see this very interesting show.

[For the record: I don't do nearly enough plugging of my friends on this blog. But Peng Wei is special, and so let this plug be the start of more plugs to come (of other friends, and their work).]

Almost forgot it was Earth Day. So in honor of Earth, please allow me to send you in the direction of last year’s good news Earth Day post concerning a very low-tech green solution to a serious Chinese environmental problem. I am, of course, referring to the famed “vibrating water table” post of April 22, 2008.

Also in honor of Earth Day: the staff over here is going to take a four day hiatus, ending Monday, that we’ll devote to some pressing real world issues, including this evening’s leftovers, pictured below:

If you’re in need of a China blog fix, there’s lots of good reading to be found on the blogroll to the right. But if that won’t do, might we suggest Bill Flanagan’s wonderful extended interview with Bob Dylan on the occasion of his new album? Not only will you get Bob’s thoughts on U.S. Grant, you’ll enjoy exchanges like this one: (more…)

Moments ago, I received a phone call from the organizers of a major industry conference and exhibition scheduled for Beijing in late May. For the sake of the people involved, I’m not going to name the conference or the industry, except to note that it is a very, very big industry employing many, many Chinese people in factories receiving a whole lot of Chinese economic stimulus funds. As for the conference: it’s being sponsored by a major Chinese trade group, several major Chinese state-owned enterprises, a notable division of Xinhua, several major foreign trade publications, and one foreign newswire. The people who own and operate companies in this industry (or, heck, analyze them) are not, generally, rabble-rousers. Indeed, they tend to be very conservative, verging on boring, with a strong preference for what some people like to call “stability.” Anyway, until a few minutes ago, I was a confirmed attendee at this conference. Then I had this conversation:

Conference Rep: “Are you aware that this year is the 60th anniversary of the Communist Party?” [actually, the founding of the PRC, but that's the anniversary he commemorated on the phone.]

Me: “Yes.”

Conf. Rep: “Because of this, I’m sorry but we must postpone our conference until November.”

Me: “Really?”

Conf. Rep: “Many of our international participants will not be able to get visas due to the anniversary. Because of this we must postpone.”

Me: “Not get visas?”

Conf. Rep: “Yes, because of the 60th anniversary of the Communist Party the visa policy changes. So we will postpone until November. Perhaps you can attend then?” [again, stating the wrong anniversary, but you get the point] (more…)

I received an email this afternoon from a friend who told me that I needed to find a copy of a documentary entitled “The Red Race,” which had aired Monday night on Shanghai’s venerable Documentary Channel. Directed by Gan Chao, a Shanghainese documentary filmmaker, the film offers stark and disturbing footage of a Shanghai-area gymnastics training center. I haven’t been able to find a complete copy of the film online, but there’s a ten minute excerpt available on YouTube complete with a Spanish voiceover. Don’t worry about the language issues, though: the footage itself tells enough of a story.

The film appears to have been released during the Olympics, which is why I must’ve missed it (along with all of the other China-oriented material unleashed and lost during that period). In any case, it seems to have been screened at a number of Western film festivals in the late summer and early fall of 2008. Those few who’ve written about it seem to fixate on the same sequence: two very young girls, in obvious pain, hanging from a parallel bar. The passage is equally engaging and disturbing, and you’ll find it in the aforementioned YouTube clip.

What I find particularly curious about the film (or, at least, the ten minutes that I screened on YouTube) is just how much it conforms to the worst Western stereotypes and fears of Chinese athletic training and – in contrast – how differently it was perceived in a Shanghai Daily article promoting it earlier this week. Whereas this English-language blog refers to the footage as displaying all the characteristics of “child abuse,” the Shanghai Daily quotes the director:

“When I took a gym class in 2007, I noticed these child gymnasts around me,” recalls Gan, 31. “I was touched by their optimism, courage and perseverance in spite of tears and injuries. I immediately decided to make a film chronicling their childhood.”

To my sensibilities, the former assessment seems far more apt. I found the footage to be deeply disturbing, and I find it hard to believe that Shanghainese sensibilities wouldn’t be similarly offended. In any case, decide for yourself, here.

In fairness, brutal exploitation of young athletes is an age-old phenomenon that takes on the national characteristics of wherever it occurs. For a very well-written (though not nearly as brutal) American example, see Michael Sokolove’s outrageously good “Allonzo Trier Is in the Game,” from the March 19 issue of the NYT Sunday Magazine. Just to be clear: I’m not drawing moral equivalents. But the NYT piece is, in its own way, a more affluent (by comparison) expression of the same phenomenon documented in “The Red Race.”

Among longer-term expatriates in China I think there’s a bit of a tendency to downplay – or downright denigrate – the observations made by first-time visitors and newcomers. I’m not immune to this tendency. Indeed, I think the worst offenders might be members of my own cohort: turf-sensitive journalists and writers. Quite frankly, I can’t count the number of times that I’ve been in the company of China-based writers as they sniff proudly at the idea of “fly-in” journalists with no experience in China, writing about China (full disclosure: I’ve sniffed, too). It’s a natural tendency, I think, but also an unfortunate one insofar as it deprives jaded eyes of fresh ones.

A humbling example:

I spent the better part of the morning and early afternoon with an American ob-gyn on her first visit to China. She’s in her mid thirties, very well educated and very well traveled, particularly in India (she speaks Hindi). She also has a strong interest in the care of low-income women. In any case, prior to meeting up with me, she spent two days wandering the city (well, my neighborhood, mostly), taking in whatever she could see. And what she saw, she told me, was a city lacking in pregnant women and children.

I immediately took issue with this observation – “I see pregnant women and children all of the time,” I replied with a wizened expatriate’s confidence. But she wouldn’t hear any of it: instead, she just shook her head back at me, and shrugged: “It’s my job to notice these things. And there are fewer pregnant women and children around than there should be. I notice this stuff.”

I didn’t give this much thought until, just a few minutes ago, I came across Dune Lawrence’s Letter to China in today’s NYT. It concerns China’s “coming wave of elderly” and points out that:

The world’s third-largest economy is aging so rapidly that by 2050, there may be only two working-age people for every senior citizen, compared with 13 to one now.

As for Shanghai, a google search brings up several recent and older articles noting that the city is in the midst of a prolonged period of negative population growth.

Now, these trends are not entirely new to me or – I’m guessing – many of my readers. But I know about them because I’ve spent many years reading and listening to lots and lots of material related to China. Meanwhile, my friend, the American ob-gyn, has not; in fact, I think it’s safe to say that she’s not even particularly interested in China. And that’s why it’s all the more humbling to realize that – in the space of 48 hours in my neighborhood – she picked up on something that I failed to see in 6.5 years.

[UPDATE] I received a number of interesting responses to this post, both in comment form and emails. One very knowledgable respondent agrees that there are fewer children and women on the streets of Shanghai, though this correspodent ascribes the phenomenon to cultural factors that encourage the coddling of pregnant women and children – and not population factors (an email mentions the advent of cell-phone proof overalls for pregnant women!). Similar comments below.]

Back in January, I twice blogged about the tragic destruction of Shanghai’s 135-year-old carmelite convent (here and here). Located on the grounds of the old Shanghai Film Studios lot in the midst of the bustling and expensive Xujiahui neighborhood, there was really no hope for this historic property. Outside of a few blogs, nobody in Shanghai – least of all, the convent’s high-rise neighbors – made much of an issue about losing another piece of Shanghai’s rapidly disappearing architectural past. And nobody from the Shanghai Film Group (China’s oldest and largest production company), owner and (re)developer of the property, ever found himself in the position of having to justify the demolition or the redevelopment plans.

But then, right around Chinese New Year, folks living in the neighboring residential high-rise complex, noticed that Shanghai Film Group’s publicly posted plans for the redevelopment would damage their property values: the quaint lane between the respective developments is slated to become a two-way thoroughfare, and the old Film Studio lot is being prepped for high-rise office space that will block out its neighbor’s sunlight. So, in late February, angry residents of this neighboring high-rise hung multistory banners from the side of their buildings with messages like: “Shanghai Film Group Environmental Assessment Fake. Lying to the Government Hurts the People,” and “Central Government Asks People to Harmonize. Why Do You Want To Be Against the Central Government?” No surprise, nothing much happened: the banners came down and the redevelopment continued apace.

But the neighbors are tenacious, and so, last night, under darkness, new protest banners were unfurled. Click individual images for enlargements (translations below) of the photos that I took at 7:30 AM, today. While reading, keep in mind two things: first, Ren Zhonglun is a deputy to the National People’s Congress, the powerful President of the Shanghai Film Group (official photo, here), and the producer and executive producer of several films, most notably Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution; and second, these banners hang from high-rise buildings on one of Shanghai’s busiest thoroughfares in the heart of one of the city’s busiest neighborhoods. They’ll be seen by tens if not hundreds of thousands of people during their presumably brief lifespans.

Left to right: A: “Public lands to construct corporate high-rises, Shanghai Film Studio you are rapacious!”; B: “Deputy to the National People’s Congress Ren Zhonglun dupes the government and the people, tarnishing the image of the Party”; C: “(If) not busy cutting streamers, it is important that Ren Zhonglun come out and resolve the issue.” (more…)

Earlier this week the new Catholic bishop of Hong Kong, John Tong, commented that – unlike his outspoken predecessor – he would not be joining the Ti@nm@n Square vigils in Hong Kong this year. In response a few commentators are now suggesting that Tong – unlike his predecessor – will be a less political bishop. Perhaps so, but I think it more accurate to suggest that Tong will be a more diplomatic bishop than Zen, especially in dealing with the CCP and China’s religious authories. In fact, this has long been his reputation among those who follow Chinese Catholic affairs. A nice example of his subtle and discrete character and diplomacy can be found in my August 2007 profile of Shanghai’s bp Jin Luxian. The story opens in 1985, when Jin was under extreme pressure to accept an illicit ordination to be an auxiliary bishop of Shanghai from the Chinese religious authorities:

Few inside or outside of Shanghai believed that it was possible for Jin to remain a faithful Catholic-at least, a Roman Catholic-if he accepted the ordination. Yet Jin believed that to reject the appointment would not only place the seminary at risk but also open the Shanghai hierarchy to a priest more inclined toward the CPA and the Communist Party. Reluctantly, he accepted, and he says that on the day of the ordination, he was in need of “consolation.”

It arrived from an unlikely source: With Pope John Paul’s knowledge and tacit approval, Laurence Murphy, a past president of Seton Hall University and an informal intermediary and adviser to the Vatican on the Chinese Church, and Father John Tong, now the auxiliary bishop of Hong Kong, attended the ceremony. (more…)

It’s nearly forty-eight hours since the US missed the April 15 deadline to confirm its participation at Expo 2010, and – as of five minutes ago – I can’t find a single news outlet that’s covering the story. No doubt, the deadline was a soft one that the Shanghai Organizing Committee can and will extend until there’s simply no time left for the US to build upon the prime real estate reserved for it at the Expo grounds. That’s the speculation, at least. If it’s reality, then the task ahead of the authorized US pavilion team is very simple: raise enough money to convince the State Department that it can sign a participation agreement. As I explained last week in the Atlantic, those prospects are murky: not only has the US pavilion team failed to raise any significant money, it has borrowed money from Shanghai to finance its ongoing operations.

So what did the authorized US pavilion team accomplish on deadline day? It hired PR flacks Ruder-Finn to handle its global media account. Now, one might argue that – in light of its lack of corporate sponsors (two, as of today; and $1.25 million raised out of a $61 million budget, as of April 24) – the authorized team has just put the proverbial cart ahead of the horse. In fact, come to think of it, I would argue that. But there’s more to the Ruder-Finn hire than the vanity of the US authorized team. Keep in mind: Ruder-Finn was also the official PR agency for the US pavilion at the last World Expo, in Aichi, Japan. And that pavilion was largely funded by Toyota, at the behest of the Japanese government. Ruder-Finn, among its many duties in 2005, listed attracting “high-level corporate sponsors ($1MM+) including notable business, arts and cultural organizations” among its objectives for that event. So, in that sense, Ruder-Finn might be the best hope for the authorized team to explore its interest in a host country-funded US pavilion.

[Update, ten minuntes later: I've just been told, via email, that Dell has signed up as a US corporate sponsor for the pavilion.]

In today’s Daily Telegraph, (h/t danwei), Ambrose Evans-Pritchard notes that China’s State Reserve Board has been importing large volumes of copper “beyond the usual rebuilding of stock for commercial purposes” and speculates – without resorting to a single Chinese source – that China must be replacing its dollar reserves with metals (possibly with the long-term goal of creating a ‘copper standard’  to replace the dollar as a global currency). Evans-Pritchard doesn’t cite a Chinese copper trader to support this hypothesis; nor does he cite a member of the State Reserve Board. Instead, he cites foreigners who know little more than he does:

While it makes sense for China to take advantage of last year’s commodity crash to restock cheaply, there is clearly more behind the move. “They are definitely buying metals to diversify out of US Treasuries and dollar holdings,” said Jim Lennon, head of commodities at Macquarie Bank.

Except that they’re not. (more…)

This evening I had dinner with an old friend, and afterwards we decided to take a walk into the old Ruijin Guest House grounds. As I detail in an earlier post, the Ruijin Guest House is a state-owned hotel and restaurant complex covering nearly 100 bucolic acres in the heart of Shanghai. At least, that was the state of things until late last year, and the decision to redevelop the complex’s rolling green lawns into a “modern” high-rise hotel complex. In any case, we decided to overlook the construction and get a look at what remains of the old grounds and buildings. Near the gate on Maoming Road, we came across this exquiste window, hand-painted and fired in the 1920s. I’ve seen it many times before, in daylight, but it was only tonight, with the light shining behind it, that I really appreciated its beauty and craftsmanship:

On the opposite side of the same building that houses this modest little window is a much larger, multi-panel art deco stained glass window depicting a leopard in a tropical forest. Some – including the Shanghai government – claim that the leopard window is the oldest stained glass window in Shanghai. Oldest surviving might be more accurate, due to the fact that most of Shanghai’s stained glass, pre-1965, was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. In any case, this bamboo window (a worthy precursor to more recent bamboo windows in Xujiahui), have a common lineage: the Toushanwan Orphanage (or, in Shanghainese, T’ou-Sè-Wè – meaning, I’m told, “Mud Hills at River Bend”). (more…)

At the Atlantic,  “The Pavilion Wars,” my reported dispatch on the various factors that will almost certainly lead to the US missing an April 15 deadline to confirm its participation – that is, its pavilion – at Expo 2010 in Shanghai (better known as the World’s Fair). More likely than not, the Shanghai Organizing Committee will extend the deadline, but there’s absolutely no reason to believe that the authorized US team will be able to meet it unless – as the team has intimated – the Organizing Committee fronts the money for construction. As I report in the dispatch, the Organizing Committee has already lent the US team an undisclosed amount of money; presumably, they wouldn’t be shy about doing it again. Sadly, had someone at the State Department shown leadership and imagination back in 2007, the US might very well be bragging about its Frank Gehry designed pavilion right now, instead of wondering whether it’ll have one at all.

Find the full dispatch here.

Above, an image from more thoughtful days: the Buckminster Fuller-designed US pavilion from Expo 67 in Montreal.

Photo by Cédric Thévenet ©2001 CC by-SA.