Shanghai Scrap

Last month I posted at length on the accelerating demolition of historic architecture in Shanghai’s Hongkou District (following on several good posts from Paul French at China Rhyming). This area, best know as the “Jewish ghetto” during World War II, has a far richer history, and architectural heritage, than that interlude might suggest. Thus, it’s been heartbreaking to watch – over the last few months – as the heart of old Hongkou has fallen to the sledgehammers (again, this post explains why I think Hongkou is worth preserving – in part).

Anyway, I spent Sunday afternoon roaming the demolished tenements with a friend. We took photos, and we chatted with hold-outs – of which there are quiet a few. Some don’t want to leave for a shiny new highrise in the suburbs; and some just want a better financial settlement. As I’ve written before – I don’t sentimentalize buildings in which I wouldn’t want to live. And, believe me, I wouldn’t want to live in a leaky, cold in the winter, sweltering in the summer, tenement. But I do believe that some of those tenements could be preserved for a fraction of the money being spent on the highrises slated to replace them (ironically, recycling crews are recovering the floors, doors, windows – basically everything but the bricks and mortar); and, actually, I do sentimentalize the century-old communities that are being broken up and relocated from those old lanes. Below, an image of one of the holdouts [UPDATED 12/1: you can find much better images (taken earlier this fall), and some details on his life, reported by the wonderful Sun Anne Tay, at her flickr site]. His mother-in-law, he told us, was asleep in the home behind him.

There’s not much that anybody can do about Hongkou at this point – nothing more than going over there and appreciating what’s left of it (take pictures, above all else) before everything is gone. If you can find the surviving pockets – and they exist! – take the time to wander them: it’s not just the buildings that’ll be gone, soon – so will the lane lifestyles that evolved in and around them.

A couple of years ago a Chinese friend who works for a large Chinese state-owned company called to ask if I could look at several pages of English that she’d translated for her superiors. I asked her to send it over, gave it a quick once-over, and sent it back. Basic marketing materials, nothing too complicated. Several weeks later I was in Beijing, and met up with my friend. Over lunch she handed me a copy of the annual report for her employer – again, a major state-owned company – and instructed me to turn to the introduction where, to my horror, I found the English-language passages that she’d asked me to check. “You had me check text for the annual report?” I asked.

“My boss asked me if I had any English-speaking friends who could help me.”

Unfortunately, this isn’t nearly so rare a situation as one might guess, and I’ve long wondered – why? That is, why do Chinese organizations with international aspirations (or, at a minimum, affectations) consistently skimp on English translations? Are they cheap? Or, perhaps – as a friend recently suggested – they believe that Chinese is hard, and English is easy (and thus easily outsourced to the secretaries and their English-speaking friends)? Perhaps they believe that only Chinese are capable of translating Chinese thoughts? Look at this way: is there any chance that a major publicly-held US company like, say, Dupont, would trust the Chinese passages in its annual report (no idea if they have any) to a secretary and her Chinese friends?

Anyway, my reason for this digression is an astonishing little volume that I found in a Shanghai bookshop over the weekend. Prepared and published by the people bringing us Expo 2010, China’s latest and greatest effort to prove to the world that it’s achieved – well, I don’t know what. But whatever the Expo is supposed to prove, the title of this officially issued handbook (ISBN# 978-7-80186-899-2) strikes me as contrary evidence:

Best as I can tell, the book was written to prepare an army of Expo volunteers to handle the expected rush of English-speaking visitors. (more…)

In observance of the Thanksgiving Day holiday, Shanghai Scrap will be on hiatus until November 30. Except that, on Thursday, we’ll make a point of posting an image of what our Shanghainese Thanksgiving dinner looked like (though it won’t be Shanghainese food).

And since it’s Thanksgiving … sincere thanks to the ever-growing number of people who stop by, subscribe, and comment on my blog. I really appreciate the interest, and I’ll continue to do my best to earn it.

[In addition to giving thanks on Thanksgiving, we also watch American football. And among my favorite Shanghai Scrap posts is this one, from October, in which I interview one of NFL China's play-by-play men. If you're in China, hankering for a Lions or Cowboys game, this might tide you over a bit.]

On October 28 the Shanghai Daily ran what now stands as my favorite headline in the history of journalism:

The headline isn’t the best part, though. That honor is reserved for the story itself, which goes something like this: last year, the five individuals in the above photo began working as prostitutes in Shanghai. One day, one prostitute noticed that another was taking prescription sedatives for a sleeping disorder. A plot soon emerged: “let’s make some chocolate, lace it with those sedatives, and feed it to clients with the intention of robbing them after they collapse.” A winning concept, for sure (!), that succeeded on at least two occasions, and would have succeeded on a third had someone not been caught using a victim’s credit card at a cosmetics shop. (more…)

If you’ve bothered to read, watch, or listen to the post-post-Obama-in-China commentary over the last forty-right hours, you’d be excused for thinking that the Presidential visit had just closed a tumultuous chapter in the history of Sino-US relations. And, in fact, that’s precisely how many observers – a good portion of them glad to have anything and anyone associated with the Bush Administration – swept out of the way, feel. There’s only one problem with this view of the new era in Sino-US relations: under the Bush Administration, especially its second half, the Sino-US relationship improved markedly. In fact, even some of the harshest critics of Bush’s foreign policy adventures will concede – when pressed – that Bush (who visited China four times – more than any other President – and held 19 face-to-face meetings with Hu Jintao) ran, on balance, a sympathetic China policy with Clark Randt, his ambassador. At a minimum, the Chinese media understood and understand it; take, for example, this 2007 China Daily interview with Randt on the occasion of the Strategic Economic Dialogue, and – in its last paragraphs – the list of exchanges and partnerships. Or, for that matter, this January 2009 interview with Randt, in which he uses language not unlike that being wielded by the Obama administration, now. (more…)

After several weeks of travel, and one Presidential visit, it’s time for me to buckle down and write; the deadlines loom. But before I go underwater, some items that I found interesting.

• Like many bloggers, I was taken by Yang Hengjun’s response to President Obama’s town hall, “Why I blog,” as translated by ESWN. It contains, I think, the best explanation and defense of free speech rights that I’ve read in a long time (and that goes for you – US first amendment scholars). Highly recommended.
• Forbes has a concise primer on why – despite all of the “China owns the US” talk that has fluttered around the run-up in US government debt – China doesn’t really own the US.  The US does: American citizens are still the largest holders of US debt, by far.
• Jeremiah Jenne of the Granite Studio reminds us that there’s nothing new under the sun, and that the nifty “Nine Nations of China” map over at the Atlantic has a wonky 1977 predecessor: “The Nine Macroregions of China.” Jenne writes: “Originality aside, the basic idea behind both maps is an important one to bear in mind when looking at China.  We tend to fixate on political boundaries, even when those boundaries and borders are drawn more for administrative convenience or for other, even more arbitrary, reasons.” [UDATED: Patrick Chovanec, author of the aforementioned "Nine Nations of China" map responds to Jeremiah Jenne, here, and he comments on his own blog about the intellectual antecedents of the map, here. For the record: I believe Chovanec had an obligation to cite his antecedents, if only via a link (that wouldn't add length to the piece). I'll leave it at that, and suggest that readers take a look at comment #1, by Jeremy Goldkorn, to Chovanec's post. My thoughts precisely.]
• Shanghaiist reminds us that the US pavilion for Expo 2010 still hasn’t raised its budget, and that forced Hillary Clinton to include a fundraising pitch in her comments at the rainy, muddy site on Monday (right about the time that President Obama was telling a group of students that he’d have to check his schedule when they asked whether he’d be attending). To an extent, this shouldn’t be surprising: The US pavilion suffers from a design so uninspiring (think: outlet mall) that it might be the only one that the Shanghai authorities haven’t plastered to a subway wall, multiple ethics and conflict-of-interest questions, and a fundraising team that’s deeply unpopular in Shanghai’s expat business circles. Here’s a question: at what point will (or has it already?) the State Department lift restrictions on pavilion fundraising from companies on its “black list? (for violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and other matters)?” More on this soon.
• And finally, Jon Huntsman, the new US ambassador to China, has earned a permanent  place in my heart for speaking truth to pow – I mean, the self-proclaimed China experts (you know who you are):  “… those who consider themselves to be China experts are kind of morons. So you take what you can, you learn what you can, and you begin to pull all the pieces together, and still it kind of remains sometimes a somewhat confused environment.” That’s right.

Above, an image snapped of an impromptu lunch hour card game played by workers at a Qingyuan factory a couple of weeks ago. No reason – except that I like it. Click to enlarge … and I’ll be back in a few days.

A quick post to let US readers know that I’m scheduled to appear on Minnesota Public Radio’s Midmorning with Keri Miller on Tuesday at 10:45 AM, CST (that’s 12:45 AM, Wednesday, in China, for you night owls). We’ll discuss Obama and China, and my recent piece for the Atlantic exploring the reasons for his popularity here. If you’re in the Twin Cities it’s at 91.1; if you’re elsewhere, you can stream it here.

This phrase, more than any other, personifies the disappointment that I’ve been reading online, and hearing in-person, from Chinese friends who watched the Obama Town Hall in Shanghai. It’s an awkward phrase, many miles from “I oppose censorship,” and really uncharacteristic of a President celebrated for his eloquence and his ability to inspire. It’s an overly calculated phrase, just as his performance at the Town Hall, was overly calculated to avoid offending his hosts in Beijing, rather than appeal to (the admittedly small number of) Chinese who might have been interested and inspired by this President (definitely not the same thing).

I don’t think it’s much defense, either, to claim that Obama’s hands were tied by the softball questions lobbed his way. Like any successful US candidate familiar with the town hall format, Obama was and is adept at answering the questions that he wishes were asked of him – not the ones that actually are. But, astonishingly, he never once veered from answering the questions put to him, never once – outside of his speech – suggested that there was anything pressing that he wanted to say to the assembled students, the online audience, the television audience. This is particularly startling considering that Obama’s advance team – by all accounts – fought long and hard to broadcast the forum to a national audience. But for what purpose? What on Earth did he want to say that required weeks of negotiations? That he’s “a big supporter of non-censorship?”

It pains me to write this (I’m an Obama voter and donor), but Obama’s performance this afternoon reminded me of nothing so much as an overly coached American businessman on his first trip to China, so concerned about what he should or should not say that he forgets what he wanted to say in the first place, and ends up going home with nothing but a hotel bill and empty promises.

Generally, the foreign media that covered the event seems to have come to a much more charitable interpretation, with the LA Times going so far as to suggest that Obama “chided” China on human rights. I’m not sure what Town Hall they watched; it wasn’t the one that my local friends and colleagues are shaking their heads at.

[UPDATED 11/19: I concede being a bit late getting to this, but here goes. My friend Jim Fallows disagrees with my assessment of the town hall, and points to the preceding speech - and the transcript of the meeting - to suggest "that he said just about as much on censorship and liberties as a visiting dignitary could say, in the circumstances." I'll agree to a point. The speech, I thought, was an excellent and eloquent statement of American principles delivered in the forceful tone that we've all come to expect from Obama. I was impressed by it on Monday, and I'm impressed, again, when I read the transcript. But here's where I part ways from Fallows. But if you put down the transcript, and turn to the actual video of the event, the confident Obama of the speech gives way to a tentative, carefully parsed President who seems more concerned with choosing his words carefully, than impressing anything upon the students who came to see him. In a sense, we have a reverse "Nixon-Kennedy." In that famous case, folks who listened on the radio believed that the articulate Nixon bested Kennedy; but those who watched on television favored the handsome Kennedy over the sweaty Nixon. Well, based upon Fallows post, and other discussions, I think the transcript comes off much better than the actual appearance. I've taken some heat for comparing Obama in the Town Hall to "an overly coached businessman." But I can tell you, among those who watched the actual performance (in person or on television) there were similar impressions. For example, this blog compares it to "a highly hyped English corner" - again, playing off the careful, un-confident Obama that none of us expected.]

[UPDATED: This post was originally intended as a public service to folks in China who don't have access to a television broadcast of the Obama Town Hall. But then I spent the last hour listening to the boneheads in charge of the audio for the broadcast inadvertently beam their voices, f-bombs - and overall lack of awareness - to the world, via the White House Facebook page. Most amazing part was that Macon Philips, the White House Director of New Media, commented on the White House Facebook page that the live stream was up temporarily, and would be going down --- and it kept running for another 30 minutes. I mean, just who's in charge around here, anyway? Sheesh. Complete details in the two updated sections, below.]

Somebody’s got a case of cold feet, so it looks like the Obama Town Hall in Shanghai is going to be broadcast in Shanghai, only. But fear not, Shanghai Scrap is here to help: If you’re out of Shanghai, and you’d like to watch the show (featuring several hundred well-rehearsed university students), go here. Alternatively, if you’re running a website/blog, and you’d like to “host” the meeting on your site, you can find the video embed code, here, and the audio embed, here – both courtesy of the White House (those rebels). I’m tied up today and tomorrow, so – !viva la revolucion¡ and I’ll see you mid-week.

[UPDATED 9:30: I'm all for media transparency, but somebody really needs to tell the White House AV staff that the sound check is being broadcast live on the White House facebook page. In the space of ten minutes, staffers dropped two F-bombs, announced that "I can speak Japanese, Korea - Chinese should be easy!," and shifted - briefly - into a Charlie Chan accent. Not cool.]

[UPDATED 9:50: Okay, it’s official: the White House AV staff clearly doesn’t know that its mics are live. A few moments ago, Mr “Chinese Should Be Easy” (referenced above) said: “I’m speaking into this. Nobody can hear me.” After a few more mangled attempts to say zhongwen, that sounded like “Joe En” he finally gave up with a “Joe Jesus!” Then, a few seconds later, when the Secret Service or somebody requested that the room be cleared for a security sweep, he let loose his finale, broadcasting to the world: “Everybody leave. Everybody please leave. Leave the ROOOOOOM. FIRE!” Catching himself, he added: “No fire. No, no, no, no.”

Ladies and gentlemen: America at its best.

I have a new essay up at the Atlantic, “Obama-mania Sweeps China,” which is just what the title suggests: some thoughts on why President Obama is so strikingly popular here. He is, of course, about to arrive here, and I’ll have more to say about the visit in other forums, and perhaps on Shanghai Scrap, as well.

At this point, though, the only thing that I can report is that the security around Obama’s hotel is notably humorless. Go figure. More soon …

I spent the first half of November on assignment in Guangdong Province, and though I can’t say too much about what I was up to down there, I did come across some interesting labor-related items unrelated to my assignment.

So. In the space of two weeks I managed to visit 11 factories tightly connected to the export manufacturing sector (either as direct exporters or as raw material suppliers to exporters), and interviewed another dozen. No surprise, all but one conceded that business is down from 2008 – in most cases, between 30% and 50%. At the same time, there was near universal agreement that the numbers would be far more grim if not for China’s economic stimulus which – according to several participants – is directly accounting for some 60% of the economic activity in Guangdong – the famous/notorious export “workshop of the world”- at the moment. What does that mean, precisely? One example: below, at a factory ordinarily devoted to manufacturing electrical equipment for export industries, workers instead hand-assemble electrical transformers for government hydro-power projects.

Good for China: the stimulus is working. Now the surprising parts. (more…)

[Note 11/13: A couple of folks have left comments expressing doubts about whether, in fact, the mask in question was used for welding. It was.]

I’ve just returned to Shanghai after 12 days of roaming up and down Guangdong. I’ll have a bit more to say about some of what I saw down there in the coming days. For now, though, I leave you with what stands as one of my favorite photos out of several hundred that I took down there. It was taken this morning, just at the point where I was putting down my camera after deciding that – twelve days into the trip – there was nothing new for me to note. At just that moment, my traveling companion for much of this trip – a gentleman known to some as Big Dog – elbowed me and said: “Look at that guy’s welding mask.”

“What welding mask?” I asked.

“That one.”

“What are – Oh.” [Click to Enlarge]

Thoughts on Guangdong, the state of China’s economy, and an essay on Obama in China, all upcoming – after a night’s rest.

The other afternoon I was riding in the back seat of a late model SUV owned by a successful businessman based in Guangdong. He’s a busy guy, with a high risk tolerance, so it really shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise that he doesn’t have much patience for seat belts, much less, the insistent alarms that his SUV sounds when he chooses to drive without fastening the one on the driver’s side. But I’ll admit, I was something more than surprised when he showed me the device that he utilizes to put a stop to those (in his view) irritatingly insistent alarms.

That’s right: he inserts a belt tongue (I looked it up; tongue is the term of art) that’s not connected to a belt, thereby disabling the alarm. Now, take a closer look at the above photo. Lacking a slot for an actual belt, that tongue has one purpose, and one purpose only: disabling seat belt alarms. According to my new friend, such tongues are readily available in most local auto parts stores (we were in Qingyuan). That is to say: there are enough haters of both seat belts and seat belt alarms (in Qingyuan, at least), to justify an entire product line. I asked to see this product line in its natural environment, and after lunch we stopped by a nearby parts store. (more…)

A companion photo to the one in the prior post, taken around 8:30 PM, Friday night.

He wasn’t the only person down there. Couples wandered beneath the bridge arches, hid in its corners and shadows; groups of college-aged kids lit campfires and got high; here and there, grandparents wandered in circles, pointing out the few remaining stars to the one or two grandchildren trailing behind them.