Haibao, on the street where I live.
While I was out of China two very important events happened in my neighborhood. First, everyone’s favorite pirate DVD shop re-opened. And second, the Beijing 2008 banners were pulled off lampposts and replaced with World Expo 2010 banners.
I leave commentary on Haibao, the mascot, to those who did it much earlier, and much better, than me.
Note to the Expo 2010 organizers: it’s not too late to change your mind (about Haibao).
[Addendum: Micah reminds us that the red banner encourages Shanghai to learn from the Beijing Olympics.]
Note to readers: this is the inaugural post in the new Expo 2010 category. And a couple of more banner photos after the jump.
9 comments »
Copy link for RSS feed for comments on this post or for TrackBack URI
Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>
Why you waste my time with this stupid kind of post? I can see the banner outside my window and not waste the time going to this blog to see it again. Stupid!
Comment by zxzx — September 5, 2008 @ 12:54 pm
Haven’t seen those in Pudong yet, will keep an eye out.
But ???????? Ugh.
Comment by Micah Sittig — September 5, 2008 @ 1:47 pm
The question marks in my previous comment referred to the “Learn From The Beijing Olympics” text on the red banner.
Comment by Micah Sittig — September 5, 2008 @ 1:49 pm
hey micah -
I just upgraded to a new version of wordpress, and for some reason it changed the input settings so that Chinese characters weren’t allowed, anymore. Thanks for pointing that out – I think it’s fixed now (this is an ongoing bug in WP that drives me nuts, by the way). Anyway, agree on the “ugh.” Shanghai can stand on its own merits … though Haibao makes me nervous.
zxzx – fair question, poorly phrased. 99.5% of this blog’s readership is outside of Shanghai; 97% is outside of China; 95% is outside of Asia. I love having a Shanghai readership, a China readership, but I happily admit to the fact that this blog mostly tries to reach folks who don’t have the opportunity to walk down a street in Shanghai on a regular basis. Sometimes that means taking pictures of things that I see on the street; sometimes it means talking about trade agreements; sometimes it means going to the Olympics. Point being, whenever I leave China I’m always surprised at the level of curiosity about daily life here. So, as much as possible, I try to bring some of that into this blog. Come to think of it, I probably should do more of it.
Comment by Adam — September 5, 2008 @ 2:13 pm
The linked article calls him (it?) a love-child between Gumby and Izzy. I’ve always thought of it as more of a Gumby x Towelie cross, but maybe my love of South Park is blinding me.
Comment by Tyler — September 5, 2008 @ 3:38 pm
[...] Shanghai it’s goodbye Olympics, hello Expo 2010. And welcome back, pirate DVD sellers. [Shanghai [...]
Pingback by China Journal : Best of the China Blogs: September 5 — September 5, 2008 @ 7:50 pm
Your DVD shops have re-opened? It’s like a DVD desert down here in Shenzhen. I might actually have to check AXN to see what time House is on instead of just popping in another disk that I have yet to buy.
Comment by ambrose — September 5, 2008 @ 10:28 pm
My local DVD shops in Jingan were rated in the last few days. But the closest one got Batman, which was nice.
Comment by tyler — September 8, 2008 @ 7:10 pm
Last week I had houseguests down from Beijing, and they innocently asked me how many weeks until the Expo opened.
They couldn’t believe, from all the propaganda, that it’s years away still. And this is from Beijingers!
Comment by Lisa — September 16, 2008 @ 2:50 pm