Due to unexpected but very welcome events in Minneapolis, Shanghai Scrap has baseball on his mind, and thus – while running errands earlier in the day – I was stopped in my tracks by the Major League Baseball stall at a busy shopping mall in Xujiahui. It’s not your average American MLB shop, that’s for…
All posts in Minnesota
My gift to anxious NFL fans in China
Due to a September 2008 blog post complaining that ESPN (in Asia, at least) broadcast a dog show instead of a Vikings-Packers Monday Night game, Shanghai Scrap appears to have become a top google result for the not insignificant number of NFL fans performing searches for things like “Monday Night Football Shanghai” and “Where Vikings…
Japan’s Benedictines
Typically, I don’t post links to articles that I write for my hometown media (back in Minnesota), lest I come off as the provincial rube that – frankly – I am. That, and I think interest is fairly limited for things Minnesotan among my readers – the vast, vast majority of whom have no interest…
What constitutes a Best Buy?
This afternoon, for the first time in months, I stopped by the Best Buy in Xujiahui (which happens to be the first Best Buy in China). And, while riding an escalator to the second floor, I saw something unexpected: roughly ten racks of CDs and DVDs. Real ones, not pirated ones. And they seem to…
In which the China blogger demonstrates his versatility.
This is a China blog (and, sometimes, ahem, a Northwest Airlines blog), and I’ve tried to exercise some editorial discipline in maintaining that focus. But, truth is, I have other interests, and it wasn’t so many years ago that I was writing about some of them. So, in a rare break from protocol, please allow…
No Nano 4 Best Buy China.
On Friday I ran my beloved iPod nano, 2nd gen, through the laundry. Some consolation was provided by the news that Apple had released its much-vaunted 4th generation iPod nano a few days before. So, if I couldn’t have my old one, I could at least have a new and improved one. The old one,…
The 2008 Minnesota Overseas/Military Absentee Ballot Follies – UPDATED
[NOTE TO REGULAR READERS: If you’re interested in how US absentee election ballots are handled, this post is for you. If not, and you stopped by expecting to see China content … might I recommend Dee Dee Pass’s excellent “The New China Price” in yesterday’s Star Tribune? A nicely reported piece.] [UPDATE 09-09: Below, Minnesota…
The Drum Tower Murder – Local Connections.
The man who was murdered on Beijing’s Drum Tower is Todd Bachman, the CEO of a 123-year-old Minnesota-based home and garden center. That might not make much of an impression if you didn’t grow up in the Twin Cities. But if you did, then it was hard to get through a year without the company…
Welcome to China: No Politics, No Cocoon.
Jay Weiner of MinnPost, an online news site based in the Twin Cities, has covered every Olympics dating back to Los Angeles, at least. He’s a very good, very respected writer, and he’s just arrived in Beijing, to this welcome: … [a]s I stood in line to have my passport checked, a police officer approached…
Flag this.
According to today’s edition of my hometown newspaper, it is now illegal to sell Chinese-made American flags in Minnesota – punishable by up to 90 days in jail and/or a US$1000 fine. The spirit of the law is well-expressed in the lede: That American flag you’re buying in Minnesota for this July 4th will be…