China is currently bidding against Almaty, Kazakhstan for the right to host the 2022 Winter Olympics. In general, this is a bad idea – Beijing has little to no snow in the winter, but lots and lots of smog. And those are just the starter reasons (I documented more in this column for Bloomberg last…
All posts in Sports
Scenes from a Junkyard Planet: The Platters.
During the run-up to the November 12 release of my first book, Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion Dollar Trash Trade, every weekday I’m posting a new photo taken during my decade of reporting on the global waste, recycling, refurbishment, and repair trade. Today’s image reveals a low-tech means of recycling the platters that store the…
Other China correspondents write about politics; I write about carp.
It is not lost upon me that this week saw perhaps the biggest political story to emerge from China in two decades. Thus, it only seemed right that my Bloomberg World View column this week would focus on how Chinese netizens feel about the Asian Carp that are rampaging up the Mississippi, into the Great…
Weekend Notes: Demolition (and) Baseball (and) guest-blogging
After an unusually acid week on Shanghai Scrap, the staff couldn’t be more anxious for the weekend. And we have plans. First and foremost. If you happen to be in Shanghai at 16:00 on Saturday, and you take even a minor interest in all of those crumbling colonial buildings that dot downtown, then you’d better…
First Liverpool. Then Cooperstown. [One for the Americans]
For the record: nobody at Shanghai Scrap is in the least bit alarmed that a Chinese national wants to pay more than anybody else for the Liverpool Football Club. We have not read articles about this matter. We have not written blog posts about the matter. In fact, our interest is really limited to one…
The Dancing Beauty and Other Tales of Carp[/crab] Fishing in China, pt. II
[Pt. I of this multi-part series, in which the blogger goes shopping for tackle at what amounts to a giant carp fishing mall, can be found here.] A friend from Minnesota, a walleye fisherman of some repute, once told me: “The only thing that comes close to the thrill of catching a fish is not…
The Dancing Beauty and other tales of carp fishing [equipment] in China, Pt. 1.
According to my sources, there are over 20,000 fishing tackle shops in China – a commercial phenomenon that defies many foreign stereotypes about China, not least of which is that you can’t find any good fishing in China. Over the next couple of months, and in a few different venues, I’m going to do my…
Watching World Cup in Shanghai
Crowds of World Cup fans assembled at the bars beneath my apartment building during the first half of South Africa v. Mexico. This is but one bar of many, and the combined cheers reaching my window make it sound as if there’s a riot rushing through downtown Shanghai (note: there isn’t). The crowds for this…
Interview: Monday Night Football’s Play-by-Play Man in China Airs it Out.
In American sports broadcasting, there’s no seat more coveted than one in the broadcast booth of Monday Night Football, the thirty-nine-year old, once-per-week franchise for which ESPN pays US$1.1 billion per season. Over the years, it’s been home to some of the very best in American sports broadcasting (Al Michaels and John Madden most recently),…
Baseball merchandising around the world, ep. 1
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…