[Second in a special one-day, two-part series on things seen while driving between Ningbo and Shanghai.] Over the weekend I finally went round-trip over the two-year-old Hangzhou Bay Bridge. For readers who don’t follow Chinese infrastructure with the same enthusiasm as I do: the Hangzhou Bay Bridge is the world’s longest (35 km/22 mi) trans-oceanic…
All posts in Travel
Fever (even) When You Hold Me Tight: Shanghai’s unmistakable H1N1-related PR mistake? – UPDATED
Shanghai Scrap remains agnostic as to whether or not H1N1 is being hyped all out of proportion to its danger. But Shanghai Scrap is not agnostic about whether or not H1N1 hype is dangerous to the media and those who feed it information. Case in point: late this afternoon, Hong Kong confirmed that its first…
Notes on the State of California (and other American places)
Last night I returned to Shanghai after my longest sojourn away from China in six years (for reasons professional and personal). I haven’t had a look around town yet, but if fresh eyes see anything worthwhile, I’ll post the news. In the meantime, a couple of random observations gleaned during my extended visit to the…
The Hammer Finally Falls: Northwest Reduces WorldPerks Benefits
After this post, I’m going to try and swear off any further blogging about Northwest Airlines. But for those of you who’ve had enough already, I suggest waiting until later in the day for a different post to read …
The masks are back?
Compared to the last bird flu scare, China seems to be taking the current, unsettling spate of bird flu fatalities with unlikely aplomb. Consider: in January, there were five Chinese deaths from the feared pathogen; for the whole of 2008, there were only three. Perhaps the relative ambivalence is related to the fact that the…
Northwest Airlines breaks promise, bludgeons consumers.
As long-time readers know, Shanghai Scrap has been, a) offline for almost a month, and b) a rant-free zone for most of its life (ie, a reported blog). But once in a while, really, I can’t help myself. Especially when the topic is Northwest Airlines. So let’s get right to it. On December 29, the…
Northwest Airlines: A First Class Security Hole
Northwest Airlines operates one flight, daily, from Shanghai’s Pudong Airport: Flight 26, to Tokyo Narita. On Tuesday morning I arrived at the airport two hours before flight 26’s scheduled departure and took my place in the very long check-in cue that snakes in front of the Northwest counters. Ahead of me, I could see that…
By Comparison … London’s Already Ambivalent Olympics
I spent most of the last week in London and didn’t see one London 2012 Olympic concession. Not one. Not even a concession parked in the back of some other kind of concession. This afternoon I wandered into London Heathrow’s duty-free sporting goods shop, but they just shook their heads when I asked. I then…
Early Images of the Bangkok Protests
I’m in London at the moment, far away from all things Asian, especially the ongoing and increasingly violent anti-government protests in Thailand (now including efforts to shut down Thailand’s air and rail links). But that was not the case in June, when I was in Bangkok for ten days and made several visits to the…
Games Over, London-bound, and offline until 2 Sept.
[Repeat: Idle until 2 September.] For years, I’ve been saying that there’s no escaping the Olympics in China, and now – in a cosmic joke of sorts – I’m the living proof: twelve hours after the closing ceremonies, I’m getting ready to board a flight to London. My business is not Olympics-related, but rather a…