Shanghai Scrap

[Part I is available here.]

[Cross-file under: Poor Powers of Observation, Bloggers and Journalists]

Below, a December 27 image of a wrecking ball demolishing the north end of the convent building once occupied by the Shanghai members of the Sisters of Carmel. Built in 1874, it was (and, as of yesterday, part of it still stands so, is) one of the oldest buildings of any type (Western or Chinese) in Shanghai.

When I arrived at the scene, not long after the wrecking ball left (for lunch?), with most of the building still to be demolished, I found a young man with a camera who looked at me, identified the building as “the sisters of Carmel” and added: “The government! What can we do?” Indeed. So, having recently fashioned myself as a blogging journalist, I decided to get to the bottom of this matter. Questions to be answered: What cretin would knock down one of Shanghai’s oldest buildings? And for what purpose? Could this be yet another example of Shanghai bulldozing its history to make way for man-bag carrying real estate developers?

To answer, we’ll need some background on the history of the Carmel sisters, and their convent, in Shanghai. (more…)

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 AP reported the following:

The subsidiary of Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines Inc. said in a filing earlier this month with the Department of Transportation that it was seeking to delay proposed daily Seattle-Beijing service by a year from March 2009 to March 2010 and delay startup of Detroit-Shanghai nonstop service by more than two months from March 25, 2009, to June 3, 2009.

Now, this might sound eminently reasonable in light of the current economic crisis. After all, the US airlines - including Northwest - have been cutting back on domestic US routes for months. Why wouldn’t they cut back on Asia routes, too?

But sharp observers might notice something wrong with this picture. As it happens, US airlines don’t need DOT permission to cut back on domestic US routes. So why on Earth should they have to ask for permission to cut back on US-China routes? (more…)

Just a quick announcement to let interested readers know that I’ll be a guest for the first hour of Minnesota Public Radio’s Midmorning with Keri Miller on December 26. That’s 9 AM to 10 AM for folks in the Central Time Zone, and 11 PM to Midnight for folks in China. We’ll be discussing the effect of the Global Economic Crisis on China (including, yes, the crash in scrap metal prices), and accepting calls from listeners. MPR’s news stream can be accessed by clicking here.

[UPDATE 12/27: There's an archived version of the show, here. Or you can download it on itunes ... just search for MPR Midmorning Hour 1.]

And, as mentioned before, Shanghai Scrap will resume its regular posting, er, schedule on January 5, 2009. In the meantime, may all your holiday specials be this trippy.

Earlier this week, Jim Fallows - via his blog - broke the story of the Chinese government’s block of the New York Times website in China. It’s an important story, and a really nifty piece of blogged reporting: Fallows asked his China-based readers to email whether or not they could access the NYT’s site, and by the end of the day, he had his scoop. Who says you can’t report from a desktop?

Anyway, in addition to sending in a Shanghai-based connectivity report to Fallows, I also sent along (a day later) some thoughts on the relative importance of the NYT block in 2008, as compared to the impact of such a block in 2002, when I first moved here. At his suggestion, I’m posting 99% of that email, below (with some hyperlinks and two end notes added):

[UPDATE: The NYT's site was un-blocked on Monday, Dec. 22. However, I think this post remains relevant, regardless of the NYT's connectivity status.]

————

But I have to admit, I can’t help but stand back and compare the relatively minor impact - on me, at least -  of a NYT block in 2008, to the ones that regularly occured when I first moved here in 2002. Back then, I can recall being frustrated to the point of anger at regular blocks on the NYT, LAT, and the WP - they were my primary sources of China news. Knock them out, and my knowledge of China was much less. Flash forward to 2008, and I can tell you that I still read those papers (although, I think the WSJ’s China coverage is, by far, the best of the major American papers), but they are no longer my primary sources of China news. Instead, I start the day with a scan of danwei’s “from the web”, ESWN, China Environmental Law, and occasionally, Shanghaiist (all of which are reported - as opposed to - opinion blogs). And only then do I move to the traditional media, starting with the SCMP. In fact, at this point, I rarely look at the NYT’s coverage (compare Yardley’s 30 years piece to the SCMP’s much tougher month-long series) due to the fact that it rarely breaks anything that wasn’t on the blogs or in the Hong Kong papers, first. And I’m guessing that I’m not the only one - more and more I’ve noticed major Western papers, and the AP and Reuters, in particular, picking up stories that - in some form - were originally broken on English-language China blogs (ie, the Fallows blog scooped the NYT on news related to their website!). I guess, in a sense, this is no different than what’s happening with political blogs in the US, though the China blogs are a bit different in that they’re often written by people with a specific kind of expertise, and typically involve more reporting than opinionating. (more…)

As much as possible, Shanghai Scrap is a reported blog. That is to say, as much as possible, I try to avoid opinionating in favor of reporting and photography. Of course, reporting means getting out, traveling, seeing things, talking to real people. But over the next several weeks I won’t be doing much of that as I finish a long-term book project. My world, for better or worse, is going to be my writing desk, and that is not conducive to Scrap-style blogging.

So, with some reluctance, I’m placing Shanghai Scrap on hold for the next 3.5 weeks. It’s not so long, really, and anyway, it’s the holidays (and you, dear reader, should be out riding in a sleigh, and not reading blogs). Just to be clear: I’m not disappearing, and Shanghai Scrap will return after the New Year’s holiday, on January 5. Until then, and as always, you can reach me via the Contact Form.

In the meantime, get your China blogging fix over at danwei. Then, sit back and enjoy my friend Mara Hvistedahl’s superb “Conscience of a Nationalist” over at The New Republic.

I’m waist deep in a project that’s rising just as fast I as I can keep up, so posting is a bit light these last couple of days. Fortunately, in the last half hour my neighbors invited someone to jackhammer their walls, and so - while I try to find an alternative work location - I thought I’d take a quick break to mention that the UK’s Channel 4 News just posted a very good segment on the famed Ningbo scrap kidnapping and the decline in the international scrap markets (originally reported here). Despite my long-standing aversion to appearing on television (a face made for blogging), I just couldn’t help myself in this instance, and so you can see me, too - your-not-so-fair correspondent - around the 3:40 mark.

[Note: Folks arriving at this post via google searches for "scrap televisions" should click here and here for actual info on how the those pesky devices are handled in China.]

[Tip: If you happen to be dragging this morning, or in need of some help writing a fight sequence, and nobody's jackhammering your neighbor's walls, try this around the 3:30 mark.]

I’ve been covering the design, production and installation of the new stained glass windows for Shanghai’s St. Ignatius Cathedral for nearly five years, now (this 2006 story for the LA Times Sunday Magazine is my lengthiest piece on the subject), and I’ve been witness to some very interesting moments along the way, but today - by far - was the most interesting and moving of all. Two weeks ago, designer Wo Ye, and her crew, began installing the cathedral’s twenty, third-level nave windows (roughly 60 feet above the floor); today they finished the process and thereby transformed an austere building, into a warm one bathed in yellows and golds. Below, an image of the left side of the nave, and the reflections cast by five of the seven new, six-foot windows that line it (click for an enlargement).

The white light on the vaults at the far end is unflitered sunlight coming through the last of the three windows yet to be installed. After the jump, some portraits of the completed windows, and a few extras … [note: the photos are posted at a slightly higher resolution that I typically use, so they may load sluggishly on a slower connection] (more…)

The Atlantic Online has just posted “Scrapped,” a brief dispatch I wrote from an interesting, emergency pow-wow between China’s biggest scrap importers, and the world’s largest scrap exporters, back in November. It also includes a slide show - “Where America Recycles” of images that I’ve taken in various Chinese recycling facilities over the last six years.

The crash - and it’s a crash, believe me - in the world scrap recyclables market began in September, but - up until a couple of weeks ago - the story was mostly confined to financial wires and trade publications. That’s beginning to change. Today, for example, China Law Blog has a very interesting post on the subject. And my friends at the ground-breaking MinnPost in Minneapolis have an excellent piece on how the situation is hurting small, independent US scrappers. Both worth reading.

[updated with a few more phrases ... I couldn't help myself.]

This afternoon, while researching a topic wholly unrelated to Shanghai dialect, I somehow landed upon Useful Phrases in the Shanghai Dialect (1908), a lost treasure from a lost Shanghai (click for an enlargement).

Published in 1908 by the American Presbyterian Mission Press (which, apparently, had an office in Shanghai), and digitized by google (thank you), this marvelous 113 page phrasebook inadvertently provides a more realistic - and caustic - view into the lives of Shanghai’s early 20th century colonial expatriate community than any period-era film or novel could ever hope to capture. For those interested, you can find the entire text, for free download, at google books. For now, and after the jump, a few select pages to provide a sense of just what’s buried within … (more…)

Below, a minor classic in the under-appreciated art of pinning blame for a workplace accident on the injured party. The complicated and highly refined nature of this craft makes solo performances exceedingly rare, and this instance is no exception: for here we have a stark duet, between the city agency responsible for running the Shanghai New International Expo Center, and the state-owned news agency which covers it. From Monday’s Shanghai Daily:

Rumor has it that he wasn’t wearing socks, either, though there is some question as to whether warm feet would have prevented him from being crushed by the several ton sign.

I’m not kidding, either: unless you know how to grade a load of mixed non-ferrous scrap metal, this post really isn’t going to be of much interest. (more…)

I’ve been laid up for a few days, recovering from a flu, producing no writing of any merit except, possibly, the following passage from a Saturday afternoon email that a friend encouraged me to post.

This morning, around 7:00 AM, I was awakened by someone singing in my hallway. Bellowing, really, at the top of his lungs. It was an old man’s voice, and in between the five or so seconds that he would pause for breath, he would sob. I couldn’t understand a word of what he was singing, and I’ll admit to thinking, initially, that he was drunk. But then I noticed a funny thing: nobody was telling him to shut up. And my hallway, on my floor, is packed with trigger tempered people who don’t allow much from their fellow neighbors when it comes to an excess of noise. But nobody, not once, said a thing. It was silent in the hallway.

This went on for ninety minutes, at least. I’ve caught a flu, and so I faded out when I went back to bed. But it was still going on at 8:30 when I next woke - and still nobody in the hallway, nobody telling him to shut up.

I went back to bed, and when I woke, the singing was gone, replaced by a constant ringing of the man’s doorbell by mourners coming to pay their respects to his just deceased wife.

In August 2006, I spent 12 days at the Oberoi Hotel in Mumbai (then known as the Oberoi Hilton). It was supposed to be four days, but for reasons having to do with the assignment I was then working on, the stay was extended on a daily basis for more than a week.

The news reports about the current terrorist action describe the Oberoi as a luxury hotel - and it is, no doubt. But due to the delays plaguing my assignment, I wasn’t in the proper mind to enjoy the Oberoi’s luxuries in August 2006. Instead, I was mostly stuck in my room, awaiting phone calls. When I wasn’t in my room, I was either in the lobby, a restaurant, or at the reception desk - extending my stay by one more day. And, in the course of those twelve days, I came to know several Orberoi staff members quite well; and likewise, they came to know me (and the cause of my occasionally testy mood). We became friendly, and had several conversations during which I learned about their lives, and the good fortune they felt for having secured jobs at the Oberoi.

So when I heard about the attack, my thoughts immediately went to them. Small kindnesses, such as the ones that I received in 2006, are recalled at times like this. I sincerely hope that two people in particular - whose faces and names I recall clearly - are safe with their families.

Change of direction. On the fourth or fifth morning of my August 2006 Mumbai visit, the US Embassy in Delhi issued a terror alert for US citizens in India. (more…)

[Day 2, Day3 Updates ... at the end of the post.]

I’ve written several times, and at length, about the project to restore/replace the stained glass windows destroyed in Shanghai’s St. Ignatius Cathedral at the onset of the Cultural Revolution (in most detail, here). So, for this reason, and the fact that I have another essay on this very topic about to go into print, I’ll avoid going into much detail now. Suffice it to say that Wo Ye, the Beijing-born artist whom Bishop Jin Luxian commissioned to design the windows, has spent the last eight years creating Catholic stained glass windows that are avowedly Chinese, incorporating traditional design elements and iconography to create something entirely unique and contemporary in both Chinese, and Western liturgical, art.

So far, the cathedral’s first level nave chapels have been completed, as well as one side of the transept and the very top-level apse windows. That is to say, Wo Ye’s artistic presence is felt within the building. But over the next two weeks that presence will be expanded into a very definite footprint as the large, top-level windows that line the nave and the remainder of the transept are transformed into a golden bamboo garden complete with magnolias, lillies, and roses. By mid-December, this grand old building will have become much more colorful, Chinese, and - it must be said - feminine (so far as anyone knows, Wo Ye is the first woman - not to mention, Chinese - to ever receive a complete Catholic cathedral commision). Above, an image, taken this afternoon, of a panel about to be installed. (more…)