Shanghai.
The first stop on my third day in Shanghai was the Propaganda Museum, a little room in the basement of an apartment complex.
All posts in China
A trip to Shanghai (Part One)
Way back in September, I visited Shanghai and promised to post pictures on the blog. But I never did. Oops.
Anyway, here are said photos, 10 months later.
Startup Weekend Beijing
Last month, I participated in Startup Weekend in Beijing. Startup Weekend is a worldwide event. The idea behind it is to launch a startup business in 54 hours. The conference attracts project managers, program developers and designers to help launch these startups. At the end of the weekend, the startups are pitched to an audience of investors, and the top two ideas are selected.
The weekend begins with idea pitching. Conference attendees with a business idea are given 90 seconds to pitch it to the entire audience. Once the ideas are pitched, attendees vote for their top three. From there, the top six winners are selected and teams are formed around those six.
Startup Weekend in Beijing was unique because a vast majority of the attendees were Chinese. Because there were few foreigners (i.e. me), they decided to hold the 90 second pitches in Mandarin.
Needless to say, I had some difficulty understanding them. I got the gist of most of the 26 pitches, but my limited industry Mandarin could only get me so far.
Lush Island
- Qingdao. Home of Tsingtao Beer.
Last month I took a little weekend trip to Qingdao, a coastal city in China’s Shandong province. I used the high-speed train to get there, which shortened my trip from about nine hours to five.
The name Qingdao (pinyin: “Qīngdǎo”, characters: 青岛) translates to “lush” or “green” island. “Lush Island” is a fitting name in more ways than one — the city also happens to be home of Tsingtao, China’s biggest brand-name beer. (Har har, get it?!)
Crowds
Dongmen shopping center (Shenzhen), March 2010
Wangfujing Shopping Center (Beijing), July 2010
Ditan Park Temple Fair (Beijing), February 2011
Beijing Metro, June 2011
Shenzhen Bus, March 2010
That same bus, from the outside
Xi'an Train Station, October 2010
The People’s Daily copies … itself
Something that made the Sina Weibo (a.k.a. Chinese Twitter) rounds recently: this side by side comparison of two nearly identical front pages from The People’s Daily, China’s largest newspaper.
Left: The People's Daily from March 14, 2010. Right: The same paper on March 14, 2011.
Some background: the annual “Two Sessions” — a two-week-long series of meetings held by the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and National People’s Congress (NPC) — were held this March. The Two Sessions received extensive press coverage here in China, with many papers — including the one I work for, China Daily — devoting a few pages each day and special web sections to the meetings.
After the final day of meetings, the People’s Daily published a front page that looked almost exactly like one from the same event a year ago.
The Wall Street Journal’s China Real Time Report Blog did notice a few differences:
In both cases, a large photo of eight of Beijing’s top nine leaders sitting hands folded (and in the same order) on the main stage in the Great Hall of the People appears to the left of a smaller photo of CPPCC chairman Jia Qinglin standing before a bank of microphones holding what appears to be a copy of his closing speech in his right hand. Close examination reveals minor differences—a slightly different expression on Mr. Jia’s face, a slightly different bright-red necktie, a barely detectable upward tilt of the head from Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao.
This isn’t an uncommon practice, either. Here are some People’s Daily front pages from the Two Sessions throughout the years:
2001
2002
2003
2004
China Daily celebrates 30th birthday
China Daily turned 30 years old on June 1. To celebrate, the entire staff was bussed off to Tiananmen Square to hear a series of speeches in the Great Hall of the People, aka the Chinese parliament building.
The China Daily expat staff in front of the Great Hall of the People
It was pretty sweet. After all, how often do you get to go inside the building where the People’s Congress of China meets? (Answer: not often. My Chinese tutor told me “commoners” aren’t typically allowed in, not even tourists.)
We listened to a series of speeches from current and former editors, including Editor-in-Chief Zhu Ling and Design Director Bill Gaspard, the sole international staffer to speak. There were a few speeches from government officials as well, including one from Liu Yunshan, head of the CPC Central Committee’s Publicity Department, and another from Wang Chen, minister of the State Council Information Office.
Find more extensive coverage of the anniversary here.
Listening to speeches. Spot the Bridget.
If a young woman runs into a Former US President and nobody has photographic proof…
…does it actually happen?
Such is my dilemma. This past Sunday, I was attending Easter Brunch at the Raffles Hotel — one of the swankiest hotels in Beijing —when I ran into President Jimmy Carter.
I had just stepped out of the restaurant for a moment when I saw Carter and crew. We were walking towards each other, but in opposite directions.
Dressed in a suit and tie, he looked relatively busy and important. Like most Former US Presidents, really. I had about 10 seconds to react before the group passed me by, but instead of pulling the whole starstruck teenager act and asking for an autograph, I looked at him and gave him a huge smile. To my surprise, he smiled right back at me.
I returned to the restaurant and gathered a few friends to go back out and try to find him. Maybe I can actually talk to him this time, I thought. Armed with cameras, we circled the lobby for about 20 minutes in search of diplomatic looking people. But alas, mine was a once in a lifetime sighting. Carter and crew had disappeared.
Oh well. Story to tell the grandkids, etc.
(Turns out he was in Beijing with a delegation of former world leaders en route to North Korea).
Bridget O’Donnell: aspiring actress?
I’ve been really bad at writing What-I’ve-Been-Up-To-Lately posts, but today that changes. Let’s rewind back to a few months ago, when I participated in a some cheesy video sketches for the China Daily.
The first video from mid-January finds me ice-biking on Houhai lake in Beijing. I came back to life a few weeks later to make snow angels and slap a man on Valentine’s Day.
I couldn’t embed the videos, but here are screenshots.
Next up: IMDb profile?
SPOILER ALERT: I die at the end. No, really.
This took about 3 takes.
No radiation (yet) here in Beijing
A few worried folks back home have asked if I’ve been affected at all by the disaster taking place in Japan. Though the two countries are close neighbors, everything here in Beijing has been fine. Some news reports said that tremors from the earthquake were felt here, but I didn’t feel anything.
When comparing Asia and America, I think most people tend to have “immapancy” — what Kai Krause refers to as “insufficient geographical knowledge.” (Check out his map of Africa to see what I mean). So to put it in perspective, I did a quick overlay map to show you just how “close” Beijing was to Friday’s disaster.
The distance between Beijing and Tokyo (1,300+ miles, or a 3 hour 20 minute flight) is slightly more than that between New York City and Minneapolis, Minnesota:
Amateur map by yours truly. Drawn as closely to scale as possible. North and South Korea, which lie between Japan and China, have been taken off to provide perspective.
That being said, I did panic for a moment yesterday upon receiving a mass text from a friend containing the following message:
BBC FLASHNEWS: Japan govt confirms radiation leak at Fukushima nuclear plants. Asian countries should take necessary precautions. If rain comes, remain indoors first 24hrs. Close doors & windows. Swab neck skin with betadine where thyroid area is, radiation hits thyroid first. Take extra precautions. Radiation may hit Phillipine at starting 4pm today. Pls send to your friends.
Turns out it was a hoax.
But my fears of radiation contamination were raised again after seeing Chinese colleagues sending this map (pictured below) to each other via IM services like QQ. It apparently shows where radiation could travel in Asia.
Turns out that too had some misleading information. Instead, it appears radiation winds will be traveling the opposite direction — east.
So everything looks safe, for now. If anything, I’d be more worried about the effect of Beijing’s pollution on my health than anything else. (See this Flickr photo I took of the skyline in November or any of my previous posts about pollution to see what I mean. )
About
Bridget O'Donnell is a designer for Ataway in Shanghai, China. She previously worked for the China Daily and graduated from the University of Michigan in 2009. More »