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.
All posts tagged China
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).
Umbrella wars
Last week, I appeared in another China Daily video. This one’s about parasols — in China you’ll often find more umbrellas out on a sunny day than you will on a rainy one.
But you have to be careful on days like this — sometimes umbrella density here gets so thick that you nearly get your eye poked out on every corner you turn.
Find the video here. I appear in another sketch as well!
Idyllic strolling.
Be careful where you put those umbrellas. You could start an umbrella war.
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. )
Beijing pollution, as seen from above
Taken on my way to Shanghai, September 4, 2010.
PS: More about the aforementioned trip to Shanghai coming soon!
My first encounter with the Chinese medical system
Déjà vu.
Believe it or not, I’ve done it again.
For the second time in three years, I’ve managed to get my foot in a cast. Thankfully, the circumstances this time around aren’t as severe.
How did it happen? Like my past injuries, the story isn’t very exciting. I was walking down to the subway platform at Dengshikou Station on Tuesday afternoon when I took a wrong step and slipped on the polished stairs. (Sidenote: China loves its polished floors, which I’ve slipped on various times. It was only a matter of time before something like this happened). As I started to fall face forward, I tried to grab the rail to avoid what could have been a nastier injury. Gravity had taken me down about five or six steps when suddenly, my left foot managed to find secure footing. Unfortunately, the landing wasn’t pretty. In fact, when I looked down at the platform, I noticed everyone was staring at me with slightly terrified expressions.
I'm not exactly a stranger to foot injuries. Me in August 2007.
When got back home, I could barely walk around the apartment. Having rolled my ankle plenty of times before, I knew this was not your average injury. The last time I had experienced this much pain walking from room to room was when I broke my foot three summers ago.
I knew I had to go to the hospital, but I’d heard horror stories from expat friends who needed to visit the ER in China. “Useless” and “clueless” were some of the words I’d heard thrown around to describe the doctors here. When I was in Shenzhen, injured friends would just travel across the border to Hong Kong, where they would receive better treatment. But hundreds of miles away in Beijing, I didn’t have that option anymore.
After an hour or so of hesitation, I finally decided to bite the bullet. I called the China Daily’s Foreign Staff Coordinator and asked her to take me to the local hospital. Within minutes a taxi was waiting for me downstairs, and we were off to the China-Japan Friendship Hospital, which I later found out was one of the best hospitals in the city.
When we arrived, I filled out a standard information form. Within 5 minutes, I was sitting in the waiting room for a doctor. And within 15 minutes, I was in his office getting my ankle inspected.
After a quick look, he told me (in clear English) that I’d be needing an X-Ray. So they got me a wheelchair, had me pay the fee (550 yuan or about 81 US dollars), and I was on my way to get my X-Rays taken in about 15 or 20 minutes.
I was in and out of the X-Ray room in another 15 minutes or so, and wheeled back down to the doctor’s office, negatives in hand.
Diagnosis? There wasn’t a fracture. Instead, the doctor explained (again, in English) that I’d injured the ligament (fancy for “sprain”). He then took a few moments to explain the injury to the Foreign Staff coordinator in Chinese. To be safe, they wanted to put me in a “plaster” (fancy for “cast”) to allow my foot to heal.
So, they wrapped my foot up in a soft cast, and I was on my way back home. I was charged an additional 530 yuan (78 USD) for the cast and pain medication. I had to purchase crutches on my own outside. (Luckily for me, there’s a pharmacy across the street from the China Daily. The crutches ended costing me 100 more yuan, or 13 USD).
Total time spent at the hospital: 1 hour and 40 minutes. No unnecessary blood tests, long lines or excess paperwork like I was expecting from a “commie” hospital. I was a little surprised. Comparatively, I’ve spent hours in American hospital waiting rooms just to get an X-Ray.
As for the ankle: Well, it looks like I’m stuck in this cast for four weeks. It would be funnier if I hadn’t just registered to participate in the October Beijing Half Marathon the day before I fell.
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 »