December 1, 2006
In the Chinese version of Financial Times, "Shanghai Residences Take On A New 'Accent'" views Shanghai's development within the framework of the influential "Death and Life of Great American Cities":
四、高密度不等于过分拥挤，但很多规划者误把高密度老城看作贫民窟，不思逐步改进，醉心大规模拆迁，把低收入者集中到偏远的高楼，把中产者搬去近郊低密度联体别墅区，一举谋杀了不少大城市和郊区。我有一帮海归朋友集体买了沪青坪公路旁的别墅，现在叫苦不迭，原来房产广告上描述的“30分钟到恒隆上班”成为泡影。高峰时间，进入市区的沪青平公路和延安高架成为“华山一条路”，车速可以用“挪”来形容。
Sometimes Jodi falls under the spell of cheap houses in the suburbs, but articles like the one above tell of their drawbacks. We're going to visit one such development for fun tomorrow morning. It's in the Jiading District, almost in Jiangsu province, on the Shanghai-Ningbo highway; their 市区接待处 reception center is right next to the Zhongshan Park Line 3 station. They're advertising RMB 72万 (a little under USD 92k) for a "Chinese-style townhouse"; tomorrow we'll see what that means. (Article archived.)
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December 2, 2006
From a new (to me) weblog I like, "Ancient tomb found opposite Shanghai Eye’s house":
Workmen digging the new subway line bumped into an old 700 yer old tomb, just next to Shanghai Eye’s humble 33 floor abode. The flattened city block, which previously housed thousands of people in close proximity, is set to be the gateway to the 2010 World Expo.
The coverage I read in the morning paper back when this happened could be summarized like "a professor was called, he looked at the corpse and decided it was in unrecoverable condition so he cut off some cloth and jewelry and they tossed the remains back in the hole." Yes, that bad.
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December 6, 2006
I was going to put the following post on my Shanghai Expat weblog because it comes from an article on metro tickets, but in thinking about the article it turned into more of a social commentary so I'm writing it here.
It's interesting moving to a country without a history of rule-of-law, where legal precedent still hasn't been set in stone, and "heavenly mandate" is still lurking in the background of people's thought processes. One recurring example of this is the perennial newspaper articles that quote city residents challenging business practices that they disagree with, not by saying "there oughta be a law against that" but by claiming that they are unfair, or unjust, or inhumane; the expectation is that businesses should not limit themselves to what can be done within the current legal framework (get away with murder, really), but that business should, like people, steer their actions according to their/our ethical compasses.
An example from today's Morning Post is the article 《地铁票款少付要补多付不退》, motivated by a phoned-in complaint by one Ms Li, about the metro staff not refunding the difference for passengers who purchase metro tickets and use only part of the value by riding for fewer stops than they paid for. Ms Li is a commuter who is used to buying 4 yuan tickets to ride to work. On a day off she bought a 4 yuan ticket out of habit but then realized that she would only be going two stops, and that a 3 yuan ticket would have sufficed. At the exit gate, the metro staff refused to refund her 1 yuan, prompting Ms Li to call the newspaper and complain. The metro company's response to Ms Li's complaint was to explain that passengers sign a contract through the action of buying a ticket which says that passengers must make-up the difference when they ride for more than what they've paid but will not be refunded for riding less than what they've paid.
This kind of implicit contract is standard fare (pun not intended; no, seriously) in the United States: people accept it without question. But here in China, contracts—much less these type of fine-print, hidden contracts—are a new thing, and people are still inclined to make judgements on them. Ms Li felt that the metro company's way of calculating the bill was unfair, even if it's written in a contract—a contract which she never signed.
(There's an ironic sidebar to the article in which professors from the Shanghai University of Political Science and Law, and from Fudan University both argue that the contract is unfair, while a representative of the (Shanghai?) Consumer Protection Committee stands on the side of the metro company.)
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December 7, 2006
The Six Blind Men and China:
It was six men in different part of the world, to learning much inclined,
who went to see China (Though all of them were blind),
that each by observation, might satisfy his mind.
Follow the link to read the rest. A work by Wang Jianshuo.
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December 31, 2006
It's weird the connections that pop up in life from time to time. Today I was digging through the website of Community ("Commie") High School in Ann Arbor, Michigan, a "student-run" alternative magnet school, looking for info on their science and math programs. Examining the class schedule for spring 2006-07, I noticed that an English teacher named Judith DeWoskin.
Yes, she is the mother of Foreign Babes in Beijing's Rachel DeWoskin.
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