Blogs » Society » Six Things to Salivate Over this Weekend

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• Six Things to Salivate Over this Weekend
• Chinese Band Alert: Pinkberry
• Fiesta with F.Y.E.S.T.A. This Sunday
• Weekendist: Jan 25-27 - Cut Killer, Camea, James Bond
• Watch: Taiwanese ships get blasted with water cannons by Japanese coastguard as they try to reach Diaoyus
• Li Guangdi descendants angered over use of ancestor's name in tea trademark
• Watch A Road Explode In Southwest China
• Got Milk? You Must Be A Shopper From The Mainland
• This Week in Shanghai Sports
• Tang Yu'er Spicy Fish Hot Pot: Winter Warming Seafood
• Selling In And Into China. Four Good Tips And Mine.
• China's Green Car Sales in 2012
• Free Valentine's Day Hotel Stays
• Americans use Chinese popcorn cooker on Discovery Channel; netizens amused
• China’s Cities Clustered
• Watch: Hotel receptionist sleeping behind counter gets nasty surprise
• Presented By:
• Homemade dialysis machine keeps Nanjing man alive for 13 years!
• Tibetans fight back against declining "reverence for nature"
• Watch: MythBusters investigate traditional Chinese popcorn machine... in a bomb suit

Six Things to Salivate Over this Weekend Posted: 24 Jan 2013 08:50 PM PST Date: Jan 25th 2013 10:46a.m. Contributed by: cityweekend_sh

Chinese Band Alert: Pinkberry Posted: 24 Jan 2013 08:00 PM PST Date: Jan 25th 2013 10:16a.m. Contributed by: andrewchin

Fiesta with F.Y.E.S.T.A. This Sunday Posted: 24 Jan 2013 07:59 PM PST Date: Jan 25th 2013 11:52a.m. Contributed by: katvelayo

Weekendist: Jan 25-27 - Cut Killer, Camea, James Bond Posted: 24 Jan 2013 08:00 PM PST Last weekend was a bit of a bust as the reopening of Logo was postponed on short notice, but this weekend promises to make up for it! Free night of house evergreens at LUNE, hip hop star DJ Cut Killer at Virgo, and Berlin's Camea at LOLA. On Saturday, Virgo continues its city-themed nights, with Manchester as the music city of the world, and they're providing free shuttle buses! Alternatively, Arkham has both Breakbot and Irfane performing. On Sunday we suggest you go see the new James Bond movie, which has finally been released here. If all that's still not enough, head over to our calendar for more./calendar">calendar for more. [ more › ]

Watch: Taiwanese ships get blasted with water cannons by Japanese coastguard as they try to reach Diaoyus Posted: 24 Jan 2013 07:00 PM PST Video has emerged of the Japanese coastguard fending off the small flotilla of Taiwanese idiots nationalists who attempted to land upon the Diaoyu (Senkaku) islands yesterday. [ more › ]

Li Guangdi descendants angered over use of ancestor's name in tea trademark Posted: 24 Jan 2013 07:00 PM PST We've seen trademark issues in China involving Michael Jordan, hairy crabs, and now, people's ancestors. Wang Ting's tea shop in Anxi, Fujian province, reportedly registered a trademark using the name of renowned Qing Dynasty writer, Li Guangdi, causing his descendants to 'boil over' with anger. [ more › ]

Watch A Road Explode In Southwest China Posted: 24 Jan 2013 08:04 PM PST An underground pipeline explosion in Beihai, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region at 2 pm yesterday was captured on tape. A 100-meter section was destroyed, but the good news is no one died, which is certainly not something we're always able to say about these road collapses. Authorities are investigating the cause of the accident.

Got Milk? You Must Be A Shopper From The Mainland Posted: 24 Jan 2013 07:05 PM PST Mothers in Hong Kong have been complaining (again) that they can't get sufficient milk powder for their babies because mainland shoppers are buying the powder in bulk. According to the Census and Statistics Department of the Hong Kong government, last year the city imported more than 37,900,000 kg of baby milk powder. The government has already increased the import by more than 30% in recent months, but sadly that amount of milk powder can't satisfy the increasing demand from mainland shoppers. Thanks to the sharp increase in demand, the price of milk powder has been raised by about 10-15% in Hong Kong. But even if you have the money, you have to compete with the Chinese shoppers who, instead of doing the hard work themselves, hire local elderly people and housewives to queue outside supermarkets and retail shops to wait for new supplies. Rate? HK$20 per can, according to a local newspaper. And the Chinese shoppers then resell the milk powder back on the mainland. Brilliant. Hong Kong isn't the only place where this is happening. Media in the Netherlands and Germany also report that Chinese people sweep supplies of milk powder from shop shelves, triggering countrywide shortage. The backlash has been predictable. We know that food safety in China is rubbish, but please, people say, don't try to solve your problems by robbing other people's resources and causing unnecessary global panic.

This Week in Shanghai Sports Posted: 24 Jan 2013 05:57 PM PST Date: Jan 25th 2013 9:20a.m. Contributed by: andrewchin Movnat trainer Oki Alexander sheds the light on primal fitness

Tang Yu'er Spicy Fish Hot Pot: Winter Warming Seafood Posted: 24 Jan 2013 05:19 PM PST Date: Jan 25th 2013 9:14a.m. Contributed by: mengsta

Selling In And Into China. Four Good Tips And Mine. Posted: 24 Jan 2013 05:20 PM PST The New York Times has an excellent article on doing business in China. The article is entitled, "New Path for Trade: Selling in China," and it is replete with good advice.  Except mine. Let me explain. The article is on selling goods in or into China and it talks of the great opportunities there and of how to do it well.  It presents the following good advice: Bilingual is not bicultural.  Lou Hoffman of The Hoffman Agency notes something I am always saying: do not mistake language for culture.  Someone can speak your language and still have no clue about how you want to conduct your business. Let others open the door.  Ric Cabot of Cabot Hosiery Mills/Darn Tough Socks tells of how his company "edged into the Chinese market" by testing it with a Chinese distributor.  "But if it gets to the point where we see we're leaving too much money on the table, we might consider doing something different." Don't get knocked off.  Earl Kluft, owner of E.S. Kluft & Company talks of the knock-off problems his company had in its first foray into China and of how things are going better this time due to a better a better China-based partner. Kluft found its new partner "through a friend" and with that partner it has "cautiously re-established a sales channel with minimal upfront investment." The Chinese partner pays royalties and is able to buy Kluft's mattresses at "a special discount." I then chime in, advocating finding "reliable partners on the ground…. through people you know, and then pay for whatever due diligence is necessary to make sure that you have made the right choice." And to do all of that "before you start doing business with them." Look locally before leaping.  The article talks of how some states have government-run international trade programs that offer counsel. Samar Ali, Tennessee's assistant commissioner of international affairs then discusses the sorts of issues his group raises with those seeking to do business with China.  "We'll help them see if there's a need for their product in China and to think it through: Do they need to set up a WFOE? Do they need to have a presence or not? Should they go the e-commerce route? And tell them how much they should budget going forward." This assistance includes help with business-to-business matchmaking through already vetted Chinese companies. And then there is the one I do not like so much and it's mine. Set up shop as a WFOE.  The article notes that "it is possible to scout opportunities with a so-called rep office and to do business in China by selling through distributors or by licensing products to a Chinese company, most American businesses that are serious about selling in China invest the time and money to establish themselves as a wholly foreign-owned enterprise, or what is known as a WFOE (pronounced WOOF-ee)." It then adds this: "We do probably 100 WFOEs for every rep office," said Dan Harris, a lawyer with the Seattle firm Harris & Moure who writes a blog about Chinese law and business. What I do not like about this is that I am concerned that it will be read as my saying that setting up as a WFOE is virtually always the best way to sell to China and I did not say that because I do not believe it. I was asked about what it takes to set up a company in China and what sort of entity usually makes sense.  To that, I unequivocally answered with "WFOE."  But what I was not asked was whether one can or should consider selling to China without any entity at all and had I been asked that, I would have unequivocally answered, "yes, that is often the best way so long as it is possible. We are actually big believers in getting product into China via distributorship or licensing arrangements: Getting Your Product Into China Via Distributorship. A Legal Piece Of Cake. Selling Your Product To China Through A Distributor. Just The Basics. China Technology Licensing. Sometimes It Makes Perfect Sense. What is so funny about the NYTimes article coming out when it did is because we received some criticism of our last blog post, Getting Your WFOE Approved In China. What It Really Takes, in which we had this to say about forming a WFOE in China: No wonder I use words like "slog" and "excruciating" and "unending" to describe to our clients what it is going to be like as we secure their WFOE registration in China. The New York Times article rightly discusses the difficulties in registering a WFOE in China: And think months, not weeks, to get all of the paperwork approved. "In China, you can't do anything last minute," said Savio S. Chan, president and chief executive of U.S. China Partners, which is based in Great Neck, N.Y., and which helped Vision Quest move its light fixtures out of regulatory limbo. "It can easily take up to six months to set up a WFOE." Mr. Chan has it right, which is one of the many reasons why anyone looking to sell their product to China needs to consider all options, not just a WFOE. WFOEs, distributorships, licensing deals and yes, sometimes even a Rep Office can all make sense, depending on the specific situation.  When it comes to China (and just about anything else), there is no one size fits all.  I just hope that nobody thought I was saying otherwise. What do you think?

China's Green Car Sales in 2012 Posted: 24 Jan 2013 02:39 PM PST Just a few years ago, pretty much everyone (except Chinese auto industry insiders whom I interviewed) thought China was about to take ownership of the global green car market. (Here's just one example from the excitable Tom Friedman of the New York Times.) In 2009 China's industrial planners announced plans to have 500,000 green cars ("New Energy Vehicles" or "新能源汽车" -- a combination of electrics and hybrids) on Chinese roads by the end of 2011. That obviously didn't happen, so last year, that same target of 500,000 was pushed out to 2015. So how did green car sales fare in 2012? Overall, hybrids plus electrics grew a respectable 52 percent. So while sales grew pretty well in percentage terms, it is clear that overall numbers are still inconsequential when you consider that 19.3 million vehicles were sold in China last year.  How do these numbers compare to the US?  Green car sales in the US grew 73 percent to over 440,000 in 2012.  (Includes electrics, hybrids and plug-in hybrids.) So China's aim of 500,000 sales may still be a bit ambitious when you consider that not even the world's largest market for green cars has reached that number yet. Nevertheless, just as China has eclipsed the US in overall vehicle sales since 2009, China can probably be expected eventually to eclipse the US in green vehicle sales too. One thing that we can surmise from these numbers is that China has clearly yet to become the global green car powerhouse it had aspired to become. The reason is simple, and it also explains why China's auto industry -- despite having been relaunched over 30 years ago -- has yet to produce a globally-competitive home-grown brand. (Investigation of this question consumes a major portion of my book, Designated Drivers: How China Plans to Dominate the Global Auto Industry.) The state-dominated structure of Chinese industry does not provide the proper incentives for innovative leadership. China has private automakers, but they continue to be marginalized in terms of state support and access to funding. The big state-owned enterprises (SOEs) continue to receive every benefit that central and local governments can hand out, yet they are still led by politicians who have no incentive to take risks or invest for the long term. The green technologies being used in Chinese EVs and hybrids are, for the most part, purchased, licensed or copied from foreign automakers. This is not a recipe for ownership of a global market. _______________________ Green car sales data sources: 2010, 2011, 2012

Free Valentine's Day Hotel Stays Posted: 24 Jan 2013 02:00 PM PST Date: Jan 24th 2013 4:38p.m. Contributed by: geofferson

Americans use Chinese popcorn cooker on Discovery Channel; netizens amused Posted: 24 Jan 2013 12:46 PM PST Recently, a magical popcorn cooker from China has piqued Americans' curiosity. The old-fashioned Chinese popcorn cooker is essentially a cannon with a handle. MythBuster, a famous show on America's Discovery Channel, uses it to explore the fastest way to make popcorn. The production team spent much time on figuring out the monster, put up a bullet-proof glass wall, had the operator wear a bomb suit before carefully lighting the flame. In the end, jets of popcorn were shot up to the ceiling from the pressure vessel. Video:     The video clip of the show was posted on Sina Weibo, the Chinese hybrid of Facebook and Twitter, and soon became the hottest topic, garnering 12 million discussions. It tickled almost every Chinese online viewer, especially those born before the 1990s when sightings of elderly popcorn vendors (usually males) wandering around the streets with the 'cannon' and a giant sack are a part of their childhood memories. Nowadays, it can be rarely seen in big cites.   Watching a "grandpa" operate the popcorn cooker is a part of the national childhood memories. Below are some very interesting and typical comments on Sina Weibo: 神隐汪：I just love foreigners who are so bumpkinish/yokelish, but the thing is, they don't seem to have got the quantity or the method right…·· 相对纶女装设计师：    How can you earthly people manage this godly tool well! 音玄3917： Holy sh*t~ You guys think you are dismantling a bomb?!! 矛盾体大骚包有幻想症：Chinese grandpas would say, "It's a matter of bare fists and empty hands. What are you laowai (foreigners) making a fuss about!" 君儿是个神经病：Stupid laowai. 钱锤银：There are so many things in China that you guys have never seen. 老山城的足球流氓：It seems the seller did not give you the sack that you explode your corn into when you mail-ordered it. Give him a bad review! _小呆欣_： Go ship them a Chinese grandpa right away!! And also, remember to let him bring the sack!!! 蔚蔚_茂也：How can there not be a sack?? So they plan to eat from the floor??? Sigh… 阿Sun–：I truly feel worried about American people's IQ. 今天要翻谁的绿头牌呢-老少年们：Actually I wonder: what kind of myth they want to bust? 九撇上一点儿： I finally have a sense of superiority! 一路向北我的海： Sigh~ Nowadays, even in China, this godly tool is rarely seen~~~ 郭沅丰： So Americans also have their moments of stupidity!! onepiecee-：LOL. I can see that on the street every day, okay? Fed-up-with-everything：Soooo lame. Chinese grandpas and grandmas are awesome. 步如花： So the best gift for foreign friends should be popcorn made with Chinese popcorn machine!!! Yummy food made at the risk of one's life! 凸囧凸凸-_-凸： It reminds me of the rice cane maker that looks like it is pooping. It is actually even cooler to watch. 绯馆的绯二： My goodness. In the future, if those Yankees negotiate with China, our country of food lovers don't even have to mention the aircraft carrier. Just put the popcorn cooker with bare fists on the table, and make it clear that in our reserve there can be endless supply of this thing. Do you guys still have the nerve to mess with us?

China’s Cities Clustered Posted: 24 Jan 2013 12:16 PM PST China is no more a single market than any other large economy, a basic point but one that bears repeating. The McKinsey Quarterly has given visual expression to that thought with a map delineating the country's central and eastern mega-conurbations. … Continue reading →

Watch: Hotel receptionist sleeping behind counter gets nasty surprise Posted: 24 Jan 2013 06:15 AM PST The above clip shows an overnight receptionist who was sleeping behind her desk in a hotel in Lanzhou, Gansu province, waking up to find a thief standing over her, in the process of stealing anything of value he can lay his hands on. [ more › ]

Presented By: Posted: 24 Jan 2013 06:15 AM PST

Homemade dialysis machine keeps Nanjing man alive for 13 years! Posted: 24 Jan 2013 04:00 AM PST When Hu Songwen was studying meteorology in Nanjing in 1993, he was diagnosed with renal failure (the inability of the kidneys to excrete waste and maintain electrolyte balance). After six years of paying expensive hospital bills and burning through his family's savings, Hu decided to build his own dialysis machine from scratch. [ more › ]

Tibetans fight back against declining "reverence for nature" Posted: 23 Jan 2013 09:18 AM PST A group of Qinghai conservationists have spent a month touring the Tibetan plateau in search of ordinary people taking action to protect their environment. Last year, the entire staff of Snowland Great Rivers Environmental Protection Association, an environmental NGO working on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, set off from the city of Xining for a month-long tour they called "Environmentalists in the Snow". The group travelled throughout Qinghai's Three- River Source region (the source of the Yangtze, Lancang and Yellow River), looking for ordinary people taking action to protect the environment. chinadialogue's Zhou Wei interviewed Snowland's general secretary Hashi Tashidorjee about the trip. Zhou Wei: Why did you go looking for "environmentalists in the snow?" Hashii Tashidorjee: Here in the "third pole", most of the land is grasslands, populated by nomadic herders. Life here teaches us to respect nature; that you can only survive by adjusting to nature. That's the "natural education" the plateau quietly gives us. Protecting the environment is a faith here, and the idea of environmental protection permeates people's lives. The locals here are the main protectors of the environment. They are permanent residents, nobody understands the grasslands better and they feel close to it and feel personal pain if it is damaged. So when we started conservation work on the plateau, the most important thing was to involve the locals. The economy here has developed in recent years. New railways and roads have been built. There are more tourists, more outsiders coming in, and all that has made environmental protection a bigger issue. Also, the locals are gradually losing their reverence for nature as consumerism becomes more powerful here. People are starting to rely on goods brought in from outside, and collecting caterpillar fungus, breeding Tibetan mastiffs and tourism have all become tempting ways of making money. That kind of culture and the disorder of the natural system are causing a lot of concern. Some locals have started to advocate and act. I know 60 or 70 people, living on different parts of the plateau – in herding or farming areas, in cities or temples. We went to find them and to encourage each other.  Also see: How long can the caterpillar fungus craze last? ZW: What kind of things are they doing? HT: For example, in the village of Ganda in Yushu, there are three "environmentalists in the snow" – village officials Ye Qing and Qiong Cairen, and a retired teacher Xijiang. They have led the villagers in protecting Yushu's only water source, the Zhaqu River.  Everyone in Yushu relies on the river, and all the roads and power lines between Yushu and Ganda follow its course. When they were built, no consideration was given to protecting water sources, there was no environmental assessment or design. Rubbish by the roadside pollutes the river and the trench dug to lay optical fibre has damaged the grasslands and water sources, causing them to dry up for a time. So the villagers took it upon themselves to protect the river's sources of water, and they did it meticulously. "Rather than worry about the Yangtze and the Yellow River," they said, "let's do something about the stream outside the front door." Tibetans believe that if the water is damaged it will cause skin diseases and other illnesses. So if you want to be healthy, you need to look after your water. In accordance with the practices of Tibetan Buddhism, they placed sacred vessels at 16 sources of water, built altars and had eminent monks perform ceremonies. The 10th of September was designated an annual water source festival, making protection of water sources a part of the culture. A team of 16 volunteers now patrol the water sources to keep an eye on them. Once they started doing that, the water began to flow again from several sources that had dried up – in some cases even more than before. The villagers say that if people are good to nature, it will improve. Now there's no rubbish in Ganda, and they say the water is clean enough to be offered to the Buddha. Reconstruction work that started after the Yushu earthquake in April 2010 is still going on. High voltage power lines are going up all over the place, and construction teams have built road after road so as to move the pylons in. All those roads have damaged the grasslands. After a month of talks between the villagers and the engineers, it was agreed that the workers would carry the steel poles used to build the pylons in one by one. The villagers also ensured that the holes dug for the pylons were small, reducing damage to the grassland. This was the first time the builders had come up against such determined "opposition". But everyone learned something in the process. The Ganda villagers made sure everyone knew that if you're going to live here, you've got to respect nature.  ZW: Cuochi village and its Friend of Wild Yak Association have been very influential. Can you tell us about that? HT: The party secretary of the village, Gama, is one of these environmentalists. Six or seven years ago, when Snowlands had just started working there, there was a big poaching problem. Thirteen herders formed an anti-poaching patrol. Back then, Gama was an ordinary herder, and he was part of that patrol. As we got to know the group, we gave them binoculars and took them to Sichuan for training. That inspired them to form the Friend of Wild Yak Association. Gama was at the heart of that, and of the village. They have 200 members now – that means one member from every household in the village. One important part of their work is monitoring wild animals. They ask herders to keep track of wildlife numbers. They never thought that, through doing this, the herders would start to worry about the wild yaks, and the impact of herding on the grasslands. So, to make room for the yaks, the village decided to pull out of pastures used by 12 households. Now the habitat available for the wild yaks is twice as large as before, and the entire village's understanding of the environment around them has changed. The 2,400 square kilometres of land belonging to Cuochi is free of rubbish, of poachers and of mines. The annual environmental festival brings the entire village together, and afterwards there isn't a single piece of rubbish – even the ash from dung fires is cleaned away. Once I visited a relative in Cuochi. The herders were bringing the cows home, followed by wild Mongolian gazelles. You don't see that anywhere else. Now wildlife and the people live close together, you can even take close-up shots. The nearby village of Leichi was also quietly influenced by what happened in Cuochi. The grasslands of Leichi are a well-known habitat for the Tibetan antelope. Leichi's herders visited the first environmental festival in Cuochi and were inspired to go back and form a Tibetan Antelope Conservation Association to monitor wildlife numbers. Gasang used to be one of Leichi's most enthusiastic hunters – he didn't like to go a day without shooting something. But now he's given it up and joined in with the monitoring. He uses camera to take shots of the animals, and as he understands their habits he gets the best photos. Looking at the animals through a camera lens has really changed him. Now Leichi is rubbish-free too. Sometimes I wonder if they're just doing it for the outsiders. But once I was passing through and saw a jeep parked by the side of the road. I thought it was someone else on their way through who had stopped for a rest, but when I got closer I saw villagers from Leichi picking up rubbish from the roadside. The grasslands there are much better protected now. The township of Qumahe is working to spread that experience and is preparing to become an ecological township. Little things down build up over the long term and are very valuable. ZW: Are all of these people locals? HT: No. The herders aside, lots of people come from elsewhere. There's a man called Heipi, who was a radio reporter in Wenzhou [a city in eastern China] until 2002. He heard about the Grassland Tribes – a yearly event where Snowlands brings Peking University students to the grasslands – and kept on phoning me, asking to join in. I said no: he wasn't a university student, and we didn't need reporters. In the end he just turned up at the gate of our Xining office just before we set off, carrying a huge rucksack. Heipi has visited every year since then, but he doesn't make a fuss about it – he just works quietly for the village of Cuochi and the project. That kind of work is very important for the village. That moves me. I wanted to give him a certificate to make him an honorary citizen of the village – it wouldn't do him or the village any good, but it would please me. And there are many volunteers in Beijing, Guangzhou or Shanghai whose hearts remain in the grasslands. They are also environmentalists in the snow.

Watch: MythBusters investigate traditional Chinese popcorn machine... in a bomb suit Posted: 24 Jan 2013 03:00 AM PST American special effects experts Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman, of the Discovery Channel's MythBusters, have called the traditional Chinese popcorn machine "god's machine" after testing it on the show. Chinese netizens were amused by the Americans' exaggerated reactions to, and fear of, the machine. One of the presenters went so far as to don a bomb suit when operating it, a totally unnecessary precaution if he covered the front of the machine with a hemp mat in the style of roadside merchants. Watch after the jump... [ more › ]

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