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- Cause What Happens In China Doesn’t Stay In China.
- Say Rat Tar Art Bar 10 Times Fast
- 25 arrested in first 3 days of new Hong Kong milk powder restrictions
- Is your Mandarin good enough to join MI5?
- Toxic Avenger @ Arkham
- Media Markt Closing (For Real this Time) [UPDATE: NOW CLOSED]
- Gallery: Taiwan's new vomit-inducing cutesy trains
- Toni & Guy's New Flagship Store in Xintiandi
- Watch: Most casual men ever hold truck with their shoulders
- Jackie Chan is latest target of criticism over military car privileges
- Presented By:
- Report: 900 dogs rescued from cramped truck in Chongqing
- The Situation Is Excellent: The Week That Was At Beijing Cream
- Rodman Calls Kim Jong-Un “An Awesome Kid,” Has First Post-North Korea Interview With George Stephanopoulos
- Dreaming Of The Dead: A Lantern Festival Story
- Not too late to reserve for Restaurant Week! (and other food/drink events)
- Newsflash: Shanghaiers smoke in internet cafes, KTV parlors, despite ban
- China Legal. Not Hong Kong Legal. Not Taiwan Legal. Not Macau Legal.
- Photos: Over 4 tons of garbage fished from Forbidden City moat
- 5.5M earthquake destroys 700 homes in rural Yunnan province (UPDATED)
| Cause What Happens In China Doesn’t Stay In China. Posted: 03 Mar 2013 08:32 PM PST More than seven years ago (that has to be the blogosphere equivalent of an eternity, right?), in a post entitled, Is China Going Green? we wrote admiringly about a big company that had one high environmental standard for the entire world:
Whenever I talk about ways to protect Intellectual Property from China, I always mention the option of providing "last year's model" to China but in the last few years, I have stared adding how this is getting much more difficult as Chinese buyers are now very much aware of what is and is not a current model and they are more and more demanding the latest. Today's Financial Times has an article on how Samsung is suffering on the PR front and being sued in France for the way its China subcontractors treat (or mistreat) their employees. The article is entitled, "Samsung code of conduct put to test" and it does a really good job discussing how companies whose pitches to the public/investors differ from reality are setting themselves up for potential PR and legal problems. The money quote is definitely the following:
When I was a legal pup, I handled the international litigation/arbitration for a multinational truck manufacturer (long ago sold off to any even bigger multinational truck manufacturer). My client's literature described its trucks as "ultra heavy duty" and also as "the best built truck in the world." I actually think both of these things were pretty much true, but after arbitrating against a top-flight lawyer who whenever I would talk about how you have to expect some initial problems with any massive truck (as opposed to a luxury car) would point out how that might be true for some trucks, but his client really expected more from an "ultra heavy duty truck" that is "the best built in the world." Though the client did shockingly well at the arbitration, I was able to prevail upon them to change their marketing to better suit legal realities. I am NOT saying that is what Samsung should do here because I have no more knowledge of Samsung's marketing or its employee handling than is contained in this one FT article, but I am saying that every company doing business in China to start realizing that what happens in China doesn't stay in China. This means recognizing that your China supply chain is your supply chain, no ifs ands or buts. Not anymore. What do you think?         |
| Say Rat Tar Art Bar 10 Times Fast Posted: 03 Mar 2013 07:45 PM PST |
| 25 arrested in first 3 days of new Hong Kong milk powder restrictions Posted: 03 Mar 2013 08:00 PM PST Twenty five people have been arrested in the first three days following the implementation of a new regulation designed to limit the amount of infant milk powder that is brought from Hong Kong to the mainland. [ more › ]        |
| Is your Mandarin good enough to join MI5? Posted: 03 Mar 2013 07:00 PM PST  Sharp-eyed Redditors spotted that the United Kingdom Security Service, commonly known as MI5, has posted example language proficiency tests online for its 'Mandarin Intelligence Analyst' roles. [ more › ]  |
| Posted: 03 Mar 2013 06:45 PM PST |
| Media Markt Closing (For Real this Time) [UPDATE: NOW CLOSED] Posted: 28 Feb 2013 08:43 PM PST |
| Gallery: Taiwan's new vomit-inducing cutesy trains Posted: 03 Mar 2013 06:00 PM PST       |
| Toni & Guy's New Flagship Store in Xintiandi Posted: 03 Mar 2013 05:47 PM PST |
| Watch: Most casual men ever hold truck with their shoulders Posted: 03 Mar 2013 05:00 PM PST Taking inspiration from last week's epic stacking, a truck driver attempted to deliver some severely overloaded cargo, only to be stopped by wind and gravity. Cut to 00:41 for the most casual men in the world supporting an entire truck on their shoulders, Atlas-style. [ more › ]  |
| Jackie Chan is latest target of criticism over military car privileges Posted: 03 Mar 2013 04:55 PM PST  Shanghaiist favorite Jackie Chan has once again found himself the center of controversy after photos of him stepping into a car with military license plates in Beijing were posted on Sina Weibo on Friday. The photos were exposed at a time when the abuse of military vehicles and their privileges has increasingly come under fire. [ more › ]  |
| Posted: 03 Mar 2013 04:55 PM PST  |
| Report: 900 dogs rescued from cramped truck in Chongqing Posted: 03 Mar 2013 08:53 AM PST Another day, another truckload of dogs saved from slaughter. Yesterday, an animal rescue shelter said 900 canines were rescued from a truck in Chongqing. Reports AP:
Two dogs reportedly did not make it, but the story was posted to social media, and as we've seen it happen before, concerned citizens went to the scene to see if they could help.
Forty to 50 volunteers are currently taking care of dogs, and it's unclear what will happen to them. |
| The Situation Is Excellent: The Week That Was At Beijing Cream Posted: 03 Mar 2013 07:59 AM PST February 25 – March 3 A teenager pooped into a trash receptacle in Guangzhou Subway, leading authorities to publish a handy map on bathroom locations. Mo Yan gave his first interview – to Der Spiegel – since winning the Nobel Prize in Literature. The Beijinger's literary contest produced comedy gold, and here are China Twitter accounts you probably already follow. Dennis Rodman became the first American to meet Kim Jong-un in office, because Kim was a big Rodman fan from his Chicago Bulls days. Rodman called Kim "an awesome kid." Jon Pastuszek wrote about the CBA playoffs. Justin Mitchell wrote a touching story about his family — old and new – in Shenzhen for Lantern Festival. Xiao Yi wrote about netizen reactions to a North Korea thing. And Robynne Tindall's first piece for us was about a naked official with a vindictive girlfriend. A German TV crew was attacked in Hebei province. Extreme sports pioneer Yi Ruilong died in a hang-gliding crash caught on tape. The CBA All-Star Weekend produced a very funny dunk contest. Forget the pollution: it's wind that wreaks havoc. An alpaca and red panda died in a zoo. Wuhan's serial finger-biter was captured. Ang Lee won the Oscar for Best Director, said Chinese and Sanskirt in acceptance speech. The controversial sign in a Beijing restaurant that warns away Japanese, Filipino, and Vietnamese diners has been removed. Yan Linkun, the airport official who went berserk after missing his flight, has been punished. Public sex. PornHub still not blocked. Beijing Undie Run. Pervy panda. Comment of the Week: |
| Posted: 03 Mar 2013 07:55 AM PST This is getting more bizarre by the second. Dennis Rodman appeared on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos earlier this morning to do his first public interview since returning from North Korea. What? He had a message, too (one which the State Department, for the record, has no interest in):
Watch as Stephanopoulos asks Rodman if he has a "responsibility" to ask the leader of North Korea about his human rights record. Because Rodman's the one we want doing that, huh. More out of The Worm:
The British never will be able to broach peace with North Korea because they don't get basketball. Just remember that. Rodman left Pyongyang on Friday, but not before giving this memorable quote to Xinhua:
An awesome kid. How many North Korean scholars are crying into their pillows, spiteful that history will forever remember Rodman as the first American to meet Kim Jong-un since his ascension to power? What we still have to sort out is what Kim and co. believe they gain out of allowing him in the country — and, for that matter, VICE, which produced one of the more self-aggrandizing and unflattering "documentaries" on the country in 2006. Maybe young Kim, just 30 (or so) years old, really just yearned for a friend. He's got a pretty good one now in a fellow human being who perceives himself as equally misunderstood. Dennis Rodman: Kim Jong Un Wants President Obama to 'Call Him' (ABC News) |
| Dreaming Of The Dead: A Lantern Festival Story Posted: 02 Mar 2013 09:12 PM PST Last Sunday night was Lantern Festival. As such, C and I had holiday dinner next door with a friend of hers whose parents, sister, and the sister's spunky 6-year-old daughter were in Shenzhen for the holiday. The dinner was fine, lots of salty spicy fish, chicken and pork dishes, and some vinegary cucumbers. I toasted with a vodka and tonic while the others raised modest glasses of cheap Chinese red wine mixed with 7-Up. For reasons I've never been able to pinpoint, red wine with Sprite or 7-Up (or scotch mixed with green tea) is considered the height of sophisticated drinking by many middle-class Chinese, though I've long since disabused C of that notion and she now admits it tastes lousy. She only bent her Absolut on the rocks rule in order to "not be the bird that flies away from the flock." As a foreigner, the flock rule doesn't apply to me. We returned to our place and before we slept she told me she was leaving the balcony light on for the night. "Why?" I asked. "It's so our ancestors can find their way to where we live tonight." She cleared her throat and laughed self-consciously. "But I don't know how mine are going to know where I am in Shenzhen…" (Her hometown, Dandong, is more than 1,000 kilometers north). "I don't know how mine are going to find me either," I said. "Most of them probably never thought of coming to China — except maybe my mother's father, Knox. He was Irish. Before she died my mother told me he loved reading stories about Asia, particularly by a British writer named Kipling. Something about a 'Burmese girl,' I think, too. "Though I don't know that story or poem. Maybe if he had a thing for a fantasy Asian girl from Burma or China, he'd have enjoyed knowing about us." "Maybe." We slept as the balcony light glowed through a night punctuated by staccato New Year's fireworks and omnipresent smoke. And I dreamed. I dreamed that my grandfather Knox who died when I was two and my mother Mila who died 12 years ago were told I could be found in China. If they desired, they could leave whatever realm the dead inhabit and join others who were visiting their descendants here for one night. I've no real memory of my grandfather, though I'm told he was fond of me and that he died peacefully napping on his couch after lunch as my mother, dad and I were visiting him and my grandmother. "You played on his body until the ambulance came," my mother told me. "You didn't know he was dead and thought he was pretending to sleep. It was a game you'd played with him before." Now I am sleeping and my dead grandfather and mother are flying through the air to see me in China. He calls it "Cathay" in my dream because that's what Shenzhen's province, Guangdong, was called by foreign barbarians when he was alive. Cathay. "C'mon now, Mila. We're flying to Cathay to see Justin," he tells my mother. He's wearing a tweed suit, white shirt, thin tartan tie and perhaps set off with a tweed newsboy cap, attire I either imagine or think I've seen in old photos of him. He hasn't lost his Irish accent in my dream. He came to the US as a young man who'd taught at a deaf school in Belfast and had dabbled in boxing only to visit a brother in Oregon who had immigrated to the US. But Knox never returned to Ireland until many years later. While in America he'd caught polio shortly after coming and the Illinois woman he eventually married was one of his nurses. She was my grandmother but she's not visiting tonight. It was also complicated between her and my mother and probably still is in the hereafter. "Hullo mum," my grandfather had greeted his mother with an American accent upon returning for a visit to his ancestral home in Northern Ireland's County Down. According to family lore, he was limping due to the polio. His mother stood silently on the porch of their whitewashed home called The Spa. "Ah, Knox. You've got the Yankee twang," she finally said of his greeting. Until this exchange, they not spoken to or seen each other in the 25-plus years since he'd left for a "short" tour of America. There is no Yankee twang in my dream. He's soaring through the air to Cathay — a place he's only perhaps read and maybe dreamed of — arms outstretched like Peter Pan, one hand clasping my mother's who looks as she did in her high school and college photos. In those black and white pictures she isn't tethered to an oxygen tank or embittered and numbed by the booze and pain pills that momentarily pacified her arthritis pain but inflamed her demons. She's not even Mila. Tonight she's "Johnnie," a high school/college nickname due to her maiden name, Johnston. She sometimes smokes a pipe and is already a talented artist. She wears bobby socks and is a babe. And though it was also very complicated between her and her father, tonight they're feckless and free together. She's thrilled to be on her father's arm flying and free-falling to Cathay to see her son, and her father is quietly proud to take her. And though it's a country of 1.3 billion, with a gazillion more dead Chinese ancestors crowding the airspace tonight, they'll have no problems. You see, because beautiful C has left the light on so they'll know where to find me. |
| Not too late to reserve for Restaurant Week! (and other food/drink events) Posted: 03 Mar 2013 07:20 AM PST  Restaurant Week: Though Restaurant Week kicks off Monday, plenty of top-notch eateries still have spaces open! The man behind Restaurant Week, Onno Schreurs of Dining City, already gave us his top ten restaurant picks, but if none of those strike your fancy, go HERE for more incredible deals! [ more › ]  |
| Newsflash: Shanghaiers smoke in internet cafes, KTV parlors, despite ban Posted: 03 Mar 2013 06:00 AM PST  A recent survey has found that Shanghai's anti-smoking law is routinely flouted despite tough on-paper penalties, with smokers lighting up in 54 percent of internet bars and 46 percent of entertainment venues (KTV parlors, bars, etc.) despite laws forbidding it. [ more › ]  |
| China Legal. Not Hong Kong Legal. Not Taiwan Legal. Not Macau Legal. Posted: 02 Mar 2013 06:23 AM PST I have given four China law speeches in the last month (two live and two via webinars, here and here). Three out of the four talks generated questions as to whether what I had said applied to Hong Kong or to Taiwan. My answer in all instances was a resounding "no." Mainland China has its own legal system, separate and apart from Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao. In thinking about the laws of those places, you should think of them as different countries. Now there are definitely some instances where the laws in Mainland China are different for companies and/or legal matters coming from Taiwan, Hong Kong or Macao, but those instances are not terribly common and they become even less common when the matter involves a Western company. Your default position should always be to assume that the laws are different and to always assume that whatever you do in the PRC will not carry over to Taiwan, Hong Kong or Macao. For example, when we do NNN Agreements for our clients, we make clear that the Agreement we will be drafting "will apply only to PRC China manufacturers. It does not cover Taiwan or Hong Kong or Macau companies that may handle manufacturing for you as intermediaries. If you will be dealing with companies from Taiwan or Hong Kong or Macau (or from any country other than the PRC), please let us know so we can make allowances for that." We do the same thing for our OEM Agreements as well. In my future talks, I am going to early on make clear that my speech is confined to the PRC. I thought of all this today after reading a post on the China IP Insider Blog, entitled, IPR: A territorial animal, emphasizing how intellectual property rights are "territorial" and what you register outside of China does not constitute registration in China:
The post goes on to note that the fact that China currently exists in a "one country, two systems" situation only exacerbates the confusion, but that "the IP systems in Mainland China differ from those in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan and different registration is required in each territory." It then does a really nice job postulating as to why so many people get it wrong regarding the universality of IP registrations:
And as to why this mistaken belief in the universality of IP can be so deadly:
It concludes by advising that the "best way to protect your intellectual property therefore is to protect it in every market you operate in (manufacture, sell, may move into in the future etc.)," or as we say here, File Your Trademark In China. Now.     |
| Photos: Over 4 tons of garbage fished from Forbidden City moat Posted: 03 Mar 2013 05:00 AM PST         |
| 5.5M earthquake destroys 700 homes in rural Yunnan province (UPDATED) Posted: 03 Mar 2013 03:30 AM PST  An earthquake flattened 700 homes and injured more than 30 in southwest China on Sunday afternoon, according to state media. [ more › ]  |
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