One of the things that foreigners enjoy lamenting in China is the destruction of architectural heritage. It is understandable, modern China has a terrible record of heritage destruction, and today there are cities with 2,000 years of history where it is hard to find any trace of old construction. But the worst is that you can witness the destruction ongoing even today, before your very eyes.

It is true that in the last years there is a growing awareness of this cultural loss (and the loss of tourism revenues), and the authorities have started to take measures. Unfortunately, these measures come in the form of “restoration”, usually by the method of demolishing and re-building something vaguely similar, in brand new materials. Of the many infamous examples of this, perhaps the concrete-and-plastic Jing An Temple in Shanghai is the most obvious.

As all my readers probably now, XinTiandi is an old neighborhood in Shanghai that was “restored” some 10 years ago into an Old Shanghai themed commercial area. A favourite question of many visitors – and particularly Europeans – is how many walls are still standing from the original buildings. In fact, most of it is 100% new, and I often wonder how it is possible that such a creation actually does attract “cultural” tourists, who flock there to take pictures of each other.

Recently I saw an article on China News saying that “The Second Xintiandi” was being built on Jiangguo Road. The project’s real name is 建业里, and it is a residential complex that bears little relation with the present Xintiandi. But both have one thing in common: they promise to restore the Shanghai Shikumen [1] to their original beauty.

This weekend I rode my bike to the place and took some pictures to illustrate how the “Xintiandis” are created. See the gallery below:

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I was very interested in the commercial copy of the project, I copy here with my obnoxious comments:

1. Classic buildings with 80 years of history. [used to stand here]
2. The Historic Shikumen will be restored to their original beauty. [Not]
3. Creating the landmarks, Defining the Sky. [That's more like it]

I could only enter one part of the construction, but climbing on a railing outside I could see most of the rest. To be fair, there is a part close to the entrance (where the workers are) that has kept the old walls. The rest of the Shikumen has been completely demolished and it is being built from scratch, using reinforced concrete structure. In the picture taken from the crossroads you can appreciate the formwork.

I don’t think this is in any way important, the value of that Shikumen is insignificant compared to the old city of Kashgar or the Beijing Drum Tower Hutongs that are going to be “restored” soon. But it is a good illustration of the Chinese approach, and I will use it as intro to this series on heritage conservation that I was planning to do. More to come. Soon?

1. the Shikumen is a style of residential street typical of early 20th century Shanghai

When I approached, I saw they were parents waiting for their children. It was the “Shanghai City Common English for Children Stars Level Exam“, an official certification of English level for children in 小学 (6-11 yo). From what I understood, it is organized by some bureau of the City of Shanghai one of many private companies. The levels are given in stars: 1 star, 2 stars, 3 stars, and the exam emphasizes oral communication.

Two thoughts: 1- A people that takes education so seriously cannot go wrong in the long term (even if the system is certainly not perfect). 2- It looks like the Teachers of English will continue to be in high demand for years to come. Lucky you who’ll be pocketing the RMBs for explaining how to speak your own language!

UPDATE: I just clarified that the schools organizing this are not official institutions, but just private companies. I was fooled by the clever name on their pamphlet “City of Shanghai bureau of language learning etc.”  Looking on the internet there seems to be a few of these companies, complete with the star ranking system.

This is a brand new sculpture called “communication”, just arrived from the US to Shanghai to commemorate the 30 years of the opening of relations between the two countries. It is a great initiative, following the old tradition initiated in Troy and continued with the Statue of Liberty…

Except that, wait a second! Who are these guys? Do they represent Nixon and Mao? And why are they dressed up as two grannies getting ready for tea? Perverts!

OK, I see, this represents  the intimate relations built up in the last 30 years. The lady on the left is becoming a bit deaf, and her friend keeps repeating herself, saying the same things a thousand times, she is saying something about currency devaluation…

Whatever. What I find most amazing of all this is that in a city of 20 million I am the only one that finds this funny. The article on the Oriental is just a rehash of the press release, and they lost a great chance to poke some fun at the thing. And if there is one thing I do not forgive is missing a chance to have fun. Oriental, this was your last chance, you are fired!

Zhejiang is the smallest province in the mainland, just a bit larger than the Chongqing municipality. But in this small area it contains some of the most beautiful places to visit in China. From the imperial gardens in Hangzhou to the islands off Ningbo or the beautiful cloudy peaks, it is like a whole China in miniature has been condensed there for the traveler to visit conveniently.

But it is for people watchers that Zhejiang is most remarkable. The almost 50 million people packed there have managed to get the highest GDP per capita of any Chinese province, something even more impressive considering it contains no major cities, and it is usually taken as an example of development through local initiative as opposed to the models in Shenzhen, Shanghai or Tianjin.

The cowboy businessmen of the Wenzhou area are known for turning their villages into the “World’s largest producer of X”, or building absurdly luxurious marinas in places nobody knows. Meanwhile, small towns like QingTian are the home of most of the Chinese diaspora in Spain, Italy, and other countries. The character of the Zhejiangese epitomizes the image of the resourceful and bitter-eating [1] Chinese that we see in the West.

I like to watch the smaller towns and villages in the province because I see in them a reflection of what China might be in the near future. Apart from rich, the inhabitants of Zhejiang seem to be fiercely individualistic. In this town in the center of the province no two houses are alike. Unlike the huge drab apartment compounds seen in other places, the Zhejiangese wants his own personalized palace to paint with his own loud colours. It’s not the hanging gardens of B, but the overall  effect is appealing to the curious eye.

Up in the mountains, there are still many of the old adobe houses hidden in the forests of bamboo. But unlike other provinces, here they all have a well-equipped toilet and flat screen TVs to use with their satellite dishes. “Ah, Spain“, says the peasant where we spend the night, “yes, my cousin just opened a restaurant in Barcelona”. With part of the family in Shanghai and another in Europe, he sounds like a peasant from a different World.

From the beginning I suspected that the little altar he had installed in the dining room was just a show to please young Shanghainese guests eager to photograph relics of the past. My conversation with the owner confirmed there was more to this place than revolutionary fervor. In the end I did my duty as a tourist and took the above picture.

And I say, what do you want in a province where you can go to the forest and eat the trees on the way? Over the weekend, I must have eaten 5 kilos of these sprouts, the main export of our little mountain village. And yet all the bamboo nibbling was worth it when we reached the end of our path and discovered the heavenly sources of the valley stream:

1. 吃苦, chiku, literally “eat bitter”, or be able to bear hardship. This Chinese characteristic is at the root of China’s miracle development

Despite being a party newspaper, I am more a fan of the Shanghai Morning Post (新闻辰报) than the relatively less government-oriented Oriental Morning Post (东方日报). I find the Shanghai Morning Post to have more stories related to the city I live in, though the Shanghai paper sells out quicker outside my apartment building than the Oriental Morning Post, so I often have to settle for the Oriental if I make it outside past 10 a.m.

When I read this I realized why I almost never see the SMP and I am stuck with the Oriental. In the convenience store down my road it is exactly the same situation: most mornings the SMP is sold out by the time I get there, whereas the Oriental is still hanging like a stale fish when I am back from work in the evenings.

To confirm this information I sought the aid of a professional. Not the local Lawson’s store, but a proper newspaper selling stand:

Since newspapers is their core business, the ladies in the stand usually get more copies of the morning papers, which means that they have both the SMP and the Oriental available until late.

The first thing I noticed is that they clearly dislike the Oriental. They have it buried under a lot of magazines and every time I have been there they have tried to convince me to buy the SMP instead. It clearly looks like someone is not doing their homework on the distribution channels. Apart from this, here is what I found:

• Every day they sell about 3 times more copies of the SMP than the Oriental – approx 60 to 20.
• The newspapers that are not sold can be returned up to a certain number (not specified) and the rest is just thrown away.

These are just anecdotal observations, but all seems to indicate that a good part of the 400,000 copies posted by the Oriental end up right in the rubbish bin, or else used as toilet paper in the nearby construction site.

Incidentally, the Oriental today opens again with the full page Mont Blanc watch. A jolly nice picture I have to say, but not very satisfying because those dark colors tend to leave stains when used on damp places.

Three workers take a short break to enjoy their new creation, as hundreds of pedestrians invade the former automobile exclusive zone.

Berlin 1989. The Wall of Cars is down and the Bund is invaded by pedestrians, happily crossing on (or nearby) the zebra passes.

Nanjing Lu should come next: When two lanes are invaded every weekend, it is time to widen the sidewalks and get rid of some smoke.

Here you are, Increased area + Increased visitors = Equal density.

We chat our way up to one of the Bund’s big banks. Here you see the two levels of the Bund, with an elevation of some 3 meters on the part next to the River. Here is my main problem with the new design, plus the fact that there are still too many car lanes.

And since we are here again, for the Nth time: he is NOT Mao, he is Chen Yi, the ex Mayor of Shanghai. You should visit his beautiful old house in the French concession, now a museum of Chinese art.

There is a brand new building on the Bund, the only one with modern architecture in the whole street. It fits very well, and it brings a certain air of European city, now that they cleaned all the facades. But I can’t help wondering, what happened to the old building that was there before?

And here is my main objection to the design. I understand the double level of the Bund is necessary, as the part next to the river must have a certain height to avoid flooding. But what I absolutely can’t understand is this horrible grey wall separating the two halves!

Not to mention the absurdly long ramps to go up and down, where it takes some 50 meters and 15 minutes to pass. It would have been much more functional and beautiful to do a sprawling stairway, where groups of people can sit down and even play instruments like on the stairs of Montmartre…

The Southern part of the Bund has been saved from the oppression of the elevated highway, which used to loom above the lighthouse, rendering this whole area useless. Now there are benches and a fountain. I am sure the Lighthouse bar will get more business.

And finally, here is a cross section taken from number 22. You can see the 2+1 lanes of cars each way, and the 2 heights of the promenade, with the background of Pudong and the moon.

Better Life, Better City? Yes, but still a lot more to do. We will continue waiting to see if they get it better for Bund 3.0. What do you think?

For more pictures of Shanghai new buildings see here. Also Shanghaiist has this covered here, and Danwei here.

Without any more preambles, let me introduce you to the Oriental Morning Post, one of the two big morning papers in Shanghai. Here are some of their front pages this week:

Look at these front pages carefully, have you noticed there are adverts? Yes. I buy this paper every morning and I was very excited to see they have found an innovative way to face the crisis: just get rid of the news and replace them with ads. Gray Lady, Mr. Murdoch, are you paying attention? Herein lies perchance the salvation of the press.

Seriously. Let me tell you a funny story about the death of a newspaper.

Like New York, Shanghai has two main morning papers that are in fierce competition with each other, the Oriental Morning Post and the Shanghai Morning Post. The former is a young paper that belongs to the large media group Wenhui, owner of the English language Shanghai Daily. The latter is part of the Jiefang Group, a historic paper controlled by the Shanghai committee of the Communist Party

The struggle between these newspapers reflects a story that is happening all over China, where relatively independent [2] groups are competing with the party media, and editors on both sides are led to push the thin line of information control in order to attract more readers. The party media has the advantage of established old reader bases and closer political coverage, so it is the “independent” media that is usually more vulnerable to attacks.

In the last few years, just like in the West, the menace of the freebies both online and offline has been a nightmare for these companies. Only in Shanghai the Metro Express reportedly has more readers (~1 million) than the two Posts together, and the internet continues to attract users by the millions.

Some have argued that the key for the survival of the big papers is reference columnists and quality, independent reporting. In a country where being an opinion leader can lead you straight to prison, and most of the news are directly copy/pasted from the Xinhua press agency, it hardly make sense to pay for the morning paper. The Metro has the same news, and the only way to get commentary on any important matter is surfing the internet fast enough to get there before the censors.

Today I asked my Shanghainese friend Mary Fu why she thinks the Oriental is better than the Metro Express, and she answered, literally: “they are similar, but the Oriental has less adverts“.

The Great Leap Forward

But let’s get to the point now, namely: I have strong reasons to suspect that the Oriental is playing a “Great Leap Forward” on its advertisers. In other words, it is reporting completely unrealistic numbers of readers. I have various reasons to believe this, mainly:

• They have been reporting the same figures (400,000) at least since 2008, while the conditions have severely worsened since then.

• They are playing desperate tactics, like the above front pages. In fact, in their table of prices for advertisers the “whole front page ad” is not even an option.

• If I know the Shanghainese well, they are not the kind of people to get ripped off 1 RMB every morning for something they can get for free.

I know it is ugly to accuse without proof, but frankly: doesn’t it look like the guys are struggling to pay the bills, and they have managed to find two wealthy foreign companies confused enough to part with half a million RMB? And perhaps they even cooked it up with an advertisement agency who has some good guanxi [3] in the group?

Pure speculation. Forget it, don’t listen to me. I recommend everyone to continue buying the Oriental Piaget Post. And I wish all the luck in the World to those 300 employees who are seriously going to need it.

Leading the Way for the Demise of the Newspapers

And now, for the desperate media leaders who are willing to try the new Chinese model, here are some some illustrative examples of the zombie life led by the long deceased Chinese journalism. Most of my examples are taken from Danwei, the best newspapers watching site I know.

Exhibit 1: Classic example of an advert disguised as news in a front page in the Oriental Guardian of Nanjing. With a characteristic lack of ethical principles learned from the censoring authorities, a large part of Chinese mainland newspapers routinely sell news space to advertisers or post adverts without any indication of their real nature.

Exhibit 2: From our very own Shanghai Oriental last week. On that day “Mont Blanc” must have smelled a rat, and the Post had to actually do a front page. In a desperate move to attract some eyes they pasted an unrelated photo of the sexiest woman in China. No article to go with it.

Exhibit 3: This is the kind of clever detail that makes me go back to Danwei all the time. Chongqing journalists are smarter than Shanghainese ones, it seems. See how they use their prime minister Wen to sell reading glasses on the front page. Pure genius!

Exhibit 4: See this Oriental Post from a few weeks ago, where the front page reports on the market price of an alpaca. This is a lame attempt to get back young readers lost to the internet, using an aging meme that is quickly becoming unfunny. Another innovation by the Post editors.

I could go on for ages with examples, I didn’t even spend 10 minutes looking for these. But enough is enough. Now I want to take you back to the West and try to picture the future in your mind.

Do you imagine what will happen when the New York Times follows the downward road pioneered by the Shanghai press?

Tell me, does the future look so bad?

Welcome to the Future of the Paper Media.

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CLARIFICATION: There are still many proud Chinese journalists who do their job honestly and the best they can under very difficult conditions. It goes without saying that the criticism here does not apply to them.

1. Yes, intranet, from now on I refuse to refer to this joke as the internet until the retards controlling the GFW understand the meaning of World Wide Web
2. By independent I mean companies not nominally controlled by the party, although obviously they are not really independent from the government directives given to all the press
3. Guanxi means relations, often – but not necessarily –  implying a shady exchange of favours. If you are going to be reading about China you better learn this word now

This is the typical Chinese motivational message that can be seen everywhere, often in the form of rhyming Dos and Don’ts. For a while now many of them are appearing with the Expo as central theme. The Oriental Post had an article yesterday announcing new measures in some districts to have locals take responsibility for their street’s cleanliness.

Handwritten signs like this are very usual in the lanes. They are organized by the residents committee following directives from above. The task of writing the signs is often delegated to the local calligraphy hero, and then you get beautiful pieces of writing (but not in this case, IMO)

The translation of this one is:

The “Seven Builds” proposed by the City of Shanghai’s “Welcome the Expo Civilized Activities Plan”:

• • Maintain order – Build a lawful City
  • Keep Hygiene – Build a Healthy City
  • Protect Environment – Build a biological City
  • Be Polite – Build a Polite City
  • Have solid Credibility – Build a honest City
  • Love Science – Build a Study City
  • Give Kindness – Build a Friendly City

Any corrections welcome. As I usually say, Chinese slogans are very hard to translate because they rarely make any sense, so I didn’t bother to take out the dictionary. Use at your own risk.

A bit of background: signese is the Chinese humour contained in public signs before they are translated to English. It is not Chinglish, it goes much deeper into our cultural differences, and it is funny because it shows an unexpected approach to life. Look at this sign below, it is a classic of toilet signese, a sign that hangs above millions of urinals in China, from the Summer Palace to the smallest alley in Shanghai:

A small step for man, A great leap for civilization

Approximately 50 million urinals carry this sign in the mainland. I wonder if somebody has told Neil Armstrong in his old age that his famous and well rehearsed line is remembered today by 1/5th of humanity as a hygienic measure for urinating gentlemen.

Bad aiming skills in the toilet is a common ill in all societies, any lady will tell you that. But in China the problem is most acute, and sub-urinal ponds are part of the landscape. Some ascribe it to the natural optimism common in most Chinese males. I prefer to think it is a matter of multi-tasking abilities: speaking on the phone while smoking a cigarette is not the best way to ensure full control.

In any case, the Ministry of Health prefers to not leave anything to chance, and already a tech startup is taking care of this:

Until this new product hits the market, please one step forward.

I just hope the developers are thoughtful enough to give it hands-free capabilities, ashtrays and Bluetooth.

PS. Speaking of technology, I know, if I am going to take blogging seriously I better get rid of this phone and get one that can take proper pics. The problem is I am torn between that and the best dictionary of Chinese in the World, that runs in my second hand Palm from Taobao.

But even more wierd is the logo appeared on Google.com: Happy holidays. It is 14 January today, still one month to go for the holidays in China. And I don’t know of any other place where it is holidays today. Does this mean: happy holidays to the GFW and the Net Nanny? A very very long holiday is what those 2 deserve, and to never come back: NO, I get it now, it is Happy Holidays to the employees, G has sent all its Chinese employees on leave and dedicates the logo to them. Sweet!

But the funniest thing by far I have seen today is this video that was circulating on twitter (thanks Tom!). This is China humour, I will explain it for those who don’t live here: Baidu is the only successful Chinese website that is not completely cluttered with the Wall of Characters and intrusive adverts in the style of the Chinese internet. Why is that? Because Baidu itself is from the start an obvious imitation of Google. The title of the video is: What will happen to Baidu when Google leaves China?

And the quote of the day:

Baidu it and you’ll know, Google it and you’ll know too much…

(from a Chinese tweet, translated by a commentator on the CMD)

UPDATE: another funny article here:

The last great battle of our time was underway last night as Google and China began fighting for control of every living thing on the face of the Earth. A fragile truce between the world’s two biggest powers collapsed as Google accused China of reneging on a deal which would see the search giant control North and South America and those parts of Africa where people can afford netbooks…

Here are a few interesting new points I have gathered that I think are worth commenting:

• There has been a call by H. Clinton to China to explain the hacking claims of Google. And in the same interesting article we read that Eric Schmidt participated last week in a dinner with her to discuss how technology can be used to promote democracy.

• Google has now started taking measures, and already all the Gmail accounts are encrypted, as far as I know in the whole world, you can check your account and see the address bar now starts with https.

• However, as of my own tests 5 minutes ago, there is no evidence that the search service in Google.cn has changed. I have a good point of comparison because I did similar searches in an experiment last year. You can look up things like 08宪章 (political document charter 08) and you will see the Manipulated Results, exactly like last year, with the FM message and all.

• In the only article that Xinhua has published about this, there is one quotation by a professor Guo of a Shanghai university: “the Google case was a reminder to the government that Internet supervision could be more moderate and smarter”. Never thought I would read that in Xinhua. (thanks to kaplanpop for the tip)

• The actions of Google have gathered a lot of support from Chinese netizens. However, this must not be taken at face value for a survey of Chinese opinion. The large majority of Chinese of course have not even heard about this, and if they have, they have no idea why it is a big deal that foreign company Google may leave China.

• The stock market still has not decided if the PR points gained in the West are worth the business lost in China. The G shares are down  just 1.4% right now. On the other hand, investors have little doubts about Baidu who is up 13,5%. I bet some copycat in the B offices is already starting to plot how to offer an online BDocs, BMaps, BCalendar, Bmail, Bwave and even Bphone to the Chinese…

In World politics time is measured in decades, and many will call the 00s the decade of China. It is just a simplification, these 10 years are nothing but part of a longer process started in 78, and probably still ongoing for another decade more. And yet, if we have to choose one event that marked the decade in World politics, like the end of the Cold War marked the 90s, the rise of China is the most reasonable choice. No other event is likely to be be more decisive in the history of the World.

In the first post of this Year End edition we proved that, within the general growing trend of the decade, 2008 was a peak for China’s presence in the World media, and 2009 has gone back to relatively normal levels. This peak cannot hide the general trend: that China is growing inexorably to become a World superpower and that it is already changing the power balance of humanity.

Measuring the Chinese decade

If we have to chose one single parameter to measure this rise, it is the economy that can give us the best clue. There is no point in going to the decimals when analyzing decade trends, so the calculation is simple: China has grown roughly 7% faster than Western countries in the last decade, and all seems to indicate that this will continue into the 10s.

The calculation* is straightforward:  1.07^10 = 2

At a rate of 7% differential a year, the size of China’s economy relative to the Western economies is doubling every decade. Today most estimates of GDP place China between 1/4 and 1/2 of the USA economy, depending if it is measured in nominal GDP or in PPP. This means that, if nothing else changes in the next decade, Chinese economy will be the biggest in the World anytime between 2020 and 2030.

The consequences of this calculation are enormous, and they are already operating today. That is because in politics we behave like in the stock market: decisions are made taking into account the foreseeable future rather than the present. China is already displacing the EU in World politics, even if it is a fraction of the European economy, even if it doesn’t want to be the protagonist. The media and the politicians are betting on the future value of China.

The Question of the Decade

Of course, nothing guarantees that the growth patterns of the 00s will continue in the 10s. There is one important school of thought that insists on the unsustainability of the Chinese system. They mention corruption, growing inequality, lack of civil rights and a civil society, repression of creativity and free market, the inability to build World class brands and a financial system in disarray, among other problems, to justify their prediction that sooner or later the Chinese economy is bound to crumble.

Those of us who live and work in China know that these problems are serious and very real, and that somewhere down the line there is bound to be a serious readjustment. And yet, the same predictions have been made regularly almost every year in the last three decades, and the collapse has not materialized.

The real question of this decade is When?

Will the Chinese economy stop growing before or after it has become a superpower as large as the USA? Will the Chinese seriously demand more rights and liberties before or after China has become a developed country? Will the economic and political readjustments be done progressively with the new generation of Chinese leaders, or will there be a dangerous explosion in this decade?

We don’t have the answers to this today, and you should not believe any China expert who claims to have them. All we can do is frame the question above, and watch out for early signs to answer it in the coming years.

There is however one statement we can make today. Looking at the World, it is obvious that many important players are already betting on the rise of China, and this view is gathering more support every year. As we have seen above, to the extent that the majority in the World believes in the superpower scenario, China is ALREADY a superpower. The political power comes years in advance of the GDP, and the new World order is already a fact today.

Photo: Eric Risberg

*This is an engineer’s calculation, the nightmare of any serious mathematician. And yet, most bridges we do are still standing, and when we speak of decade trends anything more accurate than this is a joke.