Shanghai
Shanghai Russian Concession Sports Trophy
This being Oscars season, here is a remarkable 1935 Russian Regiment sports trophy from Shanghai that just sold on Ebay to someone in the Russian Federation.
Measuring 3.7/8″ (inches) highs, 1.5/8″ in diameter and weighing 37grams or 1.1/4ozs, the trophy sold for 1,451 pounds.
According to the seller, the flag seal in enamel is taken from the Russian regiment flag, which was adopted from the seal of the Shanghai International Concession.
Paul French adds the following:
The porcelain seal is the Shanghai Municipal Council’s flag - omnia juncta in uno - all together or united as one.
The SMC flag was ridiculous as it included the flags of all 19 (or thereabouts) treaty powers - I always think that this must have been in the mind of someone when they decided the EU flag would be a simply blue with a few stars - imagine a similar hotch-potch of the flags of all EU member states! or the US flag being composed of all the state flags!
Popularity: 4% [?]
Jewish Shanghai Worth the Visit
I highly recommend Dvir Bar-Gal’s entertaining and informative walking tours of Jewish Shanghai. You will see a side of Shanghai that most people don’t know exists and gain a greater understanding of the city’s past. Dvir is working to preserve old parts of Shanghai, something that interests too few people.
Old Maps: Paul French, a journalist and director of Access Asia, has reproduced a lovely 1935 map of Shanghai produced by adman Carl Crow. (About whom Paul wrote a biography). To get a copy - if he still has any left - contact Paul on +86-21-6374-5679 or paul at accessasia.co.uk.
The Municipal Council’s map, issued for visitors to Shanghai in 1935, shows a city that had grown up in the previous 20 years — by 1935 the Bund was formed pretty much as we know it today and the International Concession reached out past the race course, now People’s Square. One interesting thing to note is that when supposed old hands in Shanghai tell you Pudong was nothing but fields and farms when they came here you’ll know they are bullshitting — the map shows how Pudong was a thriving factory area then around what is now Lujiazui.
Graham Earnshaw also has a nice collection of Shanghai maps online.
A list of some famous Shanghai Jews by Ron Gluckman:
The Kadoories - Family made its fortune in Shanghai and Hong Kong real estate, utilities and their Hong Kong and Shanghai Hotel chain (which includes the famed Peninsula).
The Sassoons - One-time opium traders who went big-time into trading and property.
Morris Cohen - Known by his nickname Two-Gun Cohen, he served as bodyguard and aide-de-camp to Sun Yat-sen, eventually becoming a Chinese general.
Dr. Jakob Rosenfeld - An Austrian who spent nine years overseeing health care for the Communist army.
Michael Medavoy - Lived in Shanghai until age 7, he went onto a career as Hollywood mogul at Columbia, Orion and TriStar Pictures.
Peter Max - Influential American pop artist born in Germany, but spent 10 years in Shanghai.
Mike Blumenthal - U.S. Treasury Secretary.
Eric Halpern - Co-founder of the Far Eastern Economic Review and first editor.
(h/t to the Shanghaiist for the Paul French quote.)
Popularity: 5% [?]
Shanghai To Cruise Ships: Duck
Matthew Crabbe’s Access Asia newsletter reports a rather unfortunate piece of planning in Shanghai.
It appears that cruise ships headed for Shanghai’s much vaunted new cruise terminal first need to duck under a low bridge. Not good news in the era of super-sized cruise ships.
There has been much reporting lately of the new Beijing T3 terminal, and how only China could do something so grand so quickly without all that bothersome consultation. But, in Shanghai, there lies a little-reported story that suggests a bit more consultation might help.
Stand on the Bund, and look towards the North Bund development in Hongkou, and you’ll see one of the best bits of post-modern architecture in Shanghai - the new and gleaming 130,000 sq m international cruise terminal, built by Shanghai International Port Group. A marvellous glass bubble on stilts to welcome passengers, as Shanghai aims to relive the glory days of its past as a cruise ship destination, and is due to fully open for business this month.
Fantastic!
Then gaze further down river, and you will spy the red towers of a massive bridge in the lower reaches of the Huangpu, the Yangpu, which opened in 1993 providing a much needed additional river crossing.
Again, fantastic!
However, there’s a problem. Ships larger than 87,000 gt cannot pass beyond the bridge, and progress upriver to the terminal. Right now, there are about 276 cruise ships operating globally - nearly 100 of these are in excess of 87,000 gross tons, and so cannot berth at the terminal. OK, so with the business still young in China, most ships using the terminal are just shy of the limit. Royal Caribbean, one of the biggest cruise ship operators, sent its 1997-built, 78,491 gt Rhapsody of the Seas to Shanghai with beds for 2,400 people.
But the industry is changing fast, and cruise ships being built and commissioned now are well in excess of 87,000 gt, while the smaller ones are being gradually de-commissioned. For instance, Royal Caribbean’s latest ship, Genesis, can accommodate 5,400 guests and weighs 220,000 gt. That’s the future.
So anything larger than 87,000 gt will not get to the sparkling new terminal, thanks to the low bridge, and will have to berth at the scenic and relaxing roll on/roll off terminal in Waigaoqiao, which, in rush hour, can be close to an hour’s bus ride from the Hongkou terminal. At best, Waigaoqiao can handle four cruise ships at any one time. More than 100 international cruise ships are expected to stop by Shanghai this year. The terminal will be home to a plethora of luxury goods shops and several hotels have sprung up nearby - if only there was no Yangpu bridge.
That’s what no consultation gets you.
Enjoy this story? Here’s some of the tantalizing reports from the Access Asia website:
Cosmetics & Toiletries in China 2008: A Market Analysis
Eggs in China 2008: A Market Analysis
Sugar in China 2008: A Market Analysis
Sounds like a feast ‘o fun!
Popularity: 4% [?]
Dvir Bar-Gal
Dvir Bar-Gal offers highly entertaining and informative walking tours of Jewish Shanghai. You will see a side of Shanghai that most people don’t know exists.
Dvir is a Shanghai-based Israel-born journalist who has dedicated himself to saving the building, memories and trying to build a memorial to the Jews of Shanghai. He has collected for preservation, the many Jewish tombstones found by farmers and builders around Shanghai.
A documentarist, videographer and photojournalist, Dvir graduated from Tel-Aviv University’s Film department and the Art-Inter Disciplinary program in 1996. His tours take over the guided visits given by Flora Amiel and Georgia Noy from 1998 until 2002.
Popularity: 6% [?]
Shanghai Photog Seeks MultiMedia Fixer/Assistant
This help-wanted advert is a sign of the times and should be a lesson to all young people looking to enter journalism. You NEED those multimedia skills!
Shanghai-based photographer Sharron Lovell, who has a great portfolio, seeks a part time fixer/assistant/translator to work on an assignment in Shanghai from as soon as possible until early September. (2 to 3 days a week)
Details here:
The project has been funded by the London School of Economics and combines a practical photography/multi-media project with an academic slant. It’s a global project looking at media representations of poverty. It should be very hands on and interesting to work on so I need someone who can really move with people. A journalism student or graduate or someone interested in journalism would be perfect. Multi-media experience, knowledge of Final Cut Pro or audio editing would also be a big plus.
Please if anyone knows anyone suitable please pass this mail to them or their details to me,
Sharron Lovell
Tel +86 13701646399
sharron.lovell (at ) gmail.com
Popularity: 5% [?]
Journalism jobs in Shanghai
Maria Trombly, whose company covers a range of topics from Asian securities to payments and technology for trade magazines, is constantly on the lookout for freelance copy editors and reporters.
Now, she is also looking for a full-time entertainment industry reporter.
The jobs pay local scale — not US rates. But she says those working for her get accreditation, bylines, decent salaries (by local standards), full benefits, paid vacations, etc.
She typically hires people with industry backgrounds (tech, finance, pharma) and teaches them how to do journalism from scratch.
Interested in launching a journalism career?
Contact:
Maria Trombly
TROMBLY LTD
+86-21-6345-9216
+86-21-6387-7243
Mobile +86-137-6131-8333
maria (at) tromblyltd dot com
Popularity: 8% [?]
Chinesepod: Rare backstage tour with Hank Horkoff
This quick tour of the Chinesepod offices in Shanghai with Hank Horkoff reveals many secrets of the highly popular Web 2.0 Chinese-language learning service.
Launched by a web expert (Horkoff) and a language teaching expert (Ken Carroll), Praxis Language Ltd has evolved into an office of Babel, with language teachers from Shanghai now using their Web 2.0 platform to offer lessons in Spanish, Italian, French and more languages on the way.
In this video you can see the school’s set up and studios, while also hearing a little bit about Ken Carroll’s idea that the web creates super-enabled teachers with star-quality. (We agree in your case, of course, Ken.)
A couple more videos coming soon on their novel language teaching ideas and interesting business model.
Disclosure: I have subscribed to Chinesepod since I started learning Chinese and find their podcasts extremely useful.
Popularity: 5% [?]
Adam Schokora
Adam Schokora is a Shanghai-based Chinese Internet watcher who leads Edelman Digital in China. He also contributes to a number of blogs, including the wildly popular Danwei.org, with posts on Internet trends, developments in digital communications, media and his internet video show “The Shanghai Beat”.
Popularity: 7% [?]
Twitter in China (Cloned of course)
The Pacific Ocean appeared to protect China from the Twitter craze hitting the US and Europe over the last year.
No more!
(Note for Luddite friends: Twitter is a San Francisco micro-blogging phenome that has thousands of people sending 160 character sms messages to each other. It is weird, yes, but also somewhat addictive.)
China has Twitter-ers both in English and in Chinese, but the local specialty of knock-offs has already kicked in. Adam J. Schokora of Edelman Digital speaks in this video about Twitter knock-offs Fanfou, Jiwai and the biggest of them all, Zuosa.
Schokora estimates that while there are only 7,000 Chinese-language Twitter-ers, Zuosa has more than 600,000.
Jiwai has the best looking homepage, but none of them have Twhirl-like offline client. How do you say “Business Opportunity” in Chinese?
To follow China Twitters in English, check out the Chinalist compiled by Christine Lu.
Popularity: 17% [?]
Paul French: Why Tom Doctoroff is wrong about China
Shanghai-based writer/businessman Paul French rants (and froths a little) in this video about why China marketing guru Tom Doctoroff is wrong about China.
Doctoroff is CEO Greater China of J. Walter Thompson, a blogger and author of the bestselling book Billions: Selling to the New Chinese Consumer.
UPDATE: Doctoroff accepted my invitation to reply and did so in this posting: Tom Doctoroff: Paul French is wrong about China (and Tom Doctoroff)
Why is French apoplectic?
French says that Doctoroff and other current-day China gurus from the west falsely claim pioneering roles in opening up China.
In fact, the real foreign pioneer in opening China’s market to western-style consumerism was the 1920s and 1930s Shanghai adman Carl Crow.
In particular, French said Doctoroff claims to be the first to launch Buick in China (which Crow did), the first to use a woman in a car advertisement (which Crow did) as well as a few other things that Crow did first. (The title of Doctoroff’s own book - Billions - echoes Crow’s book 400 Million Consumers)
Full disclosure of the French agenda: He wrote a (great) biography called Carl Crow, a Tough Old China Hand.
I also highly recommend reading Crows own essays on China Foreign Devils in the Flowery Kingdom. Crow’s seminal work, 400 Million Consumers, will soon be issued in reprint by the China Economic Review.
Be great to hear from Doctoroff on this!
UPDATE: Doctoroff accepted my invitation to reply and did so in this posting: Tom Doctoroff: Paul French is wrong about China (and Tom Doctoroff)
Popularity: 8% [?]
Paul French
A north Londoner-turned-Shanghai-based writer and businessman who has had a colorful career jaunt around Asia, including a 14-month stint in North Korea setting up DHL operations.
French has written a number of books, including one on North Korea and a biography of Shanghai adman from the 1920s and 30s, Carl Crow.
French is fond of pointing out that Crow experienced - and wrote about - much of what present-day China observers claim as a unique first-time experience. (Look at this Paul French video)
Crow’s seminal book “400 million consumers” will soon be out in print once again and will show, French says, how little has changed in the way people observe China changing.
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRSWKUnj2g]
Popularity: 6% [?]
Shanghaiist
Met with Dan Washburn and Kenneth Tan of the Shanghaiist this morning for brunch.
Dan, a former newspaper writer in America’s Bible belt, came to China in 2002 and started an urban blog called Shanghai Diaries. Seeing the popularity of the site - and lack of such a site for Shanghai - Washburn approached the Gothamist team in New York.
Taking advantage of the City-ist network’s name, Dan started launched the Shanghaiist, which has turned into one of China’s most popular English-language blog/portals. There is no sharing of advertising across the city-ist network, but a number of the English-language portals in China have considered teaming up to make themselves a single sale for an ad rep. (Not a bad approach, in my view.)
As Dan concentrated in 2007 more on his book about golf in China, Par for China, Kenneth Tan joined the team to make sure the site is updated half a dozen times per day. Kenneth runs the site while selling men’s underwear from a disused bomb shelter in Shanghai’s French Concession.
Popularity: 6% [?]
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Thomas Crampton was a correspondent for the International Herald Tribune and The New York Times for more than a decade, reporting from five continents, writing a column on Asia and covering Asian politics, economics and culture. Currently based in Hong Kong, he writes here about China, the Internet and New Media seen from Asia, while also advising companies on digital communication strategies. For more information click here...
