The new Line 7 interchange station on Line 1 has some pretty powerful and mobilizing photos about building a better metro system.

But what the hell is up with the spikes lining the exterior of the tunnel?

I know China is growing, modernizing, looking to the future, blah blah but maybe Level 7 of Contra is not the best model.

Here’s another pic that has the trains positioned like they are Transformers or something:

In the last year or so, these Food Safety Inspection notices have been popping up in restaurants and cafes all over town. Very few places seem to have the green face, and I’m guessing it may have more to do with guanxi than clean noodles.

Oddly enough, it’s still somewhat reassuring to know that most places I eat at earn a bright yellow look of apathy.

I never watch TV, but I’ve been hooked on this nightly miniseries on the Chinese Travel Network lately.

It’s about a Chinese modern-day Romeo who decided to hitchhike from Beijing to Berlin to be with his girlfriend. He and his chain smoking friend set off from Beijing with a video camera, backpacks, and head west.

Most of the time they are picked up by truck drivers, with the occasional good samaritan in a luxury sedan giving them a lift. They travel all through China, eventually crossing the border in Xinjiang to Kyrgyzstan.

Shortly after, the chain smoking guy needs to go back to Beijing for some reason and Romeo is on his own. The road eventually leads through all the ’stans to the middle east, where he passes through war-torn Afghanistan and Iraq. The last episode he was in Bulgaria, where he inadvertently ends up staying at a trucker’s brothel.

Traveler or backpacker shows are a dime a dozen in the west, but what’s really interesting about this show is seeing it from a Chinese perspective, where budget travel is just starting to catch on.

Last week I came across these knock off video game systems and games at a supermarket in the south of town.

I realize that the Mega Man series is notorious for having a silly number of (almost identical) sequels, but even this is pushing it.

“Properly Use the Elevator. the World Expo Concerns Everyone.”

Thanks for the advice, Haibo! Does the rule apply to this uh, escalator too?

Meant to post this a while ago. The aftermath of fireworks outside our apartment building.

I don’t know about you… but when it comes to choosing an anti-virus software for Windows, if it’s good enough for Jackie Chan, it’s good enough for me!

I almost wish I wasn’t using a Mac now!

The residential area I’m in is still being built up so I’m not in the heart of the action like before, but I still had a decent view. Things picked up when a guy in a minivan showed up and put two boxes of fireworks in the middle of the street. After lighting them all off, he went back in his van and just left! (Please excuse the annoyingly shaky cam)

Today (Saturday) is Chinese new year’s eve, and tomorrow (Valentine’s Day) marks the start of the new year. This year is the year of the tiger.

Chinese new year is the most important holiday in China, similar I guess to Christmas in the west, and everybody gets a week off. People spend time with their family, and children are given red envelopes (hong bao) with money. Small gifts of fruit or candy are exchanged between friends. A big family feast on new year’s eve ends with family members lighting off fireworks at night, and – more recently – counting down the clock to the new year.

An annual CCTV new year’s ‘gala’ variety show event is televised, and with an estimated 700 million to 1 billion viewers, it is one of – if not the – most widely-viewed televised event in the world (for comparison, the World Cup in 2006 had an estimated 715 million viewers worldwide).

Naturally, millions of people all over the country are heading home for the holidays so traveling at this time is extremely difficult. The train station near my house has stadium-like crowds of thousands of people heading back to their home town for the holidays, all carrying parcels, bags and gifts.

After the rush though, Shanghai is usually very quiet this time of year, because most people have left the city or are staying at home with their families. The streets are empty and it ends up feeling like a ghost town. That is, until the fireworks start, which go on late into the night on new years eve, and continue sporadically for a week or so after.

I always wondered how the holiday started, and apparently the story goes that a bad spirit named Nian (or 年, the character for ‘year’) would come around at new year and devour a village’s crops, livestock, and even people. People used loud noises and bright red colours to scare the demon away, and it never returned (hence the fireworks and red lanterns, scrolls, etc. that people hang on their windows and doors).

Other interesting CNY superstitions:

- People clean their homes (like a spring cleaning) before the new year starts in order to sweep away all the bad luck of the previous year. However, cleaning your home on new year’s day is considered bad luck as you may sweep out any good luck of the new year that has arrived.

- Getting a haircut on new year’s day is considered bad luck.