May 2013
5 posts
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Lantern Festival, Shanghai -- Travel 365 --... →
(Photograph by Delphotos/Alamy)
The annual Lantern Festival brings crowds to the Yu Yuan district in Shanghai’s Old Town. The illuminating event—which includes a parade and lantern shows—caps off the 20-some-day celebration of Spring Festival, or Lunar New Year. (National Geographic)
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Protesters gather in Shanghai to oppose new... →
(People participate in a protest against a battery factory on a street of Songjiang district, on the outskirts of Shanghai on Saturday. Photo: Reuters)
Hundreds of protesters gathered in Shanghai yesterday to oppose plans for a lithium battery factory, highlighting growing social tension over pollution on the mainland.
Residents are concerned about potential waste water and gas emissions from...
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Shanghai Streets →
Love this picture by Rob Smith that was included in his photo essay for the Public issue of MAS Context about everyday life on the streets of Shanghai.
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Sliding to safety →
(Retired Shanghai machinist Zhou Miaorong demonstrates his invention of a rapid evacuationslide that makes escaping a burning high-rise safer and faster. Photo by Wu Ni/China Daily)
Zhou Miaorong, a retired Shanghai machinist, has invented a rapid evacuation slide that willmake escaping a burning high-rise safer and faster.
During a fire, residents in a tall building can lie in the chute and...
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Lingang New City set to attract global talent →
(Lingang New City designed by gmp Architekten)
High-end international communities will be built in the Pudong New Area’s Lingang New City, which is expected to attract top-level manufacturing and modern service industries by 2020.
The 315.6-square-kilometer Lingang New City is 75 kilometers from downtown Shanghai along the southeast coast at the mouth of Hangzhou Bay. It is connected to...
April 2013
10 posts
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Neighboring cities to be linked by Metro Line 11 →
(Image of Shanghai metro from Shanghai Daily)
Shanghai will be linked by Metro to Kunshan City in neighboring Jiangsu Province when subway trains will be put on trial runs within a week, local Metro operator said yesterday.
The Anting-Huaqiao section on Metro Line 11 is likely to become operational this year after a complete trial run. (Shanghai Daily)
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MVRDV: CBD at shanghai hongqiao airport under... →
Construction has begun on the 4.5 hectare sustainable central business district near the Hongqiao airport in Shanghai. (via designboom)
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Corten Steel Umbrellas to Shade Madrid's 2010... →
Madrid’s 2010 Shanghai Pavilion - a glazed sustainable housing solution wrapped in bamboo louvers - is about to undergo a sustainable upgrade with a new facade of Corten steel umbrellas. The building was designed by Foreign Office Architects and eventually converted into a commercial office and retail complex, although it is showing signs of rust and it’s bamboo elements have...
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Shanghai planning Pudong-Hongqiao high-speed... →
(Photo by Lars Plougmann via Shanghaiist)
Presently, getting between Pudong and Hongqiao is a time-consuming undertaking regardless of whether you take a taxi, bus, or train.
However, that will soon change (well, in several years) when the city opens a direct airport-to-airport rail corridor. Shanghai is currently in the process of planning a high-speed express railway line that would connect...
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Shanghai Tower Reaches 500 Meters →
The Shanghai Tower, which is still under construction, reached 501 meters (1,643 feet) April 11, surpassing the neighboring Jin Mao Building and the World Financial Center. Shanghai Tower is now the second tallest structure in China, and will become the tallest building when it reaches completion in 2014. (CTBUH)
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A tale of two cities reveals the art of ambition... →
(Courtesy of Ota Fine Arts. Copyright of Yayoi Kusama)
After the big debate on which will be the better financial centre for China and even the world in the next decade, Shanghai and Hong Kong have recently taken their competition beyond the financial industry.
Now, it’s also about art and culture. (South China Morning Post)
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Shanghai to Start Emissions-Trading Trials Before... →
(Smog in central Shanghai. oliverlaumann/Flickr)
Shanghai, China’s financial center, said it will start trials of emissions trading before the end of June in an effort to reduce the intensity of its energy use and carbon discharges.
Shanghai aims to cut its energy consumption and carbon releases per unit of gross domestic product by 3.5 percent this year, according to a document posted on the...
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Morphosis as seen by Iwan Baan →
Giant Interactive Group Corporate Headquarters (Photo by Iwan Baan)
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Pavilion 4 by HMA Architects & Designers →
The aim of our pavilion is to exhibit a practical example for sustainable city. Our design intention is to reuse existing structure and material as much as we can use, and reduce many scrap materials by half. After we researched existing building we found that original wall needs to remove. It is because it can’t stand for. When we remove all walls we try to keep original brick in the site...
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Minimum wage up to 1,650 yuan →
Shanghai is to raise the minimum monthly wage by 170* yuan (US$27), from the current 1,450 yuan to 1,650 yuan, starting on April 1. (Shanghai Daily)
* I guess someone at Shanghai Daily is not really good a math. The raise is 200 yuan.
March 2013
13 posts
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Cultural center required for large communities →
(Photo by Kenneth Lu aka ToastyKen)
Residential communities with a population of over 100,000 will be required to have a center for cultural and recreational activities, according to new Shanghai rules that will take effect on April 1. (Shanghai Daily)
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Sergey Balovin's 'In Kind Exchange' →
Sergey Balovin, a Russian painter in Shanghai, gives new perspective to the term “starving artist.” According to Visual News, he has lived money-free for the past few years due to a clever system of bartering. The artist paints a portrait of a friend, acquaintance or stranger, and in return, the subject of the painting provides Balovin daily necessities and goods as payment....
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Ringing the changes →
(A visitor to the Shanghai Telecom Museum tries to figure out an old switchboard and telephone. Photo: CFP)
The impressive four-story Renaissance-style building at No.7 on the Bund once housed the Great Northern Telegraph Corporation (GN), a Danish company that became Shanghai’s first telephone company. In May 1881, five years after Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, GN applied...
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Poor-quality Chinese concrete could lead to... →
A sand scandal is brewing in China, with concerns that low-quality concrete has been used in the construction of many of the country’s largest buildings — putting them at risk of collapse.
The recipe to make concrete is pretty simple — cement, aggregate and water — but the strength of the final batch can vary wildly depending on the kinds of aggregate and cement used and...
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Shanghai Disneyland: Uncovering secrets about the... →
(Storybook Castle at Shanghai Disneyland . Image by Disney)
The blurry, fuzzy concept art of a Shanghai Disneyland, filled with fireworks, spotlights and a great big castle, paints a picture short on details and vague on specifics about the planned project in China.
So why all the secrecy on Disney’s part? Three reasons: * To prevent knockoff rides by rival Asian theme parks, which...
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Eyewitness: Shanghai, China →
A view of Shanghai at night from the Guardian Eyewitness series.
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Shanghai residents declare war on drunken expats →
(Shanghai is China’s most international city with nearly 150,000 foreign residents. Photo by Alamy)
A group of irate, bucket-wielding Shanghai residents has reportedly declared war on drunken expats who they accuse of disturbing their peace. (Telegraph)
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How To Build A 2,073-Foot Skyscraper →
(Layered structure. Image by Gensler)
When it opens in 2014, the Shanghai Tower won’t just be the world’s second-tallest building. The 2,073-foot-high skyscraper, designed by the architecture firm Gensler, will be a showcase of 21st-century engineering, introducing the innovations that could become standard in the next generation of supertall towers. (Popular Science)
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The mask that maps pollution across the city →
Current pollution mask designs filter out harmful particles but could do much more – such as mapping areas of the city to point out the most polluted zones.
The image of Chinese city-dwellers clad in surgical-style face masks has become a potent symbol of that country’s modernity.
For Westerners it can be a confusing, even troubling spectacle; one that evokes the environmental traumas...
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China fishes 900 dead pigs out of Shanghai river →
This is in the WTF category news:
“An inquiry has been launched in China after more than 900 dead pigs were found floating in a river near the eastern city of Shanghai.” (BBC)
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SUDDENLY SHANGHAI →
(Photo for Dwell by Andrew Rowat)
This one is from the archives of Dwell, specifically 2006 -> The developer of Three on the Bund gallery gives them a behind-the-scenes tour of the creative side of Shanghai.
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1 in 50 Shanghai women has cancer →
(Photo by Tripfoto)
1 in every 50 Shanghai women has cancer, a total of more than 140,000 currently living in the city. Each year, 357 in every 100,000 are diagnosed with cancer in the city - 25,000 cases - and there are 14,000 deaths from it, health officials said ahead of International Women’s Day on Friday. (Shanghai Daily)
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World's largest mall in Guangdong province still... →
(Image by Remko Tanis)
It’s twice as large as the Mall of America and features exquisite Arc de Triomphe and Egyptian sphinx replicas, roller coasters, and a 2.1 kilometer canal. All it’s missing are tenants and shoppers.
More than seven years after its grand opening in 2005, the South China Mall (later rebranded New South China Mall in 2007) in Dongguan, Guangdong province still...
February 2013
9 posts
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Famous Cao'an wet market to close →
28121Cao’an Market, Shanghai’s oldest central wholesale-retail agricultural products market, is due to be shuttered at the end of the month, forcing stallholders and customers alike to less renowned markets on the outskirts of the city or small neighborhood greengrocers. (Shanghaiist)
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SHANGHAI MARRIAGE MARKET →
Shanghai is China’s richest city, and one of the least fertile, with a birthrate half the national average. One in three of the city’s women in their late 20s is single, three times as many as 15 years ago, according to the Brookings-Tsinghua Center for Public Policy. A generation of independent, educated, wage-earning women want to marry who they want, when they want.
Not if their parents can...
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Head of the Dragon: The Rise of New Shanghai →
(Pudong New Area and the Huangpu River, Shanghai. Photo by wecand)
Shanghai, 1989 Two decades ago, when Shanghai’s leaders looked out over the new New China born of Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms, it seemed history had gone off the rails. It wasn’t Shanghai, the city that invented Chinese capitalism, but Deng’s new experimental instant metropolis, Shenzhen, on the border with Hong Kong,...
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Shanghai Oriental Sports Center by gmp architekten →
(Photo by Marcus Bredt)
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Creative Shanghai: A Photo Essay →
The important of the creative industries to economic growth is a rhetoric that has also been part of the immense dirigiste of Shanghai’s velocious growth. And like the ‘creative scene’ in any other global or megacity, the proliferation of a vibrant creative economy (paralleled with the increased mediation of the city) is predicated upon a vibrant subcultural milieu. This photo essay is the...
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How China copies the west →
The seeds of China’s duplitecture movement have spread throughout the country, giving rise to Romanesque villas, Swedish towns, British villages, mini-Versailles, and Californian communities in the suburbs of cities from Beijing to Wuhan. In Shanghai, for example, local officials devised - and funded — a plan for “One City, Nine Towns” that called for ringing the metropolis...
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Shanghai Acrobatics by Jonathan Frantini →
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Shanghai North Railway Station, 1920 →
From the great Virtual Shanghai project.
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Shanghai Meicang Art District →
The sound of the Paris of the Orient resonates in this proposal for the Meicang site. It brings together local history, optimism and an essential emergent style in an elemental, sophisticated, and site-specific design strategy.
The four distinct existing structures – the silo building, the corridor structure, the Japanese villa and the No. 2 building – will be unified through a language of...
January 2013
8 posts
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“Shanghai’s annual economic growth remained 8.8 percent on average in the...”
– “Shanghai retains annual GDP growth of 8.8% in past five years” article in Shanghai Daily
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Shanghai Cinema Studio →
(The fake Nanking Road)
Shanghai Cinema studio had been on my visit list since a long time. The studio is famous to host a rebuilt version of Old Shanghai. It quite famous has it was for period movies and TV series, including “Lust, caution” and “Shanghai Shanghai“. It takes a long drive to reach the location in SongJiang but the trip is well worth it. (Shanghailander)
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Photos capture a changing Shanghai →
The second PhotoShanghai exhibition opened yesterday at the China Art Museum in the former World Expo site in Pudong and will last until March 24. With focus on Shanghai’s transformation, the exhibition displays 300 photos selected from about 4,000 entries submitted by more than 100 photographers and artists. The show is jointly organized by the Wenhui-Xinmin United Press Group, Shanghai...
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shanghai layers →
Interesting “Shanghai Layers” series by photographer Sasaki Makoto.
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Smog →
In the Pudong Lujiazui financial area in Shanghai, the whole city and most of the industrial parts of the country are suffering under a permanent haze.
(Image by Aly Song / Reuters)
Wearing a face mask outdoors is a necessity for those living in industrial areas. Sales of face masks in China are eight times higher than they were last year.
(Image by Aly Song / Reuters)
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“If I were teaching, I’d love to continue in the “Learning...”
– Denise Scott Brown in Denise Recollections 2/4 for Domus magazine.
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SHANGHAI WUZHOU INTERNATIONAL PLAZA →
This project by SDA is the winner of the invited design competition for the Shanghai Wuzhou International Plaza:
Situated along Huatai Road in the third ring of the urban metropolis of Shanghai, the Shanghai Wuzhou International plaza embodies the energy and vibrancy of the cities distinct urban environment. Inspired by traditional Chinese concepts of Yin and Yang, the development is organized...
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The Unsquared Circle of Old Shanghai →
Take a look at a map of Shanghai and it still jumps out at you — a tightly-wound ball of narrow streets threading through warrens of centuries-old houses. Call it what you will — the neighborhood seems to have no standard English name, and “Old City,” “Round City,” or simply “Old Shanghai” have been used before — but it’s impossible to deny this slice of China’s largest city stands a bit aloof;...
December 2012
6 posts
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Mall major step for Expo site redevelopment,... →
(Customers tour a newly opened shopping mall on Expo Boulevard yesterday. Photo by Zhang Suoqing)
The redevelopment of the former 2010 Shanghai World Expo site took a major step forward yesterday with the opening of a four-story shopping mall on Expo Boulevard. The first phase of the River Mall opened at the two sides of the 1-kilometer Expo Boulevard, the main access to the Expo...
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Tony’s Farm by Playze →
(Photo by Bartosz Kolonko)
Tony’s Farm is the biggest organic food farm in Shanghai, which produces OFDC certified (member of IFOAM) vegetables and fruits. But Tony’s Farm is meant to be more than just a place for vegetable production. The vision is to integrate the consumer and therefore promote a natural lifestyle.
To link the activities of the working people with the visitors of the farm,...
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Shanghai to use public housing fund for subsidized... →
(CARLOS BARRIA /CARLOS BARRIA/REUTERS)
The central government has approved 11.3 billion yuan ($1.81 billion) of public housing fund mortgage loans for the Shanghai municipal government to support the city’s government-subsidized housing program, sources said on Dec 19.
Tasked with building 170, 000 units of subsidized housing this year, land-scarce Shanghai is facing a severe financial...
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Dorset pub owner visits Chinese 'copy' in... →
(The Chinese “copy” (left) has since changed into a clothes store)
They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. But for Gail Caddy the question as to why apparent copies of the shop fronts of her pub and adjoining chip shop popped up in China has intrigued her for six years. (BBC)
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Scales
Façade of the Spanish Pavilion (EMBT) for the 2010 Shanghai Expo photographed by Kacam
