Shanghai China Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Shanghai China. Here they are! All 100 of them:

At least, not in this country,' she added after a moment's thought. 'In China it's a little different. Once I saw a Chinaman in Shanghai. His ears were so big he could use them for a raincoat. When it rained, he just crept in under his ears and was warm and snug as could be. Not that the ears had such a rattling good time of it, you understand. If it was specially bad weather, he'd invite friends and acquaintances to pitch camp under his ears too. There they sat, singing their sorrowful songs while it poured down outside.
Astrid Lindgren (Pippi Longstocking (Pippi Långstrump, #1))
An inch of gold can't buy an inch of time
Nicole Mones (Night in Shanghai)
Large portraits of Mao on wooden boards several feet high stood at main street corners. Painted to make the old man look extremely youthful, healthy, and fat (a sign of well-being in China), these pictures provided a mocking contrast to the thin, pale-faced pedestrians walking listlessly below them.
Nien Cheng (Life and Death in Shanghai)
Understandably she had a lot of suitors, just like any other girls in China with two arms and legs.
Vann Chow (Shanghai Nobody (Master Shanghai, #1))
My own outlook and my values had been formed long ago. I did not believe in dividing people into rigid classes, and I did not believe in class struggle as a means to promote progress. I believed that to rebuild after so many years of war, China needed a peaceful enviroment and the unity of all sections of society, not perpetual revolution.
Nien Cheng (Life and Death in Shanghai)
Shanghai and Beijing society would come to accept her, especially if she carries a different handbag.
Kevin Kwan (China Rich Girlfriend (Crazy Rich Asians, #2))
In fact, after living in Communist China for so many years, I realized that one of the advantages enjoyed by a democratic government that allows freedom of speech is that the government knows exactly who supports it and who is against it, while a totalitarian government knows nothing of what the people really think.
Nien Cheng (Life and Death in Shanghai)
This is the kind of China you Americans always see in the movies - the poor countryside, people wearing big hats to protect themselves from the sun. No, I never wore a hat like that! I was from Shanghai. That's like thinking someone from San Francisco wears a cowboy hat and rides a horse. Ridiculous!
Amy Tan (The Kitchen God's Wife)
One of the most ugly aspects of life in Communist China during the Mao Zedong era was the Party’s demand that people inform on each other routinely and denounce each other during political campaigns. This practice had a profoundly destructive effect on human relationships. Husbands and wives became guarded with each other, and parents were alienated from their children. The practice inhibited all forms of human contact, so that people no longer wanted to have friends. It also encouraged secretiveness and hypocrisy. To protect himself, a man had to keep his thoughts to himself. When he was compelled to speak, often lying was the only way to protect himself and his family.
Nien Cheng (Life and Death in Shanghai)
As I gazed at Mao’s face wearing what was intended as a benign expression but was in fact a smirk of self-satisfaction, I wondered how one single person could have caused the extent of misery that was prevailing in China. There must be something lacking in our own character, I thought, that had made it possible for his evil genius to dominate.
Nien Cheng (Life and Death in Shanghai)
He advised that I could invest in stocks to make money. Given that I have a negative balance, that was where the conversation stopped.
Vann Chow (Shanghai Nobody (Master Shanghai, #1))
And now that I have been scammed once, I felt like it could not happen to me again.
Vann Chow (Shanghai Nobody (Master Shanghai, #1))
While I listened to the words of homage to Mao, I remembered Mao’s awesome power, like a blanket over China threatening to smother whomever he chose.
Nien Cheng (Life and Death in Shanghai)
From the point of view of the Chinese Communist Party, the greatest casualties of the Cultural Revolution were the Party’s prestige and its ability to govern.
Nien Cheng (Life and Death in Shanghai)
As I stood in the room looking at it for the last time, I felt again the cold metal of the handcuffs on my wrists and remembered the physical suffering and mental anguish I had endured while fighting with all the willpower and intellect God had given me for that rare and elusive thing in a Communist country called justice.
Nien Cheng (Life and Death in Shanghai)
Will told me you came from very far away. Where did you live before?’ ‘Shanghai,’ Jem said. ‘You know where that is?’ ‘China,’ said Tessa with some indignation. ‘Doesn’t everyone know that?’ Jem grinned. ‘You’d be surprised.
Cassandra Clare (Clockwork Angel (The Infernal Devices, #1))
That air of electric tension, of a great city on the edge of an abyss, is more noticeable than ever at the White Russian cabaret called, not inappropriately, "New York." You wouldn't know you were in China. An almond-eyed platinum-blonde has just finished wailing, with a Mott Street accent, "You're gonna lose your gal." ("Jane Brown's Body")
Cornell Woolrich (The Fantastic Stories of Cornell Woolrich (Alternatives SF Series))
Pilfering was common in Communist China’s state-owned enterprises, as the Party secretaries were slack in guarding properties that belonged to the government and poorly paid workers felt it fair compensation for their low pay. The practice was so widespread that it was an open secret. The workers joked about it and called it "Communism," which in Chinese translation means "sharing property.
Nien Cheng (Life and Death in Shanghai)
For so many years, the official propaganda machinery had denounced humanitarianism as sentimental trash and advocated human relations based entirely on class allegiance. But my personal experience had shown me that most of the Chinese people remained kind, sensitive, and compassionate even though the cruel reality of the system under which they had to live compelled them to lie and pretend.
Nien Cheng (Life and Death in Shanghai)
I love China! I love my country even though it is not always good ro right,' my daughter proclaimed in a firm voice. Her words brought tears to my eyes. I also had a deep and abiding love for the land of my ancestors even though, because of my class status, I had become an outcast.
Nien Cheng (Life and Death in Shanghai)
But it also had many large posters with messages of a more peaceful nature. These extolled the country’s economic achievement since the Cultural Revolution, which was supposed to have liberated the forces of production and increased productivity. Of course, the Cultural Revolution had done just the opposite. Official lies like this, habitually indulged in and frequently displayed by the authorities, served no purpose except to create the impression that truth was unimportant.
Nien Cheng (Life and Death in Shanghai)
Happiness in a family really revolves around how much money I have in my disposal.
Vann Chow (Shanghai Nobody (Master Shanghai, #1))
Neither [side] should seek hegemony in the Asia-Pacific region and each is opposed to efforts by any other country or group of countries to establish such hegemony.
Henry Kissinger (On China)
People keep asking me why I don’t return to China. I tell them I can’t return to a place I’ve never been. In
Lisa See (Shanghai Girls (Shanghai Girls, #1))
It feels like all we've been doing day after day is partying with Shanghai's Gossip Girl crowd.
Kevin Kwan (China Rich Girlfriend (Crazy Rich Asians, #2))
La nieve es un símbolo imaginativo muy potente, ¿no crees? Lo limpia todo
Alex Michaelides (The Bund, Shanghai: China Faces West)
So where did you go, Holly?” Rafiq never tires of this conversation, no matter how often we do it. “Everywhere,” says Lorelei, being brave and selfless. “Colombia, Australia, China, Iceland, Old New York. Didn’t you, Gran?” “I did, yes.” I wonder what life in Cartagena, in Perth, in Shanghai is like now. Ten years ago I could have streetviewed the cities, but the Net’s so torn and ragged now that even when we have reception it runs at prebroadband speed. My tab’s getting old, too, and I only have one more in storage. If any arrive via Ringaskiddy Concession, they never make it out of Cork City. I remember the pictures of seawater flooding Fremantle during the deluge of ’33. Or was it the deluge of ’37? Or am I confusing it with pictures of the sea sluicing into the New York subway, when five thousand people drowned underground? Or was that Athens? Or Mumbai? Footage of catastrophes flowed so thick and fast through the thirties that it was hard to keep track of which coastal region had been devastated this week, or which city had been decimated by Ebola or Ratflu. The news turned into a plotless never-ending disaster movie I could hardly bring myself to watch.
David Mitchell (The Bone Clocks)
One study comparing eight- to ten-year-old children in Shanghai and southern Ontario, Canada, for example, found that shy and sensitive children are shunned by their peers in Canada but make sought-after playmates in China, where they are also more likely than other children to be considered for leadership roles. Chinese children who are sensitive and reticent are said to be dongshi (understanding), a common term of praise.
Susan Cain (Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking)
Chad could put a solar panel on every roof in the country and yet become a barren desert due to the irresponsible environmental policies of distant foreigners. Even powerful nations such as China and Japan are not ecologically sovereign. To protect Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Tokyo from destructive floods and typhoons, the Chinese and Japanese will have to persuade the Russian and American governments to abandon their “business as usual” approach.
Yuval Noah Harari (21 Lessons for the 21st Century)
In an aggressive culture, non-HSPs are favored, and that fact will be obvious everywhere. Even in the study of pumpkinseed sunfish described above, the U.S. biologists writing the article described the sunfish that went into the traps as the “bold” fish, who behaved “normally.” The others were “shy.” But were the untrapped fish really feeling shy? Why not smug? After all, one could as easily describe them as the smart sunfish, the others as the stupid ones. No one knows what the sunfish felt, but the biologists were certain because their culture had taught them to be. Those who hesitate are afraid; those who do not are normal. (Science is always filtered through culture—the true image is not lost but sure can be tinted.) Here’s a good study to remember: Research comparing elementary school children in Shanghai to those in Canada found that sensitive, quiet children in China were among the most respected by their peers, and in Canada they were among the least respected. HSPs growing up in cultures in which they are not respected have to be affected by this lack of respect.
Elaine N. Aron (The Highly Sensitive Person in Love: Understanding and Managing Relationships When the World Overwhelms You)
But after living in Communist China for the past seventeen years, I knew that such a society was only a dream because those who seized power would invariably become the new ruling class. They would have the power to control the people’s lives and bend the people’s will. Because they controlled the production and distribution of goods and services in the name of the state, they would also enjoy material luxuries beyond the reach of the common people. In Communist China, details of the private lives of the leaders were guarded as state secrets. But every Chinese knew that the Party leaders lived in spacious mansions with many servants, obtained their provisions from special shops where luxury goods were made available to their household at nominal prices, and send their children in chauffeur-driven cars to exclusive schools to be taught by specially selected teachers. Even though every Chinese knew how these leaders lived, no one dared to talk about it. If we had to pass by a special shop for the military or high officials, we carefully looked the other way to avoid giving the impression we knew it was there.
Nien Cheng (Life and Death in Shanghai)
In a remarkable research finding, Yasheng Huang, an MIT economist, established that Shanghai had the lowest number of private businesses relative to the city’s size and its number of households in 2004, bar two other places in China. Only Beijing and Tibet, where government and the military are, respectively, the main businesses, had lower shares of private commerce.
Richard McGregor (The Party: The Secret World of China's Communist Rulers)
Since the very beginning of the Communist regime, I had carefully studied books on Marxism and pronouncements by Chinese Communist Party leaders. It seemed to me that socialism in China was still very much an experiment nad had no fixed course of development for the country had yet been decided upon. This, I thought, was why the government's policy was always changing, like a pendulum swinging from left to right and back again. When things went to extremes and problems emerged. Beijing would take corrective measures. Then these very corrective measures went too far and had to be corrected. The real difficulty was, of course, that a state-controlled economy only stifled productivity, and economic planning from Beijing ignored local conditions and killed incentive. When a policy changed from above, the standards of values changed with it. What was right yesterday became wrong today, and visa versa. Thus the words and actions of a Communist Party official at the lower level were valid for a limited time only... The Cultural Revolution seemed to me to be a swing to the left. Sooner or later, when it had gone too far, corrective measures would be taken. The people would have a few months or a few years of respite until the next political campaign. Mao Zedong believed that political campaigns were the motivating force for progress. So I thought the Proletarian Cultural Revolution was just one of an endless series of upheavals the Chinese people must learn to put up with.
Nien Cheng (Life and Death in Shanghai)
And yet, I have half a pot of dark brown honey remaining in my bag; a half a pot of honey that is worth more than nations. (I was tempted to write, worth more than all the tea in China, perhaps because of my current situation, but fear that even Watson would deride it as cliché.) And speaking of Watson... There is one thing left to do. My only remaining goal, and it is small enough. I shall make my way to Shanghai, and from there I shall take ship to Southamptom, a half a world away. And once I am there, I shall seek out Watson, if he still live - and fancy he does. It is irrational, I acknowledge, and yet I am certain that I would know, somehow, had Watson passed beyond the veil. I shall by theatrical makeup, disguise myself as an old man, so as not to startle him, and I shall invite my old friend over for tea. There will be honey on buttered toast served with the tea that afternoon, I fancy. (from 'The Case of Death and Honey')
Neil Gaiman (Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances)
Hence there are many things that governments, corporations and individuals can do to avoid climate change. But to be effective, they must be done on a global level. When it comes to climate, countries are just not sovereign. They are at the mercy of actions taken by people on the other side of the planet. The Republic of Kiribati – an islands nation in the Pacific Ocean – could reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to zero and nevertheless be submerged under the rising waves if other countries don’t follow suit. Chad could put a solar panel on every roof in the country and yet become a barren desert due to the irresponsible environmental policies of distant foreigners. Even powerful nations such as China and Japan are not ecologically sovereign. To protect Shanghai, Hong Kong and Tokyo from destructive floods and typhoons, the Chinese and Japanese will have to convince the Russian and American governments to abandon their ‘business as usual’ approach.
Yuval Noah Harari (21 Lessons for the 21st Century)
November 18, 2014: it’s a day that should live forever in history. On that day, in the city of Yiwu in China’s Zhejiang province, 300 kilometers south of Shanghai, the first train carrying 82 containers of export goods weighing more than 1,000 tons left a massive warehouse complex heading for Madrid. It arrived on December 9th. Welcome to the new trans-Eurasia choo-choo train. At over 13,000 kilometers, it will regularly traverse the longest freight train route in the world, 40% farther than the legendary Trans-Siberian Railway. Its cargo will cross China from East to West, then Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland, Germany, France, and finally Spain.
Anonymous
Qiao Guanhua and I drafted the last remaining section of the Shanghai Communiqué ... The U.S. side declared: The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. The United States government does not challenge that position. It reaffirms its interest in a peaceful settlement of the Taiwan question by the Chinese themselves. With this prospect in mind, it affirms the ultimate objective of the withdrawal of all U.S. forces and military installations from Taiwan. In the meantime, it will progressively reduce its forces and military installations on Taiwan as the tension in the area diminishes.
Henry Kissinger (On China)
the mystery was far from solved. Nobody understood why heparin—which is made from the mucosal lining of pig intestines, most of which come from China—was suddenly making patients sick. In February 2008, the FDA discovered the likely source of the contamination: a Chinese plant supplying crude heparin to Baxter. In a clerical blunder, the FDA had completely overlooked and failed to inspect the facility, Changzhou SPL, located about 150 miles west of Shanghai. Instead, it inspected and approved a plant with a similar-sounding name. Predictably, once FDA officials finally traveled to Changzhou in February 2008 to make an on-the-ground inspection, they found serious problems. The facility had dirty manufacturing tanks and no reliable method of removing impurities from heparin, and it acquired the crude heparin from workshops that had not been inspected. Chinese regulators were no help at all. A loophole in Chinese regulations allowed certain pharmaceutical plants to register as chemical plants, which made them subject to far less oversight. For U.S. congressional investigator David Nelson, whose committee was now immersed in the heparin crisis as well, the situation laid bare the “classically good reason to be suspect of production coming from any country that doesn’t have competent regulatory authority.” The FDA issued an import alert in March 2008, meaning that Changzhou SPL’s shipments would be stopped at the U.S. border. Though
Katherine Eban (Bottle of Lies: The Inside Story of the Generic Drug Boom)
Traditionally, young Chinese couples moved in with the groom’s parents, but by the twenty-first century less than half of them stayed very long, and the economists Shang-Jin Wei and Xiaobo Zhang discovered that parents with sons were building ever larger and more expensive houses for their offspring, to attract better matches—a real estate phenomenon that became known as the “mother-in-law syndrome.” Newspapers encouraged it with headlines such as A HOUSE IS MAN’S DIGNITY. In some villages, a real estate arms race began, as families sought to outdo one another by building extra floors, which sat empty until they could afford to furnish them. Between 2003 and 2011, home prices in Beijing, Shanghai, and other big cities rose by up to 800 percent.
Evan Osnos (Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China)
Researchers at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China, Saga University in Japan, and the University of California, Davis, proposed creating an artificial inorganic leaf modeled on the real thing. They took a leaf of Anemone vitifolia, a plant native to China, and injected its veins with titanium dioxide-a well-known industrial photocatalyst. By taking on the precise branching shape and structure of the leaf's veins, the titanium dioxide produced much higher light-harvesting ability than if ti was used in a traditional configuration. The researchers found an astounding 800 percent increase in hydrogen production as well. The total performance was 300 percent more active than the world's best commercial photocatalysts. When they added platinum nanoparticles to the mix, it increased activity by a further 1,000 percent.
Jay Harman (The Shark's Paintbrush: Biomimicry and How Nature is Inspiring Innovation)
One study comparing eight- to ten-year-old children in Shanghai and southern Ontario, Canada, for example, found that shy and sensitive children are shunned by their peers in Canada but make sought-after playmates in China, where they are also more likely than other children to be considered for leadership roles. Chinese children who are sensitive and reticent are said to be dongshi (understanding), a common term of praise. Similarly, Chinese high school students tell researchers that they prefer friends who are “humble” and “altruistic,” “honest” and “hardworking,” while American high school students seek out the “cheerful,” “enthusiastic,” and “sociable.” “The contrast is striking,” writes Michael Harris Bond, a cross-cultural psychologist who focuses on China. “The Americans emphasize sociability and prize those attributes that make for easy, cheerful association. The Chinese emphasize deeper attributes, focusing on moral virtues and achievement.
Susan Cain (Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking)
A well-heeled housewife confided that all the husbands in her social circle had recently accepted jobs in China, and were now commuting between Cupertino and Shanghai, partly because their quiet styles prevented them from advancing locally. The American companies “think they can’t handle business,” she said, “because of presentation. In business, you have to put a lot of nonsense together and present it. My husband always just makes his point and that’s the end of it. When you look at big companies, almost none of the top executives are Asians. They hire someone who doesn’t know anything about the business, but maybe he can make a good presentation.” A software engineer told me how overlooked he felt at work in comparison to other people, “especially people from European origin, who speak without thinking.” In China, he said, “If you’re quiet, you’re seen as being wise. It’s completely different here. Here people like to speak out. Even if they have an idea, not completely mature yet, people still speak out. If I could be better in communication, my work would be much more recognized. Even though my manager appreciates me, he still doesn’t know I have done work so wonderful.
Susan Cain (Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking)
Listen. How long you been going around with her, this sculpture babe?" I asked him. I was really interested. "Did you know her when you were at Whooton?" "Hardly. She just arrived in this country a few months ago." "She did? Where's she from? "She happens to be from Shanghai." "No kidding! She Chinese, for Chrissake?" "Obviously." "No kidding! Do you like that? Her being Chinese?" "Obviously." "Why? I'd be interested to know. I really would." "I simply happen to find Eastern philosophy more satisfactory than Western. Since you ask." "You do? Wuddaya mean 'philosophy'? Ya mean sex and all? You mean it's better in China? That what you mean?" "Not necessarily in China, for God's sake. The East I said. Must we go on with this inane conversation?" " Listen, I'm serious," I said. "No kidding. Why's it better in the East?" "It's too involved to go into, for God's sake," old Luce said. "They simply happen to regard sex as both a physical and spiritual experience. If you think I'm -" "So do I! So do I regard it was a wuddayacallit - a physical and spiritual experience and all. I really dop. But it depends on who the hell I'm doing it with. If I'm doing it with somebody I don't even-" "Not so loud, for God's sake, Caulfield. If you can't manage to keep your voice down, let's drop the whole -" "All right, but listen," I said. I was getting excited and I was talking too loud. Sometimes I talk a little loud when I get excited. "This is what I mean, though," I said. "I know it's supposed to be physical and spiritual and artistic and all. But what I mean is, you can't do it with everybody - every girl you neck with and all - and make it come out that way. Canyou?" "Let's drop it," Old Luce said. "Do you mind?" "All right, but listen. Take you and this Chinese babe. What's so good about you two?" "Drop it, I said.
J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)
Democracy’s brand was also damaged by America’s reaction to the Al Qaeda attacks in 2001. George W. Bush’s response to 9/11 dealt a twin blow to Western democracy’s allure. The first came in the form of the Patriot Act, which paved the way for spying on American citizens and gave the green light to multiple dilutions of US constitutional liberties. That imperative was then extended to America’s relations with any country, democratic or not, which pledged to cooperate in the ‘war on terror’. Autocrats such as Putin and Pakistan’s Pervez Musharraf went from pariahs to soul brothers almost overnight. When the Bush administration said ‘You are either with us or against us,’ it was referring to the opening of ‘black sites’ where the CIA could waterboard terrorist suspects, and the no-questions-asked exchanges of terrorist lists against which there was little prospect of appeal – a practice known in international law as refoulement. This gave undemocratic regimes an excuse to logroll domestic opponents onto the international lists, with devastating effects on political rights around the world. In the decade after 9/11, the number of Interpol red notices rose eightfold.3 Such practices belied Bush’s democratic agenda. For example, it robbed the US of the moral standing to criticise the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a China-backed body of central Asian autocracies that today operates its own refoulement exchanges of political dissidents in the name of counter-terrorism. The Bush administration’s approach was also geopolitically shortsighted. Just as the West’s support for the Afghan jihad against the Soviets in the 1980s laid the ground for the rise of Islamist terrorism, so America’s Faustian post-9/11 pacts with autocratic regimes helped sow the seeds for the world’s current democratic recession. That is certain to deepen under Trump.
Edward Luce (The Retreat of Western Liberalism)
Driving the move is a focus by Beijing on the Internet and innovation-driven sectors to boost slowing growth by easing listing rules. Another factor is a stock rally that has seen the Shanghai Composite Index climb 43% this year, although it fell 6.5% on Thursday. Meanwhile, Chinese investors are pouring money into funds that target startups. In 2014, 39 angel investment funds were set up in China, raising $1.07 billion, a 143% increase from the previous high in 2012, according to investment database pedata.cn, which is run by Zero2IPO Research in Beijing. Angel investors typically provide personal funds to finance small startups. High valuations and the loosening of listing rules will draw more Chinese companies to their home market, said Jianbin Gao of PricewaterhouseCoopers in China. “We anticipate significant growth in technology listings on domestic exchanges,” he said.
Anonymous
Between 2003 and 2011, home prices in Beijing, Shanghai, and other big cities rose by up to 800 percent.
Evan Osnos (Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China)
In 1865, Scotsman Thomas Sutherland started the Hongkong Shanghai Banking Company (later HSBC). A senior Chinese government official had issued a warrant for future HSBC board member Thomas Dent in 1839, to close his opium warehouses. This helped spark the first Opium War. France’s Le Monde Diplomatique said that “HSBC’s first wealth came from opium from India, and later Yunan in China.” Yunan is in the Golden Triangle area. The first Opium War forced China to cede Shanghai to Western powers, transforming it from a fishing village to China’s largest, most modern city with a network of opium smoking dens. Prof. Alfred McCoy would eventually call Hong Kong “Asia’s heroin laboratory,” and HSBC would become the world’s second largest bank.
John L. Potash (Drugs as Weapons Against Us: The CIA's Murderous Targeting of SDS, Panthers, Hendrix, Lennon, Cobain, Tupac, and Other Activists)
A study of advertising found that the average person in Shanghai saw three times as many advertisements in a typical day as a consumer in London. The market was flooded with new brands seeking to distinguish themselves, and Chinese consumers were relatively comfortable with bold efforts to get their attention. Ads were so abundant that fashion magazines ran up against physical constraints: editors of the Chinese edition of Cosmopolitan once had to split an issue into two volumes because a single magazine was too thick to handle. My cell phone was barraged by spam offering a vast range of consumption choices. “Attention aspiring horseback riders,” read a message from Beijing’s “largest indoor equestrian arena.” In a single morning, I received word of a “giant hundred-year-old building made with English craftsmanship” and a “palace-level baroque villa with fifty-four thousand square meters of private gardens.” Most of the messages sold counterfeit receipts to help people file false expense reports. I liked to imagine the archetypal Chinese man of the moment, waking each morning in a giant English building and mounting his horse to cross his private garden, on the way to buy some fake receipts.
Evan Osnos (Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China)
Hong Kongers are already privileged citizens of China. Even so, among a generation of students unformed by British rule, grievances about ordinary things like housing and poor job prospects have created a yearning for democracy. How long before the youths of Beijing and Shanghai put forward demands of their own?
Anonymous
only wished that in some way it was possible for him to separate his private and professional lives. And then he remembered again those eighteen women who had been slaughtered in Shanghai, their husbands and children, fathers and mothers, and the thought put his own problems back into their proper perspective. Xinxin saw Li immediately, standing among the waiting crowds on the other side of the Arrivals gate, and she went running to leap up into his arms. Margaret smiled at the sight of the two of them together. Li liked to present an image of himself as tough and unyielding, a hard man, with his flat-top crewcut and his square, jutting jaw. Margaret knew him, in reality, to be a big softie. But the smile on her face froze as Li turned, with Xinxin in his arms, to introduce her to the woman standing on his right. Mei-Ling was all smiles and sweetness, shaking Xinxin’s hand and then delving into her purse for a pack of candy. Xinxin’s initial shyness immediately evaporated and lights shone in her eyes. How easily the affections of a child could be bought. Margaret remembered that in her panic at seeing the man with the hare-lip in Beijing, she had forgotten to buy the mints for Xinxin. Li put the child back down, and Mei-Ling spoke rapidly to her, eliciting an immediate smiling response. She held out her hand which Xinxin took without hesitation, and the two of them headed off towards the shops on the far side of the concourse. Li turned self-consciously to meet Margaret. Margaret thrust Xinxin’s case into his chest. ‘Maybe Mei-Ling would like to carry her bag for her as well.’ Li’s heart sank, but Margaret wasn’t finished yet. ‘Did you have to bring her with you?’ Li sighed. ‘I do not have transport here. She offered me a lift. All right?
Peter May (The Killing Room (China Thrillers, #3))
No, not for the exhibit. When I worked on the research in 1977, I was told China didn’t yet welcome foreigners to the city.
Weina Dai Randel (The Last Rose of Shanghai)
I close my eyes. I hear the voices of the past in the wind and in the beating of my heart. My two mothers, my two fathers, and my dear uncle all tried to tell me I was wrong about the People's Republic of China. In the beginning, going all the way back to the University of Chicago, I thought socialism and communism were good, that people should share equally, that it wasn't fair that my family had suffered in America when others drove fancy cars, lived in big houses, and shopped in Beverly Hills. I ran away and came here in hopes of finding an ideal world, to find my birth father, to avoid my mother and aunt, and to crush my guilt. None of that worked the way I expected. The ideal world was filled with hypocrisy and with people like Z.G., who went to parties while the masses suffered. In finding my birth father, I only remembered how wonderful my father Sam was. He loved me unconditionally, while Z.G. wanted me as a muse, as a pretty daughter to show off, as a physical manifestation of his love for Auntie May, as an artist who would reflect how great an artist he is. I thought I could use idealism to solve my inner conflicts, but in healing my inner conflicts I destroyed my idealism. As I gaze into my daughter's face, everything becomes very clear. My mother and aunt loved me, stood by me, and supported me, no matter what. They were both good mothers. My greatest misery and grief is that I have not been a good mother and I can't save my daughter. I pray that in our final days and hours Samantha will know how much I love her.
Lisa See (Dreams of Joy (Shanghai Girls, #2))
Sweetheart, there were no real birth certificates in China until recently. All papers were forged. Whatever your adoptive parents got was not authentic.
Weina Dai Randel (The Last Rose of Shanghai)
the next US presidential election is not going to be for the American voters to decide between the Republican and Democrat nominees but a choice between dependence on China or American independence?
J.C. Ryan (The Shanghai Strain (Rex Dalton #10))
It was long said to be impossible to build a railway through the permafrost, the mountains and the valleys of Tibet. Europe’s best engineers, who had cut through the Alps, said it could not be done. But the Chinese built it. Perhaps only they could have done. The line into the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, was opened in 2006 by the then Chinese President Hu Jintao. Now passenger and goods trains arrive from as far away as Shanghai and Beijing, four times a day, every day. They bring with them many things, such as consumer goods from across China, computers, colour televisions and mobile phones. They bring tourists who support the local economy, they bring modernity to an ancient and impoverished land, a huge improvement in living standards and healthcare, and they bring the potential to carry Tibetan goods out to the wider world. But they have also brought several million Han Chinese settlers.
Tim Marshall (Prisoners of Geography)
As a natural consequence, all of the greatest empires developed the world’s leading financial center for attracting and distributing the capital of their times. Amsterdam was the world’s financial center when the Dutch were preeminent, London was when the British were on top, New York is now, and China is quickly developing its own financial center in Shanghai.
Ray Dalio (Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed or Fail)
Italy, in a coup for Beijing, was the first major industrial power to join the BRI. According to Ding Chun, director of the Centre for European Studies at Shanghai’s Fudan University, Beijing saw Italy’s debt crisis as an opportunity to expand the BRI into ‘the heart’ of Western powers, and the outcome was of ‘huge significance’ to China as it met stronger headwinds with the United States.125 Strategists in China had been taking close note of the fractures in the EU over the debt crisis, the austerity imposed by Germany, conflicts about migration, and Britain’s decision to leave. A divided Europe was much easier to tempt and subvert. A senior Chinese academic and former diplomat, Wang Yiwei of Renmin University, said that the Euroscepticism of the new Italian government made it willing to defy Washington and move closer to China.
Clive Hamilton (Hidden Hand: Exposing How the Chinese Communist Party is Reshaping the World)
It remains a feature of China to this day that when China opens up, the coastland regions prosper but the inland areas are neglected. The prosperity engendered by trade has made coastal cities such as Shanghai wealthy, but that wealth has not been reaching the countryside. This has added to the massive influx of people into urban areas and accentuated regional differences.
Tim Marshall (Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics)
The city of Shanghai hosts the first Disneyland in China.
Nayden Kostov (853 Hard To Believe Facts)
Feinstein has been a China-booster from the early 1990s, often backing pro-Beijing legislation in the Senate. Her husband has strong business links in China, which she denies have had any influence on her. In 1997 she compared the Tiananmen Square massacre to the shooting of four students at Ohio’s Kent State University in 1970, and called for a joint US–China commission on the two nations’ human rights records.35 Lowe left Feinstein’s office after the FBI warned her about him. China’s intelligence agencies also target Westerners not of Chinese heritage for information-gathering. In 2017 a long-serving State Department employee, Candace Claiborne, was indicted for accepting money and gifts from Chinese agents in exchange for diplomatic and economic information.36 She had been targeted by the MSS’s Shanghai State Security Bureau after she asked a Chinese friend to find a job in China for a family member. Claiborne maintained secret contact with MSS agents for five years, supplying them with information in return for help with her ‘financial woes’. She was sentenced to forty months in prison. In the early 1990s Britain’s MI5 wrote a protection manual for businesspeople visiting China; the advice remains relevant today: ‘Be especially alert for flattery and over-generous hospitality … [Westerners] are more likely to be the subject of long-term, low key cultivation, aimed at making “friends” … The aim of these tactics is to create a debt of obligation on the part of the target, who will eventually find it difficult to refuse inevitable requests for favours in return.
Clive Hamilton (Hidden Hand: Exposing How the Chinese Communist Party is Reshaping the World)
Actually I myself was more worried about her status after the Cultural Revolution. If there was to be a new society in which descendants of capitalist families were to become a permanently unprivileged class in China, like the untouchables in India, her life would be unthinkable.
Nien Cheng (Life and Death in Shanghai)
Deng Xiaoping went on with his efforts to normalize life in China and implement the Four Modernizations Program. Entrance examinations for universities and colleges were reinstituted.
Nien Cheng (Life and Death in Shanghai)
One of the most ugly aspects of life in Communist China during the Mao Zedong era was the Party’s demand that people inform on each other routinely and denounce each other during political campaigns. This practice had a profoundly destructive effect on human relationships. Husbands and wives became guarded with each other, and parents were alienated from their children.
Nien Cheng (Life and Death in Shanghai)
100 Air China: 22" × 16" × 8" (max: Economy, 11 pounds/Business, 2 pieces of luggage, 17 pounds each) 101 American Airlines: 22" × 14" × 9" (max: undisclosed) 102 Delta Air Lines: 22" × 14" × 9" (max: 15 pounds when flying out of Singapore Changi Airport, 22 pounds when flying out of Beijing Capital Airport and Shanghai Pudong Airport) 103 EasyJet: 22" × 17.7" × 9.8" (max: undisclosed) 104 Emirates: 22" × 15" × 8" (max: 15 pounds) 105 Quantas: 22" × 14.2" × 9" (max: 15 pounds) 106 Ryanair: 21.7" × 15.7" × 7.9" (max: 22 pounds) 107 Southwest Airlines: 24" × 16" × 10" (max: 15.4 pounds) 108 Turkish Airlines: 21.7" × 15.7" × 9" (max: 17.6 pounds) 109 United Airlines: 22" × 14" × 9" (max: undisclosed)
Keith Bradford (Travel Hacks: Any Procedures or Actions That Solve a Problem, Simplify a Task, Reduce Frustration, and Make Your Next Trip As Awesome As Possible)
Page 155: Before the War, textbooks used in Chinese schools in Southeast Asia were published mainly by two large printing concerns in China (the Commercial Press and the Chung-hwa Book Company, both in Shanghai) and were identical with textbooks used in China itself. Thus, pupils attending Chinese schools in Thailand were given as strong an indoctrination of Chinese nationalism as students in China proper; China was accorded paramount attention, invariably referred to as ‘our country’, and little attempt was made to foster an appreciation of local Southeast Asian traditions and history.
Richard J. Coughlin (Double Identity: The Chinese in Modern Thailand)
Nelson Bell took Price's book down to Shanghai to the Christian Book Room of Christopher and Helen Willis (in the future they would be the last Western missionaries in Communist China, for Helen Willis maintained the Book Room until expelled in 1959).
John Pollock
It was tempting to think that the attitudes of these students would change over time, either because a slowdown in China’s growth rate would thwart their material expectations or because, having reached a certain measure of economic security, they would start wanting those things the GDP couldn’t measure. But that was hardly guaranteed. In fact, China’s economic success had made its brand of authoritarian capitalism a plausible alternative to Western-style liberalism in the minds of young people not just in Shanghai but across the developing world.
Barack Obama (A Promised Land)
China’s economic success had made its brand of authoritarian capitalism a plausible alternative to Western-style liberalism in the minds of young people not just in Shanghai but across the developing world. Which of those visions they ultimately embraced would help determine the geopolitics of the next century; and I left the town hall acutely aware that winning over this new generation depended on my ability to show that America’s democratic, rights-based, pluralistic system could still deliver on the promise of a better life.
Barack Obama (A Promised Land)
The most noteworthy knock-Shaq-on-his-rear addition took place on June 26, 2002, when the Houston Rockets used the first pick in the NBA draft to select Yao Ming, the 7-foot-6, 310-pound center who had recently averaged 38.9 points and 20.2 rebounds per game in the playoffs with the Shanghai Sharks of the Chinese Basketball Association. Though he was just 21 and unfamiliar with high-caliber competition, Yao’s arrival was considered a direct challenge to O’Neal’s reign as the NBA’s mightiest big man. Sure, Shaq was tall. But he wasn’t this tall. Within weeks, a song titled simply “Yao Ming” was being played on Houston radio stations, and Steve Francis, the Rockets’ superstar guard, was being introduced to audiences as “Yao Ming’s teammate.” There was talk—only half in jest—of a Ming dynasty. Put simply, the NBA’s 28 other franchises were doing their all to shove the Lakers off their perch. If that meant copying elements of the triangle offense (as many teams attempted to do), so be it. If that meant adding Mutombo or Clark, so be it. If that meant importing China’s greatest center, so be it. And if that meant throwing punches—well, let’s go.
Jeff Pearlman (Three-Ring Circus: Kobe, Shaq, Phil, and the Crazy Years of the Lakers Dynasty)
The market in China is very favorable to ride-hailing services. For China has only about 160 cars per 1,000 inhabitants, compared to 867 in the United States. There are many obstacles to owning a car in China. As already noted, in Shanghai, in response to urban congestion, the cost of a license for a conventional car is often more than that of the car itself. Even if you have a car, parking is a challenge in cities that were not built for cars. All of this gives an added boost to the ride-hailing business in China.
Daniel Yergin (The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations)
Socialism in Chinese style’ is in fact a phrase coined to save the face of the Chinese Communist leaders who do not have the courage to acknowledge openly that socialism has failed in China. They hope to revitalize the State-owned industries with methods of management copied from capitalist countries and to use market forces as a substitute for central planning while retaining State ownership of those industries. They want the Party-appointed managers, who are bureaucrats on fixed salaries, to achieve the same degree of expertise and commitment as the entrepreneurs of private industries in the West. They want the workers to work much harder and more competitively for bonuses and small increases in pay but reduced welfare benefits. And they hope everybody will be motivated by patriotism to achieve increased productivity and profit for the State but at the same time to remain honest and incorruptible.
Nien Cheng (Life and Death in Shanghai)
The Party adopted unwritten rules to ensure that no one outstayed their welcome, limiting top leaders to two five-year terms and setting a retirement age. Even misdemeanours were handled in line with an unofficial code: members of the politburo might be purged for corruption, but the most senior figures of all – the Politburo Standing Committee – were untouchable, as were their families. You survived and thrived by cultivating patrons and your wider networks. The Party became safer, stabler, calmer and duller. For years, it worked. China prospered. People who might have eaten meat once a year dropped unctuous pork into their bowls each week. People who might never have left their county journeyed to Shanghai, Bangkok or Paris for shopping and sightseeing. They got their hair permed, wore bright sweaters and Nikes, tried red wine and McDonald’s, took up hobbies. It was attractive enough for foreigners to speak of the ‘Beijing model’. But there was a price. Corruption was endemic. To get your child into a decent school, or pass your driving test, or push through a business deal, or dodge prosecution, took cash: a few thousand yuan to a teacher, tens of millions to a senior leader. In cities such as Chongqing, gangs flourished, sheltered by officials they had bought off. Inequality was soaring. The more the economy grew and mutated, the more static politics seemed.
Tania Branigan (Red Memory: The Afterlives of China's Cultural Revolution)
Where America's WWII generation is often lauded as its greatest, the Chinese contemporaries of that generation deny any claims to such superlatives. Especially when China's 5,000 year history spans hundreds of generations. Nevertheless, this particular demographic defined by exodus and liberation, possesses the greatness that they share with all who survived the savagery of war, social upheaval, violent extremism, and the desperate scramble to find safe haven anywhere.
Helen Zia (Last Boat Out of Shanghai: The Epic Story of the Chinese Who Fled Mao's Revolution)
Certainly, what was true for the refugees and exiles of Shanghai remains true for people fleeing catastrophe in contemporary times. Whether these migrants are driven from Syria, Myanmar, Bosnia, Sudan, Somalia, Guatemala, or too many other places. These refugees have all faced the agonizing choice of whether to stay, or to flee.
Helen Zia (Last Boat Out of Shanghai: The Epic Story of the Chinese Who Fled Mao's Revolution)
In a world fractured by turmoil, there's much to learn from the profound human experience shared by the uprooted and displaced.
Helen Zia (Last Boat Out of Shanghai: The Epic Story of the Chinese Who Fled Mao's Revolution)
There are many lessons to be learned from refugees and migrants that can contribute to the understanding needed to navigate the global tectonics to bring people together, not drive them into flight.
Helen Zia (Last Boat Out of Shanghai: The Epic Story of the Chinese Who Fled Mao's Revolution)
The paradoxical result was that in the prewar years, as most of the countries of the world (the United States included) were turning away the desperate “prey” of Hitler’s Final Solution, it was Japan—Hitler’s ally—that was providing sanctuary, allowing them to stay in the Japanese-controlled Jewish settlement of Shanghai, China, and the city of Kobe, Japan.
Robert B. Cialdini (Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion)
Hot Pot is the agency of choice for brands looking to win in China - tailored to fit the needs of the most demanding consumer market in the world. Delivering success in this rapidly changing ecosystem requires solid strategic planning, exceptional localised creative campaigns and dynamic management across marketing and ecommerce channels. We have a growing team and offices in London and Shanghai and have delivered growth for iconic brands like Mulberry, Selfridges, Liberty & Whittard of Chelsea.
Hot Pot China
La condición humana está basada en una revolución real, que tuvo lugar en 1927, en Shanghai, del Partido Comunista chino y su aliado, el Kuomintang, contra los Señores de la Guerra, como se llamaba a los autócratas militares que gobernaban esa China descuartizada, en la que las potencias occidentales habían obtenido, por la fuerza o la corrupción, enclaves coloniales. Esta revolución fue dirigida por un enviado de Mao, Chou-En-Lai, en quien está inspirado, en parte, el personaje de Kyo. Pero, a diferencia de éste, Chou-En-Lai no murió, cuando, luego de derrotar al gobierno militar, el Kuomintang de Chiang Kai-chek se volvió contra sus aliados comunistas y, como describe la novela, los reprimió con salvajismo; consiguió huir y reunirse con Mao, a quien acompañaría en la Gran Marcha y secundaría como lugarteniente el resto de su vida.
Mario Vargas Llosa (Un bárbaro en París: Textos sobre la cultura francesa (Spanish Edition))
The technology for electrification of larger commercial fleets is moving fastest for buses. Global electric bus sales increased by 32 percent in 2018, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. China is the largest producer of electric buses, with close to 20 percent of its buses currently electrified. The European Union has a target of 75 percent of new bus sales in European cities to be electric by 2030. New York City has pledged to achieve a 100 percent electric bus fleet by 2040. Shanghai will achieve 100 percent electrified buses by 2020.
Amy Myers Jaffe (Energy's Digital Future: Harnessing Innovation for American Resilience and National Security (Center on Global Energy Policy Series))
You’re officially being transferred to Dreamland Shanghai to work with the Creators there. Effective immediately.”  All the blood drains from his face. “Shanghai? China?
Lauren Asher (The Fine Print (Dreamland Billionaires, #1))
Shanghai was not alone in holding postwar trials. They were held everywhere, and it is worth asking why. What was gained? They were less about reestablishing the rule of law than about creating what Tony Judt has tagged as "the postwar." The Second World War ended in 1945, but the postwar went on. This was an era in which the victors who had prevailed, sanctified by the sacrifice of those who had worked and fought for that victory, could not be questioned. This condition lasted for decades, perpetuated through curricula and public entertainment in an almost endless loop of self-congratulation that brooked no alternative. The Gaullists in France, the Communists in China, The Nationalists in Taiwan, and the list could go on: the war gave them the right to impose their terms on the people they ruled.
Timothy Brook (Great State: China and the World)
The other day in Shanghai, Nick and I were trying to get back to our hotel from Xintiandi. All the taxis had their signs lit up, but we couldn’t figure out why they wouldn’t stop for us. Finally, this Australian girl standing on the corner said to us, ‘Don’t you have the taxi app?’ We were like, The what? Turns out there’s an app
Kevin Kwan (China Rich Girlfriend (Crazy Rich Asians, #2))
then head of ING Bank in Shanghai, said it all: “The bad news is that the Big Four are insolvent; the good news is that they’re sovereign.” Technically, no state-owned commercial bank in China enjoys sovereign backing. In practice, however, the Big Four, as weak as they are, are as solid as China itself. As long as the government stands,
Gordon G. Chang (The Coming Collapse of China)
Over the past fifteen years China has had one of the most extraordinary housing booms in history, with monumental increases in both the volume of housing construction and housing prices. Between 1996 and 2012, annual construction of new housing tripled, from 600 million to nearly 1.8 billion square meters. From 2003 to 2013, the average price of urban housing rose 167 percent. Average house prices in the most desirable cities, Beijing and Shanghai, nearly tripled.17
Arthur R. Kroeber (China's Economy: What Everyone Needs to Know)
Indeed, the dialect is disappearing from the Shanghai streets. Beginning in the early 1990s, in compliance with the Department of Education’s Putonghua drive, and in an effort to make Shanghai a more cosmopolitan city for the twenty-first century, Shanghainese was actively discouraged in schools. Now an entire generation of Shanghai residents is forgetting how to speak the local dialect.
David Moser (A Billion Voices: China's Search for a Common Language: China Penguin Special)
Thanksgiving at Sea "Most of us will enjoy Thanksgiving Day ashore in the comfort of our home but some will be at sea, because they are working on some boat, barge or ship. Others will be out on the brine by design as passengers, now considered guests on cruise ships. What came to mind however, was my father who was a ship’s cook in the 1920’s, and the stories he shared with us. Best as I can tell, the year must have been somewhere around 1924 when his ship was in Shanghai, which is now China’s biggest city. Tied up at a rickety dock on the Huangpu River, he could see the famed waterfront promenade lined with the now famed colonial-style buildings. The time had come to butcher one of the penned goats, brought along for this expressed purpose. Being on a German freighter, Thanksgiving Day had no special meaning but stew made of goat meat was always a treat for the crew. Fast forward to the present… almost every single cruise ship at sea or in a foreign port, will celebrate Thanksgiving Day with a marvelous turkey dinner, plus joyful entertainment. Whether you celebrate the day with your significant other, or take along an entire gang of friends and family; Thanksgiving Day at sea will be far from the lonely day it once was. Holidays, including Thanksgiving are always especially festive at sea.
Hank Bracker (The Exciting Story of Cuba: Understanding Cuba's Present by Knowing Its Past)
Americans are six times more likely to suffer than citizens of Shanghai (China) and Nigeria. In general, citizens of English-speaking nations are twice as likely to suffer as those in mainland Europe. This is extremely unlikely to be anything to do with genes since they share the same genetic stock, and I have argued elsewhere that the reason is Selfish Capitalist governance. Likewise, if you compare rates in Singapore and China, the populations of which also share genes, they are far higher in the (Americanized-Anglicized) Singapore.
Oliver James (They F*** You Up: How to Survive Family Life - Revised and Updated Edition)
quarter of the police in Shanghai began carrying guns during routine patrols for the first time this week as part of a China-wide boost in police firepower following a deadly mass knifing blamed on Xinjiang separatists.
Anonymous
the police in Shanghai began carrying guns during routine patrols for the first time this week as part of a China-wide boost in police firepower following a deadly mass knifing blamed on Xinjiang separatists. Ordinary police in China generally don't carry firearms, and none of the officers patrolling the train station in the southwestern city of Kunming on March 1 was armed when at least five assailants began rapidly hacking at victims with long knives. Before armed reinforcements arrived to subdue the attack, the assailants
Anonymous
SHANGHAI (AP) — A quarter of the police in Shanghai began carrying guns during routine patrols for the first time this week as part of a China-wide boost in police firepower following a deadly mass knifing blamed on Xinjiang separatists. Ordinary police in China generally don't carry firearms, and none of the officers patrolling the train station in the southwestern
Anonymous
Though their salaries are above average even in Shanghai—which had China’s third-highest annual urban disposable income per person in 2012 at 40,000 yuan—the cost of appearing successful is stratospheric. A fancy flat and a cool car are well beyond their reach. They are wage slaves who cannot hope to be gao fu shuai—tall, rich and handsome—and marry a woman who is bai fu mei—fair-skinned, rich and beautiful.
Anonymous
In Shanghai's prime, no city in the Orient, or the world for that matter, could compare with it. At the peak of its spectacular career the swamp-ridden metropolis surely ranked as the most pleasure-mad, rapacious, corrupt, strife-ridden, licentious, squalid, and decadent city in the world. It was the most pleasure-mad because nowhere else did the population pursue amusement, from feasting to whoring, dancing to powder-taking, with such abandoned zeal. It was rapacious because greed was its driving force; strife-ridden because calamity was always at the door; licentious because it catered to every depravity known to man; squalid because misery stared one brazenly in the face; and decadent because morality, as every Shanghai resident knew, was irrelevant. The missionaries might rail at Shanghai's wickedness and reformers condemn its iniquities, but there was never reason for the city to mend its errant ways, for as a popular Chinese saying aptly observed, "Shanghai is like the emperor's ugly daughter; she never has to worry about finding suitors." Other great cities - Rome, Athens, or St. Petersburg, for instance – might flatter themselves that they had been conceived for virtuous, even heroic, purposes. Not so the ugly daughter who reveled in her bastard status. Half Oriental, half Occidental: half land, half water; neither a colony nor wholly belonging to China; inhabited by the citizens of every nation in the world but ruled by none, the emperor's ugly daughter was an anomaly among cities. The strange fruit of a forced union between East and West, this mongrel princess came into the world through a grasping premise-the right of one nation to foist a poisonous drug upon another. Born in greed and humiliation, the ugly daughter grew up in the shadow of the Celestial Empire's defeat by outsiders in the Opium War. Nonetheless, within decades, she had become Asia's greatest metropolis, a brash sprawling juggernaut of a city that dominated the rest of the country with its power, sophistication, and, most of all money.
Stella Dong (Shanghai : The Rise and Fall of a Decadent City 1842-1949)
China, talking about restrooms is very important, especially when seconds count. Memorize these characters: (Nán) is male, (Nǚ) is female. Often they may be more prominently displayed than the words “Men” or “Women” or even the familiar gender-specific silhouettes we are accustomed to seeing. Not to worry, however, if you can’t read the Chinese characters for the two gender choices. The general rule of thumb in almost all of China is “men left, women right,” meaning that the men’s restroom will be on the left-hand side and women’s on the right. Only in the areas populated primarily by minority peoples is the opposite true. If you’re female, and at least half the human race is of that persuasion, then you have a special treat in store at some Chinese airport restrooms outside of the largest cities like Beijing and Shanghai. You may walk into one of the lovely modern stalls provided for you. Lulled into a sense of security and familiarity by such a modern-looking restroom so far from home, you don’t even think to check to see if there is any toilet paper in the stall. That’s because in America there are always several giant-sized rolls in industrial-looking acrylic dispensers.
Larry Herzberg (China Survival Guide: How to Avoid Travel Troubles and Mortifying Mishaps)
Politely utter the magic words “kōngtiáo” (pronounced “kung tee-ow”) or “qǐng kāi lěngqì)” (pronounced “ching kai lung chee),” meaning “please turn on the air-conditioning,” and the driver will usually oblige. On longer trips, be sure to take down the number of your taxi so you can report the driver if he “takes you for a ride” or if you leave something valuable in the cab that you need to retrieve. Do not assume you’re being cheated, however, if the taxi driver asks you for several yuan more than the price on the meter. In recent years taxis have added a fuel surcharge (what is called the “Beijing Taxi Special Invoice Of Bunker Adjustment Factor”!). So if the meter says 20 yuan, for example, get ready to pay 22 or 23 yuan. Also be aware that taxi fares in cities like Beijing and Shanghai are a bit more expensive late at night than during the day. Of
Larry Herzberg (China Survival Guide: How to Avoid Travel Troubles and Mortifying Mishaps)
Japan is also in dispute with China over the uninhabited island chain it calls Senkaku and the Chinese know as Diaoyu, north-east of Taiwan. This is the most contentious of all territorial claims between the two countries. If, instead, Chinese ships pass through, or indeed set off from, the East China Sea off Shanghai and go in a straight line towards the Pacific, they must pass the Ryukyu Islands, which include Okinawa – upon which there is not only a huge American military base, but as many shore-to-ship missiles as the Japanese can pile up at the tip of the island.
Tim Marshall (Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics)
I met with several hundred college students at a town hall that same day. The Chinese authorities, wary of my usual unscripted format, had handpicked the participants from some of Shanghai’s most elite universities—and although they were courteous and enthusiastic, their questions had little of the probing, irreverent quality that I was used to hearing from youth in other countries. (“So what measures will you take to deepen this close relationship between cities of the United States and China?” was about as tough as it got.) I couldn’t decide whether party officials had prescreened all the questions or the students just knew better than to say anything that could land them in hot water.
Barack Obama (A Promised Land)
Unlike President Hu, Wen seemed comfortable exchanging views extemporaneously—and was straightforward in his defense of China’s trade policies. “You must understand, Mr. President, that despite what you see in Shanghai and Beijing, we’re still a developing country,” he said. “One-third of our population still lives in severe poverty…more people than in the entire United States. You can’t expect us to adopt the same policies that apply to a highly advanced economy like your own.” He had a point: For all of his country’s remarkable progress, the average Chinese family—especially outside the major cities—still had a lower income than all but the very poorest of Americans. I tried to put myself in Wen’s shoes, having to integrate an economy that straddled the information age and feudalism while generating enough jobs to meet the demands of a population the size of North and South America combined. I would have sympathized more had I not known that high-ranking Communist Party officials—including Wen—had a habit of steering state contracts and licenses to family members and siphoning billions into offshore accounts. As it was, I told Wen that given the massive trade imbalances between our two countries, the United States could no longer overlook China’s currency manipulation and other unfair practices; either China started changing course or we’d have to take retaliatory measures.
Barack Obama (A Promised Land)
the NSR—the Northern Sea Route. This fulfills a major Russian objective, the opening up of a transit route between Europe and Asia through the Arctic Ocean. It has been facilitated by the retreat of the Arctic ice, although with more variability than sometimes recognized. For instance, in September 2014, the ice extent was 50 percent greater than it had been in September 2012. The route cuts the distance between Shanghai and Rotterdam by about 30 percent, and in the process avoids both the narrow Malacca Strait and the Suez Canal. This opening has been welcomed by Japan, South Korea, and especially by China, which, describing itself as a “Near Arctic State,” applies its own distinctive name to the route—the Polar Silk Road.
Daniel Yergin (The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations)
Economists estimate that if international immigration restrictions were removed, we’d have massive global economic gains. Economist Michael Clemens has suggested that the gains would range from 50 to 150 percent of world GDP.9 On average, that’s a doubling of global income. The largest gainers would be the immigrants themselves. Greater global migration would contribute to a massive reduction in world poverty—just as internal migration has in China today, as we saw in Beijing and Shanghai.
Robert Lawson (Socialism Sucks: Two Economists Drink Their Way Through the Unfree World)