Recently in On the lighter side Category

By David Barboza | The New York Times

July 18, 2011

SHANGHAI -- For years, DaVinci furniture stores have been places where wealthy Chinese in this and five other big cities can indulge their appetite for imported luxury.

Promoting itself as "a haven for premium products," DaVinci is the place to go for Versace sofas, sumptuous Fendi Casa calf-skin couches or stylish chaise lounges stamped Made in Italy. A DaVinci bedroom set can sell for $100,000.

That's why it set off a national consumer scandal when one of China's biggest state-run media outlets reported last week that it had discovered a tawdry truth: some of DaVinci's imported Italian furniture, the report said, is actually produced at a factory in southern China.

Besides sullying DaVinci's reputation, the revelations have raised questions about whether European furniture makers are keeping close enough tabs on their Chinese supply chain.

Maybe more significant, the scandal indicates that even in China -- where consumers have long been willing to turn a blind eye to pirated DVDs and Gucci knockoffs -- there are boundaries that no counterfeiter should breach. Not if the fakes are priced as high as the real thing.

"DaVinci plays a trick of mixing pearl and fish eye together, so we customers paid for pearl but got fish eye," one customer complained in the Chinese news media.

In a Web outcry, customers have demanded refunds and posted details of how their DaVinci products turned out to be shoddily made or reeking of foul-smelling lacquers.

DaVinci, which was founded in Singapore before branching into China, tried to quiet the storm by holding a news conference last week in Beijing, along with European executives representing some of the luxury brands in question. But DaVinci's chief executive, Doris Phua, fed the news cycle anew by breaking down in tears over loud interruptions by customers.

Ms. Phua insisted that the allegations were false.

That same day, however, customs officials in Shanghai said they had evidence that DaVinci was temporarily storing Chinese-made goods in a Shanghai warehouse, including cattle-hide sofas produced in nearby Zhejiang Province. The officials said that after a day spent in Shanghai's Waigaoqiao Free Trade Zone, the products -- with the paperwork duly filed -- were imported back into the country.

"Staying at the bonded zone for a day, the products changed from domestically produced ones to imported ones," Zhou Guoliang, a customs bureau official, told Chinese news media.

Over the weekend, Shanghai's official consumer watchdog agency ordered DaVinci to stop selling items bearing the label of the Italian brand Cappelletti, because of "fake ads" and "unqualified labels," according to Shanghai Daily, the local English-language newspaper.

A spokesman for Cappelletti and the other European brands could not be reached for comment Monday.

The allegations first appeared early last week on China Central Television, China's biggest state-run television broadcaster.

>> Original Report

By Tania Branigan | guardian.co.uk
January 28, 2011

China's air force is again under close scrutiny as internet users pore over images of its fighter pilots in action. For the second time in a month pictures of military manoeuvres - this time aired by the state broadcaster - have spread rapidly across websites and blogs.

This time the craft is not the country's new stealth fighter; and the reaction is not excitement but amusement. Sharp-eyed viewers have spotted that a key clip came straight from the film Top Gun.

China Central Television News last week broadcast a training exercise by the People's Liberation Army Air Force with one plane firing a missile at another. But an observant viewer spotted that the resulting explosion matches a blast from the final fight scene in the Tom Cruise movie.

The frame-by-frame comparison of the images, by someone posting under the name Liu Yi, demonstrates the likeness, and the Wall Street journal has produced a video comparing the news clip with the movie scene.

The news broadcast was posted on the CCTV website but vanished after news of the gaffe began to spread.

A spokeswoman in the foreign affairs department at CCTV said she was not aware of the claims and would need to look into them. She was not available when the Guardian rang back.

While the clip is no doubt the work of a maverick employee, many internet users have enjoyed the broadcaster's embarrassment. The authorities censor television more strictly than publications and CCTV's news bulletins, in particular, are notorious for their unflinching dullness.

When fire consumed a building in the glossy new CCTV headquarters in 2009, many attacked the broadcaster for censoring the images in its own reports. The celebrity blogger Han Han described the blaze as an act of self-castration by "the world's number one eunuch media".

>> Original Source

By Scott McDonald - AP | via UNCENSORED Yahoo! News
August 28, 2010

China's monster traffic jam has reared its head again, with trucks and cars backed up for up to 18 miles (30 kilometers) Saturday on a highway north of Beijing, although that is a third the size of what it was.

The traffic jam came four days after the break-up of an even bigger one -- stretching to 60 miles (100 kilometers) at one point.

State media said the latest jam on the Beijing-Tibet highway was caused by an accident and road maintenance.

The worst of the jam started in Zhangjiakou, a city about 90 miles (150 kilometers) northwest of Beijing, and stretched into Inner Mongolia in northern China, with traffic creeping along in fits and starts.

A woman who answered the phone at the Beijing traffic management office said drivers should not take the highway. "The traffic flow is very slow," said the woman, who refused to give her name.

Traffic jams are part of daily life in China's major cities, with vehicles moving at a crawl in parts of Beijing for most of the day.

In the last traffic jam on the Beijing-Tibet highway, which started Aug. 14 and lasted about 10 days, state media said some drivers were stuck for five days with drivers on the worst-hit stretches passing the time sitting in the shade of their immobilized trucks, playing cards, sleeping on the asphalt or bargaining with price-gouging food vendors.

A bottle of water was selling for 10 yuan ($1.50), 10 times the normal price, Chinese media reports said.

The main reason traffic has increased on the partially four-lane highway is the opening of coal mines in the northwest, vital for the booming economy, which this month surpassed Japan's in size and is now second only to America's.

Officials eased the first jam by directing truckers to take a 180-mile-long (300-kilometer-long) detour, the China Daily said.

It quoted one truck driver, Lu Yong, who was stuck in both jams, as saying he should have prepared some food this time. "Who knows when the traffic will move again?" said the 37-year-old, who was stranded for two nights in the last jam at almost the same location.

A woman at the Inner Mongolian traffic management office said it may take several days to ease the latest jam. "Please do not drive on this expressway," said the official, who also would not give her name.

>> Original Source

By Gao Yubing - Op-Ed Contributor - The New York Times
May 16, 2010

ONE hundred thousand fireworks lighted the sky over Shanghai on April 30, marking the grand opening of the 2010 World Expo. For the city's many pajama wearers, it also signified the start of a nightmare.

After pumping $58 billion into staging this mega-event, which is expected to attract more than 70 million visitors over the next six months, city authorities started a campaign to suppress one of Shanghai's most distinctive customs: wearing pajamas in public. Just as Beijing discouraged men from going shirtless during the Olympics, Shanghai wants everyone to wear "proper attire" for the Expo.

Catchy red signs reading "Pajamas don't go out of the door; be a civilized resident for the Expo" are posted throughout the city. Volunteer "pajama policemen" patrol the neighborhoods, telling pajama wearers to go home and change. Celebrities and socialites appear on TV to promote the idea that sleepwear in public is "backward" and "uncivilized."

But many residents disagree. Pajamas -- not the sexy sleepwear you find at Victoria's Secret, but loose-fitting, non-revealing PJs made of cotton or polyester -- have been popular in Shanghai since the late 1970s, when Deng Xiaoping, then China's leader, sought to modernize the economy and society by "opening up" to the outside world. The Chinese adopted Western pajamas without fully understanding their context. Most of us had never had any dedicated sleepwear other than old T-shirts and pants. And we thought pajamas were a symbol of wealth and coolness.

Shanghainese began wearing them to bed -- but kept them on to walk around the neighborhood, mainly out of convenience. At that time in Shanghai, people lived in crammed, communal-style quarters in shikumen -- low-rise townhouses in which families shared toilets and kitchens. Through the 1980s and '90s, the average person had less than 10 square meters of living area. To change out of one's pajamas just to walk across the road to the market would be too troublesome and unnecessary.

Besides, as a retiree told a news reporter: "Pajamas are also a type of clothes. It's comfortable, and it's no big deal since everyone wears them outside."

Mr. and Mrs. Wang, who lived on the street where I grew up in Shanghai, used to stroll after dinner in their pajamas -- nice matching costumes for a loving couple, now that I think about it. Then Mr. Wang would go out to buy cigarettes. In the mornings, Mrs. Wang, still in her pajamas, would dash to a street stall to pick up sheng jian (fried buns) for breakfast.

My own family, a little particular about clothing and slow with fashion, happened not to be part of the pajama troupe. But even those of us who never wore PJs in public are unhappy about the ban.

Two journalists from Hong Kong's Weekend Weekly magazine have already challenged it. They marched in their silk pajamas along Nanjing Road, a major shopping area in central Shanghai, and sat down in a restaurant. They met only one pajama-wearing comrade, and many people made fun of them (maybe because on a rainy day they were wearing silk jammies rather than the quilted or heavy flannel styles normally worn in cool weather). It wasn't what they expected in Shanghai.

Yang Xiong, the executive vice mayor of Shanghai and a director of the executive committee for the Expo, has acknowledged the "practical limitations" that led to pajama wearing, but still insists it is now "inappropriate." The Expo, the logic goes, offers a perfect opportunity to kick the habit; with a large influx of foreigners in town (though, in fact, they are expected to account for only 5 percent of all visitors to the Expo), we don't want to ruin our cosmopolitan image.

Yet even foreigners are disappointed about the pajama ban. Justin Guariglia, an American photojournalist who showcased Shanghai's lively pajama scene in his 2008 book, "Planet Shanghai," says the fashion adds to the city's character. A British friend of mine told me last winter, before traveling to Shanghai for the first time, "I want to see the Bund, the Jin Mao Tower and Shanghainese women in pajamas!"

The historic buildings along the Shanghai Bund will be there for a long time to come. So will the 88-story Jin Mao Tower. But street pajamas may disappear as everyone moves into modern, spacious apartments. By then, some Chinese fashion designer might, as Dolce & Gabbana did last year, send models down the runway wearing pajamas -- and how the audience will applaud!

>> Original Report

By Michael Bristow | BBC World News
20 March 2009

Local Chinese officials have been told to text their superiors for approval if they want to drink alcohol.

Officials in Hua County in Henan Province must text by 1700 [5 pm] on the day they want a tipple, according to a notice on a government website.

Teams of inspectors are being sent around the county with breathalysers to check the new rule is being observed.

It has been brought in to prevent corrupt officials using public money to "eat big and drink big".

Public exposure

"Government workers are strictly forbidden from drinking alcohol at lunchtimes on workdays," the government posting said of the rule, which came into force earlier this month.

"If there are special circumstances where officials need to drink on weekday evenings, they should text before 5pm," it added.

The notice says special circumstances include visits to the county by senior leaders or outside business people.

Officials working for local government or communist party organisations are also forbidden from getting drunk - anytime, any place.

Nine supervision teams will tour local government and party workplaces with breathalysers to check the rule is being kept.

These teams will also make sure officials are at their desks when they should be and are not wasting time by playing computer games, a local official said.

Anyone who fails to meet the new strict standards could face exposure on television.

Hua County appears preoccupied with improving the moral behaviour of its local officials.

Last year it held a conference that explored ways of "rectifying unhealthy tendencies".

Corruption is a major problem in China, where there are few checks and balances on what officials get up to.

China's Communist Party periodically launches anti-corruption campaigns in an effort to show it is serious about the issue.

>> Original source