Ikea clamps down on freeloading seniors in Shanghai
As fall rapidly descends on Shanghai, two of our city’s newer traditions are in the headlines this week, raising the question of what really defines tradition in a place where change is so rapid.
One headline involves a well-known IKEA furniture store in Xuhui District, whose cafeteria-style restaurant has become famous as a hang-out for lonely retirees. The other involves an eatery famous for its scallion pancakes, or congyoubing, which may soon get a new lease on life after being shut down due to lack of a proper license.
Both stories have become fixtures in our local lore in recent years, meaning many longer-term residents are familiar with them and consider them almost a part of Shanghai’s urban fabric. Read Full Post…
Mid-Autumn Festival is fast approaching, and that means time for all the usual scandals and other negative news surrounding mooncakes, the ultra-heavy treat that suddenly becomes a fixture in city life during this time. I’ll touch on some of those stories in a moment, including one headline on the plunging black market for mooncake vouchers and another on how unhealthy mooncakes really are.
But this year I want to focus on a more positive mooncake story, and one that’s quite personal. That story saw my university unexpectedly resume its practice of giving out mooncakes to employees this year, ending a two year ban of a tradition that dates back at least for the last few decades.
The resumption did come with a number of changes, mostly designed to discourage waste and which I’ll detail shortly. Read Full Post…
I had a sense of deja vu on reading about a plan to develop a scenic river town near our new Disney Resort into a bed and breakfast (B&B) district as a way to raise local living standards while providing some alternate housing options for park visitors. Then I remembered writing a few years ago about a similar plan to transform an aging but colorful area of Hongkou District near my home into a similar B&B hotspot.
These kinds of plans are great in theory, as they raise living standards by helping local residents to upgrade their aging homes into thriving businesses. Such plans also help to restore old architecture and can create unique communities with their own individual personalities, like the bustling Taizifang area. Read Full Post…
Two stories from our 2-month-old Shanghai Disneyland are taking center stage in this week’s Street View, one involving some irate visitors who had to wait in long lines for attractions that were closed, and the other a campaign to rid our subways of Disney balloons. But the real story here is the fact that our new Disney Resort has been relatively scandal-free in the 2 months since its grand opening in June, which seems like a major accomplishment due to the huge attention it’s attracting.
As a longtime reporter who formerly covered Disney, I can say with authority that the US entertainment giant is a magnet for publicity, both negative and positive. Any sort of accident or other negative thing that would normally be considered quite minor suddenly becomes major news when it happens inside a Disney resort, which undoubtedly causes numerous headaches for the company’s public relations team. Read Full Post…
As the latest heat wave shows no signs of easing its grip on Shanghai, our local officials are trying to provide some relief by releasing a report that shows how the city’s traffic has improved under a clean-up campaign that began in March. I was a bit skeptical on reading about the report, since it cited perceptions of improvement among city residents rather than focusing on actual numbers.
But then I thought about it some more, and realized that perceptions in this case may be equally or even more important than actual facts and figures. That’s because people’s perceptions of change are far more likely to affect their actual behavior than simply reading figures about growth in the number of tickets handed out for offences like jaywalking and running red lights. Read Full Post…
This week we travel from the streets of Shanghai to some of our city’s many parks, which are getting a little friendlier by extending their opening hours during the summer. The move isn’t particularly new and comes every year, but still reminds me each time how different Chinese parks are from the big, open spaces that most westerners enjoy in North America and Europe with mostly unlimited access.
This outdoor story did see one additional new wrinkle here in China last week, when the massive Zhongshan Park in Changning District become the latest in the city to stay open 24 hours. That broke with the earlier practice for nearly all parks in China of closing during the night, supposedly for safety reasons. Read Full Post…
Our subway system beneath the streets of Shanghai became just a tad quieter this week, with the official retirement of passes that have allowed elderly riders to use the metro for free for years. Regular users of our metro will know I’m referring to disappearance of the voice that barks out the words jinglaoka every time a user of one of these free passes enters or exits through the turnstiles of the subway.
That loud voice, presumably aimed at preventing abuse of the cards, officially went quiet this past Sunday, marking the end of an era for elderly people who could enjoy unlimited free rides during non-peak times. The new policy also eliminated free rides for retirees on our city’s bus system. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: The new Shanghai Disneyland may ultimately need to lower prices and control admittance to avoid negative publicity that could hurt its image, forcing analysts to lower some earlier bullish forecasts for the resort.
Shanghai Disney opens with fanfare
I do feel like I’ve written just a tad too much about the new Disney (NYSE: DIS) Resort here in Shanghai, which has just held its carefully scripted grand opening with surprisingly few glitches or negative publicity. But then again, the $5.5 billion investment is likely to be the largest for China this year, and Disney has averaged less than one new park per decade since opening its first Disneyland in Los Angeles in 1955. And based on previous experience, the new Shanghai Disney resort may also land at the center of at least a few minor scandals before it finally finds a more stable long-term footing, which could include a tempering of initial bullish profit forecasts. Read Full Post…
Shanghai’s past and future are center stage in this week’s Street View, the former represented by an exhibit on one of our city’s most famous historic families and the latter by this week’s opening of our new Disneyland theme park in Pudong.
I attended “The Soong Sisters: Special Memories” exhibition shortly after it opened last month, hoping to learn more about 3 of Shanghai’s most famous figures in the early 20th century. Separately, I visited the new Shanghai Disneyland (NYSE: DIS) a few days before its official opening this past Thursday, in a different quest to understand what is likely to become one of China’s top tourist attractions of the 21st century. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: Shanghai Disneyland will suffer from teething problems in its first year, most notably negative publicity due to high prices in the park, but will gradually overcome that resistance to become one of Disney’s most profitable resorts.
Shanghai Disney set for strong opening
Everyone is buzzing about the looming opening of Disney’s first mainland China resort, so I thought I’d weigh in with my own forecast for the $5.5 billion Shanghai Disneyland set to formally open this Thursday. In addition to all the facts and figures flying about, my assessment includes a personal visit to the newest Disneyland over the past weekend for a preview visit ahead of the grand opening. I thought the crowds would be restricted during the preview period to give a good impression to visiting reporters and VIPs, but was slightly surprised to find the place quite packed. But more on that shortly. Read Full Post…
Something seemed strangely familiar when I read a story this week about a new $1 billion joint venture here in Shanghai between local TV giant SMG and a US company called Jaunt. I could swear that perhaps I’d read the story before, or at least something similar. But then I realized my sense of deja vu was prompted by the term “virtual reality”, or VR, which was the focus of this new tie-up and has become a sudden buzzword in our local media.
VR isn’t the only high-tech word buzzing around our media here in Shanghai these days. In addition, we’re suddenly getting swamped with stories about high-tech incubators, as well as robots and artificial intelligence (AI). The new robot craze seems particularly pronounced, and a search for the word on Shanghai Daily’s website returned a staggering 889 results, including 15 in May alone. Read Full Post…
