Madame White Snake: An opera troupe fights eviction in Shanghai

An opera singer fights to keep her community together when her theatre in Shanghai is slated for demolition.

Zhou Guixiang is the leader of a dilapidated opera theatre in one of Shanghai’s last remaining informal housing settlements. Having endured dwindling audiences and soaring rent for decades, Zhou and her troupe have refused to follow the fate of similar cultural spaces in the city.

But when authorities order the theatre demolished to make way for redevelopment, Zhou and her troupe are given one month to leave the premises.

 

Chinese police: Delete photos or face arrest at Shanghai Covid protest site

Chinese police are making people delete pictures from their phones along the road in Shanghai where large Covid protests took place over the weekend.

Shanghai lockdown: Residents protest after five weeks of strict zero-Covid measures

 

Residents have been banging pans and shouting from the windows of their homes, to protest against the government enforced lockdown in Shanghai. The Chinese government has been pursuing a zero-Covid strategy since the beginning of the pandemic, with the aim of keeping the country entirely Covid free. Criticism of the government is rare in China, but residents said they have struggled to access food supplies, while others have been temporarily evacuated from their homes so they can be disinfected.

China’s Most Censored Video - We Show it to You - Episode #105

 The lockdowns in Shanghai cause mass chaos, and some of the reasoning behind it is showing through.

China lockdown: tens of millions trapped in Shanghai

But in recent weeks, Shanghai's reputation has taken a hit. The city of twenty six million people is suffering a Covid outbreak, in a country resolutely sticking to a Zero-Covid strategy. Residents have been told to stay in their homes for weeks, with many of those trapped inside going online to complain about a shortage of fresh food. Now video has emerged of some residents pleading with police not to turn their buildings into quarantine facilities.

Coronavirus: inside Shanghai's largest makeshift Covid hospital

 

Yu Beibei, a resident of Shanghai, was transferred to the city's largest makeshift hospital after testing positive for Covid-19. Yu lives with her husband, their two-year-old daughter and a nanny. They were ordered to join a mass test on 2 April and all but her daughter were found to have the virus. After being kept under home lockdown for 10 days, Yu, her husband and their nanny were transferred to the hospital. Their daughter was handed over to her husband's father before they were hospitalised

Shanghai at center of COVID-19 outbreak in China

Shanghai is entering its third week in lockdown as part of China's battle to contain its biggest COVID-19 outbreak ever. Many residents are troubled by existential concerns: the fear of hunger. The radical curbs have put a squeeze on supplies of food and essential necessities for the city of 26 million people.

Riots break out in China as starving residents revolt against ‘Zero COVID’ lockdown

 

Disturbing video from Shanghai shows riots breaking out as desperate and starving residents revolt against “Zero COVID” lockdown.

mergency - Military Called in as Chaos in Shanghai Erupts after Children Taken Away

 

The lockdowns in Shanghai, China, are absolutely insane, and we got people sending us their footage and stories about it.

In Asia: It's All About Perception

What's the most commonly smuggled item into Korea? Well it isn't fake high end luxury items that's for sure.  Fake erectile dysfunction pills.  

  The erectile dysfunction drug Viagra tops the list of goods being smuggled into Korea.
They included some 19.22 million fake Viagra pills. The same amount of the genuine article would cost W207.6 billion. 
The next most-commonly smuggled product was another erectile dysfunction drug, Cialis, followed by 3M products and yet another erectile dysfunction drug, Levitra.

Where one's priorities lie (pun intended)


Politicians clean up the streets.

Municipal Corporation sanitation workers’ strike enters day five.

Delhi Ministers and Aam Aadmi Party MLAs along with party men armed with brooms cleaned the streets on Sunday even as the Municipal Corporation sanitation workers’ strike entered day five. A sanitation drive was launched in all the AAP constituencies and garbage was removed.

The sanitation workers on their part continued with their strike and the vociferous protestors has warned the AAP government that if their demands, which includes clearing their dues and regularisation, aren’t looked into, the garbage situation in the city is likely to ‘deteriorate’ in the coming days.

Finally a useful activity for an elected official. They're actually cleaning something up.

I took no money from the people who gave me money

Japanese Economy Minister Akira Amari resigned abruptly on Thursday to take responsibility for a political funding scandal that has rocked the government, but denied having taken bribes.
The resignation of Amari, who has spear-headed Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s economic policies, could pose a setback to the administration’s Abenomics growth plan aimed at driving Japan out of deflation, analysts said.
But the government moved swiftly to contain the fallout by appointing Nobuteru Ishihara, a former environment minister and secretary-general of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, as his replacement.

He will investigate his own wrong doing and find himself innocent. And feel good about it.

Built to look like the Pentagon meant to be a shopping mall

Chinese ghost towns are a well documented phenomenon - completely built up cities with very few people living in them.
But the Pentagonal Mart has now gained the dubious title of Shanghai's largest empty building.
This shopping mall in Shanghai was built in 2009 - inspired by the Pentagon in the United States.
But despite its massive size - 500,000 sq m - there are very few shoppers in sight.

But now, like the Pentagon it's nothing more than wasted space

As time goes by in Shanghai: video

Shanghai's Peace Old Jazz Band have been performing in China since the 1940s. We follow the band on a challenging trip.


Shanghai's Peace Old Jazz Band has been performing together since 1980, but the group's members have been playing much longer than that. Aged between 65 and 87 years, many of them have been playing jazz since the 1940s and have seen the world around them transform.

From the Japanese occupation and the Cultural Revolution to capitalism on overdrive, the band members have seen the many faces of China and withstood the government's suspicions of jazz. Through ages of political upheaval, they never lost their faith and belief in their music.

Now comes one of their biggest challenges: each year Rotterdam hosts the North Sea Jazz Festival and this year, Peace Old Jazz plans to make the trip. Follow them and director Uli Gaulke as they make the hopeful journey to win the love of the festival's audience.

Shanghai Choking On Air Pollution-video

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Shanghai authorities ordered schoolchildren indoors and halted all construction Friday as China's financial hub suffered one of its worst bouts of air pollution, bringing visibility down to a few dozen meters, delaying flights and obscuring the city's spectacular skyline. The financial district was shrouded in a yellow haze, and noticeably fewer people walked the city's streets. Vehicle traffic also was thinner, as authorities pulled 30 percent of government vehicles from the roads. They also banned fireworks and public sporting events. "I feel like I'm living in clouds of smog," said Zheng Qiaoyun, a local resident who kept her 6-month-old son at home. "I have a headache, I'm coughing, and it's hard to breathe on my way to my office." Shanghai's concentration of tiny, harmful PM 2.5 particles reached 602.5 micrograms per cubic meter Friday afternoon, an extremely hazardous level that was the highest since the city began recording such data last December. That compares with the World Health Organization's safety guideline of 25 micrograms. The dirty air that has gripped Shanghai and its neighboring provinces for days is attributed to coal burning, car exhaust, factory pollution and weather patterns, and is a stark reminder that pollution is a serious challenge in China. Beijing, the capital, has seen extremely heavy smog several times over the past year. In the far northeastern city of Harbin, some monitoring sites reported PM 2.5 rates up to 1,000 micrograms per cubic meter in October, when the winter heating season kicked off