|
 |
Wednesday, January 19, 2005 |
The People's Daily, the official government newspaper to which all
party members had to subscribe, had a lot of discussions about the
death of Zhao Ziyang on its bulletin board. Therefore the government
decided to shut it down, just like Sina.com's bulletin board!
Zhao was a former Party leader who in an emotional appeal tried to
persuade the students on Tiananmen Square in 1989 to give up their
protests. He was afterwards put under house arrest and remained there
until his dead this weekend.
6:05:25 PM 
|
|
Sitting in a taxi right now in the middle of the chaos that is Shanghai
traffic. The third outside meeting today, and so the third time I have
to cross town. The good thing is that I don[base ']t drive myself, so I can
catch up on emails, prepare for a meeting or post on my weblog.
Normally it takes me about 20 minutes to get from the office to Weihai
Lu, but now I got caught in a traffic jam, so after 20 minutes I was
still within 5 minutes walking distance of the office. Traffic in
Shanghai is so unpredictable, the best is to take the subway. Then at
least you can be sure that you arrive at a certain time. But if there
is no subway close by, you have to take a taxi. I am pretty much used
to it, but it still gets on my nerves when drivers of two cars have an
accident leave their vehicles in the middle of the road until the
police comes, even though they barely scratched eachother.
5:49:40 PM
|
|
Xinhua ran a typical China journalism story today, I copy it here:
"China is now able to forecast the weather months in advance with a new
weather forecasting system that has completed a two year trial.
An expert with the China's Meteorological Administration says the
system, supported by a sophisticated computer, could analysis the trend
of atmospheric movement, rainfall and temperature changes within
several months by using mathematic calculations.
The system has already helped forecast droughts and floods in East Asia."
So who would believe this, even the average Wang would probably laugh
at this story. Interestingly, last week the 3-day weather forecast for
Shanghai predicted 3 days of rain. However, it was sunny the whole
week... Better focus on short term predictions first!
5:47:13 PM
|
|
On Monday night Beijing's bar street Sanlitun was closed for several
hours because a bomb was found. The bomb was placed under the Buick of
one of the bar owners. Security guards had found the pacakage after a
man on a bicycle had aroused their suspiscion when he placed something
under the car.
4:51:16 PM
|
|
For the first time since 1949 there will be direct flights between
mainland China (Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou) to Taiwan. The flights
will be charter flights by Chinese airlines and will only operate
between January 29 and February 23. The direct flights are meant for
Taiwanese business people to go home during Chinese New Year. Last year
there were some flights from the mainland to Taiwan as well, but these
had to make a stop-over in Hong Kong, so they were no true direct
flights.
I am glad to see that these initiatives take place, and that they are
allowed now. They will probably (well, hopefully) lead to better
relations between the two sides of the Taiwan strait.
1:07:39 PM
|
|
© Copyright 2005 Marc van der Chijs.
|
|
|
