Danwei

Small Hubei community has been free from fireworks for eight years (and loving it)

Barry van Wyk — Wed, 22 May 13 17:21:42 +0000

For eight years already now, a small workers’ residential community in Jingzhou, Hubei province has “quietly” been living a revolution. In 2005, errant fireworks caused a fire on a balcony in this community, and drawing the (painfully obvious yet in China excruciatingly absent) conclusion that fireworks on the whole just isn’t worth it, decided to ban the stuff altogether. As the front page of the Jingzhou Evening News reports today, for the last eight years Beiling has been living in a near nirvana-like state of calm and serenity. So can we all Learn from Beiling?

For eight now already, the small community of Beiling (北菱社区) in the district of Shashi (沙市区) in Jingzhou (荆州), Hubei province, has been fireworks-free, and the residents have not at all missed the noisy traditional accoutrements of every Spring Festival, wedding or funeral in China. In the estimation of its residents, Beiling has never been cleaner or more peaceful.

A reporter from Jingzhou Evening News (荆州晚报) yesterday ventured into the community of around 700 workers to get the lay of the land of this fireworks-free zone, and found the air nice and clean. At the main entrance of the community the reporter interviewed a few of the older residents who sat playing chess, and these informed him that eight years ago during the Spring Festival holiday, someone in Beiling was careless when shooting some fireworks and caused a fire on an apartment balcony. Fortunately no-one was injured, but at the time some of the residents were dismayed by the incessant cacophony from the crack of dawn to the middle of the night, and the “red carpet” of debris that would be left strewn everywhere every day.

So the community decided to henceforth ban all fireworks. And what was the result? A more peaceful environment, cleaner streets, less noise and ruckus, a greater sense of calm and security, and cleaner air. And not only this, as the residents informed the reporter, now during Spring Festival holidays people can leave their windows open and can freely engage with each other in all kinds of hearty activities without being disturbed. All the residents were in agreement that their community is so much better now.

The head of Beiling’s neighborhood committee put it succinctly: fireworks waste resources, pollute the environment, disturb everyone’s peace and are potentially dangerous – so why on earth would you have them?

So in the spirit of Learn from Daqing and Learn from Dazhai, it’s now time for China to Learn from Beiling.

Links and sources
Jingzhou Evening News (荆州晚报): 北菱社区8年不闻鞭炮声

Man finds his brother’s killer after 16 years

Barry van Wyk — Tue, 21 May 13 14:03:36 +0000

Sometimes the wheels of justice turn slowly. And sometimes you have to make them turn yourself. The Guizhou Metropolis Daily today has a front page headline that reads “He’s lying!” (他在扯谎), which was the phrase uttered by a man who heard his brother’s murderer proclaim his innocence. For 16 long years, Yang Shunming has been looking for the man who killed his brother, and by something of a fluke, he found him sitting at another table at a society dinner. The man had a new name, a new job, and dark secret.

For the last sixteen years, Yang Shunming (杨顺明) has been searching for the man that killed his younger brother, Yang Shunxiang (杨顺祥). The man who did the vile deed, named Ren Yuefeng (任岳峰), back in 1997 hired Yang’s brother as manager of his girlfriend’s western restaurant in Yunnan province. After working at the restaurant for five months, Yang Shunxiang found out that Ren was using the restaurant to distribute fake cigarettes. Yang Shunming advised his brother to quit, which he did. But Ren was not happy and demanded compensation, which Yang Shunxiang refused. Ren and two of his friends then lured Yang Shunxiang to a remote place, and beat him to death. Ren then disappeared.

Upon this tragedy, Yang Shunming resolved to find the man who was responsible and bring him to justice. For the last 16 years he has been doing part time work while moving from place to place, looking for Ren. He searched through Yunnan province, up into Shanghai, and into Guizhou province. Miraculously, last week Yang was attending a society dinner in Guiyang (贵阳) in Guizhou province, when he spotted Ren sitting at another table in the same room. Yang observed him closely, surreptitiously took some pictures, and alerted the police – he was sure he had his man. Turns out that Ren was working under a different name as the head of the Guizhou branch of the China Planning Institute (策划研究院). Ren at first maintained his innocence, but later – and after Yang Shunming has shouted “you’re lying!” at him a few times – confessed.

Links and sources
Guizhou Metropolis Daily (贵州都市报): 他在扯谎！

AQSIQ: Excessive lead detected in L’Occitane exfoliant

Barry van Wyk — Fri, 17 May 13 11:09:00 +0000

This post is an extract from the Danwei Bulletin, a briefing of company and market news collected from the Chinese news and social media before the information appears in English language reporting and sent to premium subscribers of the FT’s China Confidential and Danwei. Please click here for more information.

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Chinese media last week reported that the Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ) announced that they had detected excessive amounts of lead in a foreign skin care product: “Almond Delicious Paste”, a skincare exfoliant product sold by the French company L’Occitane en Provence. L’Occitane is a Hong Kong-listed French company.

AQSIQ said that tested samples of “Almond Delicious Paste” contained lead in excess of the 0.04 mg/g standard. The test results were included in AQSIQ’s regular quarantine list. This issue of the list, published in early May but covering the month of March, included 156 imported food products and nine imported cosmetics products. L’Occitane’s high domestic profile made it the media focus in China. The company blamed the problem on the presence of naturally-occurring lead in kaolin, one of the product’s ingredients that a supplier had not properly analyzed. However, it also said that it had already recalled the product when it identified the problem in December 2012, and could not account for the source of the March 2013 imports.

Companies and brands affected
L’Occitane en Provence (HKG:0973)

Migrant workers forming “temporary couples” in the cities

Barry van Wyk — Mon, 13 May 13 17:30:49 +0000

The millions of migrant workers in China have a tough life. Leaving their homes to find work and separated from their families almost all year round, they toil in the cities for little pay and reside in ramshackle lodgings. Yet this much we know about migrant workers, what we know less about is how these migrant workers deal with the loneliness and isolation of their long and difficult sojourns. After more than a month of research and interviews with migrant workers in the city of Ningbo, the Contemporary Gold (现代金报) newspaper from Zhejiang province today published a front page story on the phenomenon of migrant workers forming “temporary couples” (临时夫妻) in the cities.

The newspaper recounts the stories of a few individual migrant workers in Ningbo that have formed temporary bonds of love and support in the cities to help shoulder the difficult burden of urban life. The newspaper quotes statistics from the Ministry of Health that around 80% of migrant workers in China are in a sex-starved state. And not only this, they are alone in an unfamiliar location, with little money, and no-one to comfort them. So perhaps it’s not at all surprising that migrant workers are seeking to make temporary arrangements.

One of the stories that Contemporary Gold relates today is that of Old Shen and Xiaoyan, both married migrant workers, who found each other in Ningbo. Their tale illustrates just how some migrant workers are dealing with the difficult circumstances they face in the cities, and how they have to face the consequences of their decisions.

At this year’s Two Sessions in Beijing, Anhui NPC delegate Liu Li (刘丽) made mention of the phenomenon of “temporary couples” that migrant workers are forming in China’s cities. The Contemporary Gold (现代金报) newspaper from Zhejiang province today has a special investigative report on this phenomenon, the result of more than a month’s investigation among the migrant workers in the city of Ningbo. The newspaper cites data from 2011 that put the number of migrant workers in the city at 4.3 million, accounting for 43% of the city’s total registered population of 5.7 million.

Old Shen from Jiangsu province has been working as an electrician in Ningbo since 2000. He works alone in an office with no computer, only a desk. His wife and child originally came with him to Ningbo, but they eventually returned home because it was too expensive to keep them in the city. He used to visit once every year during Spring Festival, but that ceased as well when Old Shen opted to stay in Ningbo and work overtime.

Then one day Old Shen met Xiaoyan, a quiet fellow worker in the factory whose husband was working in Yunnan, when she asked him to go and fix the broken lamp in her rented room. They gradually became better acquainted and eventually were chatting every night. But Lao Shen was wary of falling in love with her.

Then during August last year, Xiaoyan caught a bad cold, and Old Shen took her to the hospital and stayed with her there for a day, and next day accompanies her back to her room. But then Xiaoyan would not let him leave. That night, they had sex for the first time. “It was like eating of the sweetest honey”, Old Shen was later to tell the journalist from Contemporary Gold. From then on, Old Shen spent three or four nights a week with Xiaoyan.

Yet Old Shen was deeply vexed by his infidelity. So during this year’s Spring Festival he decided to return home and tell his wife. The news was not at all well received by his family, and Old Shen and his wife eventually divorced.

Xiaoyan and her husband also divorced, and she and Old Shen are now living together in Ningbo. Yet they don’t want to get married, as they are not sure how long their relationship is fated to last.

Links and sources
Contemporary Gold (现代金报): 临时夫妻现状调查; 是什么促成了“临时夫妻”？

Whitening toothpaste safety scare

Barry van Wyk — Fri, 10 May 13 16:03:34 +0000

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On May 2, Modern Life Daily 当代生活报 reported on a study of test results of whitening toothpaste from Guangxi University for Nationalities, located in Nanning. The study found that six brands of whitening toothpaste contained ‘carcinogenic sulfites’. In response, the China Oral Health Products Industry Association cast doubt on the methodology of the study, but the report caused a spike of social media conversations on Sina Weibo, many of them negative.

As the chart above illustrates, the day the news was first reported in the media (May 2, the blue lines), it caused an immediate spike, followed by a larger spike the next day (the brown lines). Conversation gradually receded over the next few days.

The brands and companies affected are listed below. Note that the report concerns only whitening toothpastes, not the full range of products offered under the brands listed here.

Companies and brands affected
Zhonghua 中华 (Unilever NYSE:UN)
Colgate 高露洁 & Darlie 黑人 (Colgate Palmolive NYSE:CL)
Heimei 黑妹 (Masson Group – privately held)
Crest 佳洁士 (Procter & Gamble Company NYSE:PG)
Liby 立白 (Guangzhou Liby Group – privately held)

Fake sanitary pads: Massive margins driving rampant piracy

Barry van Wyk — Fri, 03 May 13 16:49:52 +0000

A typical sanitary pad customer will remain loyal to one brand for several decades, so a company with a strong brand and good distribution has a license to print money. And where there is money in China, there are pirates. Southern Metropolis Daily 南方都市报 last week reported that counterfeit sanitary pads worth over 150 million yuan were seized by police in a port city famous for its smugglers: Quanzhou in Fujian province.

The report explains that the reason why there are so many knock-off sanitary pads is the high gross profit of sanitary pad production, i.e. about 65%. The counterfeiters use cheap substandard materials, driving their margins sky-high. The report includes a number of interesting facts about the industry:

Tampons do not have high use rates in China but sanitary pads are popular: there are currently about 400 million regular consumers of sanitary pads, a market that was worth 41.1 billion yuan (US$ 6.6 billion) in 2010
The top ten brands (domestic and foreign) control 80% of the market with foreign brands at the high-end and domestic brands offering cheaper products
The article says China exported US$ 327 million’s worth of sanitary pads and imported US$ 10.1 million’s worth in 2012
The government has increased duty rebates on sanitary pads at what the article calls a ‘remarkable rate’ since 2009 in order to encourage exports

Notes on the chart
- Another of Proctor & Gamble’s (P&G) products called “Always” was also mentioned in the counterfeiting scandal despite not being marketed by the company in China.
- Followers * and Mentions*: Social media followers and mentions data from Sina Weibo; “Mentions” are for 2013 to date. Data collected by Danwei.
- The data in this posting is based a Southern Metropolis Daily 南方都市报 report published on 23 April 2013 which uses data from the following source: 2011-2015年中国卫生巾行业市场研究及发展规划调研报告 (2011-2015 China Sanitary Pads Industry Market Research and Development Report), published in July 2011 by China Market Research Reports. The market share data is for 2010.

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The Danwei Bulletin
The posting above is an excerpt from The Danwei Bulletin (Issue 5, 1 May 2013), a weekly report produced by Danwei and published on the FT’s China Confidential website and sent to premium subscribers. The Danwei Bulletin is a briefing of company and market news collected from the Chinese news and social media. We focus on information that has not appeared in English language reporting or not yet been noted by the investment and business media and communities.

A brief summary of each week’s report can be viewed on the China Confidential website, and the full edition is available by subscription.

For more information on The Danwei Bulletin or on our custom media monitoring and research services, please contact jeremy@danwei.com

The Danwei Bulletin: Stay ahead of the English news
The examples below illustrate how Danwei Bulletin readers get the scoop on business stories long before they hit the international media.

Gold Price
April 25 – Danwei Bulletin
Despite gold prices dropping in the last week, demand in China remains strong
Chinese social media websites were buzzing with reports of mainland Chinese visiting Hong Kong to buy gold. One photo that was widely shared shows a branch of the jeweler Chow Tai Fook with shelves completely empty after a visit by goldbug mainlanders.

May 3 – South China Morning Post
Chinese mothers beat Wall Street to force gold price rebound
Attempts by Wall Street funds to drive down bullion value through short selling thwarted by Asian mothers swooping in to buy for weddings.

May 9 – Bloomberg
At least 30 tons of gold were sold between April 29 and May 2 in Hong Kong, up more than 50 percent from last year, according to estimates by the city’s Chinese Gold & Silver Exchange Society.

Nongfu Bottled Water – major bottled water and beverage brand
April 3 – Danwei Bulletin
Bottled Water – Scandals continue
Wang Hai, a veteran Chinese anti-fraud activist, has suggested that there may be quality problems with Nongfu Spring tea beverages… Nongfu… has been on the defense recently, fending off charges that its water sources are polluted

May 3 – CCTV English – China Central Television News
Via Twitter
Nongfu Spring, China’s leading bottled water, pulled from shelves in Beijing as it failed national standards.

May 4 – Shanghai Daily
Industry body seeking Beijing ban for Nongfu Spring water
The Bottled Water Sales Association of Beijing published a notice yesterday saying that Nongfu Spring water was not only in violation of national standards but also guilty of false advertising and misleading customers.

May Day aftermath: 180 tons of trash left on Gulangyu Island

Barry van Wyk — Thu, 02 May 13 16:59:42 +0000

Another public holiday in China, another mountain of trash. The front page of the Haixi Morning Post (海西晨报) from Xiamen today is one of a few newspapers around China looking back on a public holiday of gridlocked traffic, congested scenic spots and – inevitably – mountains of trash, again.

As the Haixi Morning Post reports today, after the three-day May Day holiday the scenic island of Gulangyu (鼓浪屿) off Xiamen welcomed a total number of 186,700 tourist visits – and then had to sweep up 180 tons of trash, a new record for the May Day holiday. This is despite the fact that the total number of tourist visits was down by 3,000 compared to last year, when the trash left behind on the island totaled 165 tons.

What this means, then, is that less people are making bigger mountains of trash. In fact, on May 30th a mere 66,000 tourists left behind a full 75 tons of trash, a feat towering above the 80 tons of trash left behind by no less than 120,000 people on the 2nd of October last year during the Golden Week Holiday.

All this is despite that during the May Day holiday the island was equipped with more than 100 sanitation vehicles, 100 rubbish bins, and almost 300 hygiene officials. The latter worked every day from 4:30 am to 12:00 pm to clean up the trash but – as the newspaper sardonically puts it – “were unable to always maintain a clean environment”.

Here’s a few other front pages from China today on the congested and crowded May Day holiday:

: 贵州都市报

: 温州都市报

: 温州商报

: 新京报

: 燕赵晚报

Links and sources
Haixi Morning Post (海西晨报): 鼓浪屿3天扫出180吨垃圾

Corporate earthquake donations and social media

Barry van Wyk — Fri, 26 Apr 13 12:11:25 +0000

Soon after the Sichuan earthquake of 2008, donation fever gripped China as individuals and companies lined up to donate funds for disaster relief. Some of this enthusiasm turned sour: Internet users drew up a spurious list of the top ten “international iron roosters” 国际铁公鸡 accusing global brands like Samsung, Nokia, and Coca-Cola of donating nothing to the earthquake relief effort despite reaping in millions in profits in the China.

After the Ya’an quake of April 20 this year, companies foreign and domestic have been swift and public about their donations, and donation announcements have sparked considerable discussion on China’s social network services. The chart above illustrates the conversation spike on Sina’s Weibo microblog platform for ten prominent brands after their donations were publicized in the media. Apple and Samsung are notably prominent.

The above is adapted from The Danwei Bulletin, a weekly report produced by Danwei and published on the FT’s China Confidential website and sent to premium subscribers. The Danwei Bulletin is a weekly briefing of investment intelligence from Chinese media and Internet, presenting company and market news collected from the Chinese news and social media. We focus on information that has not appeared in English language reporting or not yet been noted by the investment and business media and communities.

A brief summary of each week’s report can be viewed on the China Confidential website, and the full edition is available by subscription.

For more information on The Danwei Bulletin, please contact jeremy@danwei.com.

Traffic policeman leaves black Audi with fake plates blocking gate

Barry van Wyk — Thu, 25 Apr 13 21:41:49 +0000

The black Audi has a reputation in China as the car of choice for the rich and powerful. Or for anyone pretending to be rich and powerful. And sometimes the dividing line between reality and pretense can become blurred. With the headline “Car blocks entrance to small community, is it the car that’s awesome or the driver?”, the front page of the Zhoukou Evening Paper from Zhoukou (周口) in eastern Henan today relates the story of a black Audi whose driver, a traffic policeman, clearly considers himself above the law.

At around 1 pm on Tuesday this week, members of a residential community on Zhongzhou Road (中州路) in the city of Zhoukou in Henan province were perplexed to find an Audi A6 with license plate AC0298 parked in front of the gate of their community, blocking all traffic in and out.

A journalist rushed over to the scene and soon found out who the absent driver was, as this is apparently not the first (but the third) time this had happened: a young man aged 20 who wears a police uniform.

According to the article, the guard explained:

The black Audi didn’t have the requisite card to enter, so I wouldn’t let him in. I asked him why he wanted to enter, but he didn’t reply, so we we’re deadlocked. This lasted for about a minute, whereupon the driver got out of his car, locked the doors, and walked off with the young woman he had with him in the car, which was left there in front of the gate.

About an hour later the driver of the Audi appeared again, and some of the residents – now clearly somewhat perplexed as no-one could drive in or out – tried to reason with him. But with a cigarette in his mouth he was completely unperturbed and deaf to their appeals. Someone soon phoned the (real) police, who checked up on the license plate. Turns out not only was the license plate fake, so were the tags on the windshield. Yet it emerged that the driver – a man named Li – was indeed a member of the traffic police of the local Public Security Bureau (PSB).

At 4 pm on Tuesday when the journalist left the scene, the black Audi was still there. But when he returned the next morning, he found the Audi parked on the inside. A resident then informed him that the previous evening at 6 pm, an officer of Mr Li’s PSB unit had appeared with said Mr Li to apologize for the inconvenience.

Not satisfied at leaving it there, the journalist went over to the traffic police where Mr Li worked to ask him about the fake plate and tags. Mr Li insisted that he had only lent the car from someone else (whom he would not name), and knew nothing about the fake plate and tags.

The newspaper ends its report by noting that fake number plates can land you in jail for 15 days and cost you a fine of up to 5,000 yuan. Yet it then asks forlornly: will Mr Li face justice?

Links and sources
Zhoukou Evening Paper (周口晚报): 车堵小区门，是车牛，还是人牛？

Weeping over broken pots in Ya’an

Barry van Wyk — Tue, 23 Apr 13 13:47:54 +0000

“In the Ya’an earthquake disaster zone I sobbed twice, and both times were by the side of cooking pots”.

The Chongqing Times newspaper today has a special section on the earthquake that occurred in the city of Ya’an (雅安) in Sichuan province last weekend. The special section, entitled “We are all Ya’an people now”, looks at the state of affairs 72 hours after the earthquake with the observation that “The destroyed area is calm and collected as it was before“. In eight pages of in-depth coverage, we see the extent of the destruction, how the survivors are being looked after, and how some people are trying their best to get on with their lives. One page in this special section outlines the findings of a journalist who went to take pictures of damaged homes, and found himself looking at a myriad destroyed stoves and pots as a cruel metaphor for the immense destruction wrought on people’s lives and livelihoods by the earthquake. Seeing all this destruction, there were two occasions when he wept.

The day after the earthquake struck last weekend, a journalist from The Chongqing Times (重庆时报) was in Longmen township (龙门乡), Lushan county (芦山县) in Sichuan province in the area that was the epicenter of the quake. At a village deep in the mountains he was taking pictures and walking from house to house, looking for dwellings that had escaped complete destruction. Yet he found none – all were destroyed. He met an old woman sitting on an embankment who told him that all the cooking stoves and pots in the village had been destroyed; now how would they cook food and boil water?

The journalist was struck by this, and decided to go and inspect the kitchens of every destroyed house if perhaps any of the stoves and pots had survived. In the first broken structure he entered, the kitchen area and everything in it were utterly wrecked; the same went for the second and third house he saw. “The more pictures I took”, he wrote afterwards, “the angrier I became:

I couldn’t help but curse the heavens above for being so heartless as to rob all these people of their means of preparing their food.

This was the first time that the journalist wept in Ya’an. Yet later he did find one house with its pots and stove still intact, even though there was a large crack in the floor. He retrieved the pots, and saw to it that they were used for preparing food.

A few days later the journalist witnessed another mournful scene by the side of a cooking pot. In Lingguan township (灵关镇), Baoxing county (宝兴县), he saw women preparing food in a few large cooking pots while some men were stoking the fires with wood. All the people here, the journalist noticed, had tears in their eyes. The reason for this, he was told, was that the people had seen a television news report that proclaimed that everyone in the disaster area were eating good meals of fish and meat and were doing just fine.

Yet this was far from the truth for the people standing next to the cooking pots: none of the leaders had come to visit them, and they had not much to eat. The journalist overheard an old man telling his wife that he had returned once to their destroyed home to retrieve some dried meat and mushrooms, but had ended up giving the food to a volunteer working in the area.

In Baoxing as well the journalist went to look through the homes in the area, and found that from the outside some of them appear to have been left untouched by the earthquake. Yet inside they were all devastated; in none of them could you cook a meal. All this signified, the journalist concluded, that the sweat and labor of two generations have been wiped out.

“We are all Ya’an people now”:

Links and sources
Chongqing Times (重庆时报): 如果你为一口锅哭泣

Gold rush in Guangzhou

Barry van Wyk — Thu, 18 Apr 13 13:44:12 +0000

The global price of gold has tanked, and Guangzhou’s gold market is booming.

The front page of the Guangzhou Daily (广州日报) today has images of long queues that formed the last few weeks in the city of people seeking to part with loads of cash for cheap gold.

From a peak of US$1,900 in August 2011, the price of gold has been on a gradual decline, and Monday this week saw a precipitous drop of 9% in a single day. Starting from Saturday and persisting through yesterday, a veritable gold rush has engulfed Guangzhou as the price of gold jewelry fell to 358 yuan per gram. Many stores in the city even sold clean out of gold. The head branch of the Dongshan General Merchandise store in the city yesterday sold 12 million yuan’s worth of pure gold, while its branch in Huadiwan set a new single day record for pure gold sales of 15 million yuan. The largest single purchase was when one customer bought 2,000 grams of gold for 1,75 million yuan.

Journalists from Guangzhou Daily noticed that people were waiting in long queues to purchase the stuff, and after parting with their cash, some happily brandished their spoils. One such was 70-year-old grandma Kong, who flashed the five bracelets, three rings, one set of large solid gold bars and a pendant she had just purchased for 70,000 yuan. Even gold jewelry items that usually sell much slower flew off the shelves in the last few days, and many stores ran out of stock. Yet customers were happy to pay in advance, even though (as some of the gold merchandisers told the Guangzhou Daily), most of the sellers in Guangzhou dropped their prices by only 12%, less than the 16% drop in the global price of gold last week.

Links and sources
Christian Science Monitor: Gold price: biggest tumble in 30 years
Guangzhou Daily (广州日报): 我为金狂

Chengguan makes video to “clear up misunderstandings” of his profession

Barry van Wyk — Mon, 15 Apr 13 21:08:17 +0000

This is probably not going the get the hated chengguan any love, but one of their number has made a short video in the style of a popular recent television advertisement to try and “clear up some misunderstandings” surrounding his profession. His video probably did nothing of the sort, but you can’t fault him for ripping off another television advertisement to try and stem some of the overwhelming negative press his profession generates. Or perhaps you can.

China’s urban law enforcement officers, known as chengguan, don’t have a very good reputation. Regularly in the news for abusing and assaulting street vendors or blind beggars, the chengguan have been a feature of urban security for noncriminal administrative concerns such as noise control, parking and sanitation ever since 1997.

Yet theirs is a thankless job, for obvious reasons. But now one member of their ilk has had enough of all the “misunderstandings”. In the city of Changzhou in Jiangsu province, one chengguan by the name Jiang Yifan (蒋佚凡) enlisted a few of his friends and colleagues to produce a video of 1 minute and forty seconds. The front page of the Yangzi Evening News (扬子晚报) from Jiangsu province today reports on Jiang’s video, which can be viewed here. Described as a mild-mannered (文质彬彬) man, Jiang got tired of all the jokes and jibes that ensued whenever he told anyone about his profession. The style of the video is a straight-up copy of a recent advertisement from the cosmetics firm Jumei.com that became popular on Chinese television (see the Baidu Baike page here to view the video of this ad). With a series of slow motion scenes and phrases that appear in bold on the screen, the Jumei ad was all about triumphing in adversity, self-confidently overcoming obstacles to succeed in your own way. Hence the chengguan ad follows the same formula of slow motion scenes and commentary, which are the following (screen text in italics):

Jiang and a colleague seem to accost vendors on the street with pointing arms and stern discussion – All you ever see are my extremely strict words
A bowl of instant noodles is steaming on his desk, his wife is on the phone, he’s working overtime – But you don’t see all my tears and grievances
A female vendor is cooking snacks on the street – You have your livelihood
Jiang and his colleague are standing in front of the female vendor and writing stuff in their notebooks - …and I have my duty
Other people on the street are laughing and pointing – You can be disdainful of my job
Street scenes of traffic and buildings – But we can show you who is really making the city pretty
Close-up images of Jiang working on a computer – Being a chengguan is destined to be controversial
Jiang stands watch on the street - We are questioned and mocked wherever we go
Jiang looks at himself in the mirror while putting on his uniform – But despite all this, even if no-one understands
Jiang pushes open a door to face directly into the camera – We will march courageously onward
Jiang looks sternly into the camera – I am a chengguan, and I can speak for myself

And all the while there’s dramatic music playing for effect. How’s that for a little chengguan pushback?

As Jiang himself points out to Yangzi Evening News, every day the chengguan are faced with numerous contradictions, and they will be blamed for whatever they do. People swear at them, and accuse them of meddling in other people’s business. What’s a poor chengguan to do?

Links and sources
Yangzi Evening News (扬子晚报): 常州80后城管自演自拍宣传片　“为自己代言”化解市民误解

“Don’t let your stomach become an animal graveyard”

Barry van Wyk — Fri, 12 Apr 13 18:10:28 +0000

The newspaper Daily Sunshine (晶报) from Shenzhen in Guangdong province today includes a special section entitled “Evil returns from the grave” (恶的还魂) (or perhaps another translation could be “The recycling of evil”) as a “reflection on the relationship between animals and humans”. The largest part of the newspaper’s front page is taken up by a Xi Jinping headline and a large image on the ongoing standoff on the Korean peninsula. The top corner of the front page refers to the sudden cancelling of the Tarantino film Django Unchained.

In light of all the animal massacres that have been so prominent in China news of late, the Daily Sunshine‘s reflection on this matter is – unsurprisingly – quite morbid, yet it also contains a message of hope.

The opening sentences of the special section sets the scene as follows:

Looking over a series of shocking, ghastly pictures [e.g. of dead pigs, ducks or swans?] causes one to shiver from the very bottom of the soul. What kind of evil is this that transforms cities into slaughterhouses for wild animals? What kind of brutality is this that transforms out stomachs into cemeteries?

Is it ignorance that makes our stomachs into slaughterhouses for animals?, the newspaper asks. A third of all the animal species in the world are on the verge of extinction, it continues, yet are we but helpless in the face of this massacre? Will we let this tragedy play itself out until the bitter end? In Shenzhen, the Daily Mirror consoles itself, people are taking action. Volunteers are joining groups like the Cat Network (猫网) and the Bird Watching Society, and people are restricting their appetites and spreading awareness of animal preservation.

As part of its special section, Daily Sunshine includes an article about an undercover reporter that was sent to a Hakka restaurant in Shenzhen suspected of serving various kinds of wild meat. Indeed, outside the restaurant the journalist saw cages filled with wild mountain fowl and exotic birds, snakes, tortoises, porcupines, etc. Another article ”exposes” the cruel practice of people going up the mountains to catch wild birds for fun and them eating them.

With all this the newspaper admonishes its readers: ”Don’t let your stomach become an animal graveyard”.

Links and sources
Daily Sunshine (晶报): 恶的还魂; 暗访残酷的杀戮曝光猎鸟从未停

The Danwei Bulletin

Danwei — Wed, 10 Apr 13 15:56:36 +0000

The Danwei Bulletin is a new weekly report produced by Danwei and published on the FT’s China Confidential website and sent to premium subscribers. The Danwei Bulletin is a briefing of company and market news collected from the Chinese news and social media before the information appears in English language reporting.

A brief summary of each week’s report can be viewed on the China Confidential website, and the full edition is available on subscription. For more information on The Danwei Bulletin or about our custom media monitoring and research services, please contact jeremy@danwei.com.

Stay ahead of the news
The examples below illustrate how the Danwei Bulletin readers get the scoop on business stories long before they hit the international media.

May 3 – CCTV English – China Central Television News
Via Twitter
Nongfu Spring, China’s leading bottled water, pulled from shelves in Beijing as it failed national standards.

Corner store consumption: profiles of small Chinese convenience stores

Zach Hyman — Tue, 09 Apr 13 15:09:16 +0000

Xiaomaibu literally means small selling department, and refers to Chinese corner shops or small convenience stores usually run by an individual or a family. The person who runs such stores may sleep inside the store. The range of products and services sold in such stores varies immensely. This post highlights such xiaomaibu in a few locations around China, looking at the most popular products sold in each store along with particular services offered that make each xiaomaibu an essential local dispenser.

Danwei previously published a illustrated article on on xiaomaibu – Chinese corner stores by Jonah Kessel.

# 1: “White bread” mobile breakfast

Location: near the entrance to Chongqing University, Chongqing
Top-selling product: Taoli (桃李) brand “Chunshu” (醇熟) packaged toast

“One bite, one gulp” – White bread and milk for breakfast on the go

When the store began stocking this food product several years ago, they decided to do so primarily because they had been exposed to the stereotype that “Foreigners prefer eating bread over noodles”, and hoped to attract them. Initially it was indeed primarily foreigners who bought it, “particularly Koreans” the owner said. Then, gradually, the owner witnessed a change, and before long there were just as many Chinese buying bread as there were foreigners.

Though seemingly designed to be prepared in a toaster, the bread is not consumed by most of the store’s Chinese customers (that is, university students) in this way. Most purchase it in the morning on their way into campus for class, and eat it by holding the package of (untoasted) bread in one hand and a carton of milk in the other hand. The owner termed this style “one bite, one gulp” or, washing down each bite of toast with a swig of milk. The owner said that she thought it had mostly to do with their lack of time to sit down and enjoy a lengthy breakfast as they rush to class.

#2: Sliced fruit in syrup with re-usable jar

Location: Long-distance bus station in Chongqing
Top-selling product: Huanlejia (欢乐家) sliced fruit in syrup

Sliced fruit in syrup in a very useful jar

“I can’t speak for ‘most popular’ – all of the things I sell here are popular,” the owner of this store conceded, “but one very common choice is this [Huanlejia (欢乐家) brand] sliced fruit in syrup.” He grabbed a jar each of pineapple and peach and placed them on the counter.

It wasn’t immediately apparent why travelers are so fond of it, as consuming it required utensils and would naturally be easier while not riding a form of transportation prone to unpredictable bumps, stops, and starts such as trains and buses. Yet the owner revealed that its popularity didn’t have as much to do with the contents of the container as with the container itself. Around the lip of the glass jar is a plastic ring with a loop attached for simple carriage. “When people finish the fruit, they reuse the jar by filling it up with water or tea and carrying it with them on their trip, or they give it as a gift to whomever they are traveling to see”.

#3: Lunch and cellphone account/battery charging

Location: Residential middle school entrance in Tongren, Guizhou
Top-selling product: Tongyi (统一) brand orange juice

Lunch with cellphone top-up and charging

Although nominally a xiaomaibu, this store’s capacity as a retailer of daily-use goods and cold beverages is of only secondary importance to the throng of middle school students regularly passing through. The students’ priorities appeared to be 1) eating, and 2) charging and adding credit to their cellphones. Many students chose to add a relatively small amount of money – ten or twenty kuai in most cases. Every student who added credit to their phone also stayed for lunch, and a few also handed their cellphones over to the owner to be plugged into the powerstrip behind the counter.

Although a natural draw as a place to fill one’s stomach and cellphone accounts and batteries, the store owner does not receive any commission from China Mobile for charging their cellphones. “I [offer this service] for free in order to ‘serve the people’ more effectively,” he said, evoking the dictum of Chairman Mao to “serve the people” (wei renmin fuwu, 为人民服务). He identified the most common-selling item as the Tongyi (统一) brand orange juice beverage (鲜橙多).

#4: Cigarettes and real estate brokering

Location: Near Xiangqian Square in Wanyuan, Sichuan
Top-selling product: Yun Yan (雲焰) cigarettes

Xiaomaibu and local apartment broker

Positioned at the end of an alley of residential buildings, this xiaomaibu serves as a social hub for many apartment residents. Like other xiaomaibu, the store’s inventory has been finely tuned over the course of years to correlate with and keep pace with the evolving consumption patterns of the neighborhood. The most sold item is Yun Yan (雲焰) cigarettes, produced by Hongyunhonghe (红运红河) Tobacco Group – the price a mere ten kuai (US $1.60).

In addition to serving the neighborhood’s nicotine needs, the owner has also established herself as the area’s apartment broker. While full-time professional brokers abound in China’s dense urban areas, part-time brokers such as the owner of this xiaomaibu are the norm in smaller cities like Wanyuan. The white board is for apartments that are for sale, while the chalk writing on the door of the xiaomaibu is for advertising apartments and separate rooms within larger apartments for rent.

#5: Electric vehicle charging

Location: Qingyang District, Chengdu, Sichuan
Top-selling product: Probably hot dogs

Xiaomaibu equipped with e-bike battery charger

The owner of this xiaomaibu was at a loss for deciding upon his “most popular item”, though he said that hot dogs sold consistently well on account of the children from the nearby school liking them. While this particular xiaomaibu conforms to the standards set by others across China in terms of its miniscule size (roughly the dimensions of a large walk-in closet) and convenient location (right next to a busy bus stop on a main thoroughfare), it is distinguished by its electric vehicle battery charger.

It costs vehicle owners (mostly of two-wheeled electric vehicles such as scooters and “e-bikes”) one yuan (around US $.15) to charge their batteries for ten minutes. The owner agreed to split the revenue of the charger with the company that installed it, while he himself must pay for the additional electricity consumed by the machine. The charger’s revenue varies seemingly randomly by month, ranging from around 100 kuai (US $16) up to around 300 kuai (around US $48).

Meet Swallow, China’s champion search and rescue dog

Barry van Wyk — Thu, 28 Mar 13 17:36:36 +0000

Just see Swallow in action – China’s champion search and rescue dog in the making.

The semi-finals of the All-China Search and Rescue Dog Championships, organized by the fire department of the Ministry of Public Security, have just concluded. As yesterday’s front page of the Yanzhao Evening News (燕赵晚报) from Hebei province told us, there was one outstanding star at the event: a one-year-old Springer from Hebei province called Swallow (燕子). Swallow was top dog in the small-scale category, and will now go through to the finals of the event. According to the handlers, Swallow has a very smart sense of smell, and is very obedient.

Swallow is currently undergoing training as a search and rescue dog. Every morning at 8 am, Swallow and her companions are first taken through their paces in endurance exercises lasting around 15 minutes. At the command of “sit!” (坐下), all the dogs must line up in a line in front of their handlers, and remain in this position for another 15 minutes in a sort of “patience drill”. This completed, its time for breakfast, which is made to order for every individual dog. And then its time to strap on the search and rescue gear and head out to the training ground. The daily training routine is stiff, encompassing such exercises as learning to obey orders, searching through boxes and ruins, and jumping over barriers.

Then of course there’s also the more fun game of fetch. According to her handler, Swallow is not the fastest dog but she always manages to rush forward and grab the ball first and retrieve it. The reason for this is because she is the smartest. While all the other dogs would wait until the handler throws the ball before setting off, Swallow would already be running when the handler lifts his arm to throw the ball.

Although Swallow is still in training, she has already heroically participated in two operations. One was when a building collapsed and she searched the ruins for signs of life, while in the other case she searched for survivors after an explosion caused by fireworks. And the best thing about Swallow is that she’s still just one year old – she has a bright future ahead.

Links and sources
Yanzhao Evening News (燕赵晚报): “燕子” 搜救犬中的花木兰

招聘：客户主管

Jeremy Goldkorn

单位咨询寻找客户主管

岗位描述
客户主管一职, 负责本公司客户以及公司研究和销售团队之间的沟通协调，保证业务各环节交流畅通无碍，并协助公司的市场开发和客户发展。

该客户主管需要对项目自始至终全程参与，负责报价制定, 客户沟通管理，项目跟进，款项催收，产品提交，发票开具等在内的一系列工作。由于公司以海外客户居多，该岗位要求具备良好的英语能力和跨文化沟通能力。客户主管将和纽约，伦敦和香港的销售人员共同开展工作，并与公司北京总部的项目经理共同确保产品准时交付。该岗位的直接上级为公司总监。

• 该职位有一定的公司内部职业发展空间。
• 该职位的薪金和福利参照市场水平，具体数额将根据应聘者的工作经验有所调整。

技能和特征
良好的英文口头和书面表达能力
高度条理性，能够和不同国家区域的团队融洽协作，良好时间观念，不拖沓
良好的人际技能 – 待人友善，心态开放，有好奇心
有销售经验优先
了解金融市场和产业优先

关于单位咨询
立于北京，单位咨询是一家立足北京面向海外的咨询研究企业。公司业务目前主要涉及基于中文媒体和互联网的信息搜集和分析，追踪投资，品牌相关以及企业和金融机构客户所需其它信息。

自2003年创建伊始，单位咨询从一家英文媒体信息网站发展成为一家专业咨询服务提供商。公司拥有一支对中国咨询媒体和互联网业有着深入了解和丰富经验的研究和编辑团队。

单位咨询隶属英国金融时报集团旗下，同金融时报的另一家拥有卓越声誉的咨询研究公司 China Confidential 合作紧密。同时单位也是一家独立实体，同金融时报报纸不存在信息共享。

有意者请发送简历至jobs@danwei.com

Five floating dead black swans join China’s animal apocalypse

Barry van Wyk — Wed, 27 Mar 13 21:20:37 +0000

At the north-eastern corner of Anhui University’s old campus in Hefei, capital of Anhui province, there’s a scenic pond that’s inhabited by a bevy of black swans. The swans have been there for more than a decade already, and were – as the front page of local newspaper Star News (市场新报) laments today – an object of fondness for locals.

The black swans at Anhui University in happier times

Yet early this morning, five of these black and beautiful swans were found floating lifeless on the surface of the pond. The latest instance of floating dead animals in China – first pigs, then ducks, and now black swans – these mere five black swans became an object of heated discussion on the Internet right after the announcement was made.

How did they die? Was it a natural disaster or another man-made one? As Star News tells us today, upon hearing of the news yesterday it immediately sent a journalist to the scene to find out exactly what happened. What he found was just one more filthy pond filled with oily water and garbage.

The swans are something to behold. The picture above is taken from a photo album that was uploaded to the website 万家热线, or “Ten Thousand Hotline” (a news and information portal focused on Anhui province), in 2011. Now clouded with a sense of sadness, the album shows the then 13 black swans as they appeared last winter. There are now eight swans left.

The journalist was not impressed by the scene he found the pond. The water had an oily quality to it, and quite a lot of garbage could be seen on the surface. From what he could ascertain from locals, many people often used the pond to rinse cloths, mops, mats and other items containing various chemicals.

The journalist could not see the dead swans anymore, because, as he was informed, they have been preserved and will be studied carefully to determine the cause of death. After this their remains will be used as specimens for academic research.

With the cause of death as yet entirely unknown, the Star News today offers four possible causes of death in a desperate attempt to establish whether it was a natural occurrence or not:

Killed by other animals: According to a witness interviewed by the journalist, on Sunday afternoon a large dog was seen chasing and biting the swans
Poisoned by garbage: Just ten days ago a black swan was born in the pond, and this caused an increase in the number of visitors. Many of these were seen to throw peels, leaves and other things into the pool, and one of these items may have poisoned the swans
Water pollution: In the last few years, the quality of the water in the pond worsened considerably. Incredibly, sewage was pumped into the pond sometime last year, leading to an outbreak of blue-green algae
Disease or some other natural cause

So what caused these five black swans to go the same way as thousands of pigs and ducks, all discarded into a watery grave? Speaking to the people responsible for the maintenance of the area, the journalist was told that new measures are now to be implemented at the pond, including strengthening patrols by local security, improving the quality of the water, and removing the garbage. But alas, it’s too late for the five black swans, who were preyed on by predators, bombarded with garbage, and left floating lifeless like just some worthless pig.

Links and sources
Star News (市场新报): 天鹅之死
 Star News app on iTunes
365jia.cn: 徜徉在午后温暖阳光里的安大天鹅池

FT中文网和 FT China Confidential招聘：研究员、市场分析、销售

Jeremy Goldkorn

欲知详情请点击以下链接
FT China Confidential 中国投资参考：Researcher/研究员
本职位由FT中文网于2013年03月06日发布
工作地点：北京

FT中文网：Marketing Intelligence Manager
本职位由FT中文网于2013年03月13日发布
工作地点：北京

FT中文网：Sales Executive/销售代表
本职位由FT中文网于2013年03月13日发布
工作地点：上海北京（各一名）

Hubei farms and dead floating pigs

Barry van Wyk — Tue, 26 Mar 13 16:13:32 +0000

In the city of Huangshi in Hubei province there’s a lake called Cihu Lake. Situated close to the Yangtze River, the lake area appears to be an idyllic scenic spot. Yet, especially in light of recent events, Cihu Lake is blemished by the existence of ten pig farms that are situated on the south-western edge of the lake. After 108 pigs were fished out of the lake in the last few days and several thousand more in lakes and rivers elsewhere in China, the local newspaper Dongchu Evening News wanted some answers, so it sent a journalist to the ten pig farms on Cihu Lake to investigate. The situation the newspaper uncovered is startling. Not only were all the pig farms technically illegal, none of them had the proper paperwork, and the farms were falsifying the labels on their pigs’ ears.

Yet making this deplorable situation worse is the state of government regulation being applied to the pig farms, regulation which can only be described as messy and inefficient. So while we may not yet know the full details of where all the dead pigs in the rivers originated from, the out of control pig farms on Cihu Lake can shed a lot of light on the situation.

The front page of the Dongchu Evening News (东楚晚报) from Hubei province today makes an insightful contribution to our understanding of why several thousand dead pigs ended up in rivers in China. 108 pigs were fished out of Cihu Lake (磁湖) in Huangshi (黄石), Hubei province, and the newspaper today casts a suspicious eye on the ten pig farms on the south-western edge of Cihu Lake. And not without reason, because after the pigs were removed from the lake, authorities in the city went to check up on the ten pig farms and found that not a single one among them had its documents in order, and in particular none of them were holding a valid certificate for animal disease prevention.

Yet when a journalist from the newspaper went to interview some people at the ten pig farms, the manager of one farm let on more than he intended when he protested: “I have a valid business license, and that’s all you need for a pig farm!” This was strongly denied by the animal health authorities in Huangshi, who maintained that you can only obtain a business license once you have the animal disease prevention certificate.

According to regulations from the Ministry of Agriculture, however, the Cihu pig farms are not even supposed to exist. The regulations specify that no pig farm can be situated closer than 500 meters from sources of drinking water or from residential areas, and the Cihu Lake pig farms fail on both these criteria.

Not only are the documentation of the pig farms not in order, the labels on their pigs’ ears are all highly suspicious as well. The label is supposed to state exactly where each and every pig came from, yet the pigs fished out of Cihu Lake have labels linking them to locations far and wide such as Anhui, Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces – but none from Hubei. What this suggests is that the farms on Cihu Lake didn’t bother to update the labels or simply falsified them.

Throwing dead pigs in rivers is in fact nothing new and has been happening for years. So why, the newspaper asks, has regulation of this issue been so lax? In fact, as the journalist discovered, government regulation on the issue of pig farming is convoluted to say the least, with no less than seven different government departments (e.g. agriculture, quality supervision, health and hygiene, etc.) having some responsibility for regulation. So the journalist decided to get in touch with each of these departments to find out who is really responsible, but the only reply he got was “it’s not our responsibility”, before being fobbed off with the instruction to get in touch with some other department.

With this chaotic situation, thousands of dead pigs in rivers seem a lot less surprising, if not any less awful.

Links and sources
Dongchu Evening News (东楚晚报): 随意丢弃病死畜禽　将进行案值2－3倍罚款; 磁湖死猪事件引发社会各界高度关注; 十多家养猪场挤在磁湖边上猪屎和死猪涌入湖水中