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 One of our favorite Chinese sites seems to have run afoul of the net nanny: vip.bokee.com has been on again off again, but perfectly viewable with a proxy. Using the proxy we saw an article about a list published in a Chengdu newspaper of the top-grossing authors in China, at least based on royalties from the sales of their books. At the top of the list was a Guo Jingming, a young author (born in 1983), whose books earned him over 10 million RMB in royalties this year. According to Xinhua, his latest book, The River of Sorrow, was released in April of this year and sold a record high of one million copies in the first two weeks. Second and third on the list were Yu Dan (also over 10 million) and Yi Zhongtian, both professors that have made their fortunes peddling popularizing versions of the classics, such as Confucius' Analects or the Zhuangzhi. The chart you see shows the break down of sales from Yu Dan's various books, with her book on the Analects being the most popular, selling 6.72 million copies.
Despite being convicted of plagiarism in 2004, Guo seems to be a real phenomenon: his book signing events cause traffic jams, and of course, there are crazed fans and groupies to boot. We haven't read any of his novels, but if, as the reports say, he drives a Caddy, we are going to boycott his books just on that principle. If anyone has read of any of his books, let us know what we are (presumably) missing out on in a comment.
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 Weekenders looking for a break from the usual club and pub offerings should consider these two interesting events this weekend.
Saturday, September 8th
m97 Gallery "Document/Portrait" exhibition
Opening Reception, 5pm to 8pm
m97 Gallery consistently showcases China's best contemporary photographers and their upcoming exhibition, "Document/Portrait" brings veteran and newcomer works together for what promises to be a very approachable and honest look at China today. Be on the lookout for works from perennial favorites, Peng&Chen and Yan Cheng whose "Theme:Park" exhibition was recently shown in July.
From their press release:
Document / Portrait” is a broad look at a diverse range of photographic styles and subject matter depicting the many faces and facets of China each illustrating various aspects of modern Chinese society all through the genre of portraiture. Both urban and rural realities are explored, and traditional Chinese ethnic and cultural symbols are seen alongside documents of China’s ever-expanding and often anonymous urban centers.
Sunday, September 9th
M on the Bund's Glamour Bar presents Duncan Hewitt's Getting Rich First: Life in a Changing China book launch.
Author talk, 4pm. 50RMB includes one drink
Former BBC correspondent and China resident since 1986, Duncan Hewitt will be giving a talk on his first book, Getting Rich First, which follows the dramatic societal changes in China following Deng Xiaoping's economic reform in the 1990s. Shanghaiist has not yet read the book, but it should be an interesting insider take on the forces that have shaped this city.
m97 Gallery | Shanghai
97 Moganshan Road, 2nd Floor
+8621 6266.1597
The Glamour Bar
6/F, No. 5 The Bund (at Guangdong Lu)
Shanghai
Tel: (86-21) 6350 9988
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 Back in April we did a post on the top ten books favored by the users of Douban.com, a book review and recommendation site. Since that time, tastes have changed and new books have been released so it's about time to take a new look at the site's top ten:
- JK Rowlings - "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" (Does this need an explanation?)
- Han Han - "The Glorious Day I" (Magical realism from Shanghai teen prodigy, blogger, "most read" post-80s author.)
- Audrey Niffenegger - "The Time Traveller's Wife" (Author's first novel, a love story with a sci-fi twist.)
- Car"Ballad Of The Sad Café" (Southern Gothic short stories by melancholy American author, first Chinese publication in April.)
- Sang Gege - "When I Was Young" (70s and 80s nostalgia by 27 year-old, Wang-Xiaofeng-endorsed deputy editor at Urban China magazine, started as a weblog.)
- Orhan Pamuk - "Istanbul: Memories of a City" (Melancholy and disturbing ruminations on the identity of a changing city by the first Turk to win a Nobel Prize.)
- Lian Yue - "I Love Asking Lian Yue"(Collection of this journalist and blogger's "I Am Chicken Soup" column for the Shanghai Weekly.)
- Song Hongbing - "Currency Wars" (Discussion of global banking and its effects on China, by a veteran of the US financial sector.)
- Tian Yuan - "Double Mono" (Beijing author, HK actress, lead singer of band Hopscotch, and blogger/MySpacer writes about love, youth and self-discovery.)
- Carolyn Parkhurst - "The Dogs of Babel" (Dog who witnesses wife's death taught to talk by husband, by professional American writer.)
Contrast that list, by young, connected Chinese, with the Amazon-affiliated Joyo.com's top seller list: "Harry Potter", "Don't Laugh, I'm an English Book" (humorous English textbook, translated from Korean), "Better To Ask Yourself Than To Ask A Doctor" (medical reference book), "If Life Is Merely A First Impression" (classical poetry commentary), "The Book of Bunny Suicides" (cartoons of... bunny suicides), "Kids" (cartoons by Zhu Deyong), "Currency Wars", "Si Wu Xie: Recalling the Memory of Past Life" (poetry appreciation), "The Dogs of Babel".
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 The latest copy of City Weekend draws our attention to the launch of BooksDirect.com.cn, a tripartite joint venture between Xinhua Media, Chaterhouse Booktrader and Bertelsmann DirectGroup. We understand this to be the first online English bookstore in China, and guess what, they also offer free delivery to locations in Shanghai, Hangzhou, Suzhou and Nanjing! We checked out prices on the website and they seem to be fairly cheap. Hardcore supporters of Shanghaiist who are in the market for books, especially of the more dissident and subversive variety that would not be available here, might also like to check out our rotating Amazon ads.
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 While we at Shanghaiist will undoubtedly be half-comatose after a night of liver bashing, if past experience be anything to go by, on 21st July Harry Potter enthusiasts will be lining up in the hordes to await the arrival of the seventh and last book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. At 7 am on the dot (yawn, yawn) the long-awaited story will go on-sale at stores worldwide, including a handful in our locality (sorry, English only for the time being).
After months of speculation and even hoax drafts floating on the net, Potter fans will finally be able to discover whether Harry does in fact die. Rowling is keeping her lips tightly zipped, but for all those with a morbid bend, she has nevertheless revealed that the book will contain several dark twists and turns ie expect some of the central characters to be killed – sorry, again.
Unfortunately, death isn't restricted to the magical realm of Hogwarts. At approximately RMB180 a pop (Chaterhouse prices, Amazon are already reducing), it's quite killer for the wallet too, especially for the little nippers. Lets just hope Wujiang Lu and its street sellers haven’t really breathed their last breathe.
Picture from People’s Daily
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 The recent hoopla over poisonous, tainted, and otherwise malignant Chinese exports — toothpaste, toys, and pet food, oh my! — has left us with an unpleasant taste in our mouths (and not just the minty-fresh kind). Industrial malfeasance has become the bane of Chinese commerce, and we have no intention of downplaying the unique brand of terror experienced by a parent who realizes he just gave his kid a lead-addled plaything.
But it is difficult for this Shanghai resident not to worry about sinophobic implications of the current hysteria. Witness sleeper-hit non-fiction book A Year Without Made In China, sparked by journalist Sara Bongiorno's realization that "China has taken over the place," and her year-long attempt to evict it (excerpt here suggests the project sucked most for her kids, who were forced to endure A Year Without New Toys). Bongiorno's most shockingly Ameri-centric claim — that if the US boycotted China for one week "the empire will collapse" — demonstrates a naive view of global commerce. Last we checked, China exported to a few countries other than the U.S. Rather, it is America's growing trade deficit — ergo, dependence on nations like China for production — that leaves Americans quaking in their Made-in-China boots. The "means of production" are not only invisible, they're in a different hemisphere, and under different legal jurisdictions! It is as though the servants in the kitchen have begun to poison the meals destined for the dining room set, and diners like Bongiorno are suddenly realizing that they are more at the mercy of their distant producers than they care to be.
So where does this leave the consumer? And what is an export-minded industrialized nation to do? Last year alone Chinese exports totaled more than $1 trillion (that's, like, a bazillion-jillion RMBs). Despite its success, though, China's industrialism is still relatively new — and uniquely tied to those enigmatic "with Chinese Characteristics" that her government so loves.
Good thing Joseph Kahn, of the New York Times, has got it sorted into language even this naive, young American can understand:
Phony fertilizer destroys crops. Stores shelves are filled with deodorized rotten eggs, and chemical glucose is passed off as honey. Exports slump when European regulators find dangerous bacteria in packaged meat.
More product safety scandals in China? Not this time. These quality problems prompted a sluggish United States government to tighten food and drug regulation 101 years ago, when President Theodore Roosevelt signed the act that created the Food and Drug Administration.
Like America’s industrializing economy a century ago, China’s is powered by zealous entrepreneurs who sometimes act like pirates. Both countries suffered epidemics of fatal fakes, and both have had regulators who were too inept, corrupt or hamstrung to do much about it.
The question now is whether Chinese factories, caught exporting poisonous pharmaceutical ingredients, filthy shellfish, bogus pet food and faulty tires, can react in time to head off more damage to their reputation.
Or, to put it another way, are the latest incidents enough to push China toward its own Progressive Era?
Here's where we all cross our fingers ...
The answer, say people who have studied the country’s regulatory system, is a cautious yes. But first, they say, Beijing must take a fresh approach to inspecting and policing its often unruly economy.
Hooray! Kahn points to a "roguish undercurrent" in Chinese commerce, the side effect of massive bureaucracy and an unsustainable model for growth:
Safety lapses are a serious side effect of China’s gradual and still incomplete efforts to separate politics and business. To spur economic growth in the 1980s, top leaders gave local-level officials more power. The goal was to undercut socialist conservatives in the central government who exercised tight controls. Regulatory power was also scattered.
Growth surged. Entrepreneurs, foreign investors and peasant farmers assumed a dominant role in production. But safety, as well as labor and environmental standards, fell by the wayside.
The article also details various ministerial buck-passing tangles and political hurdles in the consolidation of China's currently diffuse product regulations organizations. The creation of a single, authoritative, hopefully un-bribe-able FDA-like organization is widely acknowledged to be the current goal, just as it was for America in Roosevelt's years. Kahn notes, however, that the FDA took about 55 years to grow from its relatively weak early role to its current regulatory-behemoth status; for the sake of Thomas-the-tank-engine-sucking toddlers everywhere, we'll just have to hope China does it a little faster.
New York Times: Can China Reform Itself?
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 We have just got into audiobooks. It's a great way of getting hold of new reading material without having to wait weeks for it to clear customs. They are great for summer holidays, because audiobooks can be downloaded from the Internet to your MP3 player without taking up any extra baggage space.
We have to give credit to Chaterhouse and Garden Books for improving accessibility to hard copy English language books, although it's still not so great for native speakers of other languages such as French and Spanish. A French teacher we know said that she gets round this problem by getting visitors from France to import books and magazines whenever they can. It's not as convenient as downloading books from the Internet.
We've been enjoying The Long Tail by Chris Anderson, because it's the only book we've ever read (or listened to) that puts The Gang of Four in the same company as Pareto's 20/80 rule. We like books that entertain and make us feel cleverer than we really are. They also have the famous Mao book that you are unlikely to see in mainland China for quite some time, but you can download it in just an hour or two. Hopefully, the Net Nanny has not found a way of blocking expensive audiobooks. Would she even try?
We've just downloaded The Perfect Thing by Stephen Levy that talks about how wonderful Ipods are, but we're not sure how much we can trust his book, because he was given an Iphone to play with before anyone could buy one. (See this sycophantic review)
Audible.com is the most well known audiobook supplier. They sell through Itunes, but you can also buy direct from their website. They have French, German, British and American versions of the service, but alternatives exist such as Simply Audiobooks who support a wider range of languages in their catalogue. We'd be interested to know if there are any local providers of Chinese audiobooks.
Audible has a number of payment plans, but it works out cheaper if you subscribe and take part in one of their promotions. We got one free credit by going to www.audible.com/twit and setting up an account. Audible has recently been sponsoring Leo Laporte's technology podcasts so his listeners have been encouraged to download a free audiobook, although they are banking on getting you to subscribe for longer than the two week free trial. Not all the titles are available on this free promotion outside the US.
Audible's gold membership plan allows you to download one audiobook a month for $14.95, although the first three months are only $7.95. This might sound pricey, but they are big downloads, which playback upto fifty hours and they are no more expensive than printed books. On the other hand, data is so cheap to store and distribute that they could sell a lot more books if they lowered the price. Audible's files have lots of digital rights management on them to stop you from making unlawful copies or playing it on Linux. You also need a credit card, although you are not locked in to the subscription.
Audible provides software downloads for Windows and Mac OS allowing you to download books and sync them to any number of MP3 players, not just Ipods. We've also got it running on a Windows Smartphone, but not on our Ubuntu Linux computer.
There are free alternatives. We like the Librivox project, which takes out of copyright works and rerecords them as free digital audio files for anyone to download. Podiobooks is another possibility that allows authors to record and distribute their books as free podcasts under a creative commons license. Our favourite Boing Boing digital rights activitist and science fiction author has made Eastern Standard Tribe available on Podiobooks in this way.
If anyone has any recommendations or cheap, legal alternatives then we'd love to know.
Crossposted on catshanghai
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