After reading this article in the New York Times about the creativity and resourcefulness of the Shanghai bootleg DVD merchants, I had to see one of the stores for myself, secret door and all. I wasn’t sure if there was going to be a special password needed to get into the secret section where the bootleg DVDs were displayed, but luckily just walking in the door was good enough.
Despite my anxiety that we would not be understood, as soon as we walked into a DVD shop in the French Concession area of Shanghai we were whisked to a corner of the store with a red shelf that had a couple of DVDs displayed on it. Without pausing the clerk pulled the left side of the shelf and it swung toward her allowing her to knock on what appeared to be a wall. A couple of seconds later the wall opened and we were shown to the back room where bootleg DVDs, Blu-Ray disks, CDs, books and even magazines were for sale.
In an attempt to document this eyewitness reporter style, I used my new iCamcorder app for my iPhone 3G to record the very shaky and low quality 15 second clip of how we left the back room of the store. While not very good quality, at least it was discrete.
Along with rearranging the bootleg DVD shops around town, the EXPO has had a tremendous impact on the city of Shanghai. The 300 kilometers of new Metro lines opened in the last year is just one of the many additions to the city. All of this rapid construction, however, comes at a cost. According to the Associated Press, each Shanghai family will receive a free Expo ticket and a 200 yuan ($29) prepaid transportation card from the government as partial compensation for inconveniences such as traffic and mandatory bag scans at subway stations.
And perhaps most discouraging is that all of the effort, money ($55 billion in total by some accounts) and resources dedicated to the monumental effort of putting on the EXPO may not have a lasting positive impact. We found that after being opened for only 4 days there were many examples of EXPO construction falling apart. Paint was peeling off benches and light poles were leaning precariously as they had come loose. It seems that the old adage holds true, you can have only two of the following three attributes for a project: Fast, Cheap or Good. It seems the Chinese always opt for the first two. This has created a huge branding problem that the 1.3 billion Chinese will be dealing with for the foreseeable future as they look to build an economy not solely based on exporting the cheapest, least value-added products to the rest of the world.
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In other news, Amy and I contributed, along with 200 other top travel bloggers, to Tripbase’s Travel Secrets eBook that has just launched. We were happy to contribute our travel tips because there is a great sustainability aspect to the project. For every e-book that is downloaded Tripbase will make a $1 donation to the fantastic cause, Charity: Water.
- Charity: Water’s mission: to help bring clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations.
- Tripbase campaign target: to build 4 freshwater wells, providing clean water for an entire school for the next 20 years.
How it works:
You, the GreenAroundTheGlobe reader, get a FREE ebook with travel tips from the best travel bloggers across the net (including us!). When you download the FREE ebook, Tripbase will donate $1 to the clean water project. Simple. YOU click, YOU download, YOU get great travel tips, YOU help bring safe drinking water to the world.
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That video work is as discreet as the bag of beer on Krehbiel’s lap when you were pulled over in the rail buggy in high school. But, you got away with this one, too!
You really do have to love the mega cheap dodgy DVDs in China though! We brought loads back with us from a trip to China. Most impressively (at about 10p each) they all worked too. I’ve bought them in other countries where they are more expensive and half don’t actually work.
haha I had a similar experience in China. The door was blocked off by a bookshelf and to get in they moved the book shelf and into a well hidden door then into another door. Wish I could have reordered that one.