Catshanghai

I arrived in Shanghai in the summer of 2004. At that time, my only access to English language television content was through CCTV 9, which is a bland and filtered vehicle for news and Chinese culture. Listening to platitudes about government policy is not something I was used to, having been raised on the BBC.

Those first few months were a whirlwind. I was more interested in learning about Shanghai rather than finding out what was happening back in the UK. I did look at news websites from time to time, especially the Guardian’s pages (www.guardian.co.uk) and I enjoyed listening to streamed programmes from BBC radio as I hooked my laptop to the stereo.

There are English language publications for sale in Shanghai. You can buy the Shanghai Daily almost anywhere for 2 RMB to get some local news in English. There are also some very good listings and review magazines such as That’s Shanghai and 8 Days Shanghai. The best sources of local gossip are on the Internet. I used to read the Shanghai Expat website (www.shanghaiexpat.com) all the time, but there are only so many nauseating anti-Chinese posts or recommendations for Rolling Stones concerts that you can stomach. Smart-Shanghai is good for local listings (www.smartshanghai.com) and they once wrote a story about my wife’s shop, but I don’t tend to lurk in their discussion forum. Life is too short. My favourite source of local news is Shanghaiist (www.shanghaiist.com), which is the brainchild of expatriate Shanghai Diaries blogger, Dan Washburn. There is a group of different authors who intelligently aggregate and comment upon local events, venues, gossip, news and conspiracies. When Tang Hui lost their local music license, I heard it on Shanghaiist first. Shanghaiist reported when Coco the local jazz singer was beaten up by thuggish bouncers.

For international news, I tend to buy Time or Newsweek at least a couple of times a month. I need to get my dose of geek news by reading Wired magazine, but The Sunday Times arrives late without the supplements and I am not prepared to pay 120 RMB for the privilege.

Recently, the BBC news websites have become accessible on a mirror site (newsimg.bbc.co.uk). I tend to scan this for technology stories to discuss with my IB class. RSS feeds are great. I have set them up on my Flock browser to see the new stories as they get updated, but this is also a good chance for me to geek out with Engadget (www.engadget.com), Tech Crunch (www.techcrunch.com) and Digg (www.digg.com). I look at the Choke forum (www.ttyc.co.uk) and Pitchfork-Media for tips on which music to download from the Itunes music store or Audio Lunchbox.

I get the bulk of English news and technology information fixes from netcasts, because I can listen to them on my Ipod when I am travelling to and from work or even in the gym.Leo Laporte is a saint and genius in setting up the twit network (www.twit.tv) of technology podcasts. I have learnt so much from him and his guest experts. There is some really good video content. John C Dvorak has a panel of nay sayers on his Cranky Geeks panel show. Patrick Norton shows off new hardware on DL.TV and Kevin Rose swears a lot on Diggnation. I am trying to update my webdesign skills thanks to netcasts by Paul Boag.

A great thing about netcasts is that it is very difficult to filter content out so you get a much more candid view of the world from the BBC content that I download. I really like the BBC newspod, which is a daily digest from Radio 4, Radio Five Live and even Radio 1. From Our Own Correspondent is available twice a week and Mark Kermode’s FiveLive film reviews set me up to restock my DVDs. I can even keep upto date with BBC TV news care of Ten Weekly and the Newsnight video netcasts. You can search for and subscribe to any of these audio and video netcasts using Itunes or equivalent software.

In some ways, I am now more upto date with what is happening than when I lived in the UK thanks to the Internet and netcasting. Given that my job is extremely busy and I have to sleep, my Chinese study is going through a bit of a hiatus at the moment. Even that can be fixed using the Internet and podcasts such as Active Chinese (www.activechinese.com) and Chinese Pod (www.chinesepod.com). Long live the Internet!