Adam Minter's Blog, page 11

Coming Soon: Scenes from a Junkyard Planet

For the last couple of years, China has been the world’s largest automobile market, supplanting the United States. So, for the last month or so, I’ve spent some time trying to figure out what on earth China plans to do … Continue reading →

Stop the Baseless Panicking Over E-Waste

What happens to your old phones, computers, televisions and other devices when you drop them into the recycling bin? For more than a decade, the standard answer to that question has been some variation of: they’re “dumped” in China. The … Continue reading →

Would You Pay a Plastic Surgeon for an Eiffel (Tower) Nose?

Spotted in the back of a taxi in Chongqing: an advertisement for a plastic surgery practice that specializes in re-shaping noses to resemble La Tour Eiffel: A close-up of the model’s nose suggests that the surgeon in question has given serious … Continue reading →

(Why) Do Chinese Airlines Prohibit Smartphone Airplane mode?

The other day I was sitting at the gate at Pudong Airport in Shanghai, downloading a couple of newspapers to my iPhone that I hoped to read during the flight. Of course, I’m keenly aware that use of phones of … Continue reading →

Shanghai Bishop Jin Luxian’s Legacy

This mostly dormant blog was started in 2007 with almost no agenda beyond plans to expand on my just-published profile of Shanghai’s Catholic bishop Aloysius Jin Luxian in the July/August 2007 issue of the Atlantic. I did that, and over … Continue reading →

Suspend Me On Twitter (Updated)

[UPDATED BELOW] On Friday afternoon I logged into my twitter account and was promptly informed that my account had been suspended. I’d been given no notice, no warnings, no indications whatsoever that something might be amiss (for the record: I … Continue reading →

Did Chinese iPhone 5 workers really go on strike? Probably not.

Late Friday, news broke on several wire services that Chinese workers had engaged in a massive strike at a Foxconn manufacturing plant in Zhengzhou, China. The source of the story was a press release issued by China Labor Watch, a … Continue reading →

What Henry Blodget Didn’t Get About Foxconn

On Friday, China Labor Watch, a New York-based NGO that claims to be “dedicated to promoting workers’ fair redistribution of wealth under globalization,” announced that a “large-scale strike” had shut down a Foxconn factory that manufactures the iPhone 5. The group … Continue reading →

Four Shanghai Views on London 2012

Here at Shanghai Scrap, we’ve always been sports fans. And, in our opinion, being a sports fan means being an Olympics fan. Sure, the games drive us nuts at times. The IOC’s hyper-vigilance against corporate logos that don’t have a … Continue reading →

Is Delta Airlines Scamming its Customers With Change-Ticket Fees?

The other day I purchased a ticket from Delta Airlines, the world’s largest airline, for international travel in the month of September. Then, as sometimes happens, something came up and I needed to change the dates of my outgoing flight … Continue reading →