Elevated rail still in track-laying stage
CONSTRUCTION workers are laying normal track along the first phase of the city's first elevated rail, which is expected to be completed in the third quarter of this year.
Drugs in mail
MIND your mail, Shanghai Customs warned recently.
Carmival mood in Yangtze ballroom
FUNNY costumes and weird make-up, hugging, drinking and dancing. The specially decorated Crystal Ballroom of the Yangtze New World Hotel became a sea of some 400 revelling expatriates and local people on Saturday night.
Merger brings first exhibition JV
THE first local Sino-foreign exhibition joint venture was formed in Shanghai last week after the merger of two established exhibition services firms.
Water transport services safe for Spring Festival
SPRING Festival, which means a peak in the numbers travelling by sea, begins on Thursday and will last forty days.
Legal services market to heat up
WHILE China's imminent entry to the WTO spells a great opportunity for the development of China's legal profession, it must restructure to meet the challenges, according to a seminar sponsored recently by Shanghai-based AllBright Law Offices.
Survey:drinkable water at low ebb
LOCAL government officials are stepping up efforts to push forward a general survey of local water resources, that targets rivers, lakes and reservoirs.
Blast-hit road reopens No deaths, no injuries from gas explosion
AFTER 23 hours' hard work, repairs to the broken gas pipes which exploded on Saturday morning at the intersection of Gonghexin and Luochuandong roads was completed on Sunday morning.
4 years for date-raping 17-year-old
AN employee of Shanghai's City of Books was recently sentenced to four years' imprisonment by Pudong New Area People's Court for raping a girl last year.
Trash-picker who steals bag quickly arrested
A MIGRANT woman who allegedly stole a handbag while collecting trash was recently arrested by Putuo Police on a charge of theft.
Ambitious young man dies in Germany
I REALLY don't know how I have come through these past four months. Every day when the sun rises, I long for the darkness, so that I may be shrouded in sleep. But when the night does come, I long for the day, for I cannot sleep."
A ride on the wrong side of the law
IT had to happen. As a frequent user of the city's taxi cabs I have often been able to curl a scornful lip at the poor souls who are sitting in a cab which has been pulled over by a traffic policeman. There they sit in lonely splendour while the driver - depending on the demeanour of the officer of the law and the real or alleged seriousness of the offence - either engages in much armwaving and fingerpointing, or cowers, as he, or she, fishes for licence and permit. Recently, at about 2:45 pm in the afternoon, I was proceeding along a major thoroughfare towards the Westin Tai Ping Hotel, in the Hongqiao District of Shanghai, in the company of a driver with a distinct rustic air about him. Then it happened. Maybe I was giving my driver too much information about where to go, I cannot be sure. But we were having trouble with our accents. Plus, I had previous, form of travelling in taxis in Beijing, with red-cheeked rustic drivers who still gawked at the tall buildings and on occasion would ask you where Tian'anmen Square was. Anyhow, a very serious-looking sergeant on point duty at the busy intersection summoned us to stop. The driver pulled into a turning lane very close to the officer, though not so close as to drive onto the toe of his boot, as a friend once did in a Western city. "Kindly move your car over to the curb, driver," was the order. This he did with alarming haste, before bustling back on foot to the officer on duty. Crammed in the front seat with its driver protection shield, it was hard for me to turn around completely to follow the course of our case. So I sat and waited, and craned, and waited...I was not going to get out of the car after all, lest this might be interpreted I was some high-minded advocate coming to argue the point. Basic law is basic law after all. Eventually, he returned, bearing his pink slip or an antipodean "bluey." We should not have attempted to make a left turn at the intersection was the verdict. No matter. We took a bit of a horsehoe route and still ended up at the hotel. Guilty as sin, I split the five renminbi fine with him. Never more will I scoff at those erring travellers pulled up by the wayside. Brian Cummins is an Australian now working in Shanghai.
Copyright 2000 by Shanghai Star. All rights reserved.