Miss Chinese Cosmos

The 2007 Miss Chinese Cosmos Pageant final round throwdown left three beauties standing. At the top of the pile was Zeng Guang (above middle), a 20-year-old undergraduate from Xi'an. Close behind were Wang Qianqian of Shanghai and Jiang Nan from Jiangsu. This annual beauty contest emphasizes intelligence, involvement in charitable organizations and overall babaliciousness. Frankly, there isn’t much news in here, but the accompanying photo isn't half bad.

How White Is Your Collar?

According to a newly-released 2007 wage report, if you live in Hong Kong, you need to make ¥18,500 a month to qualify as white collar. If you live in Macau, it's only ¥8,900. For Shanghai the figure is ¥5,350 and for Beijing it's ¥ 5,020. If you’re a migrant to one of those cities then add ¥1,800.

Box Office Record Breaker

After two false starts, Ang Lee's long anticipated film “Lust, Caution” finally hit mainland movie theaters on November 1. Despite the fact the movie was denuded of nine minutes of salacious material (stills of which, however, are all over the Net), “Lust, Caution” has struck box office gold, raking in ¥25,000,000 so far. Moreover, the cinema mill is swirling with rumors that female lead Tang Wei is in line for an Oscar nomination.

Bridge Wars

It’s not surprising that a country with one of the world’s longest rivers should also boast three of the world’s six longest suspension bridges. Completed in 2005, the Runyang bridge crosses the Yangtze River in Jiangsu province and measures 1,410 meters; the Jiangyin Bridge, also on Yangtze, measures 1,385 meters; while the Tsing Ma in Hong Kong comes in at 1,377 meters. None of them compares to the Akashi-Kaikyo bridge in Japan, however, which at 2,000 meters is nearly 22 football fields in length.

Tycoon Beauty Seeks Handsome Foreign Man

Once upon a time, this would have been an acceptable advertisement in Zhengzhou, but no longer: The local government has banned match-making advertisements featuring these words. Government officials didn’t specify the reasons, but one assumes that one too many disappointments factored into the decision.

Public Transport

Beijing’s efforts to herd people onto public transport has had a measurable impact. Last month, the number of people using public transit surpassed the number using cars for the first time since records were first kept in 2001. Experts think it’s the new Line 5 coupled with a system-wide drop in ticket prices. Daily average ridership has reached 2.48 million, a 58 percent increase over the previous nine months.

Fuel the Beast

Earlier this month, the Chinese government raised the price of gasoline nearly 10 percent, with shortages spreading across the country. Many analysts think it's the result of the skyrocketing price of crude oil which is heavily subsidized in China. We don’t drive, so we don’t care all that much, but if it means even one less car on the road, then we’re all for it.

Mask Week

Local laowai Matt Dalton has turned himself into an accidental activist by spearheading a unique campaign in favor of cleaner air, promoting November 17-24 as Mask Week. All week, anyone living in China, foreign or local, should don a mask and wear it whenever they go outside as a symbolic gesture. Why Nov. 17? In Chinese, 11-17 is "yao yao yao qi", or “want want want to breath.” Get involved by contacting Matt at mattman_30@hotmail.com.

Olympic Ticket Debacle

The second round of Olympic ticket sales went online early in November with disasterous results as more than 200,000 applications were submitted each minute. The site and the phone hotline both jammed and even BOCOG officials couldn't get through to sort out the mess. Ticket sales were suspended and will resume on December 10.