Every day Li Yizhong translates and puts into brief perspective the headlines of the Shanghai Morning Post's daily newspaper, Shanghai's largest morning newspaper

Top Story

Weird weather continues as we head towards September. After the eclipse, rainy weather, the hurricane that never hit, Shanghai got almost 1800 lightning strikes flashing through its sky yesterday. It’s getting a bit crazy. The heavy rain and fast wind killed 6. 4 workers died from a fallen jib crane and another fallen wall killed a mother and her daughter. Tragedy is shitty weather. It doesn't suck much more than that. Even in Shanghai, we haven’t had that much rain in the last 50 years. Also, the price of green vegetables is shooting through the roof.

Other Headlines Today

• The transportation department upgraded their license plate auction system ahead of this month’s auction on the 29th. I guess nobody cons the government, not twice.

• Kai Xin Net – one of the Chinese equivalent of facebook – has started charging its users for certain services. This brought wide criticism from the public. But I don’t think a little noise is going to stop the site making a little money, at least not when the return is in the billions.

• Rumor cleared. The knife attack on the metro 3 line yesterday has been proven false. There were no first-hand witnesses and no police record of the emergency call. In reality, we have a maybe. If it never happened, why did it appear in the first place?