Who’d have thought it. News of tube strikes in London has reached Shanghai.. Feeling rather blessed that I’m not there, and wonder why the Chinese should care if the Northern line is making lives in London miserable (again). After all, they have their fair share of urban woes to deal with. Not least a crackdown on melons. It has been decreed that henceforth, melon sellers will be banned from the city centre. With the summer in full swing, the sight of big carts of juicy melons was enough to lighten the spirits of any hot, weary urbanite, but sadly no more…! This, we are told, is because they are scruffy and hazardous. Shanghai is sprucing itself up for the 2010 Expo, and, like Beijing in the run up to the Olympics, is in a permanent state of re-invention.
But scratch beneath the surface, and you find old China. I needed no further reminder of this than on my touch-down from Singapore earlier this week. China is on high swine-flu alert. Having rather botched up the SARS response a couple of years ago, to much global approbation, they are determined to get this one right, in a sort of knee-jerk ’it takes a steamroller-to-crush-a-walnut’ fashion. We sat on the plane while a phalanx of forensic-suits armed with goggles, masks and stun guns got on and, one by one, ’stunned’ us with their temperature gun. Two suspects found, and the poor souls sitting 3 rows behind and in front of them, all branded ’potential contaminators’ and quarantined. Not quite sure what to do with the rest of us, after much negotiation and to-ing and fro-ing of men in white suits, we were let off the plane, over an hour later.
They may not be able to stop the disease of capitalism spread (and nor do they really want to), but they sure as hell know how to respond to diseases of another kind..when they put their mind to it.
On which subject, the client I’m here for has its work cut out for it (as do we!). Focused on the healthcare sector, they are looking at some scary statistics.10% of the population with Hepatitis B; the highest incidence of diabetes in the world – 50% of sufferers not even aware they have it.
Melons are just the tip of the iceberg