Tales of City

Yesterday afternoon, two trains crashed in Shanghai subway line 10. Till now, 271 people have been injured without dead.

At 14:10 on September 27 (Beijing Time), because of the equipment failure at Xintiandi station of metro line 10, the subway trains slammed to brake. Then the section between Jiaotong University and East Nanjing Road was scheduled artificially. At 14:51, two subway trains collided at Yuyuan station, the very central of Shanghai.

The signaling fault was supposed to be one of the accident cause. The signal system provider of metro line 10 is CASCO, and the same train signal system was used in Wenzhou train crash accident.

Although the metro line 10 resumed operating 4 hours after the crash, part of the line (from Yili Road to North Sichuan Road) is out of service for further investigation.

I had a trip to Zhenjiang during the Middle Festival. Zhenjiang is a city with more than 3000 years history in the southwest of Jiangsu province. It is about 2 hours train from Shanghai and is suitable to visit in the weekend, when it will be no crowd. I just stayed in Zhenjiang for one day and may not catch the highlight spots of the city, but it is worthy a visiting IMO. What I want to mention about in this blog is the Xijindu Ancient Street, which is the most concentrated and most intact historic district in Zhenjiang.

 The roof of the Xijindu residential area

A corner of the Xijindu historic street

Zhenjiang is an important transportation hub in the recent history, owing to its location near the intersection of the Yangtze River and the Grand Canal, and in which condition, the UK built the British Consulate in 1889 in Zhenjiang Xijindu.

 The British Consulate in Zhenjiang since 1889

There are residential buildings since the late Qing Dynasty and Early Republic, and are still inhabited. The buildings are in old style and the doors attract me.

Zhenjiang’s special food are Guogai noodle (锅盖面) and Yao meat (肴肉). I like them very much and still have aftertaste.

The traditional Chinese Middle Autumn Festival is approaching (Sep. 12), and mooncake becomes a hot topic, again. Different with the past, more negative voices come out toward the mooncake and the newly known so-called mooncake tax.

A box of mooncake is usually presented as corporate welfare in the Mid-Autumn Festival. A few company may post a box of mooncake to their employee’s family, which is recognized as a better way. Many companies send mooncake to their customers for better relationship. Anyway, it is very common to receive more than one box of mooncake in a family.

However, as people care about their health and eat much healthier more than before, they don’t eat many mooncakes. One or two piece(s) of mooncake is enough for the taste in this traditional day. Many families left a lot of mooncake after the holiday and it becomes a big waste. The negative voice says that they don’t want to receive mooncake anymore, and they recommend not to send mooncake to employees and customers in the Mid-Autumn Festival. You can buy some yourself if you want.

Mooncake tax is another story. The tax authorities indicate that it should pay tax when company sends mooncake to employees. People feel incredible and dub it a ‘Mooncake Tax’, but actually, such tax has been paid for 17 years already.