Megan Shank dot com

For Huffpo
Today while at a Bund-side five-star hotel’s cafe where I was conducting an interview for the Enterprise section we’ll launch in March’s edition of Newsweek Select, a troop of 30-plus mud-covered construction workers tromped in with their rubber boots and construction hats and plopped down next to white collar workers disinterestedly sipping 55RMB ($7) [...]

BLOG for Huffpo
The Chinese can rest easy tonight. I should know. I saw it on the news.
Tonight, I flipped on the evening broadcast of CCTV1. The station is part of the China Central Television (CCTV) family, which also runs channels such as CCTV2, CCTV3, CCTV4, CCTV5, and, well, you get the gist. Not exactly creatively [...]

My cousin, Jenny Shank (or J. Alicia Shank), whose work has been featured in a variety of renown fiction magazines, is a semi-finalist in the Amazon-Penguin Breakthrough Novel competition. Please download her work, read, and provide your comments (and stars!!!) Her wry, subtle humor and deep sympathy for her characters will hook you.

Via Skype, Adam and I review a translation together during one of my 15-hour work days. We are stuck on one of those paragraph-long sentences by a Chinese academic.
Adam: “Passive voice is like hiding the ball.”
Megan: “No one acts. Instead, everyone, everything is acted upon. Maybe it makes sense that many Chinese write this [...]

International Herald Tribune
Net gives Americans abroad a stronger political voice
By Eric Sylvers
Friday, January 4, 2008
MILAN: Thanks to the Internet, Americans who belong to the Democratic Party are getting a voice of their own in the presidential nomination, as the party has agreed to allow expatriates to choose 22 delegates to the national convention as part [...]

Q & A: Interrogating Inspector Chen
Crime novelist (and poet) Qiu Xiaolong dishes on Chinese censors and soup dumplings
By Megan Shank
Date posted: January 13, 2008
IN “RED MANDARIN DRESS,” the fifth installment of his Inspector Chen mystery series, Shanghai-born émigré Qiu Xiaolong intersperses the narrative of gritty murders with glorious descriptions of Chinese food and captivating asides [...]

My fiancé Adam has been here for two weeks. Now he’s going home. We’ve enjoyed celebrating the holidays, trying out new recipes, hosting our Siberian friends for a weekend and making a satiric film about the great China hype and Western hysteria. Hope you enjoy watching it as much as we did making it. But [...]

Awesome. Looks like Chinese and American journalists don’t have a corner on irresponsibility and hubris.

For Newsweek Select’s January 2008 edition; this copy was only printed in Chinese, but I post the English version.
A Carbon-friendly Stay
China is now the fastest growing emitter of greenhouse gases worldwide, but one new hotel in Shanghai wants to change that—with style. URBN Hotels Shanghai, the first carbon-neutral boutique hotel in China, is sure [...]

FOR NEWSWEEK SELECT JAN. 2008
Sending out an SNS
Chinese and international social-networking services want to “friend” you.
By Megan Shank (Shanghai)
No other culture in the world emphasizes building guanxi (connections) as China’s does. Recently, the foreign powerhouse social networking sites (SNS) Facebook and Friendster have engendered themselves as part of that experience here. [...]

I edited this piece by Lauren Hilgers. It ran in our December edition.
Business
Tough to Swallow
Tightening regulations are changing the face of China’s pharmaceutical industry.
By Lauren Hilgers (Shanghai)
At the junction of three major rail lines outside of Beijing at Shijiazhuang, China’s pharmaceutical row, warehouses are pumping out antibiotics and pain medication. Assembly-line workers bottle endless [...]

I’ll be speaking live about Christmas in China on NPR’s The Bryant Park Project 8am Christmas morning EST. Tune in, cheer on.
UPDATE: Here’s the link to my segment.

For The Huffington Post:
How about a Facebook Race?
By Megan Shank
Growing up a Nebraskan, I was taught to deeply distrust Iowans—particularly while driving. I have learned that although they are poky behind the wheel, Iowans have expertly navigated the American electoral system to their advantage, drumming up much hubbub and hard cash for the state with [...]

I am getting back on the blog after two weeks of holiday and then two weeks of adjusting to working life again, but I have to say this is horrible news for me and the residents of Discworld:
Terry Pratchett Says He Has Alzheimer’s
RAPHAEL G. SATTER | December 12, 2007 07:20 PM EST | AP
LONDON [...]

Today I awoke to a stunning sunrise and walked crisp cornfields in the early light around a pond crystalized with ice. I startled a white-tailed deer on my way, which fled tail flashing, and rabbits popped from bramble and bush. Finches and wren and woodpeckers scattered for seed. And the little farm cat, also known [...]

I INTERVIEWED TIAN HAOJIANG IN CHINESE FOR OUR NOV. 2007 LAST WORD. THEN I TRANSLATED THE CONTENT INTO ENGLISH.
LAST WORD
TIAN HAOJIANG
During the Cultural Revolution, 15-year-old Tian Haojiang furtively rooted through an underground Beijing bookshop and discovered his first book of poems – a collection authored by the Tang Dynasty poet Li Bai. Covertly, Tian set [...]

I WROTE THIS FOR OUR NOV. 2007 EDITION.
HEALTH
Quit Drinking; Try Herb
By Megan Shank (Shanghai)
To date, the West has predominantly treated alcoholism with pharmaceuticals – many with nasty side effects – and complete abstinence from alcohol. Yet many alcoholics hesitate to seek treatment because they don’t want to completely stop drinking and are [...]

This website is intended to be a conversation, not a confessional for those who have not yet come out of the closet or who are considering suicide. I am not a counselor. I cannot help you with these issues. If you are one of the many people who has written to me with these problems, [...]

WE RAN THIS FAST CHAT IN THE SEPTEMBER 2007 EDITION.
Fast Chat
Ken Carroll, co-founder of ChinesePod
At the eye of a perfect storm of torrential iPod sales and raging interest in Chinese study stands Ken Carroll, co-founder of the online Chinese language training service ChinesePod. After founding several traditional English language training schools in Shanghai, Carroll [...]

BELATEDLY MORE FROM OUR SEPTEMBER EDITION. I WORKED WITH WRITER VENESSA WONG ON EDITS.
Business
Studying a New Market
By Venessa Wong
Outside, immaculate fields fill with the cheers of soccer teams while inside kayaks race across a heated swimming pool. From both locations, it’s possible to hear the strains of a melodious live symphony. It’s tough to [...]