Cancelled and delayed flights have long been a regular fact of life at Shanghai’s airports with heavy rains causing the latest round of passenger inconvenience. “The airport authority can do nothing about the flight delays, but is responsible for keeping passengers informed,” said Jing Yiming, the airport authority’s president, adding that the airport is also working closely with airlines and other government institutions, but would not reveal any details on when the service will be available.

The service is set to debut on Alibaba’s online payment platform Alipay. If your flight is delayed a notification will be sent to your phone via Alipay, its online payment platform. It will also provide flight information, allow users to make inquiries and check-in online as well as to provide VIP and airport traffic services.

Alipay may use the model for other partnerships, too. It’s apparently looking to launch an app targeted at people planning to visit the new Shanghai Disney Resort. Through the app, users will be able to buy tickets for both air travel and admission to the theme park.

Li Derun, the airport authority’s board chairman, said Shanghai’s two airports will receive a total five million more passengers each year once the Shanghai Disney Resort opens in spring 2016.

The post Alibaba to Push Shanghai Flight Delay Notifications Through Alipay App appeared first on The Nanfang.

Unsubstantiated reports say an Uber driver in Chengdu, Sichuan was the target of a trap set by taxi drivers who pulled him from his car and beat him.

An anonymous user on the xcar forums posted this before 9am yesterday (June 1):

A Uber driver caught in a trap at Babao Street was dragged from his car and beaten for ten straight minutes. After the police came, the beating continued. (The fracas continued to grow until) five police cars and one ambulance were eventually called to the scene. However, the taxi drivers persisted and were able to drag the Uber driver out of (the ambulance). It’s hard times again for the taxi drivers, as they won’t be able to cause trouble like this again.

Accompanying the post are three aerial photos that show a crowd and several taxis that appear to be surrounding a single car. The last photo corroborates the claim that a sizable police presence was eventually called to this scene.

This incident has not been confirmed by any Chinese news source so far. Uber’s own official Chinese Weibo micro-blogging account shows little recent activity.

Even as the car-sharing service that originated in California, USA has expanded to many markets throughout the world, Uber has encountered a number of problems in China.

While ride-sharing apps currently occupy a grey zone in Chinese law, Uber’s competition Didi and Kuaidi have the advantage of being strongly backed by Alibaba and Tencent, influential Chinese companies with a history of cooperating with Chinese authorities. It also doesn’t bode well that Didi and Kuaidi are said to have 99 percent of the ride-sharing market in China. Meanwhile, Guangzhou and Shanghai have announced their intention to create their own locala ride-sharing apps.

Over the span of a week last month, Uber had its Guangzhou and Chengdu offices raided by government officials, something an Uber manager said lead to a relocation of its Chengdu offices.

The bad news continues with Sunday’s news that Wuhan traffic authorities have threatened Uber with fines up to 10,000 yuan if they are caught operating on Wuhan streets.

Local taxi drivers in Chengdu have long complained their fares have been halved since Uber launched there nine months ago. But as they told WSJ China Real Time, they’re also not above joining the competition if given the opportunity.

Whether or not the Sichuan incident can be verified, it won’t be the first time Uber drivers have faced violence.

This past March saw at least 20 incidents in Brussels, Belgium in which cabbies confronted Uber drivers attempting to pick up fares, in some cases coming to blows. During a taxi strike in Paris this past January, taxi drivers began attacking Uber drivers who were taking fares, resulting in smashed windows, slashed tires, thrown eggs, and broken mirrors.

Here are more photos from the incident in Chengdu:

Related:

• Rent-a-ride app Uber launches in Shenzhen

The post Cab Drivers in Sichuan Violently Beat Uber Driver in Planned Attack appeared first on The Nanfang.

San Francisco ride-sharing startup Uber has come under fire in China after two of its offices were raided by police. Officials marched into Uber’s offices in Chengdu just days after doing the same in Guangzhou, claiming they were looking to “get information” but not punish the company.

Photographs from Chengdu show what appears to be Uber personnel surrounding uniformed officials, pointing fingers and taking pictures on their phones.

On April 30, authorities from the Guangzhou municipal industry and commerce bureau, the transport commission and the local police raided Uber’s Guangzhou branch, seizing thousands of mobile phones and other equipment. The provincial transport commission said it suspected Uber was operating a taxi service without a proper business license and could face a fine of RMB 30,000 ($4,800).

In January, apps allowing drivers of private cars to offer their services were banned by the Chinese government. Chinese taxi drivers have been known to air their grievances against car-sharing companies, who they say should be regulated.

Uber has been growing quickly in China, and already operates in nine Chinese cities including Shanghai, Beijing and Shenzhen. It faces heavy competition from Chinese-made apps, however. Most estimates put Uber’s share of the Chinese market at just 1 percent.

Here are more photographs of the invasion in Chengdu:

The post China Raids Uber Offices in Guangzhou and Chengdu appeared first on The Nanfang.

Large, doe-like eyes; smooth, porcelain skin; a tapered chin on an almond face—these features can be seen in the many selfies taken by China’s younger generation, especially girls.

But with the need to adhere to a standard of beauty that keeps rising, some women manipulate their images in order to look the part. They use photo booths, Photoshop, apps, and even cameras with special features to achieve their idea of perfect beauty. But now, there’s an app that does the opposite: removes the touch-ups to show what’s truly underneath.

Primo is a Japanese app that reportedly removes any enhancements to an altered image and restores a picture of a person to its original state. This means that Primo will undo the effects of eyes that have been enlarged, and skin tone and teeth that have been lightened.

READ: How to Attract a Chinese Man Part 1: A Cartoon You is a Sexier You

So far, the app is only available on iOS, but users say it helps them not feel “cheated” by images they see. “This software is simply out of this world; never again will I have to worry about being tricked by a picture of a girl,” one commenter said. Another opined, “Very useful; those people that would present a fake appearance to the world should be more careful now.”

Of course, applying this on photos that haven’t been touched up also gives interesting results.

To provide a clearer explanation of how this app works, here is an example:

Does a person simply look too good to be true? Let the Primo app do its work:

Primo is also being used on famous people:

With huge influx of selfies you have to wade through when using Chinese social media, it appears there’s finally a way to look someone in the eyes and see them for who they really are.

Photos: Xinhua, the Nanfang

The post Popular New App in China Removes Selfie Touch-Ups to Show What’s Really Underneath appeared first on The Nanfang.

The app is called 疯狂来往 in Chinese, but loosely translates into Mad Relations in English. It allows users to play charades online by recording a video of yourself acting out before sharing it with your friends.

The game was developed for Alibaba’s Laiwang chat service, a competitor to the popular WeChat social network.

As Kotaku reports, developer Zhejiang Zhile Network and Hortor Soft apologized for the incident. They issued a statement saying once they realized Mad Relations was uploading videos without the players’ consent, they removed the video sharing function.

While some pundits suspect this is a publicity stunt, much of the criticism from the press has come from outside China’s borders.

Gamasutra said the incident “shows the peril of not thoughtfully handling all forms of player data your game may scrape and upload to servers”, while Polygon titled their story “Game caught uploading private videos to internet without user permission”, a headline some found to be “sensational”.

READ: Chinese Media Publish Hacked Nude Celebrity Photos

Here’s a video of a news report of the story:

Photos: Kotaku, Polygon

The post Alibaba App Leaks 36,000 Videos of Half-Naked Users Online appeared first on The Nanfang.

By monitoring the heart and brain, users of the app will be able to diagnose their own psychological well-being, and obtain treatment using online resources. Users can also make various inquires online and schedule appointments with a psychologist via the internet.

The project is a collaboration between the Beijing Huilongguan Hospital and the Beijing Psychological Crisis Research and Intervention Center.

The need for the app was presented very differently in various media outlets. Sina highlighted the recently publicized suicides of US actor, Robin Williams, and Chinese translator, Sun Chongdan. iFeng quoted a number of statistics, specifically that suicide was a top ten cause of death in China that claimed about 131,000 lives a year, particularly the elderly.

WSJ China Real Time noted the announcement of the app followed a recent spate of officials committing suicide in a year of frequent corruption investigations. More than three dozen officials, or employees, have committed suicide since early 2013, reported Caixin.

Although public stigma associated with mental illness may be waning in China, the public will have to wait between three and five years before the app is released. There is no word whether the app will be compatible with the next generation of the Apple iPhone.

In the meantime, the Chinese public will have to make do with the few psychologists it currently has. According to the World Health Organization’s Mental Health Atlas, China had 1.53 psychiatrists and 0.18 psychologists per 100,000 people in 2011.

[h/t WSJ China Real Time]

Photo: jyrb

The post Feeling Depressed and Suicidal in China? There’s an App For That appeared first on The Nanfang.

The fact we even know what that means is a sad commentary on the times we live in. While most of us (though not all) have clearly made peace with China’s lung-blackening pollution levels, we still want to know when it makes more sense to watch a movie rather than go for a run. To help with that, a slick new iOS app called Airpocalypse has been released detailing pollution levels in 16 Chinese cities, including Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and Hong Kong (Zhuhai clearly not needing it).

There are many apps out there already, but this one adds the current temperature, forecast and the pollution report, and does it all with a bit of ‘tude. The app’s slogan? “The air in China sucks. We hate it too.”

You can download it here (iOS only at this point). Check out the screenshots below.

The post Slick New App Gives You Pollution Data With a Bit of Attitude appeared first on The Nanfang.

The constant sound of rain falling upon Shenzhen has been too much for one male commuter who was photographed performing nature’s business at what appears to be Laojie Station in full view of an apathetic public.

Taken on the evening of May 12 by a Weibo user named MRxHarveyyyy, the pictures dampened the mood of dismayed netizens who expressed their outrage at this ill-mannered man who didn’t have the foresight to pee across the border in Hong Kong so that he could be defended with nationalistic fervor.

We’ve seen worse things happen on the Shenzhen Metro. And, we do appreciate this guy’s technique of splaying his feet in order to dig deep into the recesses of that corner. However, as had been brought up during online debate, the issue remains: where are all those public bathrooms? Why can’t I find a bathroom when I really need to use one?

You’re in luck. Never again will you have to worry about who’s number one.

Over in nearby Guangzhou on May 12, the local chengguan showed off their proud new development, a bathroom-locater app. The app works by using your phone’s GPS and comparing the user’s position to a map of public bathrooms

The app is currently available for all Android models and can be accessed using the displayed QR code at the bottom of the page.

Finally: an app that tells you were to go so that you can sit down and use your phone some more. However, we do find that there to be a glaring flaw with this well-intentioned plan: that people are more prone to taking than giving—in this case, the object in question is “a crap”.

All the same, we can’t fault this idealistic plan. We hope many users will use this app so that more people will be able to use the filthy gutter toilets of public restrooms rather than the convenience of a nice, clean subway platform.

Or, if you don’t want to pay the fare to gain access to this Shenzhen station bathroom, you can always take your business outside.

Related:
ExploreMetro Officially Launches Map for Shenzhen Subway
Explosion on Shenzhen Metro Caused by External Smartphone Battery
New Shenzhen “Pee Straight” Funnels Aim to Help You Avoid Costly Fine 

Photos: Shenzhen City Coast Society via Weibo, Yangcheng Evening Report via Weibo, Nandu via Weibo

The post You’re in Luck: Guangzhou Public Bathroom App Streaming Online appeared first on The Nanfang.

An easy-to-use map that has been available for other major Chinese cities that include Guangzhou and Hong Kong, ExploreMetro maps have long been a favorite of ours for its simple interface and neat features.

Want to know how long it takes to get from the border at Futian Checkpoint all the way to Airport East Station? Connecting a starting point with an end destination tells us the length and cost for a journey: in this case, it takes 62 minutes by train at a cost of RMB 8.

Clicking upon a station (the bubble) and then clicking upon the appearing window will bring up additional information like maps of the local area and station exits, first and last trains, and details and photos of the surrounding area.

Available in both English and Chinese Mandarin, the ExploreMetro Shenzhen map is available online for web browsers and as a downloadable app for persuasions both Apple and Android.

We can’t wait to see what the subway make will look like when the Dongguan Metro will connect to both the cities of Guangzhou and Shenzhen. We suppose it will make for a lot of scrolling.

Related:
Shenzhen Metro to Connect with Dongguan and Huizhou
Shenzhen Metro to Introduce In-Train WiFi in June
Explosion on Shenzhen Metro Line 4 Caused by External Smartphone Battery
Guangzhou Subway Station Toilet Directory

Photo: ExploreMetro

The post ExploreMetro Officially Launches Map for Shenzhen Subway appeared first on The Nanfang.

Uber allows users of Android and iOS to request a car pick them up and confirm the fare, which is paid for via credit card through the mobile device. It’s become quite popular in the United States, so Uber has been expanding quickly in Asia.

Tech In Asia reports the launch in Shenzhen is expected to be low key, at least in the beginning:

As is Uber’s usual strategy, this is a limited, “secret Uber” roll-out that serves as a testing phase, probably for a couple of months. Uber’s blog post on this topic (via TheNextWeb) notes that Uber’s limos will be available around the Nanshan, Futian and Luohu neighborhoods of Shenzhen, but might be in short supply for now.

Uber’s minimum fare in Shenzhen is RMB 40 ($6.50), which is more than three times the starting rate of a local taxi.

Uber’s blog post on the launch in Shenzhen explains how the service works:

Download the Uber app on your iPhone or Android device and register with your credit card. Pinpoint your location and within minutes of requesting, a professional driver will appear with a luxurious Audi A6L stocked with Wi-Fi, water and chargers. Your private driver will be ready to take you wherever you want – whether you are crossing the HK Border, strolling the OCT Loft, or dining at your favorite spot in CoCo Park.

New to Uber? Use the promo code “SecretSZ” for one free ride up to RMB 200.

Uber is something we’ll definitely try out at least once (especially during rush hour when taxis are hard to find). It’s interesting that Uber picked Shenzhen as an early launch city, even beating out Beijing and Guangzhou. It speaks to the city’s cutting-edge and tech-friendly image.

(h/t @lantaumama)

The post Rent-a-ride app Uber launches in Shenzhen appeared first on The Nanfang.