Explosion rocks Beijing-based Shanghaiister's neighborhood food joint

Shanghaiist contributor Maggie Rauch had quite a startle today when an explosion destroyed a restaurant close to her in downtown Beijing this morning.

Perhaps because of the 60th Anniversary jitters and the ethnicity of the restaurant (it's owned by a certain minority that's been in a lot of trouble recently), the government has reacted pretty harshly to unauthorized news on the subject - blocking Twitpic minutes after Maggie put them on the web.

If you want to read more details, you can check out the Xinhua article (which one Twitterer pointed out, is short enough to be a tweet), this China Daily piece on the damages (so far, only injuries) or this WSJ summary.