January 4, 2009 - January 10, 2009 Archives

Littleredbook.cn is a promising new blog from Shanghai-based ad agency bloodyamazing. Their mission: "Our mission is to make the world of advertising & creative in China more accessible to companies outside the Middle Kingdom. You'll find here the most relevant information for researching and eventually launching your own China campaigns."...

"In 10 years its population doubles to a seething 7 million people!" Via quirkyBeijing/Danwei....

And while you're visiting the ice festival in Harbin, why not consider taking a dip into the chilly river with these guys? This video sure makes swimming along to Chinese techno music look fun!...

If you are stumped for things to do for Chinese New Year and the thought of Siberian-like cold and a hot bowl of borscht seem more appealing then the beaches of Boracay, perhaps Harbin is a city you might consider visiting. Harbin's annual ice and sculpture festival started this week and runs until the end of February, weather permitting. More from ChinaTravel.net after the jump: Photos by Jonathan Deves from Harbin Ice and Sculpture Festival in 2008....

The Philippines have been exporting college graduates to work as domestic helpers / maids in other countries for many years now, but now, their Chinese counterparts are looking to do the same domestically:Desperate Chinese graduates, facing grim job prospects amid slowing economic growth, are clamouring to find posts as nannies and domestic helpers for the rich in one southern province, state media reported on Wednesday. Thousands of university students had applied for nanny work through an agency in China's export heartland of Guangdong, the Guangzhou Daily newspaper said. 'There have been five or six hundred people applying every month,......

Tens of thousands of people gathered in Kim II Sung Square in Pyongyang, North Korea, on Monday holding up banners with slogans including "Long live the Great Leader Kim Jong Il". Shanghaiist was amused to hear we're observing only a "Year of Friendship" with this country in 2009. We've always thought they were our BFF....

China Tech News reports that about 80 copyright holders will be ganging up on Tudou for copyright infringement. Some of these companies in the alliance include Joy.cn, Beijing Polybona Film Distribution, Beijing Orange Sky Entertainment Group and SFS Emperor and are said to be suing for RMB10 million. Tudou is a video sharing website that is bigger than YouTube in China showing 1.2 billion videos each month including bootlegged versions of TV shows and clips from Hollywood movies. Tudou, possibly in response to this suit,......

Danwei directed us to the embedded six-month old video of a short local NBC News piece on a Chinese-made three-wheel "car" available from a dealer in Webster, New York (it's actually available in several places in the U.S., like Michigan). The Webster dealer (we think this is his MySpace page ... yes, MySpace) claims women love the Wildfire WF650-C. The jury is still out on that one. The WF650-C does, though, supposedly get up to 70 miles per gallon. For that, you......

... aren't here, you naughty bastards. Lately, lots of people have been stumbling on this website through Google searches of Zhang Ziyi (章子怡) while other concerned readers have been writing in to us wondering about our curious silence on Zhang Ziyi's latest paparazzi photos, the biggest celebrity scandal to hit China after Edison Chen's "sexy photo gate". Well those pictures, all 81 of them, belong to X71online.com who's been known to sue bloggers for......

James Fallows Go here to listen to Terry Gross' interview with Beijing-based (and formerly Shanghai-based) writer James Fallows, The Atlantic's "man in China." Fallows discusses a variety of topics, including China's extensive investment in the United States (see his Atlantic story on the topic here), his new book of China essays (excerpt on Danwei), internet censorship and his recently deceased father. Around the 24-minute mark, Fallows makes some interesting statements about how he thinks Chinese people would have voted......

So the rumors we heard over the weekend at Kiito's were true ... and sooner than expected. According to SmartShanghai, China West — the outfit that brought, among others, Norah Jones, James Brown, Black Eyed Peas, The Roots, Incubus, James Blunt, Kanye West and Kylie Minogue to China — was "unable to maintain a profitable bottom line" after five years here. SmartShanghai says China West is "bowing out of the Chinese market for 2009," so perhaps they not ruling out a return to the market in......

As we've mentioned earlier, the China Internet Illegal Information Reporting Center this week published a list of web pages considered "vulgar and unhealthy". Google and Baidu, among others, were warned to clean out the unwanted material... or face the music. Baidu has already issued a very contrite-sounding apology. Meanwhile, high-ranking officials have demanded the resignation of three editors at news.163.com we hear. At Kuaiche, one of the web portals criticized, we could see clear results today. The first screenshot shows what the page's photo section looked like yesterday, the picture below is the same section today.......

A classic Hengshan Lu tale from Louis Lei Yu, Chinese-born DJ at CFUV 101.9 FM, radio station at Canada's University of Victoria: "[T]his is my bitter experience at the cold fairyland NYE show. So I saw cold Fairyland on NYE, I looked on the Internet and saw that they are playing and I thought 'oh cool, at lease I get to see one decent Chinese indie band during my trip to China.' This turned out to be one of the worst concerts I’ve ever saw, and not......

Boing Boing points us to this interesting art installation by Chinese artist Liu Jianhua who recreated the Shanghai skyline from dice and poker-chips. This was exhibited at the Galleria Continua in San Gimignano, Italy. A close-up shot follows after the jump. [Photos by Cinghialino] ...

Yes, people are crazy and times are strange. Two days ago, a fashionably dressed young woman ate a RMB280 lunch at a Japanese restaurant somewhere near Nanjing Xi Lu and Chengdu Bei Lu. When it was time to get the bill, she told the wait staff that she had no money on her and needed to withdraw some cash. A restaurant employee followed her to a nearby China Construction Bank (CCB) ATM, whereupon the woman locked herself inside and forbade anyone to come near her, saying she had a knife and would kill......

SmartShanghai has put together a compilation of the best and worst event flyers found on their website last year. Our favourite one has to be this flyer you see on the right, designed by I Love Shanghai for a party last January. We're sure the party went down well (no pun intended) on many a moustached man and cunning linguist in town....