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Since around March this year, a sad-looking panda has been spotted roaming the streets of New York City — on the subway, in Times Square, at various parks and around Wall Street's bull statue. Over the next few months, the Sad Panda has intrigued and fascinated New Yorkers — his short disappearance on Wall Street led a few concerned individuals to put up a missing notice, and his great makeover as Spongebob Squarepants did not go unnoticed. Turns out this Sad Panda is a 62 year old man from Guangzhou, Chen Jialing, who has now lived in the United States for many years.

We've always found China's obsession with UFOs highly amusing, so this interview on GoKuming particularly struck our fancy. The site spoke to Zhang Yifang 张一方), founder and former director of the Kunming UFO Research Association, who recently organized the 2009 International Astronomy Year and Extraterrestrial Life Forum at Kunming's Dongfeng Plaza.

Now that we've had a good night's rest, we can sit back and reflect on the general meaning and importance, both literal and symbolic, of President Obama's town hall in Shanghai yesterday. We've come to a sort of peace with the entire affair: yes, it was scripted, but could you expect more from such an unprecedented meeting between citizens and the populist president of a staunchly democratic country in a Communist state? No, Obama didn't seem to have a substantive, overarching message for a meeting that his administration fought tooth and nail to arrange: but in his first appearance in China, having yet to even meet with President Hu Jintao, were we really expecting something earth shattering?

Since our live blogging of Obama's town hall meeting with Chinese students earlier today, a few interesting things have come to light.

There has been a flurry of news in preparation for and response to Obama's first trip to the Mainland. Because we're following it across the web so you don't have to, here's a round up of the most salient and interesting links, videos and general reactions to the US President in China.

Remember that fun little bike race we told you about a couple weeks ago? The Shanghai Alleycat? It happened this weekend and, happily, seemed to be a great success! Check out the winners and various links to picture galleries on the People's Bike website. Good going, guys. Hopefully, by next year, we'll actually be comfortable enough bike riders to join in on the festivities.

2012, the new apocalyptic movie by director Roland Emmerich, opened this weekend in Shanghai to smashing box office records, showing that Hollywood's discovered at least one way its blockbusters can make a killing in China - by pandering to the Chinese.

Useful new feature alert: Google's Translate service now displays Pinyin results when translating into Chinese characters - which makes it that much easier for us to figure out what the heck a word is after we've changed it over from English. If you want to use the feature, hit "Show romanization" once the translation comes up. Thanks Google!

Shanghaiist lists all the live music performances you might want to check out from now to Sunday this week. For fun things that aren't live music, take a peek at our Pencil This In (out every Monday!)

Electrolist, by Shanghai Ultra of the VOID crew, gives the lowdown on the Shanghai electronic music scene each week, with picks, tips, news, and other rumors.

Rich Medina, a veteran of the New York music scene, is tearing up the Shelter on Friday night - a party you definitely don't want to miss.

"I think we're going to need to have chicken for Thanksgiving this year," our roommate told us, faces twisted in dismay. A Thanksgiving traditionalist, she had been adamant about cooking the meal at home for friends rather than head out to any of the many restaurant/take away options other people have outlined.

Anyone who’s been trawling through the China-related web this week will surely have stumbled across the ‘Nine Nations of China’ map that surfaced on Atlantic Monthly. Patrick Chovanec, from Tsinghua University, posted his map amidst the inescapable excitement of Obama’s visit to China, reminding the US President that China is "a mosaic of several distinct regions, each with its own resources, dynamics, and historical character."

A Shanghai-based English copywriter has discovered some hilarious Chinglish slogans, including a new one for Haibao that explains the Shanghai Expo mascot's consistently happy visage. Since we've previously determined that Haibao is a boy mascot, all we can think of say to his slogan is... "Really? So soon?"

Making a pit stop during the Obama Administration’s Blonde Ambition tour of Asia, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton paid a visit to the 2010 Expo site earlier today. Secretary Clinton addressed a squadron of journalists in front of the site for the future United States pavilion, among other things asking for increased contributions from American businesses, as the U.S. had raised two-thirds of the expo participation cost as of September.

• Who knew that one simple gesture, like holding your own umbrella, could mean so much? Obama made an awesome first impression by shielding himself from rain on Sunday evening, thanks partially to the habit of Chinese officials usually having a flukey to hold their umbrellas, P. Diddy style. [Wall Street Journal]
• The LA Times has a great look at the story behild Jiyuan, a place known for manufacturing lead batteries where lead poisoning has gotten so bad that entire villages are being evacuated. [LA Times]
• So should we be calling President Obama 奥巴马 (àobāmǎ) or 欧巴马 (ōubāmǎ)? Both have been used in press releases, though the U.S. Embassy said it was now standardizing the Chinese translation of Barack's last name and should now be using the latter exclusively. [Danwei]

Did you know Shanghai had a jump rope enthusiast team? Neither did we until we stumbled upon this pretty awesome video on Youku. While we could've done without the silly soundtrack, we were mighty impressed by their jump roping shenanigans. Watch these kids share ropes, switch ropes, do double back flips between ropes and off each other without missing a beat.

As foreigners in Shanghai, we understand the difficulties with assimilation: if you're not from Shanghai you are different, no matter where you're from. In all honesty, though, it may be easier to be a foreigner in Shanghai than it is to be an waidiren, an outsider from another part of China.

Well, President Obama's first trip to China is now officially over. A lot of things happened, a lot of people talked about it, but nothing too groundbreaking occurred. Obama seemed to have a good trip: he visited famous Chinese landmarks, met with his brother, even talked a bit of politics along the way. But a lot of us were ultimately left with a feeling something like disappointment: for various reasons, the mythic qualities of the American president were overwhelmed by the totalizing nature of China and Chinese politics.

Since up until now, we've only seen the third case of serious swine flu emerged in Shanghai, you may well be wondering, “how bad could all this hullabaloo get anyway?"

Despite getting a ton of press when it first opened back in March, it looks like the Barbie Megastore on Huai Hai Road just hasn't been as popular as Mattel had hoped. The six-floor retailing monolith has been unable to make any of its "astronomical" sales targets.

Oh god: we're not really sure how this is newsworthy, but apparently Nanfang Daily decided that a bunch of pictures of drunken foreign girls awkwardly passed out was good enough to at least make into a photo gallery. The pictures were taken from popular BBS site Huanqiu: we couldn't find the original post, though we did find pictures of another netizen getting a duck drunk, which are funny, and somehow more disturbing.

Shanghai-born Dr. Liliane Willens will be speaking twice this weekend about her newly published book, Stateless in Shanghai at several venues around the city. But first, a word of explanation about what "stateless in Shanghai" really means:

What's lurking underneath Tiananmen Square? It ain't just rats. In 1969, at the height of the Cultural Revolution, Mao commissioned the construction of an underground city, built right under Beijing. Fearing an imminent nuclear attack from the U.S.S.R, Dixia Cheng (地下城 the underground city) was meant to be a safeguard, designed to house 40% of the city's 7.5 million in case of catastrophe. It was meant to have apartments, stores, and even a skating rink: all the comforts of above-ground home.

Fashion news columns are buzzing over the November 14 launch of Jimmy Choo for H&M, a collection of couture at prices that aren’t supposed to make budget-conscious fashionistas weep too hard. The collaboration between Jimmy Choo and H&M is the latest in a long line of link-ups between the Swedish fashion giant and designer labels - a list that includes fashion elites Karl Lagerfeld, Stella McCartney, and Roberto Cavalli.

Are you a party animal, do you love electronic music, and do you happen to dream about the city of Berlin for just those reasons? Then you should come to Vienna Café on Thursday, who will show the 2008 flick Berlin Calling - a film about a Berlin DJ and his attempt to make it in the club music industry, "a melodramatic tragic comedy set in the world’s most recognizable and bustling hub of dance music activity today."

More photos on the Shanghaiist Contribute page. To see your photos on our Contribute page, use Flickr and tag your photos “shanghaiist”. Or you can email your photos to photos@shanghaiist.com and they will automatically appear on our site (and here).

Sad: a Bryde's (pronounced Brooda) whale was found beached this week on Hengsha island. Rescue workers tried for a good two days to rescue the poor thing and return it to the sea, but bad weather conditions made saving the whale impossible. All things considered, the whale was in pretty good health, leading experts to think that it got sick and lost its sense of direction, wandering into the Yangtze delta. Which makes sense: what would a whale want to do in shanghai, anyway? Visit the aquarium? That was an overwhalemingly bad joke.

President Obama's come and (almost) gone by now and despite our proximity to the Portman Ritz Carlton, we're pretty sure we'll never get a chance to actually get a picture with the leader of the free world... or will we?

• Haha, look - it's an Obama egg, made by egg artist Kang Yongguo in Liaoning Province. [Obamafoodorama]
• Tao Weishuo (陶韡烁) defends a statement he made: "I strongly disagree with what Obama said about the Internet firewall... I think all Chinese people have Internet freedom - we can speak out freely on the Internet about current social affairs", which generated a wave of criticism from netizens. [China Digital Times]
• Gosh there's a lot of green news coming out of China. Here's a summary of some of the biggest things to hit the wire and what they might mean. [NY Times]