Ah, sweet nostalgia. Long afternoons playing with kids whose names we don't remember, showing off our toys made of tin and plastic. Look at this wind-up chicken's manic pecking action! And you can play with my Constructicon, but only if you promise to be really, really careful with it. His name's Scrapper, and he's their leader, and he forms the right leg of DEVASTATOR! Look, you pull his head out like this, and then you make him stand, like so... more ›

Today marks the kick-off of Cotton's Thirty-Somethings Mondays: a salute to all of those who've hit their dirty thirties. Every Monday, celebrate with your Gen-X friends and relive all those great moments from your childhood - grunge, boobs showing up in teen movies, and episodes of the Simpsons before they began to suck. Cotton's will be playing hits from the Brat Pack era (anyone? anyone? Bueller? anyone?) and tunes from the 80s and 90s. more ›

Flickr user Kattebelletje, also known as Alice, has put up a beautiful set of slides her mother took on a long trip around China back in the 1980s. Looking at pictures of Shanghai from 1985, it's hard not to amazed at how much everything has changed. Check out the Shanghai and other cities (including Beijing, Nanjing and Hangzhou) that Ariane Dijkstra saw and documented two decades ago. more ›

Shanghai filmmaker Shu Haolun (舒浩仑） made a name for himself a few years back with his personal documentary Nostalgia 《乡愁》, an exploration of the nong tangs where he grew up and which are slated for destruction. He's just come out with a new film, a 20 minute fiction film called Young Blood 《少年血》, that also explores 1980s Shanghai life, telling the story of young teenage love. There was a screening last month (sorry to be telling you now, we're ridiculously out of the loops), but there should be more in the future. Read more about the film and filmmaker on his blog. more ›