Results tagged “advice”

Paying off bills here is as easy as going to a convenience store with some cash... but in case you thought even that was too much of a hassle, Shanghai's one of the few cities in China that also allows you to pay online. How? Taobao, of course.

By Benjamin Cohen

By Benjamin Cohen

... and going with strange girls who want to practise their English to coffee shops is STILL a bad idea, folks. Yet another chump — this time a Swedish guy on a business trip — has fallen for the time-honoured scam by following a pair of temptresses who were "dressed like university students" (so wearing mortar boards, presumably) to the Manabe coffee shop on the 3rd floor of the Brilliance Shimao Plaza, Shanghai Daily reported...

Yet. For those who like to keep up to date on Shanghai-English-language-website news — yes, all three of you — head on over to Urbanatomy.com. That's the future home of a new website from the folks at That's Shanghai. And if Urbanatomy.com is as half as good as thatssh.com ... someone seriously needs to be fired over there, because thatssh.com is really quite awful. But they know that — hence the new site. But why...

Two weeks ago, when we told you that China's new labour law was going to be a big, big thing, we had no idea it would also be the cause of some serious blood-letting. Local gangs and triads have been attacking the Shenzhen Dagongzhe Migrant Worker Centre which has been instrumental in providing legal advice for rural migrant workers and informing them about their rights under the new labour law. In separate attacks, they shattered...

Photo of a Mummy 3 set in a Hebei Province desert from China.org.cn

Even weirder stuff than the Youtube block seems to have been happening, though. Apparently, for a short while on the 17th, before the Youtube block occurred, blogsearch.google.com and live.com were both redirected to Baidu! Blogsearch.google.cn was totally inaccessible. This has been confirmed by Ken Wong (see screencaps on his blog) and other Chinese netizens. Google Blogoscoped reported that yet more exotic pages like search.ibm.com.cn were also being hijacked to Baidu.

Oops..we have been sitting on this a few days, all the beers and amazing shows made Shanghaiist a little loopy and unable to sit down and type. The entry below comes via Emily Moy who had a chance to sit down with Talib Kweli and Ozomatli at the Yue Festival press conference last Thursday........

Walking into Steak & Eggs, Shanghaiist was flooded with fond childhood memories of chowing down on big greasy breakfasts at truck-stop diners during family road trips along Interstate 10. Sure, we love Moon River and its classic 1950's theme, but Steak & Eggs is the first place we've eaten at in Shanghai that fits the mold of the no-frills American roadside diner.

There have recently been whispers all across town that Enoteca is the hottest place for wine connoisseurs right now. We were willing to give hearsay a run for its money. So we turned up, yesterday to be precise.

Watch this video clip of the poor receptionist girl working at Google China getting harrassed by a guy, Zola Zhou, (once) billed as "China's first citizen reporter". Zola first gained widespread attention for his blog reports on the Chongqing nailhouse. Hungry for more success, he also went to Xiamen to report on demonstrations against Haicang PX. Hell, he even got interviewed by NBC.

Remember that Chairman Mao bag that you...your "friend" bought the first time you came to China? These bags are found all over China and they are easy to spot. The bags are dark green with a red star or red portrait of Chairman Mao on the flap. Usually, the bags will contain some quote from Mao's The Little Red Book (the second best selling book in the world, by the way), written in red Chinese...

The first rule that many foreigners hear about doing anything in China is that you will need guanxi - relationships that help you clear the jungly bureaucracy, receive preferential tax treatment, or "free" land. Of course, the follow-up rule that is never stated in polite company is that guanxi means money, a greased palm, a sop, and a board seat. However, as useful as some relationships can be, they frequently outlive their usefulness and become nothing more than baggage.

Sichuan food addicts beware! China’s food safety inspectors have found some startling news (well, actually it’s not that startling at all, as you can see here, here, and here), 13% of recently tested chili products have been found to be unsafe. The reason for the health concern is too much preservatives and improper labeling.

Shanghaiist has had a string of bad luck in recent months when it comes to locks. Say, for example, the lock on our door which swung closed behind us one Saturday night at 3am and left us stranded outside our apartment with only a towel to cover our modesty (long story).

Our mom always taught us never to stick our fingers into holes on bus-stop benches. We always thought this was odd advice — we didn't live in a town with a public bus system until our late 20s — but now we know mom wasn't just talking crazy. Since 2002, Shanghai's bus stop benches (pictured) have been trapping fingers at a rate of at least one per year, according to the Shanghai Daily. All the victims had to be "cut free," including a 10-year-old girl in 2004, who we guess has chubbier than normal digits. That led to benches with "safer" kidney-shaped holes being installed at new bus stops (the holes are there for drainage). But the old "unsafe" benches continued to claim curious fingers, most recently on April 22, and over the May holiday warning signs were erected. One thousand holeless new benches made of stainless steel bars are going to replace the old ones — but the company responsible for benches is worried that thieves will steel the new design because "steel bars can be used for much wider functions than dotted steel plates and can sell for a better price on the recycling market."

Shanghaiist has been hearing a lot of rumours of late of dodgy, well, more dodgy behaviour along the Tongren Lu bar strip south of Nanjing Road. This morning, Shanghaiist was forwarded an email by our golf-enthralled editor via one of his trusted acquaintances. The email contained details regarding the assault of two expat males on Tongren Lu this week.

We are happy to report that we are wearing shorts. It's a beautiful day — 23 degrees Celsius (73 F) and sunny according to the little sun icon above the Shanghaiist logo over on the left. And by Friday, it's supposed to be 28 C (82 F). Since it is finally bearing good news, we thought today would be a good day to remind you about the Shanghaiist Weather Page, which you can access by clicking on that weather icon above our logo, or by following this URL:

ChinaTechNews.com directed us to this press release about a publicly traded company named Admax Resources, Inc., and why it is changing its name to China YouTV Corp. The reason is simple, really: Admax has decided to follow the well worn path many companies take — the one where they go from mining minerals in Canada to online video sharing in China.

Shanghaiist may be accused of going with the flow on occasions, and one of those areas might be to do with our narrow mindset on the lovely, cute and adorable panda. We've applied our finest available powers of research to bring you the following snippets on the flipside of China's panda tail, and yes, it is mucky in there. So let us be accused of panda-ring no more. Yes, this is reporting with bite.

There's a few things in this life that start with the letter M that Shanghaiist doesn't like. Malingerers, marmite, and men with no moustache but full beards (OK, the last one is a bit of a stretch M-wise). Some would say that these are irrational and ill-conceived categorisations, but there is another one on the list that isn't — and that is mosquitoes. And it looks like Shanghaiist isn't going to enjoy our coming summer evenings.

We know some of you actually hope that Disneyland comes to Shanghai, but if you see Donald Duck around town these days, don't get too excited: it's just the Shanghai Police:

Sunday. Usually, a quiet, contemplative day in the Blogosphere. But not here in the Ist-a-Verse. Nonono! Just look below and see all of the wild and crazy stuff our staffs are up to.

If you're new to Shanghai or still in that "testing the water" phase of living here, you should be well aware of Shanghai Daily's guide to living in Shanghai, called Live in Shanghai (previously mentioned here). Recently, the website added a new and useful section about shopping in Shanghai.

We recently moved into our fourth different apartment in just over four years in Shanghai. We used to do the moving ourselves: Get one of those Dazhong taxi trucks, lift everything in at the new place, and then lift everything out at the old place. Easy and cheap -- those things don't cost much more than a normal taxi. But over the years, we have accumulated quite a bit of stuff, and it had been raining for ages ... we just didn't want to deal with it. So, based on a friend's suggestion, we called up the moving company branch of the Dazhong taxi empire. It was good advice.

In Beijing, Changsha, and Xi'an, a certain group of people has decided to take on what they see as the coldness and apathy of human relations in the big city -- by giving out free hugs. They wear shirts and carry large signs that say things like "come and give me a hug," and while they attraction attention in public places, they haven't been all that successful -- in Xi'an, two hours of standing in a plaza in the cold only got them around 10 hugs and most of those were from children. Adults were either uninterested or embarrassed. One Mr. Li said that hugging was more of a foreign thing, not something that Chinese people do all that often. However, when several young Americans passed by and learned of what was happening they seemed rather nonplussed and didn't participate either.

Christopher St. Cavish, motorcycling philanthropist

CNN has just published a fairly glowing précis of Shanghai aimed at first-time visitors. The article, with the treacly title “Shanghai always a lovely surprise”, features hints on the major sites, getting around and day trips -- though, funnily enough, not a single word about food.