The International Herald Tribune has a great new article entitled Shanghai: The allure of individualism which explores the rising trend of young Chinese designers setting up shop to sell their own stuff. And they are not cheap.The New York Philharmonic has just left Shanghai for Beijing on its Asian tour that also includes Hong Kong and Taiwan and a landmark concert in Pyongyang. The New York Times talks about the disappointment of principal oboist Wang......

The environment Shanghai Daily: People's Square set to shine with solar power Xinhua: Chilling effect from Great Hall of the People China Daily: Shanghai running out of cemeteries New York Times: A Shanghai Hotel Goes Green China Digital Times: More Than Four in Five Chinese Glaciers Retreating - People Online China Digital Times: Deal With Global Warming: Try Not to Divorce - China Youth Daily Travel AFP: China produces first home-grown bullet train: report......

A Shanghai photo studio recently (we're not sure exactly when) made a pretty cool discovery in their, we assume, messy and neglected basement. CCTV reports: And just recently in Shanghai, a set of remarkable photographs was discovered because of a leaky pipe. Nearly 20,000 pictures from The Wang Kai gallery were brought to light after decades under cover. The photos, though they've yellowed some, are still in good condition. Most were taken in the 1920s......

It's good to know the good members of the Shanghai police force are rolling up their sleeves and hitting the mean streets in an effort to protect us from all the ills of modern China ... like shops that sell bubble tea. From the Associated Press: A Shanghai tea house whose name translates roughly as "Frog Keeps a Mistress" has been deemed a threat to public morality and told to get a new moniker, local......

Beijing retailers told to mind their manners with customers or be found violation of the law.Beijing has opened what we believe to be China's first pitch-black restaurant—where diners eat in complete darkness and the staff use night vision goggles.300 new bao mu's are being trained for deployment during the Chinese New Year, when many of the city's bao mu's are heading home.Was it climage change that brought down the Tang dynasty?A Shanghai production of the......

Zhang Rongkun is the first person to get arrested in the Shanghai corruption scandal.A reporter who wrote about corruption in the city of Shaoyang was freed, though his conviction on charges of extortion was not overturned.Shanghai's not the only place with corruption problems: Shenzhen joins the club, with five judges under investigation for taking bribes.The Chinese women's gymnastics team won the World Gymnastics Championships, upsetting the United States and winning their first ever team medal......

A prominent Chinese statistician was fired from his government post for undisclosed reasons.Watch out for deaf mutes and close your passenger side windows, car drivers!Two football players from Shanghai Shenhua score goals in the China-Palestine game and take China to the Asian Cup finals.Don't tell us that you don't watch TV on that 240 square meter TV floating in the Huangpu River near the Bund.Monkey Peaches reports that Johnny To's Exiled (放逐) is going to......

CNET reports, via Reuters and the South China Morning Post, that a courts in a city in Shandong province have been using a computer program to help calculate sentences in more than 1,500 criminal cases: The software, tested for two years in a court in Zibo, a city in the eastern coastal province of Shandong, covered about 100 different crimes, including robbery, rape, murder and state security offenses, the South China Morning Post said, citing......

Via Gridskipper, we learn that The Observer has singled out some of the world's top hotels, calling them the "Magnificent seven: icons of modern hotel design." A Shanghai property, of course, makes the list: Hotel Unique, Sao Paulo, BrazilThe Kandalama, Sri LankaHotel Marques De Riscal, Rioja, SpainThe Vigilius Mountain Resort, south Tyrol, ItalyThe Grand Hyatt, Shanghai, ChinaBurj Al Arab, DubaiThe Four Seasons, New York Here's what they said about The Grand Hyatt: Against a skyline......

Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang on doing business in China: "We have to think of a way in which the internet phenomenon can continue to grow and reach more users and at the same time comply with local laws. In places like China and other places that have different political regimes I think you'll see them trying to react and potentially regulate these kinds of activities. But our observation is that it is inevitable that things......

A "cancer village" 220 km from Shanghai.Illegal abortions performed by at least three Shanghai hospitals.A little food poisoning never killed anyone. (Not true.)Oh, great. A new Tiffany store minutes from our apartment.Bokee signs agreement to distribute Movable Type blogging software in China.It was inevitable. The Beijing Olympic mascots have their own TV show.The majority of Chinese internet users are "male, unmarried, under 30, with educational levels below Bachelor's degree and monthly income less than 2,000......

We love high-speed trains. A Shanghai-Beijing line was just approved -- and it will use "homemade technologies."China is helping the environment ... in the U.S. ... with fake Christmas trees.Shanghai's mayor: "Shanghai has been hoping to build a Disneyland for a long time." Disney: "There is nothing new to report on the progress of Shanghai discussions. If we were to reach an agreement for a second park in China, it would not open before 2010."Yahoo's......

China admitted earlier this week that the bird flu situation here is "grave," especially for the 2,600 dead birds found in Inner Mongolia. Now, quite suddenly it seems, Shanghai is starting to act like it is taking the threat seriously (and Shanghaiist is having SARS flashbacks, like when immediately after the government stopped lying to the people and Shanghai University gave all the foreign teachers a thermometer ... and vitamins). It was announced yesterday that......

A Shanghai woman has apparently succeeded in her attempt to stop a factory from polluting her Pudong neighborhood, and she didn't need the help of a peasant revolt to do it. She just took the company to court. A China Daily story with the unfortunate headline "Abortion woman stops factory pollution" tells the story of Zhao Yingdan, who claimed that emissions from the Shanghai CIMC Far East Container Co., Ltd., just 100 meters from her......