Share with us how you see Shanghai, or China! Post your photos on Flickr, tag them with "shanghaiist", and we'll select one favorite image per day. Or you can simply email your photos to photos at shanghaiist.com.......

We attended the Chicago Improv All-Stars show at Henry's last night ... and we enjoyed ourselves. It kind of had the feel of a theme party at a friend's house (assuming that friend was very popular, brewed their own beer, had a very large living room with poorly placed pillars, was bad at training their staff and charged guests RMB 280 at the door). If you have ever seen an episode of Whose Line......

See the Chicago Improv All-Stars!...

Déjà vu all over again? Here it is once more, Shanghaiist's nearly quarterly review the Douban book Top Ten List: Annie Baby - "Sunian Jinshi" (Beijing-based author, photographer and blogger who writes about love and self-exploration in the big city.) JK Rowling - "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" (Official Chinese version, published by the People's Literature Publishing House.) Markus Zusak - "The Book Thief" (Australian author of Austrian-German heritage writes a WWII book......

This is just waaaaay too cute. If these three videos aren't enough for you, then hop over to Life in the Fast Lane for more amazing pictures and videos of baby pandas from day 1 to day 120 of their birth that made us keel over from an overdose of cuteness. Have a fabulous Thursday, Shanghai.......

Southeast Asian pact exposes rifts [NY Times] Southeast Asian leaders signed a charter here today that was drafted as a watershed document to bind the region together as a European-style economic community but has instead exposed the sharp divisions over Myanmar and other issues among the signatories.Malaysia busts DVD lab in its biggest raid in 2007 [Reuters] Malaysia has raided a laboratory capable of churning out $52 million worth of pirated DVDs a year in......

If you guys have passed by CITIC Square on Nanjing Lu in the past month or two, you'd surely have seen that Mont Blanc has taken over the ground level store that used to be occupied by Starbucks, and apparently, they are building the world's largest Mont Blanc boutique right there. All Roads Leads to China reveals that Mont Blanc is paying US$11 per square metre per day, which works out to about US$250,000 per......

We know we've been posting a lot of videos lately, but this one was too engrossing not to pass along. It's Christopher St. Cavish, former motorcycling philanthropist and current food writer at SH magazine, eating a live baby octopus at a Korean restaurant in Shanghai. According to the YouTube page: It was for a magazine article, stupid, tasted terrible, and fueled by alcohol. We saw Chris on the street recently, so we can confirm that......

Shanghaiist has just touched down in Beijing. And just as we were wondering if it was just us, or if the air in the Jing was really that much worse *cough*cough*, this is what we read:Birth defects in Chinese infants have soared nearly 40 percent since 2001There is one Chinese baby born with birth defects every 30 secondsIn Beijing, the incidence of breast cancer has increased 23 percent in 10 years, with about 45 women......

In the latest edition of Sexy Beijing, Sufei hits Shanghai and asks her psychoanalyst and historian dad if her obsession with Chinese men has anything to do with her relationship with him and his relationship with her mom. Turns out that they have a really fascinating family history! Sufei's grandfather was a practising psychiatrist in Hamburg and his brother was the Chief Rabbi of Augsburg and everyone was forced to flee Nazi Germany when her......

According to recent rumors we've heard, tickets are on sale this week for the biggest show of the year (in our humble opinion), The Beyoncé Experience! Beyoncé (aka Beyoncé Knowles), the 27-year old singer, model, and actress, is currently one of the biggest superstars in America. She began her career with the ginormously successful all-girl group Destiny's Child and has been just as prosperous as a solo artist. She brings her world tour called The......

Sichuan TV reports of a helpless 19 year old girl by the name of Yan Chunyan in Wenzhou that has gone on the streets on the search for a kind hearted soul who will adopt her baby. The 21 year-old man with whom she had been living together for over two years and who fathered her child has disappeared, and without a job, she simply doesn't know what to do. When asked why she wanted......

The mercury may be falling but there's still lots of sizzle left in the grill. It's time for another great big cook-off, and The Naked Cow is hosting the Shanghai Rib Cook-off in two weeks! And it's all for a good cause! 10% of all proceeds from the day will go to Shanghai Bo Ai Children's Rehabilitation Center which aids local children with cerebral palsy. Now we just need 20 gallant teams of three each......

Shanghaiist really needed a break and what better place to take that break than... the Venetian? I know what you're thinking: biggest casino in the world + gambling Chinese tourists = a big fat headache. Well, it wasn't that bad, really. The Venetian was fully booked over the weekend so we could only get one night at the Vegas transplant... which was quite enough for us. The casino is an exact replica of its Vegas......

This week's Adoptable Pet from Second Chance Animal Aid, Shanghaiist's adopted animal charity. From the SCAA: Jill is an adorable three-month-old brown tabby. She was just a few days old when she and her sister, Jackie, (now adopted) were discovered by two children playing just outside their compound. Their family already consisted of a cat, dog and a new baby, their mother contacted SCAA for help to bottle feed and rehome the kittens. Unfortunately, the......

This group of women in Guangxi Province's Nanning (南宁) have just completed their state-sponsored training and received their certification as trained maternity matrons (月嫂), who according to our favourite English-Chinese dictionary, are maids -- usually married women who already have their own kids -- that are hired to take care of mothers and their newborns ("Chinese women traditionally are confined indoors for a month after delivering a baby on the grounds that they are particularly......

Since the family was once again in town, we decided to have dinner, not at Jade on 36 this time, but at what is maybe Shanghai's most famous restaurant of Shanghainese food (with a Sichuan twist, according to this site): Meilongzhen. We first tried this place two years ago, and then again last April, but this time we went to their branch accross the street, on the 6th floor of the Westgate mall (which incidentally......

Eating with chopsticks can be tricky for those of us who first picked them up quite late in life. Even though we've been using them for a while, our frequent spillages suggest that we need to refine our chopstick wielding skills. Success in this endeavour will generate the same level of praise hitherto reserved for baby faced Channel V presenters and NBA basketball stars. We may exaggerate, but thanks to Gomestic (via Lifehacker) we have......

An innovative Chinese couple seeking a unique and distinctive name for their baby have arrived at the "@" sign, which in Chinese sounds like "love him" (爱他). Naturally, language officials (yes, those guys have struck again) were not amused. The unidentified couple were cited by Li Yuming, Vice-Chairman of the National Language Commission (国家语委) as an example of bizarre names that Chinese people were trying to give their children. In the Report on the Use......

This picture dated August 28, 1937 is of a terrified baby who was almost the only human being left alive in Shanghai's South Station after brutal Japanese bombing. Yesterday marked the 62nd Anniversary of Japan's World War II Surrender. A delegation of 48 Japanese people, including history experts, representatives from Sino-Japan friendship organizations and university students, took part in a gathering yesterday in Nanjing commemorating the Nanjing Massacre. Photo from US National Archive and......

Call to abandon wooden chopsticks [China Daily] Restaurant owners and patrons should abandon the use of disposable chopsticks for the good of their health and the environment, an official with the China Cuisine Association (CCA), has said. The country produces and discards more than 45 billion pairs of wooden chopsticks every year, at a cost to the environment of about 25 million trees. Protective pig takes bite out of man's penis [Shanghai Daily] A......

Jackie Chan, China's most famous actor/singer/producer/cartoon character/matchmaker (whew!) finds himself one sino-franchise poorer this week, as government officials have blocked mainland distribution of his newest flick, Rush Hour 3. E! News reports: The official word on why the Brett Ratner-directed sequel won't be making it to the big screen is that the country has already imported too many American films this year for it to be a profitable acquisition, but some officials are attributing the......

This is a tale that could be told a thousand times, according to Shanghai Daily. Fourteen years ago, Shanghai resident Shi Jianlin opened her front door to find it bedecked by an abandoned baby girl. The story should have ended happily: the girl, later named Zhao, was received warmly by Shi. But Shi's own status complicated issues: as an impoverished mother of one (Shi already had a boy), Zhao could not be adopted under Shanghai......

Ok, whatever people might say about the Bund – tacky, over-priced – most are still damn glad it's there rather than not. It is, after all, the most enduring reminder of Shanghai's decadent international past. Consequently, when the paradigm of this past, the Peace Hotel, recently closed for its US$65m makeover, a few questions were raised about the area's future. For those who don't already know, the Peace Hotel was the property baby of British......

We must admit that Shanghai Daily has some of the most curious captions around, but some of them do actually entice us to read on further! In this story entitled, Prison for a sleeping pill beauty cheat, we read of a 25 year old girl, Ma Jing, from Sichuan who was imprisoned yesterday by the Jing'an District People's Court for 10 years for robbing an elderly couple that had hired her to have a baby......

China to be world's third largest economy China's sizzling economy grew even faster in 2006 than previously reported, the government said Wednesday, moving it closer to overtaking Germany as the world's third-largest and possibly adding to fears of overheating. China falling short on energy-saving goals China is falling short of its goals in a campaign to boost energy efficiency in its fuel-guzzling economy - the world's No. 2 oil consumer - but is starting to......

Plucky film star / delusional hologram Bai Ling—she of Shanghai Baby, multiple personalities, frequent public nudity, and one monstrously awkward dancefloor seizure caught on tape—announced yesterday that a tell-all memoir is in the works, and slated to publish with HarperCollins. Given Ms. Ling’s historically troubled relationship with truthfulness, we’ll believe it when we see it. A lazy-eyed Bai Ling scratched her head and tugged at her Mandarin collar (must she always dress like an extra......

Tomorrow night, a possibly pregnant Christina Aguilera will perform at the Shanghai Grand Stage. Since May, Shanghaiist has been looking forward to this extravaganza and now that we bought our tickets (thanks Taobao!), we are as happy as a clam! Based on her previous stops in her Back to Basics tour, the setlist should look something like this: 1. Ain't No Other Man 2. Back in the Day 3. Understand 4. Come On Over Baby......

Shanghaiist is not one to visit the many, various, countless, plentiful, and numerous gossip sites on the internet and saved in our bookmark folder. However, after an accidental click or two while innocently surfing the internet at work, we stumbled upon several interesting reports claiming that Christina might be performing at her upcoming Shanghai concert with a "noticeable bump". Could Christina have a bun in the oven? The speculation has the celebrity gossip blogs in......

We told you how we're not so fond of Bai Ling here but the new star of Shanghai Baby has been showing some of her latest moves at Club Play in Hollywood celebrating the birthday of porn star Mary Carey (we wonder if her choice of friends is indicative of any new career move). She also (sort of) tries to dirty-dance a midget, and ends up looking like she's having epileptic fits in the......