From Shanghai Daily:

SHANGHAI issued an orange alert for heavy fog this morning. It was the first orange fog warning since winter began early this month. more ›

... 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... more ›

If you attended the first round of the HSBC Champions Golf Tournament today out at Sheshan International Golf Club, you are likely stuck in traffic trying to get back into the city. If you didn't attend, you may find it interesting to know that someone associated with the tournament is live-blogging the whole thing (from the media center). And we're not just talking making a few posts each day, this is minute-to-minute stuff. Here's a segment of today's post selected at random: more ›

For the ever-pragmatic Chinese, adopting English names has always represented a way for them to bridge the linguistic and cultural gap. Now, as China widens its reach abroad and as the number of expatriates living in China swells, picking an English name has become a rite of passage for most young, urban Chinese. So ... this is news?

• Ever wonder why Zhang Ziyi speaks English so fast and always makes her sentences rhyme?
• ".cn" is the new favorite suffix for web addresses in China. And Chinese consider Google to be the best search engine, although more people still use Baidu. Oh, and China now has 111 million internet users. And 14 percent of youths in Shanghai are addicted to the internet.
• Japan has turned manhole covers into works of art. Not a bad idea.

Shanghaiist likes writing about movies that elicit strong reactions -- love it or hate it, there's at least something to write about. Not so for current offering from acclaimed Hong Kong action director Tsui Hark, whose latest wuxia (武侠) epic, Seven Swords (七剑), came out in late July. This film doesn't actually suck, but might be compared to lukewarm soup -- served hot it might have been real tasty, served tepid it's not yet cold enough to taste completely lousy. more ›

Well, America and the world got what they had been clamoring for, even if the revaluation wasn't quite as significant as many had hoped. Shanghaiist hopes China doesn't really think 2.1 percent is going to make life as a rising, international power any easier. more ›