Unlicensed pedicabs, which for the longest time have been gone from our city, have been making quite a comeback recently. To combat this, police have issued a pedicab crackdown, which cumulated in them seizing 60 of these electric wagons in just one short hour! more ›

"This is not a zoo, you can't keep horses here! But because we've never seen a horse in our life before, seeing one is actually quite nice... There's lot of people who keep dogs. How do you control it if someone wants to keep a pet? Where does it state in the regulations that you can't own a horse?" more ›

Aw shucks. Metro Line 7, which was supposed to open sometime this month, will likely have its debut delayed since seven out of the line's 28 stations are still under construction. Metro officials said yesterday that they couldn't “rush to a completion,” but promised that it would be running by Expo time. Line 7 will go from Pudong to Baoshan District and is expected to carry about one million passengers a year. more ›

• Shall we go for a jaunt in the cemetery, check out celebrity graves and catch a flick? [Shanghai Daily] "Though young people are less fearful than their parents, going to the cemetery is still a grave undertaking, not a walk in the park. So it was a break with tradition when parklike Fushouyuan Cemetery in suburban Qingpu District applied late last year for scenic-site status from the city's tourism commission. Fushouyuan (literally Happiness Longevity Garden) says the process is underway and is making big plans to attract visitors throughout the year... That a cemetery could become a tourist attraction - and investors plan a cinema and a museum - is a sign that China's funereal (meaning sad) culture could slowly be lightening up."
• Enter the bunker of sound - 0093 [Urbanatomy Shanghai] Lisa Movius checks out 0093 - also called Ling Ling - a former bomb shelter turned rehearsal rooms where Shanghai's young bands have begun practicing their music. More than just a place to play, 0093 has become the glue that holds the Shanghai music scene together.
• Man falls onto Metro Line 2 track, killed by passing train [Oriental Morning Post] On Wednesday morning, a man suddenly fell onto the tracks at the Loushanguan Road station and was hit by an oncoming train. He was taken off the tracks immediately afterwards, but had died on impact, according to medical personnel. They could not find any documents on him. The Metro Line 2 train was delayed for 7 minutes.
• Shanghai’s Extreme Expo Makeover [All Roads Lead To China] "Well, you knew it was coming, and if you have been in Shanghai for the last 8 months you will already begun to see the signs of the 2010 Shanghai face lift. Extreme Makeover style. It is a process that will spare few neighborhoods, look for lots of buildings encased in green construction packaging, and the last line of the Shanghai Daily article City to clean up for Expo really says it all: 'Old residential areas, wet markets and small streets are the key targets'."

If you've been still wondering how the woman who rammed her bike into the bus actually managed to do it, this one takes the cake! Today's Shanghai Daily tells us of a truck that got stuck under a bridge while trying to force its way through on Songxing Road in Baoshan District yesterday at 7pm. In fact:

Police said the driver knew the crane bases on his truck were taller than the bridge, but he still decided to "try his luck." Once the truck got stuck, the driver sped up to force his way out instead of backing out, police said.

MONDAY more ›

Around a week ago, Shanghai Daily ran a story entitled "Top tourism sites named": more ›

On Saturday night, Shanghaiist was strolling along Changle Road (a long street), when we noticed a number of policemen in vehicles moving in both directions with their lights ablaze. Not that there is anything abnormal about that, but a motorcycled policeman did seem to take special interest in us, stopping for a moment to turn his head for a clear look. Perhaps it was because we had a large rucksack in tow or because he thought us strapping he-men. Whatever the reason, it reminded us that currently, somewhere lodged in a historic Shanghai hotel, 100 investigators from the Central Discipline Inspection Commission (CDIC) are stationed for the ongoing graft investigation that has claimed Shanghai Municipality Mayor, Chen Liangyu, among other elite Shanghai politicos. The last time a sitting Politburo member was purged China was in 1995 with the removal Chen Xitong, the Beijing party chief and a significant rival of Jiang Zemin. more ›

Shanghaiist keeps following these stories on rabies that keep popping up around the country. Slaughters are happening in places like Nanjing, and now stories about dog bites and rabies cases in Shanghai and Beijing. Our paranoid mind can't help but wonder if the state media is planting seeds of warning. more ›

• It's "rat breeding season" in Shanghai and the city is running a "rat sweep" campaign through November 11. "Businesses and residents will be able to get information about rats, how to control, catch and kill them, from their local health campaign office." Lovely.
• The first Miss Hooters China was crowned recently -- and there are three of them. "I can meet new friends, broaden my mind and have fun," said Zhou Shouya, one of the winners who has a chance to join the 10th annual Hooters International Swimsuit Pageant in Las Vegas next year. "Hooters makes me happy. I can't change the weather but I can change my mood."
• A man in Baoshan District agreed to buy an apartment there, but now he wants out of the contract. Why? The previous owner murdered his lover and dismembered her body there. For some reason, the real estate agent neglected to mention this.

Shanghaiist’s worst travel experience ever was on a 15-hour “sleeper bus” (ha!) from southern Shandong Province back to Shanghai. Packed to the rafters, Arctic January temperatures, layers of ice on broken windows, an ancient, festering interior dotted with rusty metal benches and the occasional sodden blanket (actual interior, pictured), black smoke chundering out of the engine console inside the vehicle, a desperate need to urinate for the second half of the trip and a Soup Nazi of a driver who couldn’t even be bribed to stop. To make matters worse, we joyously spied the night lights of the Oriental Pearl Tower in the disorientating haze of bladder pain and thought the horror was over, only to discover it was a miniature of the Pearl Tower located about 200 kilometres northwest of the city and we still had a four-hour crawl left to go. more ›

The residents of Shanghaiist's apartment building, especially those with hammers and drills, wake up at 5 a.m. on most Saturday mornings. But we're assuming this past weekend they all did so to stand in line to buy the English version of the new Harry Potter book -- everyone else in the friggin' world did. more ›