Real estate tycoon Huang Nubo, China's 161st richest person, is said to have struck a deal with private landowners in Iceland for a 300 square kilometre tract of land in the Grímsstadir á Fjöllum region to develop a $100 million ecotourism golf resort project. more ›

Shanghaiist has just spoken to a promoter from Yuyintang. As of yesterday, they have had their application for the Midi Festival performance licence rejected, and have since announced on their Facebook page that the festival is now officially off. It was going to be held in the park behind the venue (Tianshan Gongyuan). The reason is confirmed as being a knock on from the Bjork incident and concern about ongoing protests in the run up to the Olympics. more ›

Scanning The Independent the other day, we came across a piece about a gloriously named singer called 萨顶顶 (Sa Ding Ding) that caught our eye. Born to a Mongolian mother and Han Chinese father, the article calls her a 'former Mongolian nomad' who is 'poised to sweep the globe' with her blend of traditional folk sounds and dance music. Intrigued, we had a hunt on Baidu's ever-reliable MP3 search engine (not that Shanghaiist condones illegal downloading of course) and found that searching for her name in characters returns quite a few results. more ›

UPDATE, Friday 9:45 am: The show will go on ... at Windows Tembo. more ›

To be frank, we were kind of hoping that we wouldn't have to do a whole post about Celine Dion on Shanghaiist, but then this article from China Daily struck us as somewhat odd and we felt we should share our cynicisms with you. more ›

Recent events in the Western provinces make Bjork's little indiscretion in Shanghai look like a storm in a teacup. However, she speaks, we report and in an interview for the New Statesman magazine, (previewed on TheLipster.com) Bjork had this to say about her pronouncement during "Declare Independence":

"When I said "Tibet, Tibet", I whispered it three times. There was no fuss in the room. It happened afterwards on websites."

By Jeffrey Wasserstrom more ›

China commentary just took a new turn … well several twists and turns, followed by a rapid descent into a mind-bending ideological vortex. Confused? That’s the point. No, really. That’s the point behind Sp!ked Magazine’s campaign against China-bashing in the media. more ›

We know he's meant to be quite a bit more brilliant in concert than we saw the other night, but it seems as though a few things conspired to make Harry Connick's Shanghai show this past Sunday less great than it really should have been. For one, the role that the rest of the band played was way too small — it seems that we heard more from Bjork's brass section the week before! And when they were playing, you could barely hear them as the piano and voice were so much higher in the mix and the horns got drowned out. We fell asleep at the beginning of the show, with all the solo piano and mellow vocals happening. Then it was the same 2 or 3 players taking horn solos all night, and there was only one trumpet solo in the entire show! It makes you wonder what the heck was going on for this to happen, after all the hype about this great big band. more ›

• Gothamist found that an explosive set off outside the Times Square army recruiting center may be similar to five past bombings in New York City.
• Seattlest worried when severed right feet and bottles of rat poison started washing up on local beaches.
• Shanghaiist was surprised by Bjork's rooting for Tibetan independence at her concert (see video), and the political fallout has only just begun.
• SFist debated the merits of new bronze plaques that will be placed in locations where San Francisco's homeless have died.
• DCist was obliged to respond to the worst Washington Post Outlook column ever published, in which conservative writer Charlotte Allen tried to make the case that women are dumb.
• LAist found Satan's ice cream truck trolling the streets, and they recorded the music.
• Some crafty Torontoist readers didn't like the dearth of ski hills in downtown Toronto, so they just built one of their own on their deck and (of course) recorded a video of them all taking turns on it.
• Bostonist knows the city's subway and bus system, the MBTA, has problems. So does this 17-year-old who submitted a report and told the MBTA brass how to fix it.
• Phillyist explored the possibility of an Ivy League prostitute, while their commenters debated the most ethical approach to proving or debunking the story.
• Londonist spent a little too much time looking at airbrushed operatic private parts, and enjoyed an enlightening comment from someone who was there. more ›

It looks like the news embargo on Bjork's "Tibet" incident has finally been lifted and the fallout has begun. We have not found many traces of it, however, in the Chinese mainstream media. Two of the more notable reports we have found among the limited coverage is one by the China News Agency, the lesser known of China's two news agencies, entitled "比约克上海演出引不满 文化部：核实后依法处理" (Bjork's Shanghai performance stirs unhappines, Ministry of Culture to act in accordance with the law), and another on CCTV.com entitled "冰岛女歌手上海献唱 宣扬"西藏独立"挑衅中国" (Icelandic songstress promotes "Tibetan Independence" in Shanghai concert and angers China). more ›

Argghh..can you feel it? With the end of the holiday season things in the realm of live music are starting to pick up again. After a much needed break from Shanghai, we are back and ready for some musical action. During the break it seems that venues around the city have started to warm up to the idea of holding more gigs. In April, Windows Tembo, will reopen as a live music venue and is building a solid lineup of shows, while Harleys, that great basement bar in Xujiahui is rumored to be back on the scene with shows by both Queen Sea Big Shark and Canadian dance punk extraordinaire, You Say Party! We Say Die!. more ›

We've been looking around all day for a video of Björk's final song Declare Independence at her Shanghai concert and here it is! [Click here for another alternative video] Björk chanted "Tibet, Tibet" not once, but thrice, before yelling out "Raise your flag" again and again in a crescendo that made the crowd completely ecstatic (presumably because half of them didn't understand what she was saying?). A scan of Baidu News reports on the concert continues to show ZERO mention of the incident, so it is likely that a news embargo has been imposed. Even among the English-language mainstream media, the story is slowly gaining currency. Only two more newswires covered the incident yesterday: AP and the Press Association. We don't know if and when the tipping point will be reached, but when that does happen, one can expect Xinhua to publish commentaries denouncing Bjork for "greatly hurting the feelings of 1.3 billion Chinese". more ›

As Jake Newby told you in our previous post:

With backing from a live Icelandic brass section (the ingeniously named Wonderbrass), songs such as the horn heavy ‘Wanderlust’ demonstrated Björk’s gift for spectacle and her incredible delivery, before she closed out the set with the anthemic ‘Declare Independence’, chanting the name of a huge piece of real estate west of Sichuan and Yunnan amongst a hail of streamers.

UPDATE 3: more ›

This weekend venues are still suffering from the New Year hangover and not many events are happening. You might check out blues band, Studio 188, who will be performing at the Blues Room on Saturday. Or maybe join the firecracker loving crowds throughout the city for a bit of noise. more ›

This is just a rumor at this point. But it is a strong rumor. Not a weak rumor, or a flat out lie (like these). Basically, we think you can mark your calendars ... and use pen. more ›

Shanghaiist is neither fashionable nor interested in fashion, but we know a good party when we hear of one. Which is why we held on to the three invitations that landed on our desk for the opening of the Giorgio Armani Retrospective at the Shanghai Art Museum, a Giorgio Armani fashion show in the Shanghai Grand Theatre, and a Vogue China after-party at Three on the Bund, all on Saturday night. more ›