As we mentioned earlier, the start of school term has been followed by suicide attempts among the city's middle and high school students. Only yesterday, another two high school students attempted to end their lives but were saved. These tragedies have made Shanghai bookstores ban the cartoon Suicide Rabbit, for fear that it might have a negative effect on young people's minds. Both the original Bunny suicides book by British cartoonist Andy Riley and the......

Jeremy Goldkorn of Danwei speaks to Zhang Lijia, journalist and author of the new book Socialism is Great. Zhang worked as a teenager in a Nanjing factory which produced missiles designed to reach North America, participated in the Tiananmen Square protests and subsequently became a journalist. To read a sample chapter of the book, click here. Related links The China Beat: Interview with Zhang Lijia The Guardian: Time to stop criticising China - we've already......

Tony Parsons' (“Man and Boy”, “Stories We Could Tell”) new novel is set firmly in Shanghai. “My Favourite Wife” is the story of a lawyer who brings his young family from London to a well-researched Shanghai. Bill Holden lives in Gubei, works at a firm in the financial district of Pudong and entertains clients at Judy’s Too and The Peace Hotel. Perhaps taking his cues from a certain TV show about three hookers and their......

And so it begins. Today, with the Olympics to open at 8:08pm tonight, the world will see China, and more importantly, Beijing in all its splendour. For better or worse, Beijing and the lives of its 16 million residents have been irrevocably changed. Exactly a year ago to this day, a team of 35 talented photographers fanned out in all corners of this sprawling metropolis, from dusk to dawn the very next day, to capture......

The Wall Street Journal reports that 4.3 million copies of "an etiquette book outlining rules on good manners and foreign customs, including rules about what not to wear" have been distributed to Beijing residents for use during the Olympics. A snippet: "No matter what, never wear too many colors...especially during formal occasions. When you wear [formal shoes], be sure to wear socks in good condition...socks should be a dark color -- never match black leather......

In an article about official Olympic protest areas, the Wall Street Journal linked to some scanned pages from Olympic Security English, a training manual for Olympic police. We have reproduced those pages for your enjoyment. Poor Mr. Leer. He's an honest man. He can only make Indian pan cake. He's never seen a bomb. Yeah, right. Source: Enzaji Leer is caught red handed with the bomb!......

In this latest episode of Sexy Beijing, Sufei meets up with Shanghai-born Qiu Xiaolong (裘小龙), author of the award-winning Inspector Chen series of mystery novels, Death of a Red Heroine (2000), A Loyal Character Dancer (2002), When Red Is Black (2004), A Case of Two Cities (2006), and Red Mandarin Dress. Qiu currently lives in St Louis, Missouri and writes all his books (and poetry) in English, and only recently have his works been translated......

Fans of French film might be interested to know that Jean-Pierre Melville's 1970 classic Le Cercle Rouge (starring Alain Delon, Andre Bourvil, Gian Maria Volonte and Yves Montand) is being remade in Hollywood by none other than Hong Kong action auteur Johnnie To. What's even more weird is that Chow Yun-fat and Orlando Bloom are attached to the project. Malaysia's The Star reports that in Chen Shi-Zheng's Dark Matter the film about the Chinese physics......

By Kate Merkel-Hess I recently received two new travel books (of sorts) in my mailbox, one of which I wrote a few short bits for. Beijing Time by Michael Dutton, with Hsiu-ju Stacy Lo and Dong Dong Wu, (due out in May from Harvard University Press) and Urbanatomy: Shanghai 2008, edited by Nick Land (published by China Intercontinental Press in 2007) fall at opposite ends of a rather loosely envisioned “travel book” spectrum, but both......

As you’ve no doubt read about already here on Shanghaiist, this weekend could be one of the best for live music since we scuttled into the Year of the Rat. Therefore, you’ll forgive us if we don’t make it down to M on the Bund but instead spend our time over the next couple of days at slightly less refined venues checking out some great bands. Nevertheless, if books not beats are your thing, then......

This evening will see the second week of the Shanghai International Literary Festival kicking off down at M on the Bund. Events will continue across the weekend and throughout the week, providing plenty of opportunities to see a whole host of great writers and performers. Ticket details can be found here as can the full line-up (which we suggest you check - there's far too much going on for us to cover it all in......

Now into its fifth year, M on the Bund’s Shanghai International Literary Festival kicks off this weekend and once again has an impressive line up featuring a string of famous names and expert figures from across the book world. Running for the next three weekends, the festival offers Shanghai’s literati the chance to see some of the best Chinese and international writers. With so many great events to choose from (you can buy tickets and......

This Shanghaiist isn’t a massive fan of travel writing. As interested as we are in other places and in travelling, we’d rather experience these places ourselves – we don’t like someone else spoiling all the surprises for us. We’ve also become a bit tired of reading work by Westerners “experiencing” China, given that these pieces often tend to say the same shallow things: China is currently in the midst of rapid economic growth (gasp!); the......

Every now and again, time and space just seem to line up in an incredible display of fate/coincidence (delete as appropriate). For months now, we have been trying to get to grips with the strange brand of Uncle Tom-ism on display in the Shanghai ex-pativerse. It has so many unique facets that it appears to defy summary or clear explanation. Then along came Matthew Polly who wrote American Shaolin, a book that sets it all......

A Deutsche Presse Agentur story released on the eve of the New Year's reveals that Nanjing is about to be home to the world's largest Bible factory to be housed in what's been described as an "aircraft hangar-sized plant" capable of producing 1 million copies a month, or one Bible per second. Amity Printing's current factory is already 800,000 Bibles a month in 90 languages, from Braille to Slovakian to Swahili. Megan Hunt, a volunteer......

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......

For those of you wondering what Shanghaiist's founding editor Dan Washburn has been up to for the past half year or so (other than not posting very much on Shanghaiist) there was some evidence last week that he is alive and well and doing more than sitting on his couch counting his Shanghaiist money (really, that would only take around five minutes). Go to ESPN.com (here, here and here) for stories related to his book......

Shanghaiist has often wondered what China would look like if it had complete religious freedom, as in the freedom to organise and set up religious denominations and associations outside of the five "official religions", and to have all these religious groups enter the free-wheeling marketplace with their books, CDs, video programmes and what not. This weekend, we caught a glimpse of that when a woman claiming to be "Jesus' sister" was arrested in the Guangdong......

One of our favorite Chinese sites seems to have run afoul of the net nanny: vip.bokee.com has been on again off again, but perfectly viewable with a proxy. Using the proxy we saw an article about a list published in a Chengdu newspaper of the top-grossing authors in China, at least based on royalties from the sales of their books. At the top of the list was a Guo Jingming, a young author (born in......

Okay, Shanghaiist has got several hundred blogs on his RSS that he scans through everyday. Some things scream at us, others are quickly forgotten and yet others are hidden in some corner of our brain for (mostly useless) information ready to be used at some future point in time. There are all these bloggers that you've never met personally that you can form an impression of only after a long period of reading their blogs.......

Shanghai is back in Beijing's good books. Or so an article published by the People's Daily two weeks ago indicates, claims the Associated Press. The article, titled "Glad to hear the new good tidings from Shanghai", lavished praise on Shanghai for it's recent successes. "A golden breeze refreshes Shanghai; one important, auspicious event after another" gushed the lead article. It is a sign, claims AP, that the fallout from last year's pension scandal has started......

Just a few days ago, the New York Times researcher Zhao Yan (赵岩) was freed after three years in prison. Today, we hear Li Yuanlong (李元龙), 47, a journalist who was jailed in 2005 for posting subversive essays on the Internet, has also been freed. Li, who wrote under the pseudonym Ye Lang (夜狼) or "Night Wolf," used to work for Guizhou Province's Bijie Daily《毕节日报》which we understand to be a paper with a really tiny......

From Southern Weekend via the Bokee blogs we learned that the controversial Shanghai high school history textbooks—the very ones that were the subject of a New York Times article last year (Sept. 1, 2006)—have been banned. In that article, Joseph Kahn claimed that China's decades old Marxist template was being abandoned and that class struggle and other mainstays of Marxist theory were being downplayed. Instead, world history and civilization figured more prominently. Bill Gates was......

Weekenders looking for a break from the usual club and pub offerings should consider these two interesting events this weekend. Saturday, September 8th m97 Gallery "Document/Portrait" exhibition Opening Reception, 5pm to 8pm m97 Gallery consistently showcases China's best contemporary photographers and their upcoming exhibition, "Document/Portrait" brings veteran and newcomer works together for what promises to be a very approachable and honest look at China today. Be on the lookout for works from perennial favorites, Peng&Chen......

Journey to the West: Chinese Tourists Do Europe -- in 14 Days [Spiegel Online] Chinese tourists have recently discovered Europe as a destination. SPIEGEL traveled with a group who covered 11 countries in 14 days by bus, snapping the sights and buying up brand names. A Glimpse of the World: A Chinese Century? Maybe It’s the Next One [NYT] China claims that its economy is growing at 10 to 11 percent a year, and......

Good English-language books are hard to come by in Shanghai, with Garden Bookstore and Charterhouse Booktrader standing out as the only establishments with decent selections. Seekers of specialty and international art and design-related titles take note--Timezone8 Bookstore in the M50 art complex on MoGanShan Rd is having an overstock clearance sale on all titles except magazines, Chinese-language, and consignment titles. The sale ends Friday, August 24th, so get there fast to splurge on all those......

Back in April we did a post on the top ten books favored by the users of Douban.com, a book review and recommendation site. Since that time, tastes have changed and new books have been released so it's about time to take a new look at the site's top ten: JK Rowlings - "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" (Does this need an explanation?) Han Han - "The Glorious Day I" (Magical realism from Shanghai......

China should be an obvious beneficiary of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Scheme, which seeks to provide robust $100 portable Internet computers to children in developing countries. Behind the headlines of double digit growth and urban prosperity, two thirds of Chinese still live in the countryside and two hundred million people earn less than a dollar a day. Still, the Chinese government has not signed up to this project. The OLPC XO-1 laptops are......

Color us excited. The "Lust, Caution" trailer is out! "Lust, Caution" is the latest from Ang Lee, the Chinese director best known for turning cowboys gay (Brokeback Mountain) and Ziyi Zhang into an international superstar (Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon). Based on a novella of the same name by grand dame of Shanghai fiction, Eileen Chang, "Lust, Caution" depicts love and betrayal in Japan-occupied and espionage-riddled 1940's Shanghai. Lee's crew filmed on location in the Nanhui......

The latest copy of City Weekend draws our attention to the launch of BooksDirect.com.cn, a tripartite joint venture between Xinhua Media, Chaterhouse Booktrader and Bertelsmann DirectGroup. We understand this to be the first online English bookstore in China, and guess what, they also offer free delivery to locations in Shanghai, Hangzhou, Suzhou and Nanjing! We checked out prices on the website and they seem to be fairly cheap. Hardcore supporters of Shanghaiist who are in......