A series of strong earthquakes have hit the county of Yushu, in the western Qinghai Province. The China Earthquake Networks Center has measured the main quake to be a magnitude of 7.1. The death toll is now estimated to be over 300. more ›

This news just in from Shanghai Daily:

FIVE workers were injured in an explosion at a demolished building near Shanghai's landmark Jin Mao Tower in Pudong New Area this morning, Eastday.com reported. more ›

Photo of a Mummy 3 set in a Hebei Province desert from China.org.cn more ›

Starbucks Corporation, the world’s biggest coffee shop chain, recalled 250,000 children’s plastic cups made in China after receiving reports of the cups breaking and posing a choking hazard. more ›

A powerful storm drenched China's southeast coast Sunday after killing five people on Taiwan and prompting the mainland to evacuate more than 1 million people, the government announced. more ›

We just received news that North Korea has expressed its intention to attend the Shanghai World Expo in 2010. How exciting is that, people! more ›

Burma's military junta has been showing its true colors this week, firing automatic weapons at peaceful demonstrators and raiding monasteries to beat and kill Buddhist monks. But the junta's criminal disdain for human rights has also cast a harsh light on China, the principal commercial partner, strategic ally, and diplomatic protector of the junta. more ›

20 year old Cuban Dayron Robles stole the show yesterday at the Shanghai Golden Grand Prix yesterday with an impressive 13.01 sec at the 110m hurdles event. Together with Anwar Moore of the United States, he trumped Liu Xiang who disappointed a highly expectant home crowd. more ›

Planning an October holiday escape? Need some fresh air? How does Norway sound? The European Arctic. That should be far enough from the pull of Shanghai's pollution, right? Wrong. These days, there's no escaping China's chief export: Crappy air. more ›

Zhejiang Satellite TV's Citizens Take Action 《绿原公民行动》has uncovered the most extraordinary story of a woman, Wang Xiaocui (王晓翠) who has been rescued from an underground hole in Lin County, Lu Liang District, Shanxi Province. Barely 2 square meters in area, the hole was home for Wang, and this was where she would eat, drink, sleep and take care of ALL her bodily functions everyday for six long years. more ›

The free Metro Express commuter paper has a big front-page spread today on the People's Square metro interchange make-over. The headline announces that "People's Square Three Line Interchange Hall To Open By Year's End", which is old news to those who have been following the progress of the new metro Line 8. Instead, the reason for the story being published today is that the Shanghai Rail Transport Construction Headquarters just released a bunch of numbers on the new station, as well as a map of the planned station layout. Among the numbers: more ›

Fire broke out today at the US$910 million 101-storey tall Shanghai World Financial Center in an elevator shaft on the 40th floor at about 4pm today. Eight fire trucks were dispatched to douse the fire, and it was eventually extinguished by 5.42 pm. There were no reports of injuries or deaths. more ›

Shanghaiist is starting to pay attention to Shandong Province's Qilu Television for the quirky things we find there. The station that brought us the story of the glass-eating wonder 24 year old Wang Chengke (王成科) recently had a talkshow which had a huge debate on whether girls should go for plastic surgery. The talkshow pitted 28 year old Beijing native Hao Lulu (郝璐璐) against Qiu Lili (邱丽莉) of the Shandong Economic Management Institute. Hao has gone through a dozen cosmetic surgeries from head to toe (watch her amazing transformation here) and has been dubbed the "man-made beauty" (人造美女) eversince. more ›

Even as the majority of the domestic and international press crowned Inner Mongolia native and Shanghai resident Duo Zirong for her courage to stop the truck and "save" 800 cats from the food trade on July 7, dissenting voices have been raised with regards to the character of this women. And some have gone so far as to call her — as we have heard recently from those involved in various animal rescue organizations — more of a psychopath hoarder than a cat saviour. more ›

If you haven't noticed (perhaps you are a human ice cube?) it's hot out. Really hot. Today's forecast features a 36C high, which is 97F to the Americans in the audience, plus another 10-13 degrees for the heat index. Yesterday the mercury hit 39.6C, making it the hottest Shanghai day in 63 years. more ›

Sri Lanka is fighting against the threatened beheading of a teen maid in Saudi Arabia over the death of an infant. Saving her from beheading has become one of the most urgent issues in a country where nearly everyone has worked abroad or had a relative employed overseas. more ›

Image from China Daily. more ›

Chinese basketball fans held their collective breath this morning as the NBA draft took place a full 12 time-zones away. 22-year old 19-year old Yi Jianlian slipped past his projected spot at the number 5 pick when the Boston Celtics signed a draft-and-trade agreement with the Seattle Supersonics involving 7-time all-star Ray Allen. more ›

Almost as fun as playing Counter-Strike was watching this video of how China is gearing up for the thorny security problem that is the 2008 Olympics. These are the guys that can do 50 one-armed push-ups without breaking a sweat; they know whether to snip the red wire or the blue wire first; they will make sure that the possibility of being held hostage and then beheaded by an obscure group of Islamic insurgents won't crimp your style! more ›

Last Friday night, Shanghaiist dusted off its finest flannelette shirt in anticipation for the 4Live performance of Brooklyn band Locksley. more ›

With all the excitement of the GP and the success of Chinese women at the Jinshan Olympic beach volleyball qualifiers, you might be forgiven for missing out on a world-record breaking event happening right under our noses, also in the Jinshan district: the world's longest kite. OK, it's not officially the world's longest kite, but its maker will apply for that title from the folks over at Guinness. more ›

We were happy when the CNET web media empire finally got round to running stories about China. And now, today's CNET News podcast has a report from Tom Krazit who has just come back from his first trip in China giving a broad, down to earth, if not ground breaking summary of technology in this country, covering the issues of infrastructural development, the digital divide, censorship, the rise of Baidu, an explanation of pinyin, outsourcing, building works and pollution. Apparently, China has electricity already. more ›

For most of the day yesterday, we here at Shanghaiist were wondering if we should post anything about the horrific mass shooting at Virginia Tech, a university in the United States. On the surface, the answer should have been an easy "no" — Blacksburg, Virginia, is nowhere near Shanghai. But news started to trickle in about the suspected killer: He was Asian, possibly Chinese. And then, yesterday morning, Chicago Sun-Times columnist Michael Sneed posted a story labeled "exclusive" that started out like this: more ›

We here in the Ist-A-Verse know that we're sensational, but it's very rare that we get a chance to be sensationalistic. This week, we've decided to have ourselves a little fun and try our hand at tacky tabloid headlines, using nothing more than our favorite posts from this week. more ›

New Scientist recently reported on a record-breaking feat of a particular bird-of-prey population near Beijing. This news isn't something to celebrate, rather something quite worrisome. Researchers discovered that kestrels had record-breaking amounts of a PDBE chemical known as Deca in their tissues. more ›

star Adrian Grenier, who misses NYC public transportation when he's working in LA. They also reported on NYU students protesting a band whose name is also known as a slur, the new graffiti king in town, Bill Cosby's adorable dog, and the disturbing tale of a yoga instructor who was found guilty of killing his girlfriend, a dancer from Ohio who stripped to make ends meet. more ›

Wild scenes of celebration, drunken tomfoolery, and a stampede of autograph hunters scrambling over tables and chairs were highlights of the evening as major stars from the world of Chinese football attended a fans event in the city on Saturday night. more ›

Virtual China calls MyTshirt.cn "China's Threadless," and yes the design-your-own-T-shirt concept in nothing new (in fact, on its main page MyTshirt.cn links to all the other similar sites it was "inspired" by). But MyTshirt.cn is the only one of those sites in Chinese and, we assume, it is by far the cheapest. You could have a basic T-shirt arrive at your doorstep for as little as 41 kuai. more ›