It's been on troubled ground for a long time now, so this shouldn't come as too much of a surprise... but it's still a shame to say goodbye to Chinatown, Shanghai's first (and, we think, only) modern burlesque club. more ›

For people far away from their family in Shanghai, Gosney & Kallman's Chinatown offered a different kind of family to spend time with on Christmas Eve. A highlight of the evening was Amelia Kallman's three-minute rendition of nativity story, told in teenage girl speak. Mulled wine and eggnog was provided for guests, along with the usual cocktails available on the menu (I had a "Miss Tickle" and almost forgot to pay for it... whoops!). The set list also included vintage film clips, dance routines, comic sketches and club standards such as "Luck Be A Lady." more ›

It's been a while since we've seen A Christmas Carol, and we tend to forget exactly why we're so drawn to it. To put it lightly, Shanghai Repertory Theater reminded us in spades with an overwhelmingly heartwarming rendition. It was like Dickens on overdrive: Scrooge was crotchety, Bob Cratchit was an exemplar of optimistic vivacity, and little Tiny Tim charmed our socks off with unfeigned innocence. In the course of a short hour and a half, we forgot the cultural importance of the play, and entered into the virtues and vices of mankind, something that Dickens was aiming for long before his play became the centerpiece of the Christmas canon. more ›

Alliance Française keeps serving movies to all who are charmed by the rich French cinema history. On Saturday they offer a "crossed movies"- experience, where one 1953 Jacques Tati classic meets a 2008 drama featuring Isabelle Huppert. The event is called "Crossed Movies : Modern and burlesque society". more ›

• According to this website, Shanghai's planning on building a shanzhai version of the U.S. Pentagon before the World Expo. Like most weirdly shaped complexes in China, It'll be a shopping mall. [非常日報]
• People's Daily looks at the "Bund Origin" program and reflects on the Huangpu area's last 60 years. [People's Daily Online]
• Adam Minter interviews a migrant worker who's working to clean up Shanghai all spiffy like by refreshing the paint on windows. [Shanghai Scrap]

Friday night was the first of five nights of racy burlesque performances by the Atomic Bombshells at the Glamour Bar. It was the perfect cure for those "boring Olympic opening ceremony blues", at least until China's own Olympic team paraded onto the screen--at which point nothing could draw the crowd's attention away from the big screen. Luckily that won't be an issue for the remaining 4 nights of shows. more ›