more ›

Hilarious story as told by our friends from Next Media Animation. More on what happened here. More NMA hilarity here. more ›

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 ›

Timed just right to coincide with President Hu's visit to Washington, this new CNN report says foreigners, and in particular, Americans, are "falling" for a "rising Shanghai". Bringing back the neon are places like cabaret club Chinatown and people like Spencer Dodington, a 42-year-old restorer of Art Deco homes from Texas, and Kelley Lee, a young Chinese-American woman from South California who owns a mini empire of restaurants that will be familiar to most Shanghaiist readers -- including Cantina Agave, Boxing Cat and the Alchemist.
more ›

In case you were hoping for something fun to do on a Thursday and you didn't already know about it, Time Out: Shanghai is celebrating their first year of existence at Gosney & Kallman's Chinatown. You're invited. more ›

Photos by Jeremy Breningstall. more ›

As an early-in-the-week edition of our ongoing Threesday feature, Shanghaiist takes the time to count out three of....well, whatever catches our fancy that week. And what we're hankering after are tickets to these top-notch productions onstage, one of which has its final show tonight! more ›

Ever wanted to know about the people behind Shanghai's (nay China's!) only burlesque club? Gosney and Kallman's Chinatown almost never came about thanks to problems with the license and possible "vulgarity," but it has now opened for almost a year now and has been featured in magazines and tv shows. We named it one of our favorite new bars of 2009. more ›

Here comes the Weekend, and here's what it has in store for you: trance parties, EP release parties, dark parties, pool parties! Hey, it is the summer after all. more ›

Every Friday, Weekendist brings you our picks of the best of what's coming in the next three days. Be sure to check our Shanghaiist Calendar for more info. 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 ›

Shanghai has an ephemeral nature: with the breakneck pace of modernization, it seems like the city is a little bit different every day, changing right under our noses. With all that constant progress comes an ever changing cast of cultural venues: every year, we find our favorite places to rest and relax going the way of the collective farm, only to be replaced with entirely new and fascinating ones that catch our attention. We spend a lot of our time exploring the great things our city has to offer, especially the ones that serve us alcohol: to top off our year of intrepid boozing, here's a list of our favorite new bars, clubs and lounges that have popped up over the past year. more ›

Okay, we’re such terrible poets that even Hallmark holiday cards won’t be including our works anytime soon. Bad rhyming aside, we do empathize: you’re still in Shanghai while most people you know have joined the mass expat exodus and taken off for far-flung lands. But that doesn’t mean you’re going to miss out on the holiday spirit. To help our readers get a fill of red and green cheer this year, we’ve highlighted some of the coolest Christmas parties happening around town. Go to one, or make appearances at all - there’s no excuse to be alone in Shanghai for the next few nights. more ›

News flash: there are only 10 days left in 2009! Time to drop the workload and spend some quality time with the friends and fam. If you need food and/or copious amounts of alcohol to help you get through it, we point you to Smart Shanghai for an extensive list of Christmas dinners. For other holiday happenings this week, like maybe a Christmas Market, or a production of the Nutcracker, keep reading: 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 ›

• China's 8.9% Growth? No Way [Forbes]"On Oct. 22, Beijing announced that gross domestic product grew by 8.9% in the third quarter of 2009 compared with the corresponding period last year. The National Bureau of Statistics also reported that growth for the first three quarters was up 7.7%. How could it not have been? Since last November, Beijing has spent perhaps as much as $900 billion-from its own funds as well as those of the larger state banks-to jump start its $4.3 trillion economy. No government can disburse that amount of cash without creating some economic activity."
• China's push for oil in Gulf of Mexico puts U.S. in awkward spot [LA Times]"China's push to enter U.S. turf comes four years after CNOOC's $18.5-billion bid to buy Unocal Corp. was scuttled by Congress on national security grounds. The El Segundo oil firm eventually merged with Chevron Corp. of San Ramon. Whether CNOOC's second attempt to lock up U.S. petroleum assets will trigger a similar political backlash remains to be seen. The sour U.S. economy and the need for Washington and Beijing to cooperate on potentially larger issues could mute any outcry."
• The story of China Incorporated [China Daily] "Twenty-five years ago, Megatrends was a must-read for any Chinese who was keen to know about the world - not just the world as it was, but the world that would be. And that included higher officials who were unaccustomed to foreign theorizing other than that by Marx and Lenin. By some estimate, the book sold some 20 million copies in China. The original English version was published two years earlier, in 1982, and stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for two years. Last month, John Naisbitt, the author of Megatrends, came out with China's Megatrends. This time, the Chinese edition debuted before the English original."
• Voices of Power Transcript: Chris Lu [Washington Post] "Chris Lu has known President Obama since they attended Harvard Law School together, but they cemented their friendship when Obama hired him in 2004 for his Senate staff. He's the Cabinet secretary — a title that belies an intense assignment as chief intermediary between the White House and the federal agencies. On a daily basis, his job is not only to convey the president's views and expectations to all the department heads and keep them on message, but also to help them resolve their issues with the White House. The son of Chinese immigrants, Lu is one of the highest-ranking Asian Americans in the administration. "
• A special report on China and America: : The price of cleanliness [The Economist] "The Beijing authorities built Taiyanggong to impress the world in the run-up to the Olympic games which opened in the city in August 2008—on the same day that America opened a new embassy in Beijing (heated, American officials say proudly, by Taiyanggong). Some 5,000 workers toiled night and day to deliver on the Chinese government’s promise to provide an environmentally friendly power source for the games. Taiyanggong was connected to the grid with nearly eight months to spare…Now the power station’s owners, led by a municipal state-owned company, are struggling to make it work financially. "
• Mandarin Eclipses Cantonese, Changing the Sound of Chinatown [NYTimes] "He grew up playing in the narrow, crowded streets of Manhattan’s Chinatown. He has lived and worked there for all his 61 years. But as Wee Wong walks the neighborhood these days, he cannot understand half the Chinese conversations he hears. Cantonese, a dialect from southern China that has dominated the Chinatowns of North America for decades, is being rapidly swept aside by Mandarin, the national language of China and the lingua franca of most of the latest Chinese immigrants." 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]

In Paris, New York City and the Hague:
more ›

Xinhua: Danish PM wishes for closer cooperation with China in New Year more ›

His instinctive understanding made the carcass snap and clarify beneath his nimble hand that held the knife so long, so many times, the handles' changed to shapes just like his fingers and his palms more ›

Shanghai Daily tells us that all businesses in Xintiandi and along Huaihai Road, "especially foreign-brand stores", must add Chinese names to their signs and must do so before this Sunday. more ›

Even though we are way way past school age, we still get a little melancholy at the close of summer. Fortunately, our friends across the -ist network know that the shenanigans don't need to end just because the big yellow buses are back on the roads. So, grab your sunscreen and your favorite hangover cure, as we take a tour of end of summer fun from -ist cities all over the damn place. more ›

While the work may no longer be at Shanghai Sculpture Space (please correct us if we are wrong), you can still see it here. You can also see photos from the party here and here. And you can buy a piece of art that is somehow related to the show here. more ›

Our late night web prowl, in between reading ever-gripping SEC filings, turned up this little gem, WingKong.net. If by some miracle you recognize the reference, pat yourself on the back for being a true trivia buff as well as a great fan of American cinematography. The film in question, an 80’s classic is Big Trouble in Little China (The Wing Kong Exchange is home to the arch evil-doer Lo’Pan), starring Kurt Russel and yes, Kim Cattrall, burning up the big screen long before her Sex and the City Days. more ›

For those of you who love generalizations of China in the Western media, we've got a doozie for you. The Chicago Sun-Times has a regular feature called "Agent of Travel" where readers will write in a travel related question and someone on the staff will track down the answer. Last week, the headline was "China wear tips: Casual clothes, comfortable shoes." Enjoy: more ›

• Hybrid cars should hit Shanghai by the end of the year. Meanwhile, about 360,000 cars in Shanghai have received the "green" seal of approval.
• Weddings are up in the Year of the Dog. But what caught our attention was this: "For weddings with 200 guests, the current price is 18,000 yuan (US$2,236), which is 15 percent above last year."
• It is now officially illegal to discriminate against AIDS sufferers in China.

Chinese residents of New York City are about to get a little homesick -- or perhaps they will just be reminded of why they left China in the first place. Beginning October 20, New York based Brazilian artist Solange Fabiao will project her street scene videos of Shanghai and Nanning, capital of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in southern China, on a building facade on Canal and Centre Streets in New York City's Chinatown. Called Transitio, Fabiao's "city within a city" project will run through October 31 with nightly showings at 6:30 pm and 11 pm. Fabiao has been doing these Transitio things for a few years now, including one about New York (and Shanghai and Nanning) last year in Beirut. more ›