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US billionaire Warren Buffett may have appeared on this year's chunwan (春晚), CCTV's Chinese New Year gala show, but even that wasn't enough to turn around the long-standing decline of the annual affair. Barbara Demick and John Lee of the Los Angeles Times write that increasingly heavy-handed censorship has caused several heavyweight celebrities to drop out of the show and driven viewers away: more ›

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And here it finally is -- the video that Warren Buffett sent in to CCTV to be played at the spring festival gala -- in all its 45-second glory! To send his new year's greetings to 1.3 billion Chinese, the Berkshire Hathaway chairman strummed on his ukulele and sang "I've Been Working on the Railroad" in front of a room-sized model railroad. more ›

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Shanghai is doing it big for the year of the Dragon, with heaps of events that'll keep you out and about all weekend. We've got dance performances, comedy sets, parties, feasts, fireworks, and all sorts of excitement to bring in the new year! Indulge yourself, and have a happy new year! Read on for all the details, or head over to our calendar for more. more ›

Bangkok celebrates the Year of the Black Water Dragon with a special underwater dragon dance. more ›

Li Senlin (李森林) and his friend Yuan Hui (袁辉) have chosen to hike back home for the Spring Festival. The two university students plan to spend 8 days covering 400 kilometers from Suzhou, where their universities locate, to their hometown Yancheng. more ›

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What the what?! Apparently Warrent Buffet has already sent in a video of himself singing and playing guitar for this year's CCTV Spring Festival Gala, to be aired on a special web broadcast on New Year's Day (January 23.) more ›

The Yellow River Sailor, performed by Gong Linna and gang at Hunan TV's lantern festival show:
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The Spring Festival is all about spending time with your family and if new years aren't about turning over a new leaf, then we don't know what is. Over the holiday, a jail in Jialing, Sichuan found a meaningful way to do both and allowed over 150 of its inmates to invite their relatives for a foot-washing ceremony. The traditional Confucian ceremony acted as an apology for the shame they brought to their families. more ›

More photos on the Shanghaiist Contribute page. To see your photos on our Contribute page, use Flickr and tag your photos “shanghaiist”. Or you can email your photos to photos@shanghaiist.com and they will automatically appear on our site (and here). more ›

We all know that traveling on a train during the Spring Festival rush is anything but glamorous or sexy, but count on FHM to inject copious amounts of that into even the unsexiest of situations. This is FHM China's risque editorial on the Spring Festival annual migration that's drawing a fair bit of criticism. The photographer Liu Jianan also has a few more out takes from the shoot that he's posted on his blog. more ›

It isn't everyday that we get to show you what fireworks can actually do to a building, so here you go. That's what the Dynasty Wanxin Hotel, the tallest building in Shenyang (and possibly the tallest in all of the northeast), looks like today after stray Chinese New Year fireworks gutted it last week. more ›

World of Chinese puts into graph form what, after days of fireworks exploding against your windows, some of you may be beginning to feel. For a bigger version of the graph, click here. more ›

Another day, another building on fire. This time, the victim is the historic Fahai Temple in downtown Fuzhou, capital of Fujian Province, built over a thousand years ago in 945. No casualties were reported in the fire, which was put out by a team of 150 firefighters in an hour (armed by the jet-powered water cannon, perhaps?). None of the cultural relics in the temple were said to be burnt, although looking at these pictures, we can't say we can be sure of that. more ›

More photos on the Shanghaiist Contribute page. To see your photos on our Contribute page, use Flickr and tag your photos “shanghaiist”. Or you can email your photos to photos@shanghaiist.com and they will automatically appear on our site (and here). more ›

Sopranos and tenors are a fixture at every year's spring festival gala show on television, but what happens when show producers, in their overzealousness to connect with younger audiences, make them sing songs that were never meant to be sung by them? The result, ladies and gentlemen, is a CATASTROPHE, as you will see in the following clip from Beijing TV's show: more ›

Well, well, you learn something new everyday. Apparently, the Vietnamese calendar has "borrowed" only 10 of the 12 Chinese zodiac signs -- replacing the rabbit with the cat and the ox with the buffalo. more ›

The WSJ has a funny little interview with Li Kejia, a 26-year-old Beijing native, who bought herself a pet bunny to bring her good fortune in the Year of the Rabbit. She's already wondering what she'll get herself next in the Year of the Dragon!
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People, what did we just tell you about being careful with fireworks? A damper was put on new year celebrations in Shenyang after fireworks burnt down a 5-star hotel. The Dynasty Wanxin building complex, located on Qingnian Street of Heping District, was comprised of three towers -- the fire quickly engulfed Tower A and B and gutted them but left Tower C intact. It broke out just thirteen minutes after midnight at Tower B, the apartment section of the Dynasty Wanxin complex and quickly spread to the neighboring Tower A which housed their 5-star hotel. more ›