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......

Earlier this week the heat in our bedroom pooped out. The weather on Friday hit a promising 18 degrees and we thought our prayers had been answered, but no such luck. Xinhua has put much of China back on a code red weather alert and it looks like we're head right back to highs in the single digits. Anhui and Jiangsu in east China, Hubei and Henan in central China and Shanxi and Shaanxi in......

By JFK Miller Of course! Xinhua has already called it for the home team (on Christmas Day, in fact): “China is widely expected to beat the United States and Russia to top the medal standings of the 2008 Olympic Games.”......

By Mike Chen Date: Christmas Eve 2007 Location: St Ignatius Cathedral, Xujiahui, Shanghai......

Leading Chinese search engine Baidu is mourning the loss of its CFO, Shawn Wang (王湛生) who died in an accident during his Christmas vacation in China on Thursday (no more details were given). The man was credited with leading the company through a successful initial public offering on NASDAQ. Meanwhile, a group of seven leading global record companies, including EMI, SONY BMG, Warner Music and Universal Music have lost their lawsuit against Baidu for aiding......

SFist saw Christmas Day turn tragic after a Siberian tiger escaped from her pen at the San Francisco Zoo, killing a visitor and mauling two others. Phillyist counted down the top ten items on Philadelphia's New Year's wish list. Gothamist looked at the wooden bikes being offered for NYC's first bike share program on Governors Island. LAist received a Christmas present in the form of a drunk Santa Claus in a g-string. Bostonist launched......

What's happening around the nation as one year closes and another begins 2007 is definitely the year of angry students. After last month's bloody riot at the Hefei PLA Artillery Academy is a Christmas Eve clash in Tianjin's Nankai University, said to be among China's top ten universities. We all know the powers-that-be do not like angry students, so they will be watching this in 2008.In the above picture, laid off bank workers at the......

Christmas in China Reuters: How the Grinch stole China city's Christmas trees Asia Times: Christmas is made in China RFA: China Detains 70 in Raid on Shandong House Church Meeting [Proxy needed] SCMP: Controversial bishop tipped for top post [Subscription required] Xinhua: Rule on living Buddhas aids religious freedom Women, money and bling LA Times: In Beijing, some bling is unwelcome EastSouthWestNorth: Desperately seeking Anna Miscellaneous EarthTimes: Chiang Kai-shek's family threatens to bury his......

Shanghaiist wishes all its readers a very merry Christmas, and above all a safe and happy holiday season! From Chris Billman: At one time this building was probably a factory/sweatshop and now it's been converted into a Christian Church. It was really in the middle of nowhere, the town only had one restaurant and that was the only restaurant for at least 5km. What amazed me though was just how many chairs there were,......

It is that time of the year again, and love it or hate it, it is there to remind us of its impending arrival everywhere we go. Here is a collection of pictures that capture Shanghai's Christmas, this year. Xujiahui's temple of mammon, also known as the Grand Gateway Plaza, by meckleychina The church on Duolun Lu, built in traditional Chinese style, gets dressed to welcome the birth of Christ, by Qiao-Da-Ye......

... not Santa Claus! We wonder if the Chairman would be rolling in his grave Mao-soleum if he knew he was on the cover of the latest issue of The Economist, looking all festive with a santa hat. Well, according to them, Mao is a role model of sorts for top Chinese executives even today. The four key ingredients of the Chairman's art of management are: a powerful, mendacious slogan; ruthless media manipulation; sacrifice of......

From the makers of The Unseen China, Jiang Xueqin and Brian Keeley, comes another documentary, Children of Blessing. While we are not totally fans of the way the directors have framed their story (and we won't spoilt the show for you or impose our opinion on you, watch it for yourselves and share with us what you think in the comment section!), this is still a stellar production, and we'd like to share it as......

Yao Ming is not the best singer. And neither is any of his team mates from the Houston Rockets as this latest video of them spreading the holiday cheer with their own rendition of Jingle Bell Rock shows (Click here to watch them sing 12 Days of Christmas). But we love it!......

We have never actually experienced or even witnessed a person's ears bleeding from a live show, but last night we were pretty damn close. Thursday, the Ex-Models put on an interesting show of sharp, sonic blasts for a small 4Live audience. If you happened to miss it, no worries, the band will be joined by Carsick Cars and Torturing Nurse on Saturday at Yuyintang. Carsick Cars has enjoyed a stellar year, opening for Sonic Youth......

Where to go, where to go: Shanghaiist is still trying to figure out where to carb up for our big dodgeball game tonight (that's right, patches, dodgeball). Pure, the fancy new Japanese restaurant that is part of The Collection at Xintiandi, has been offering their new sushi menu for 50% off since last Thursday. The special ends tomorrow night, however, so if we enjoy ourselves tonight we may find ourselves there tomorrow as well. On......

... with SCAA's Christmas gala which happens this evening at 6.30pm at O'Malleys! RMB 100 at the door gets you a glass of Champagne, two standard drinks, comfort food, lots of free gifts and one Holiday Raffle ticket for a chance to win over 100 prizes totaling more than RMB 150,000! For those of you on the hunt for Christmas trees but don't know where to get them, Smart Shanghai has the answers! 'Tis the......

Since Net Nanny lifted her ban on YouTube, we have been catching up on the some of the vids that we missed during the year-long ban...okay, it wasn't that long. Looking for any excuse to waste time and avoid Christmas shopping, we watched every episode available of the first season of Project Runway Canada (the other PRC in our lives). It's the Canadian version of the very popular (especially among the LGBT crowd) American show,......

WHAT TYPE OF DRUNK ARE YOU? When you get pissed out of your mind, are you a harmless drunk? A violent drunk? A poetic drunk or what? We all prefer not to meet a violent drunk because that's just trouble, and it's then up to somebody like a Zapatas bouncer to take him out. Loquacious drunks, like a German acquaintance, are pains in the backside, but it's usually easy to make a quiet exit. Then......

Since Thursday, mallrats visiting Citic Plaza on Nanjing road may have noticed the greeting card and painting exhibit on the ground floor, right across from McDonald's. We were struck by how atypically childlike the artwork was, and then we found out why: they were all produced by children. The event is called the "Share Your Love" Art Charity program and is organized and hosted by the SMIC Private School in Pudong. We'll let the website......

With Christmas just around the corner, there are plenty of parties to attend, plus more wine tastings and other opportunities to get thoroughly blotto. Here's what Winopete has heard about so far: Nov 29 Oriented Happy Hour at MoCA art gallery in People's Park. Please visit www.oriented.com for details. Nov 29-Dec 1 Italian wine exhibition at the Shanghai Exhibition Centre (Tongren and Yan'an Roads) hosted by the Institiute of Fine Italian Wine. No other details......

An early Christmas present? Or is someone just napping over at China internet police headquarters? Regardless, the photos over at Flickr, our photo sharing website of choice, appear to be accessible at 7 pm on Saturday night. Yay? We'll see. Working for you? The above screen shot of our Contribute Page, which shows a live stream of Flickr photos tagged "shanghaiist," was taken while using Safari with no kind of proxy or VPN or Flickr-unblocker......

China reporters probing bridge disaster "beaten" [Reuters] Chinese journalists probing a bridge collapse that killed dozens of people said they were harassed and beaten by local thugs, exposing the state-run media's see-saw struggle between control and candor. China blows up collapsed bridge in search for more victims [Xinhua] The new bridge which collapsed four days ago was blown up early Friday morning in a desperate effort to find out more victims as chances of finding......

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......

So while we're nursing our hangovers from last night's party and trying to get the damn Beatles songs out of our minds, it dawned on us that not so long ago, we wrote our very first entry here on Shanghaiist, and since then, two years have passed! In the meanwhile, the poor bloggers at Shanghaiist have been so busy trying to keep you entertained and supplementing our meagre writer salaries by peddling strange stuff on......

Is it us or have there been a lot of political news stories and incidents in recent weeks? A few weeks ago, the restive group of villagers in Guangxi rioted over fines relating to the one-child policy, a glimpse of which you can see in the video on the left. Then maybe on Thursday or Friday night of last week, hundreds of Zhengzhou students rioted in the streets, after a student vendor was beaten by......

In 2006, Shanghaiist prayed for a direct flight connecting the United States' east coast to Shanghai. Hell, we even signed a petition to the FAA. But the travel god(s) turned a deaf ear to our pleading, and awarded the precious route to Washington, DC/Beijing. Bummer! But an announcement made yesterday after a two day summit between the senior American and Chinese finance ministers has rekindled our hope. To accommodate surging trade and air traffic between......

Maoming Lu is no longer a wild party street. Gone are the lascivious hostesses running around in a noisy chaotic fashion, challenging beer-drenched men to games of Connect Four. H & Y' s boss must have seen it all, because this low key Japanese restaurant is still going strong in this street after seven years. We enjoy this restaurant, because it has tasty, inexpensive Japanese food in a very casual environment. Inside, H & Y......

The hard working staff at Shanghaiist once again takes you to the front lines with a report of a UFO sighting over Hongkou and Yangpu districts on the night of April 12. According to the report (in Chinese), the UFO was seen by many residents, and pictures subsequently spread over the internet, starting (exclusively?) from the Fudan University BBS (they are in that area). The question remains as to why any advanced civilization would pimp......

A few days ago, we linked to a BoingBoing post entitled "Buddha Machine: spiritual, generative transistor radio." Well, Shanghai blogger Swiss James, who is, naturally, "an Englishman born in the year of the Horse," recently bought six of these plastic chanting contraptions and videotaped them for us all to see and hear (he used his close proximity to Jing'An Temple as an excuse). He writes: I think there’s something really appealing about these little gadgets......

We at Shanghaiist know that you are busy people (or that at least you try to act like busy people when your bosses are around). That's why we launched a Favorites page a while back. On it you can find the most popular Shanghaiist posts based on comments and votes (the "Recommend This!" link you see at the bottom of each post). So if you are rushed for time, you can just visit that page......