The China Daily has issued a damning verdict on the construction of the new 632 meter Shanghai Tower — soon to be China's tallest skyscraper. It says that with the new tower, "blind worship and race for skyscrapers has reached a new high" and that the 121 storey tower will be a "milestone in turning Shanghai into a less pleasant concrete jungle". The opinion piece (God knows who it was written by as no byline was supplied) then sought to substantiate with a litany of reasons why the Shanghai Tower would be a bad idea: (1) Shanghai is sinking, and a new skyscraper isn't going to help; (2) Traffic in Lujiazui is congested enough and a new building is going to make rush hours all the more "nightmarish"; (3) The "urban heat island effect" is going to make Shanghai feel even more like a sauna in summers; (4) Skyscrapers are vulnerable to attacks and disasters; (5) The economic risk of building the Shanghai Tower will be shared by various state-owned enterprises and the money could be "better spent elsewhere"; (6) Shanghai should instead save its old buildings from demolition; (7) Shanghai's public transportation sucks. Why not spend more money there? (8) It also has the fastest graying population in China and should build more facilities to cater to the elderly. In conclusion, China Daily judged super skyscrapers like the Shanghai Tower to be "not a priority for Shanghai" and that it "could cause more harm than add to its glamor". Such words of wisdom. more ›

Last weekend, we told you that Yahoo! is now apologizing for not telling the full truth to Congress at the February 2006 hearing where Yahoo! was taken to task for its role in the conviction of Chinese journalist Shi Tao. Now both Republicans and Democrats have launched scathing attacks on Yahoo. San Mateo Democrat Tom Lantos has called Yahoo "moral pygmies", and New Jersey Republican Chris Smith compared Yahoo’s cooperation with the Chinese government to companies that cooperated with Nazi Germany during World War II. more ›

Saw this Saturday night at Yinghua Bowl, our Shanghai bowling alley of choice (yes, we went bowling on a Saturday night). Here is what the text of the sign says: 请妥善保管好您的物品 遗失本馆概不负责 Please take care of your belongs. We are not responsible for any of your losses. Does the image — some kind of bowling barbarian hoarding his pelts, "ancient" bowling pins and balls and, of course, one human skull — make any sense to... 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 had a good laugh when we saw this "patriotic" banner by Chinese blogger Xiucai ("秀才") which reads: "Joyfully welcome the 17th Party Congress, building a harmonious society together. Xiucai is a good comrade. This site has temporarily shut down comments and forum features." [h/t to Rebecca Mackinnon] more ›

China hurting in world opinion polls [China Post]

In a survey covering 18 countries which account for 56 percent of the world's population, 38 percent said China can be trusted to act responsibly while 52 percent said the country can't be trusted.

Lost Laowai brings our attention to the following soundbyte of a conversation between an Air China pilot and the control tower of the JFK Airport in New York. In it, the pilot fails to understand anything that the traffic controller was saying and his English was so garbled that he might as well have been speaking in Esperanto -- a language that is deemed so important that China Radio International's website has a version in it! more ›

For those of you using Feedburner to manage your RSS feeds and wondering why you haven't been able to read any of your favourite blogs, it looks like it might have been GFW'ed. CNet Asia's Little Red Blog says the Feedburner block was only temporary, but we're still unable to access any of our feeds at http://feeds.feedburner.com. It also recommends that we check out FeedSky, which it says is China's number one RSS feed service, but we're not convinced -- you mean the net nanny is so stupid as to allow a Chinese RSS feed service bypass all its blocks so netizens here can read Blogspot blogs? more ›

Back in April we did a post on the top ten books favored by the users of Douban.com, a book review and recommendation site. Since that time, tastes have changed and new books have been released so it's about time to take a new look at the site's top ten: more ›

Our round-up of some of last week's highlights from China's English-language blogosphere: more ›

The blog Lost Laowai has started a group writing project called "If I Knew Then What I Know Now." The general idea is for other bloggers to write about what they thought about China before actually moving out here and how different the reality actually is. Once the writer has finished the post, he/she can notify Lost Laowai and have it put up on the consolidated submission list for everyone's reading pleasure. more ›

Our round-up of some of last week's highlights from China's English-language blogosphere: more ›

Comic Paul Merton has recently been touring China, making a light hearted documentary that is currently being aired on Channel Five in the UK. If the few clips we have seen are anything to go by, then this follows the best tradition of whimsical British travelogues such as Louis Theroux's Wild Weekend. more ›

Our weekly round-up of some of the highlights from China's English-language blogosphere: more ›

Last Friday, Shanghaiist attended a conference which was, for all intents and purposes, about how to push products to the Chinese populace and maximize profits in this gold rush. Weasely marketing types abounded, frantically and forcibly pelleting their business cards upon us whilst spewing their “bottom-line is king” rhetoric. Every other word out of their mouths was either ‘opportunity’, ‘growth’, ‘potential’ or ‘profit’. Scary stuff. more ›

It seems that charming Shanghai has become the creative and commercial object of affection for yet another famous Tom (after Cruise and Friedman, of course) and is now featured as one of the backdrops for Ubisoft’s Splinter Cell: Double Agent. The fourth title in the Splinter Cell series is newly available on the Xbox 360, the Nintendo Wii, and the PC, and bears the name and coveted approval of noted author, bass fisherman and Sith Lord Tom Clancy. more ›

We'd heard a lot of hype about Hong Kong director Johnnie To's (杜棋峰) new film Exiled (放逐), not least of all because it was one of three Chinese language films that competed at the Venice Film Festival (against new works by Jia Zhangke and Tsai Ming-liang). more ›

GigShanghai: Booty, 'touching guitars' and Supergirl?!? more ›

An article from Interfax tells of a Southern Metropolitan Daily opinion piece that was written in response to the Ministry of Health Mao Qun'an's comments to the effect that the media was covering medical and health issues irresponsibly by creating reports that are unbalanced and unobjective. Well, the folks at Southern took issue to that, but of course, replying to accusations from an official is not for the squeamish, so they worded their reply quite cautiously: more ›

Photo from rachelleb.com. more ›

Tim Kao, musician more ›

Mercer Human Resource Consulting just released its annual standard of living report, which ranks the quality of life in the world's major big cities. Shanghaiist has kept up the results the last few years, and there haven't been any major changes. Bloomberg reports: more ›

Photo by Shanghai Streets taken from the Shanghaiist photos page. To see your photos on our photos 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. more ›

As if you needed us to tell you, it's Oscar night morning. We have one eye on the TV right now -- Dragon TV, and at least one other local network -- are showing a "live"[1] feed of the red carpet coverage from E! (with Chinese commentary). Why not watch on our satellite? Because it never freakin' works. CCTV usually replays the Oscars Monday evening, although we haven't found confirmation of that online yet (anyone out there got the details?). In past years CCTV's coverage has been in English with Chinese subtitles. more ›

Michael Ohlsson, underground DJ more ›

We don't remember exactly how we stumbled upon this photo diary of food in Shanghai, but we're glad we did. It's a colorful look at some of what the city has to offer. It's not just Shanghainese food (that would be silly ... there is so much variety in Shanghai) and it is far from comprehensive (that would be next to impossible), but it is worth a look. And the guy who took the photos, Taipei-based Liao Yusheng, is a professional photographer. His Flickr set "Taste of Shanghai" includes commentary, venue addresses and unvarnished opinions (basically, everything is better in Taiwan). more ›

Shanghaiist greeted the news that Zhang Yimou had gone back to making touching humanistic films set in the backwaters of China with some trepidation. We hope, after the disappointment of Hero and the even more atrocious House of Flying Daggers that Zhang has gotten this whole slick martial arts fantasia thing out of his system, like Michael Jordan and his minor league baseball lark. Zhang even managed to get veteran Japanese actor Takakura Ken for the lead role. Like Not One Less and The Road Home, the film is shot in a fairly realistic, almost documentary style and the plot is fairly lean, more a short story than a novel. more ›

Shanghaiist tried really really hard to bite our tongue after reading an AFP story first thing this morning -- headline "US lawmaker tells China to learn from CNOOC row" -- that contained astonishing quotes such as this one from the fast expanding Chuck Schumer: more ›