By Kenneth Tan and David Feng Not good news: Tudou may be in for a squashing by the Chinese mainland authorities, specifically, the State Administration for Radio, Film and Television. A Sohu IT report claims that the presence of porn -- a big no-no on the Chinese Internet -- was all that it took for the potato (which is the Chinese translation of "tudou") to be squashed. The squashing is long-term and has no set......

Photo by Brad Westphal Shanghai East Asia Hong Kong United 0 – 3 LA Galaxy Two late goals from Ecuadorian striker Carlos Ruiz gave a final scoreline that not only overstated the quality and excitement of this game, but also flattered a lack-lustre LA Galaxy side at the largely empty 80,000 Shanghai Stadium. East Asia had reduced Major League Soccer's Galaxy to few chances on goal and had even looked the more threatening side......

Tonight will see the massive Shanghai Stadium host a sporting event for seemingly the first time in ages. More akin in recent times to holding pop concerts and ceremonies, the 80,000 all-seater arena will be the venue for an exhibition match between American MLS Soccerball team LA Galaxy and China Division One side East Asia (kick-off 7:30pm). The match is part of the Galaxy’s pre-season tour of East Asia and will also serve as a......

... and if the problem is not sorted out in time, Chinese fans may not get to see David Beckham this Wednesday, says Ruud Gullit, head coach of the LA Galaxy. Our city may be home to some of the world's tallest and most beautiful (okay, that one's subjective) skyscrapers, but as it turns out, we have problems keeping soccer pitches clean. Here's Gullit's complaint, quoted verbatim from an AFP report: "The pitch is in......

David Beckham was swarmed by fans and journalists when he arrived yesterday at the Pudong airport with the LA Galaxy on the second stop of their three-part Asian tour. The team has just arrived from Seoul, where they were defeated by FC Seoul despite Beckham's stellar performance. The team faces off China All-Star Union at the Shanghai Stadium this Wednesday, March 5 at 7:30 pm. For those of you hoping to catch some Beckham-mania, rumours......

People who made the news this week Kim Jong-Il, the President of North Korea, has met up with Wang Jiarui, the head of the international department at the Central Committee of China’s Communist Party, in Pyongyang on Wednesday. According to South Korea's Chosun Ilbo, when Wang voiced his explicit dissatisfaction with the DPRK's failure to meet its nuclear disarmament deadline, Kim said, “The present difficulties are temporary and can be conquered.” Kim also made a......

Worst. Wong Kar-wai movie. Ever. Wong Kar-wai movies used to be mini-events in our lives, so we were probably more disappointed than the average viewer. It's hard to believe that My Blueberry Nights (MBN) was made by the same guy who made a gem of a road movie about ten years ago, Happy Together (HT). Both are road movies about lonely souls and wayward lovers, so it's hard not compare the two, but unfortunately,......

Recently, Tudou's Marc van der Chijs commented on how he knew the bubble in the Chinese stockmarket had to burst soon when he found out that his driver, too, had jumped headlong onto the stock bandwagon although he had zero understanding of how stockmarkets work. You will find an echo of that sentiment in Al-Jazeera's latest report on China's current stockmarket frenzy. Meanwhile, David Barboza of the New York Times says China wonders if its......

From National Geographic: Cars are racing into China supercharging its economy, and delivering dreams of a better life. But Chinas cars are clogging its highways and spewing out clouds of pollution. The rest of the world better watch out, because some Chinese automakers have plans to flood the world markets with cheaper Chinese cars be they made by GM or Chinas own Geely Automotive. We go inside the Geely plant in Ningbo, and follow a......

Quick note from the Editor: We are pleased to introduce to you a new member of our family: David Feng, who has come to join us at Shanghaiist to head up our tech column. David is the founder of the Beijing Macintosh User Group and a one-man super blogger on the China tech and startup scene. He was most recently the China editor for tech uberblog BlogNation, before its infamous implosion, that is (which we......

Tiger eats tiger in NE China zoo [Xinhua] A Siberian tiger at the Shenyang Glacier Zoo was killed and eaten by four tigers it had lived with for five years over the weekend. Apparently, the cash-strapped zoo has not been able to feed the tigers with sufficient food for the last two years.'Spiderman' Scales Part of China Mountain [AP] A daredevil French climber nicknamed "Spiderman" scaled part of Hunan province's Tianmen Mountain using only his......

The 3rd annual Shanghai International Creative Industry Week is going on through Wednesday the 21st. We went to opening night last Thursday and were able to get a sneak peek into the 1933 building mentioned a few posts back, where some of the exhibitions were still being touched up at the last minute. One of the purposes of the SICIW is to bring together art and design entities from all over the world into one......

The 74 year old slaughterhouse that stands on 10 Shajing Road (虹口区沙泾路10号) in Hongkou has been remade as 1933, a lifestyle and design center. Some of the brains behind this new development include Paul Liu, formerly of Three on the Bund, and David Laris, owner of his eponymous restaurant also at Three. Has any Shanghaiist been there yet? Photo from Jake in Shanghai......

There must be something strange in the air (literally), because this year's Tennis Masters Cup has been quite a doozy. And after last night's action (Day 3), it's officially a doozy. Richard Gasquet of France, the last man to qualify for the tournament, upset number three in the world and crowd favorite, Novak Djokovic of Serbia, in convincing fashion, 6-4, 6-2. It was Djokovic's second loss in the tournament, after falling to Spaniard David Ferrer......

We were right. The Olympic Bible ban controversy would spill over. And it has, in a most unbelievably crazy fashion. More ill-informed Christian and Catholic news media have given legs to the story. Somewhere along the way, the rumour became a fact, and a debate has made its way to the hallowed halls of the US Congress! Senator Lindsey Graham has made a complete idiot of himself by calling up the Chinese Ambassador to the......

Yes, that was our reaction when we saw these pictures, but sorry to disappoint all you Facebook whores (that includes ourselves!) out there, the image on the right is just a Facebook clone, Xiaonei.com (校内网). It looks like the portal was started around 2005 (less than two years after Facebook was born), and since then, it has grown exponentially to cover around 2,000 university campuses in Greater China. They have just recently started to......

Hot on the heels of the FIFA Women's World Cup, yet another international sporting event, right here in Shanghai. The Special Olympics will open on 2 Oct at the Shanghai Stadium and run all the way till 11 Oct. We hear from the organisers:Award-winning producer and director Don Mischer has created a spectacular Opening Ceremonies event to mark the official opening of the World Games. The event will include star-studded entertainment, the Parade of......

People who made the news this week Zhao Yan (赵岩), the Chinese journalist jailed in 2004 while working for the New York Times is expected to be freed this weekend. Zhao was charged for revealing state secrets after a Times report was published that correctly predicted the retirement of Jiang Zemin (江泽民) as president and Communist Party chief. He was also accused of fraud for taking RMB20,000 from a village official. Prior to joining the......

Many free to have more than one child Less than 40 percent of the population is restricted by the family planning policy to having one child, a senior official with the National Population and Family Planning Commission said yesterday. While popularly referred to as the "one child policy", the rule actually restricts just 35.9 percent of the population to having one child, Yu Xuejun, a spokesman with the commission, said in a Webcast on......

...says the Chinese female population. According to China Daily, the Hong Kong superstar topped the list of most desired sperm surveyed by 1000 women and conducted by Self Magazine. The women cited his good looks and wealth. Right on his heels, in second place, was none other than Bill Gates, also due to his wealth great charm and good looks. At a measly and disappointing tenth place came Brad Pitt. Whether or not Lau would......

David isn't the only Beckham that's globetrotting and reveling in his fame: It's official, Girl Power is back, and the Spice Girls reunion tour will make two stops in China. But the only two shows are January 10 in Beijing and January 12 in Hong Kong. What, no Shanghai? Photo from no frills marilyn's Flickr page.......

My time as a hostage, and I’m a business reporter As an American journalist based in China, David Barboza knew there was a good chance that at some point he’d be detained for pursuing a story. He just never thought he’d be held hostage by a toy factory. China province head apologizes in slave labor storm Yu Youjun the governor of Shanxi province shaken by the slave labor scandal publicly apologized on Friday, as officials......

We went to the last Pecha Kucha night in Shanghai. We had a good time. We recommend you attend the next one being held this upcoming Saturday. We would elaborate more but we are sleep deprived and cranky. So, without further ado, the old straight-from-the-source trick: Pecha Kucha is known worldwide as an open night for architects, designers, photographers or anyone who wants to share their ideas and dreams. This time we will go back......

Designer Tang Pushes Fashion in China David Tang is famous for founding the Shanghai Tang label that put Mandarin-collared shirts, cheongsam dresses and other Chinese-style fashion on boutique shelves from New York to Paris. Booming stock market cures man's paraplegia Not only can the man walk to the nearest brokerage in 20 minutes, he made 60% profits on his returns from the market. Entrance at Nanjing Road E. Station to be closed Not the......

While we were wondering why neither ESPN Asia nor Star Sports on our satellite system was showing the Dallas Mavericks-Golden State Warriors game this morning, we noticed a clip on ESPN video that talked about NBA commissioner David Stern expressing interest in setting up a joint venture hoops league in China. We stopped going to Shanghai Sharks games a few years ago because the team didn't seem to care too much about its fans, so......

Has the destruction of Wujiang Lu got you down? Need a quick picker-upper? If so, you might think about heading down to Henry's Brewery & Grill for a nice dose of comedy to turn that frown upside down. Does Henry's sound familiar to you, oh dearest reader? That's because it will also be the host of Shanghaiist next Happy Hour. Okay, that's enough self-promoting. This isn't the first time there's been some stand-up comedy on......

Or more like who won't be performing. We've already told you about Live Earth, Al Gore's 24-hour, 7-continent series of concerts on 7/7/07. Well, lists of performers at different venues (cities participating are: East Rutherford, New Jersey [near New York]; London; Rio de Janeiro; Maropeng [near Johannesburg]; Tokyo; Shanghai; and Sydney) are starting to be announced. First up, the US and the UK. Here's who will be playing at Wembley Stadium in London: Beastie Boys,......

Shanghaiist likes reading sciencey stuff. We are often seen browsing through the archives of Science Magazine, The Scientific American and New Scientist magazines akin to how your Mum might flick through weekly gossip rags like Who Weekly or OK! magazines. Naively, we often delude ourselves to think that our pleasure was without the vice of judgement, but reality snapped us back and reminded ourselves of the petty nature and politics of science throughout history when......

During this year's joint exhibition "Design Week" and "Sino-International Real Estate Summit" a seminar about New Public Space was held by FAR. This is a non-profit foundation to facilitate the communication and collaboration between architects in China and Shanghai. The eight speakers of this seminar covered a broad spectrum of topics. Starting with the presentation of architecture projects for public use and of projects covering bigger urban space, followed by a presentation of art in......

Shanghai-made Ferris wheel applies for Guinness World Records "It is 25 meters taller than the London Eye, currently the tallest observation wheel in the world, and only cost one-eighth the price to build." Probably very safe. Six feared dead as Beijing subway tunnel collapses "A contractor had tried to conceal the collapse from authorities by sealing off the site and confiscating the workers' cell phones, it said, citing rescuers." Chinese director receives official approval......