Forget your banking cube farm in the WFC, Shanghai's coolest office space is Leafy Shade in Hong Kou district. Transforming a dark and dingy former hotel into an urban forest was the work of a Japanese guy at Shanghai based design team A-Asterix, the people who also knocked together the Sony Style store on Huai Hai Lu.. None of the press information gives an exact address but if anyone works there, can we come over......

We got this via email from Josh at medalcount.com: [Olympic medals] used to be mighty impressive, what you'd expect to earn after 4 years of hard work. The most recent medals, well, perhaps not. I present: Exhibit A: The Beijing air hockey puck Exhibit B: The Torino 2006 cracked DVD So I've put up picture galleries of every Olympic medal ever made. The winter ones, I dare say, tend to be more stylish. Of course,......

From Hong Kong-based blogger Thomas Crampton: The Chinese link? The Fail Whale was drawn by Chinese graphic designer Lu Yiying, who sold it on iStockPhoto for US$10, according to Jay Oatway of the Hong Kong-based Charged magazine. Thanks to Twitter’s perpetual failures, Lu’s Fail Whale now features on t-shirts and coffee mugs while other artists create kinetic Fail Whale sculptures. The Sydney-based Lu Yiying fanned the flames of fandom with a girlfriend (and the official......

More green spaces, easier access to the promenade… All could be built in time for the World Expo in 2010. American urban design and architecture firm Chan Krieger Sieniewicz was chosen by the town to revamp its former international concession port area. The Huangpu River and the heart of the city will be “reconciled.” Head of project Liang Zhao explains that today, the Bund buildings are separated from the water by Zhongshan Road –......

Yes, we know there are a lot of websites out there for students of the Chinese language, but have you ever seen one as cute as this? Hanzillion is Ana Campos' mission to: "Learn all the zillion hanzi (chinese characters) by collecting them one by one". Organised by (amongst other things) number of strokes, each character is backed up with an example taken from the screens, streets and signs of Shanghai. We predict a spin-off......

Photo by Sypro Share with us how you see Shanghai, or China! Post your photos on Flickr, tag them with "shanghaiist", and we'll select one favorite image per day. Or you can simply email your photos to photos at shanghaiist.com.......

Fashion designers in Shanghai are a jiao a dozen. What is rare is a designer with an innovative concept — not copied, borrowed or recycled from a different era. Born in Guyana to Haitian parents and raised in Paris, emerging designer Sheilla Constance Sidney arrived in Shanghai one year ago. Living in China inspired her interest in integrating traditional African and Chinese fashion. Habesha, the name of her collection, means 'mixed' in Amharic, the language......

Now into its fifth year, M on the Bund’s Shanghai International Literary Festival kicks off this weekend and once again has an impressive line up featuring a string of famous names and expert figures from across the book world. Running for the next three weekends, the festival offers Shanghai’s literati the chance to see some of the best Chinese and international writers. With so many great events to choose from (you can buy tickets and......

The International Herald Tribune has a great new article entitled Shanghai: The allure of individualism which explores the rising trend of young Chinese designers setting up shop to sell their own stuff. And they are not cheap.The New York Philharmonic has just left Shanghai for Beijing on its Asian tour that also includes Hong Kong and Taiwan and a landmark concert in Pyongyang. The New York Times talks about the disappointment of principal oboist Wang......

The weekend has arrived and with Chinese New Year looming things have gotten much quieter on the live music front. Friday night Club 8 and Pelle Carlberg, both from Sweden, will bring their pop sound to the crowds at the Shanghai Concert Hall. It had been scheduled for the Dream Factory but due to lack of a proper live music license has been moved. Shanghaiist's interest in this show has been piqued by the oddly......

Adding to the flux of design studios and boutique start-ups in the artsy enclave of Taikang Road, we stumble upon yet another new kid on the block. Projection 216 is a design studio/boutique started by fashion designer Jenny Ni who has also rounded up several of her friends including design duo Perk, T-shirt collective The Thing, artist/graphic designer Tyakasha, sneaker designer DK and even a manicurist, Mary to join her in this endeavor. We......

Olympic Games will take place in Pékin and not in Beijing “The French have committees for everything. … After much discussion, the geographers and linguists of the CNT have decided that the rest of the world has it wrong. ‘Beijing’ must be spelled ‘Pékin’.” China anti-graft Web site felled by “too many hits” “A Chinese government Web site encouraging citizens to report corruption crashed on its first day under the weight of too many......

We want some of whatever this guy is smoking: "Haibao is a jolly, confident and cute kid," said Shao Longtu, 62, CEO of the Jiumuchuansheng advertising company and head of the mascot design team. "Using a human being as a mascot reflects the spirit of human-orientation, while the color blue stands for water, sea, the Earth, life, dreams, the future and technology," Shao said. ... "The mascot is a perfect match for the emblem. It......

Not too surprising, we suppose. They broke ground on this at the expo site today, More from the Shanghai Daily: The structure is named as "the crown of the East" as its most distinct feature is the roof. It will be made of traditional dougong brackets, which have a history of more than 2,000 years. ... China Pavilion's design was chosen from 344 entries submitted from all over the world and revised by experts, the......

Above, dear reader, you will see an example par excellence of lazy journalism. The header to this post is about as hackneyed as they come, but then so is the approach of a new periodical we stumbled across this week, the rubbishly titled SLmagazine. Whereas Dickens spent 500 odd pages flitting between London and Paris, SL pompously sees its "visionary mission" as to provide a cultural link between Shanghai and London (SL - geddit?) in......

Ang Lee's steamy blockbuster Lust, Caution was named Best Film at the 44th Golden Horse Awards in Taipei yesterday, the Chinese-speaking world's most coveted film awards. It also swept away six other awards, including Best Director, Best Actor, Best Screenplay Adaptation, Best Film Score, Best Makeup and Costume Design, and Best New Performer. Here is the list of winners:Best film: "Lust, Caution" Best director: Ang Lee, "Lust, Caution" Best actor: Tony Leung Chiu-wai, "Lust, Caution"......

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,......

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......

Want your 6min 40sec of fame? Have some interesting ideas that you've been dying to share with the world? Then put together 20 powerpoint slides of 20 seconds each (no boring lectures or grandmother's tales please), and get in touch with the organisers of Pecha Kucha Night volume 8 at info@far-china.net. From the organisers:Pecha Kucha Night is for designers, architects, photographers, architects, interior designers, graphical designers, game designers, artists, fashion designers, inventors, creative students or......

Low-priced Chinese cars quietly gain a foothold in Europe [The Boston Globe] China's quiet inroads into Europe are the first test of rich markets by Chinese automakers as they build dealer networks and deliver small shipments of cars to test the reaction of drivers and auto industry experts. The game the Japanese mastered in 15 years, and the Koreans in 10 will possibly take the Chinese just five years. China coal mine blaze kills three,......

At the risk of pissing off our rich and powerful film producer friends and thereby never getting invited to a press junket again, we want to begin this movie review with a simple declarative sentence, the likes of which has not and may never be seen again in film criticism: the movie Blood Brothers (天堂口) sucked ass. If you were to ask why first-time helmer Alexi Tan's film sucked, when it had John Woo executive......

An exhibition on Antoni Gaudi in Shanghai? It sounded too good to be true. Held in MoCA, from August 19th to October 5th, "Cosmos Gaudi, Architecture, Geometry and Design" is definitely worth the visit though. On two floors, you will be guided through examples of his work, studies he made on different materials, furnitures of all shapes and sizes, to show you how he used geometrics and ergonomics to incorporate them into his constructions. Two......

We just got word that Blue Frog will be opening a restaurant at the Venetian Macao-Resort-Hotel on August 28th. From their press release: blue frog bar & grill is strategically located on the main casino level of The Venetian, which opens its doors on August 28. The stylish 6,500 sq ft, 200 seat venue, will offer all-day dining from breakfast, lunch and dinner to afternoon snacks, wines and cocktails. “While incorporating the classic elements of......

Good English-language books are hard to come by in Shanghai, with Garden Bookstore and Charterhouse Booktrader standing out as the only establishments with decent selections. Seekers of specialty and international art and design-related titles take note--Timezone8 Bookstore in the M50 art complex on MoGanShan Rd is having an overstock clearance sale on all titles except magazines, Chinese-language, and consignment titles. The sale ends Friday, August 24th, so get there fast to splurge on all those......

Since the family was once again in town, we decided to have dinner, not at Jade on 36 this time, but at what is maybe Shanghai's most famous restaurant of Shanghainese food (with a Sichuan twist, according to this site): Meilongzhen. We first tried this place two years ago, and then again last April, but this time we went to their branch accross the street, on the 6th floor of the Westgate mall (which incidentally......

The contrarian and sometimes controversial Chinese artist Ai Weiwei (艾未未), who was a consultant in the design of the new Olympics stadium (known as the "Bird's Nest"), has disavowed his creation: In an attack on the "disgusting" political conditions in the one-party state, Ai Weiwei told the Guardian he would not attend the opening ceremony a year from now, or allow himself to be associated with either the government or the games. Ai likened the......

Fire broke out today at the US$910 million 101-storey tall Shanghai World Financial Center in an elevator shaft on the 40th floor at about 4pm today. Eight fire trucks were dispatched to douse the fire, and it was eventually extinguished by 5.42 pm. There were no reports of injuries or deaths. An AP report offers an excellent recap of the numerous travails that have faced the wedge-shaped building in the last few years (some of......

Remember we told you about how Xinhua had mistakenly illustrated a story on the causes of the debilitating disease multiple sclerosis with an X-ray photo of Homer Simpson's brain? We would have LOVED for it to stay on, but alas, the offending picture has now been taken off, thanks or no thanks to Chris O'Brien of Beijing Newspeak, who works for Xinhua's Dui Wai Bu (Home News for Overseas Service Department), a completely separate department......

There have recently been whispers all across town that Enoteca is the hottest place for wine connoisseurs right now. We were willing to give hearsay a run for its money. So we turned up, yesterday to be precise. Indeed, Enoteca, Italian for "place where you store wine," did not disappoint. Its design is simple, sultry - with a colour palette of dark mahogany and rich red. Bottles line the walls, headed under cute captions, such......