Last week, we told you about the visa and financial problems that Shanghai Rego International School was reportedly experiencing. Things are just about to get worse for them because district authorities have refused to continue leasing land to it. This means the school will have to move elsewhere within the city when its current lease is up January 2013. more ›

Lots of foreign scammers milling about in Shanghai doing their thing these days, it seems. First there was Ryan Fedoruk, the Canadian fake landlord who sublet 30 apartments to 80 tenants before fleeing with RMB300,000. And then yesterday, a Nigerian man was charged at the Shanghai No.1 Intermediate People's Court.for concealing criminal income totaling more than US$265,000, according to the Shanghai Daily: more ›

It's been a couple of days since we told you about Ryan Fedoruk, the Canadian scammer and fake landlord who sublet 30 apartments to 80 tenants before fleeing with RMB300,000, and still, the man is nowhere to be found. Victims tell Shanghaiist they were told by police on their last check a couple of days ago that Fedoruk still hasn't left China. But who knows? Our friend could have walked over a bridge to Vietnam without his passport, or trekked over from Tibet to India, or walked over the frozen Yalu River to the DPRK. more ›

"I know Fedoruk. He is a scammer and he ran away, owing me tens of thousands yuan," said a landlord victim who refused to be named. "He rented the apartments, then he sublet them and disappeared with the money he owed to me and to the poor tenants, but I will find him." more ›

Information continues to trickle in ever-so-slowly on the so-called new social benefits system that China is rolling out for expatriates here. Now, they're saying some -- not all of us! -- will be allowed to retire and to withdraw our pensions here. But who will get it, and who won't? Nobody seems sure. more ›

Odd story of the day: A Singaporean man who has been overstaying in Beijing for six years escaped from a Chinese jail term by tampering with his passport so as to get repatriated. The story via the Straits Times: more ›

"For an explosion scene today, we laid over a kilometre of explosives and called up more than a thousand extras, as well as a Chinese aerial video company. The result was a catastrophe as they couldn't even maintain a steady hover height. This has taught me a lesson -- you may want to give domestic companies a platform, but they won't give you face, and eventually you'll still have to do a u-turn and get the laowais in. If you don't have the right techniques, you can practise, but what's frightening is that these guys will tell you they can do anything, and then mess it up when the big moment comes. Right, I'll just suck it up. Next time, I won't believe anyone again." more ›

China Digital Times has translated a set of really hilarious responses from Sina Weibo users to an American expatriate who just got to town and wants to know how he might be able to log on to Facebook where all of his friends and family are: more ›

Russell Flanary, Shanghai bureau chief of Forbes magazine, weighs in on China's new "social benefits" for foreigners:

Rather than emphasize the higher costs and taxes, the state paper put a positive spin on the news in a headline saying: “Foreigners set for social benefits.” The “benefits” start on Oct. 15, it said. more ›

A new regulation from the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security guarantees the 593,800 foreigners working in China the same social insurance benefits that are granted to Chinese nationals starting from Oct 15:

All expat workers will have the right to the five forms of social insurance: pensions, medical insurance, work injury insurance, unemployment insurance and maternity insurance. more ›

Shanghai-based market research man Shaun Rein says gone are the days when you can just hop on a plane and get a job in China even without speaking Mandarin or knowing anything about the Chinese culture. more ›

"THE income tax threshold of 4,800 yuan (US$744) enjoyed by expats in China will remain unchanged when personal tax thresholds are raised. At present the threshold is 2,000 yuan with an extra 2,800 yuan for expats. From September 1, China is raising the threshold to 3,500 yuan but the extra sum for expats is to be cut to 1,300 yuan, leaving them with the same 4,800 yuan benefit." [Shanghai Daily] more ›

Riding on the current revival of "red songs", this crazy laowai has done an autotuned hip hop version of the song "映山红", or Ode to the Azalea, where he sings alongside a Chinese partner in crime. Little is known about the identity of the laowai (we'd appreciate any tips), but the video has attracted quite a fair bit of attention, chalking up over half a million views on Sina alone in just one week. He is of course, not the first laowai to be singing red songs. Back in 2008, Honglaowai, a shirtless New Yorker became an instant online celebrity by singing red songs. more ›

A new social insurance law that will apply to foreign employees from July 1 may make it significantly more expensive for companies in China to hire expatriates. more ›

We informed you a while ago that expatriates in Shanghai can now apply for the two-year residence permit. Our friends at City Weekend have figured out how to go about getting it done, but first, you need to figure out if you're eligible:

First up, almost anyone can apply if they’ve been working in Shanghai for a decent length of time. Anyone whose had a “Residence Card B” for two years (this covers all foreign nationals legally living here) is eligible, as are managers, legal representatives or high-tech workers with companies registered in Shanghai. If you’re just an “ordinary person” in a company worth over US$30 million, you’re up for it as well. 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 ›

A male foreigner received a beating from bystanders on the Guangzhou subway recently for his obnoxious behaviour. Before he boarded the train, said eyewitnesses, the man had had a knife confiscated at security checkpoint. On the train, he began yelling at other passengers, calling them prostitutes, and flipping the bird at them. Later on in the altercation, a young Chinese woman who speaks English stepped in to try to talk some sense into the young man, but he would not listen, flipping her cell phone out of her hands, at which point a male passenger totally lost it -- and began attacking him. The incident ended at the next station when the foreigner took his belongings and got off the train.
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Louisa Lim of NPR meets up with Shanghai-based UK expatriate Arthur Jones, aka The Sole Man, who's trying to make a film based out of his experiences of living barefoot for one whole year. more ›

• Even your eggs aren't safe now, people. After Hong Kong found Select's "extra-large fresh brown eggs" to contain close to twice the legal limit of melamine, Walmart has pulled all eggs from the brand off the shelves of all its China stores. Select (咯咯哒 or "Gegeda" in Chinese) is a big brand and is one of those "China Famous Brands" (中国驰名商标). Refer to the packaging of the affected eggs in the video, and if you have them at home, dump them.
• A 37 year old woman from the Zhejiang province has come to Shanghai to seek medical treatment for her incontrollable shaking after spending RMB100,000 on medical care in Hangzhou, but even the best doctors at Huashan Hospital are baffled by her condition.
• An Anhui man has been sentenced to death for the cruel murder of the ex-husband of his lover. After suffocating his victim with a plastic bag, he dismembered him with a kitchen knife and then boiled and steamed all his body parts before dumping them in a creek in Pudong.

We were surprised to read from the China Briefing blog that ShanghaiExpat.com has been reported to the Chinese Network Security Police:

The social expatriate website Shanghaiexpat.com has had a legal case against it lodged with the network security division of the Public Security Bureau in Shanghai for libel and ‘disrupting social harmony’ it has been reported today. The site, which last year celebrated its fifth anniversary, has proved popular with local expatriates yet has consistently drawn criticism for its generally negative online forums and it’s sometime racist portrayal of Chinese nationals and the general living environment in China, it has been alleged. more ›

As mentioned before, US expatriates are, for the first time, able to vote in a global primary, meaning that they get their own set of delegates during the primaries, which decide each party's respective presidential candidate. This particular event, held on Tuesday at the ecologically sound and coolly designed URBN hotel, was well attended. Computers were set up to help people register, liquor and hors d'ouevres helped people mingle, and Barack Obama's victory speech from the South Carolina primary was played on a big screen. Melanie McGanney was there and wrote about it on the Huffington Post. Youtube has a video of the speech here, and you can see some more of our photos here. more ›