Since Monday, we've been having problems accessing Facebook here and thought we were the only ones having that problem. Tuesday, we began to hear from friends of ours all around China complaining of the same problem, on the Shanghaiist Contribute page and among the China Twitterati. And then this piece by the WSJ's China Journal appeared, devoting five full paragraphs to Facebook's mysterious outtage. God forbid the day when we have to turn on our......

Following a hot tip from the New York Times we were able to find Facebook's newest member, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao (温家宝). Initially Shanghaiist was excited about the prospect of being friends with 'Grandpa,' but then we realized he had more friends (13,280 supporters as of now) than all of the contributors combined and more supporters than the Shanghaiist fan page. Just leave it to the older generations to make it uncool for everyone else.......

Following their somewhat bizarre picture last month of Obama and a "dapper" donkey, the latest person to grace Baidu's homepage gives a slightly clearer message. The picture is of "Wheelchair Angel" (as she's been dubbed in some sections of the press) Jin Jing clutching the Olympic Torch to her chest, a position she adopted when pro-Tibetan protestors tried to snatch the flame from her in Paris last month. Clicking on the picture takes you through......

High intelligence society and all round cybernerds GaoZhiShang (tr: wisdom) have an interesting way of getting Facebookers to add their new IQ testing application: rampant nationalism! Other than getting some high-class brainbox lovin', the members of the group seem to be mainly concerned with finding the answer to that eternal question: is Paris Hilton (ditzy blonde boob of the media age) more intelligent than Zhuge Liang (military strategy genius of the Three Kingdoms era)? We......

Shanghaiist braved the crappy weather last Saturday to take in the sight of people bashing each other with pillows for no discernible reason. We arrived with hopes of massive pillow-based armies clashing heroically on the battlefield of the Shanghai Sculpture Space. Reality was somewhat less grandiose as maybe 30 - 40 people showed up to fight, with probably another 20 or 30 people cheering from the sidelines (not including some bemused security guards). Also, due......

The Shanghai location for the Worldwide Pillow Fight Day has been announced by the guys from Bad Cat Productions! Now, before we get to this, let's remember the PSB's distaste for public mass gatherings. Observe the rules (see below) and be sensible. Remember the one about bailing after 15 minutes maximum. The time is almost the same as on the official website: 15.03 on Saturday. The official message says to wait for a countdown. And......

Photos by Marc Dominic Cirkel Some of you have been asking on our Facebook page (remember to sign up as a Fan!) if there will be an update of the Shanghaiist logo once the WFC — you know, the building that had to be redesigned because it reminded people too much of the Japanese flag, took forever to be built because of a property glut, was almost burnt down, and recently suffered a security......

Editor's Note: This is an update to that flash mob we told you about earlier. The writer was the organiser of the event. Following the example of NYC-based drama group “Improv Everywhere,” an assembly of people gathered on Nanjing Road last Saturday at 3pm to "freeze in place at the same time." Although it was raining a little and many couldn’t make it on time, the event was a great success in terms of......

Shanghaiist was back at Yu Yin Tang after the extended New Year's break. Gigs have been slow to restart after Spring Festival due to announced renovations of their space over by Tianshan Park. Alter-Ego played on Friday and we went down to Saturday's 0093 Rock Showcase. Our first discovery was that the renovations have not actually been finished. The performance space is unchanged and it's the entry way that's getting expanded. Basically, there's a roof......

All this month (that would be March), the photography of Hong Kong artist Norm Yip will be on display not on the walls of a fancy-schmancy gallery on Moganshan Road, but on the meandering walls of Shanghai Studio. The photography, in mostly black and white, features fit, mostly East Asian men in various stages of undress, in front of simple backgrounds or stark black backdrops. The pictures do not feature any naughty bits, so Mr.......

At the risk of damning all that is cool and underground with our pro-whiteboy Midas touch, we're going to tell you how much we enjoyed watching the soul, funk, R&B and sometimes classic rock band LX play at Logo on Wednesday. This band is headed by Lucius Clark (whom we are told is from New York), and the other players include the very talented Vladimir on guitar (sorry we don't know your last name), whom......

Just as the rest of the world is getting swept away in a social networking frenzy, googling for keywords such as "Badoo", "Facebook", "Ebuddy", "Hi5" and even "Second Life", Chinese googlers it seems are a completely different species. In 2007, four out of the top ten keywords among Chinese googlers were wealth-related, searching for keywords such as "stock", "China Merchants Bank", "Industrial and Commercial Bank of China" and "China Construction Bank". Bank of China is......

... 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......

WARNING: GORY IMAGES This video clip is circulating big time on the Chinese internet right now, and has received over 470,000 hits and 5,000 comments on Youku within less than a day. And it is just plain disgusting. A security guard at Wenzhou University beats a helpless dog to death as students videotape from above. From the sounds of the students yelling out to the security guard, we imagine they are at a student dormitory.......

Okay, okay, we promise we will STOP talking about Facebook right after this post for the next week, but seriously, people, it is such a great way to not just entertain ourselves, but also to find out about what's going on in our city [1] . Through Facebook, we've not only seen how people in our town are organising themselves for good, we find that it also can be a great source of GOSSIP. And......

Hong Kongers snub Beijing Sydney Morning Herald: Hong Kong voters snub Beijing, strike blow for democracy TIME: One for the Democrats in Hong Kong Reuters: Pro-democracy Chan wins symbolic Hong Kong election Fake moon pictures? Fox: China: Our Moon Photo Is No Fake The Canadian Press: China rejects questions over allegedly generic lunar surface photo The Telegraph: China defends lunar probe pictures China business WSJ: China Railway Shares Surge On Shanghai Trading Debut WSJ:......

We seriously LOVE some of the things we hear about going on in our city. Yes, some of the people we meet here can be harsh and mean, but this story goes to show that humanity still exists in Shanghai. Two weeks ago, Rebekah Pothaar, an executive with Ctrip.com, found that her ayi's husband was in a serious motorbike collision. They went with her to the hospital and found that surgery was going to cost......

JinJiang Park, that wonderful wonderland that we saw a few days ago, is, as Swiss James of ISpyShanghai.com discovers, a "rich vein of badly translated English". Reading through this sign just made us go "OMFGOMFGOMFGOMFGOMFG..." The 3,541 members of the Facebook group Save Chinglish - China's disappearing culture (by the way, don't forget to join our group!) will be disappointed that Chinglish is not only not disappearing, it is alive and well! Pictures from ISpyShanghai.com......

Chinese video-sharing site Youku.com has raised another US$25 million in funding while our favourite airline ticketing company Qunar.com has received US$10 million in a fresh round of funding.Chinese social networking service Xiaonei.com has followed in the footsteps of Facebook and opened up its services to non-college students. The only thing standing in its way, we think, is its name as Xiaonei ("校内") literally means "at school“.Google has launched an SMS search function that now makes......

Baidu has released its video search report, and Kaiser Kuo of the Ogilvy China Digital Watch translates and summarises some of the key findings. Interestingly, “adult-related” search terms account for 34.14% of daily search volume, followed by celebrity-related (14.74%), TV serial related (12.48%), and animation-related (12.21%) searches. Google is reportedly under investigation in China for tax evasion, says Paul Midler of The China Game.Chinese Skype users now exceed 25% of the global total.While venture capital......

Southeast Asian pact exposes rifts [NY Times] Southeast Asian leaders signed a charter here today that was drafted as a watershed document to bind the region together as a European-style economic community but has instead exposed the sharp divisions over Myanmar and other issues among the signatories.Malaysia busts DVD lab in its biggest raid in 2007 [Reuters] Malaysia has raided a laboratory capable of churning out $52 million worth of pirated DVDs a year in......

Back in the office and just can't concentrate on work? Here's a bunch of useless links we gathered that you can entertain yourself with (while pretending to look oh-so-busy)! The Opposite End of China pulls out more old China news from the New York Times archive. Eye-catching headlines include: "Moslems capture West China cities", "Sinkiang capital falls", "Mohammedans capture Urumchi, Nanking may send mediator", "New state is formed by Eastern Sinkiang", and "The Living Buddha......

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......

We told you it was going to be the biggest, baddest, spookiest, scariest Halloween didn't we? A whopping 700 of you Shanghaiist freaks came to storm the gates of hell and turn the city upside down last Saturday, and my what a party that was. One of our friend's girlfriends was too spooked to enter because "there were too many freaks and weirdoes" but hey that's just the way Shanghaiist likes it. At one......

So both Myspace and Friendster have their own China versions. Now Kaiser Kuo of Ogilvy Digital China Watch points us to a report on China Business News (第一财经日报) which cites an “industry insider” who says that Facebook plans to release additional language interfaces and intends to enter the China market as early as December this year. The paper also claims that "Facebook has given up its initial plan to set up its own China-based site......

This is your final warning! Where: Shanghai Studio, No.4, Lane 1950 Huaihai Zhong Lu, near Xingguo Lu (淮海中路1950弄4号,近兴国路) When: Tonight, 9 pm until the last demon is exorcised! Drinks: RMB 25 beers, RMB 30 standard drinks and house wines Entrance: RMB 35 (includes a free beer or soft drink) For those of you who still haven't gotten your costumes (shame on you!), you still have a few hours left! See photos of last year's party......

A quick note to interrupt your last-minute Halloween costume shopping (we made our costume yesterday ... you'll definitely hear us coming) to let you know what films we plan to show at the big Shanghaiist Halloween Party on Saturday night. If you haven't been to Shanghai Studio, it's a spooky maze-like place that occupies an old bomb shelter. So if music and dancing are your things, we've got rooms for that. If chatting and drinking......

Have you (like us) waited until the last minute to get your Halloween costume even though back in September you promised yourself you'd start putting it together early this year? Not to worry. Shanghaiist has you covered. Here's a list of places to get pre-made Halloween costumes and accessories that we put together last year. We've given them a call and apparently they're all still up and running. If any of you finds any other......

Here, Shanghai, were your favourite stories for the month of September: Most Voted: 1. China home to the world's largest Christian population? 2. Typhoon Wipha coming to town? 3. Crazy Olympic hairstyles 4. Dianping's Shanghai specialty must-eats 5. Oops! The Telegraph can't tell Hu Jintao and Chen Liangyu apart... Most Commented: 1. The Shanghai Show: Huang-poo 2. Sorry, 'guest': You are being phased out 3. The latest on Survivor: China 4. Take us home, Steak......

World Car Free Day, September 22 Ever thought of what you're doing to offset your carbon footprint? This Saturday, instead of driving your car or taking a taxi, why don't you try taking public transport, cycling or walking instead? Residents will be asked to avoid driving private cars within the Inner Ring Road, and while compliance is not mandatory, driving will be banned outright in some areas. Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋节), September 25 As the mercury......