China's star hurdler Liu Xiang, who won gold at the 2004 Athens Olympics, pulled out of the Beijing Olympics yesterday, disappointing hordes of fans. The Wall Street Journal talks to the man on the streets to find out what they think. more ›

Lam Thuy Vo of the Wall Street Journal discovers that China has been training close to 600 women in the art of cheerleading with the help of cheerleaders from the New England Patriots, the U.S. football team, and Chinese choreographers. The ladies were selected in 24 competitions nationwide and will be cheering at every Olympic event — and not just basketball and volleyball events. Intent on injecting Chinese characteristics into what is otherwise an all-American art, the girls will be twirling not just be twirling pompoms but also Chinese fans and nunchuks! That first sequence you see in the vid also reminds of this particular Chinese dance. more ›

It's the best that we have, though we have to admit this video doesn't do justice to the incredible spectacle that was made up of North and South Korean fan contingents at Hongkou Stadium for the two Koreas World Cup qualifier play-off on Wednesday. The action on the stands was just as, if not more, amazing to watch as the action on the field. more ›

Jolin Tsai (蔡依林) has been in the news quite a bit lately, and for all the wrong reasons. Last week, pictures of a woman with an uncanny resemblance to her surfaced during the Edison Chen scandal and this time, she refers to Hong Kong as a foreign country (国外), and talks of how she wants to gain glory for the people of Taiwan (“为台湾人争光"). Her Chinese fans are not finding it funny, and she is getting it big time on the Internet. God knows what will happen to her, but we do know the last time Zhang Huimei (张惠妹) sang the Taiwanese anthem, she was barred from performing in China.
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Wondering what the Chinese media are saying about Lust, Caution? We found the following story from the Information Times (信息时报) entitled Survey: Fans rushing to imitate positions in Lust Caution 调查:影迷争相模仿《色,戒》经典床戏 dated 7 Nov on Xinhua — yes, the website everyone goes to for high-quality Chinese journalism. Shanghaiist was so inspired by the spirit of investigative journalism exhibited by this reporter that we decided we had to translate the whole story to share with you. As an aside, it's been said that Chinese journalists just can't seem to get over the full frontal nudity and the brutal sex scenes, and director Ang Lee was supposed to have ticked off a Chinese journalist who insisted on asking questions related to the sex scenes, "Can't you ask a better question?" more ›

We'll keep this quick. It's beautiful outside and half-price beers await. more ›

This morning, Chinese language news portal 163.com had a great scoop, and revealed the future planning for Shanghai and China's Maglev railway system. more ›

RIP Wulihe Stadium of Shenyang. Built in 1989, this stadium is best known for being the place where China qualified for the World Cup Finals by beating Oman 1-0 in October 2001. It was razed to the ground in a little over six seconds on Feb. 12, 2007. more ›

Thanks to the kind folks at ARCH, the second installment of movie nights at ARCH is going to be this Thursday, and the movie we will be showing is Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar-wai's (王家卫) Happy Together, starring Tony Leung and Leslie Cheung as gay lovers in Buenos Aires. If you've never witnessed what happens when you cross Christopher Doyle's cinematography with Wong's cinematic sensibilities, we could point you to numerous writings on it. Fans of Wong probably know that there have been critical scholarly books written about this movie as well as full-length auteurist studies of his corpus to date. more ›

Fans of billiards/snooker/pool/8-ball -- or any other variety of the game which involves hitting variously coloured balls across a chunk of felt into one of six pockets -- will be pleased to hear that a big club has opened near Xujiahui, with two enormous floors full of shiny new tables and cues. more ›

Via Wired :

A Japanese-developed, adult-themed computer game has incensed some of China's online gamers who deem it a bawdy slur on the classic Chinese novel, Dream of the Red Chamber. more ›

Fans of rap and hip-hop, take this down: Jay-Z is coming to Shanghai. Probably. The Grammy-winning rapper reportedly will be performing at the Hongkou Soccer Stadium on Monday, October 23, as part of a tour that will also see him making stops in Taipei and Seoul, according to Shanghai Daily. more ›

All y'all crazy football fans out there must have heard that from certain (and as of yet undisclosed) bars in the city, you can get a free ride home from Dazhong Taxis (someone else is paying, so it's free for you) if you're drunk -- this to prevent traffic accidents from people who drink and drive. The scheme is called "Send Me Home", but again, we don't know which bars the offer is valid for. Maybe it's just the bars that people get really drunk at. Hope that clears things up. more ›

So what new invention will soon be hitting the streets? Will it be innovative? Intelligent? Thought-provoking? more ›

Fans of 1979's Shaolin Temple, despair. In the spirit of Sylvester Stallone’s switch from the Rambo franchise to trying his hand at comedy with Stop Or My Mom Will Shoot, Jet Li has decided to throw his last roundhouse kick to the head. In a recent discussion with students at Shanghai’s Fudan University, the actor suggested that his upcoming film Fearless, the story of martial arts pioneer Huo Yuanjia (to be released next year), would be his final film in the genre. more ›

Shanghaiist wasn’t joking when we said yesterday that the city was crowded. Thousands upon thousands (upon thousands) flocked to the Bund last night for ... well, for no apparent reason. There was no display of fireworks -- that happened on the Friday night -- no entertainment, no access to the riverside promenade. Nothing. Just lots of inflatable hammers. more ›

Derby fever sweeps the city Saturday night as the city's two biggest football clubs go head-to-head in the China Super League at Shanghai Stadium. more ›