Got photos of this morning's storm or the flooding that followed it that you'd like to share? Email them to photos@shanghaiist.com and they will automatically show up on our Contribute Page. Flickr users, simply tag your photos "shanghaiist".......

Please excuse us for what will be a day of light posting. We've been puking cosmopolitans and bile ALL morning from this really hot party last night at the Le Meridien that we didn't tell you about (hah! sometimes we prefer to keep the fun to ourselves), but even before we've said goodbye to the thousand diablos hammering on our head right now, we're already planning on where to get ourselves further plastered tonight. Long-time......

Due to multiple requests (total of two, and one was me) here is more golden week festival news. The previously mention Hop Festival has gotten an official name...so....let it hence forth be referred to as the Yue Festival. Ticket prices are set at 140rmb for students, 280rmb advanced purchase and 360rmb at the gate. Rock-ing has also released their ticket prices and they range from 280-880 depending on how special you want to feel. For......

For this Shanghaiist, lunch during the work week typically consists of lukewarm slop served downstairs in the company canteen. So, when we get a rare chance to take a day off from work or telecommute, we like to venture out and take advantage of the many lunch specials that are offered by Shanghai's popular restaurants. Boonna 2 has already earned its reputation as a hipster favorite with its cozy and laid back vibe. It's now......

These are definitely the dog days of summer and as in summers past, live shows have dried up with the heat. Ironically enough Shanghaiist has chosen to skip town and head to even hotter Hong Kong where PK-14, Hedge Hog, New Pants and the Re-tros will be playing in the cramped but intimate Fringe Club on Sunday. For those of you stuck in Shanghai and hankering for some live music check out Etienne (Gypsy Jazz......

Still recovering from your May Holiday partying? Well, there's no respite. Here are a few things that Shanghaiist is keeping an eye on over the coming week. Thursday May 10th Photography Exhibition Reception: Shanghai - The New Noir. Photography exhibitions appear to be a 2007 trend. Tonight, see the opening reception of photographer Heungman's collection. The exhibition contrasts the great metropolies of New York and Shanghai, and explores their lurking "sinister energies". Shanghai: The New......

Maoming Lu is no longer a wild party street. Gone are the lascivious hostesses running around in a noisy chaotic fashion, challenging beer-drenched men to games of Connect Four. H & Y' s boss must have seen it all, because this low key Japanese restaurant is still going strong in this street after seven years. We enjoy this restaurant, because it has tasty, inexpensive Japanese food in a very casual environment. Inside, H & Y......

Tonight, New Zealand punk jazz prodigy Aron Ottignon descends upon Shanghaiist’s favourite weekly, Freaklub. Critics have ladled some lavish praise upon the 23-year-old pianist, who began tickling the ivories — “really playing!” Ottignon insists — at the age of one, when most of us were still trying to wrap our heads around the concept of left-foot-right-foot-left-foot-right-foot. At age 11, he picked up what was to be his first of many jazzman accolades — New Zealand’s......

Spotted these yesterday at a fruit stall on Wulumuqi Lu near Fuxing Lu, and had to buy a couple for obvious reasons — they reminded us of a Nerf football we owned in the 1980s. The entire basket was filled with oddly shaped oranges, many of them quite large (the bigger one in the photo above is 14 cm long). The vendor didn't have an explanation for the elliptical look of the fruit, but did......

Sunday night we headed down to the House of Blues and Jazz to check out the new band from New Orleans, “Continuum”. They started a couple weeks ago but already have their groove on, with an easy stage presence that shows they are comfortable playing together and a group sound that is starting to come together nicely. Front man Thaddeus Ford, who plays the trumpet and acts as MC, is a 6th generation New Orleans......

Last Saturday night, Shanghaiist fancied going to this new place we heard of — the bar where you can drink cocktails with Absinthe — called Tara 57. Located on Fuxing Lu, just next to Boona 2, and opposite JZ Club, this “cocktail lounge”, as they call it, is a very small place. And that is actually a good thing — it's very cozy. Even more (and this is important for us), there is a coat-rack,......

Shanghaiist is getting in the holiday mood--it's December, it's cold, and Christmas gifts are beginning to be bought! (Though not by us. We've thought about it--does that count?) We can't write long, as we're about to head out to a fun, festive holiday dinner at -- Dongbeiren? Well, we are Shanghaiists after all. Before we go though, we want to share a tip our friend Ryan shared with us regarding the ultimate holiday accessory .........

Because the boss tells them to. Or at least that is the answer we have received ... on many occasions. We like Charmant, the Taiwanese restaurant on Huaihai Lu near Fuxing Lu. We have written about how much we like it. And now that we live pretty much next door, we go there quite often. But we have always wondered why the female manager and every single one of the waitresses has a short, boyish......

Shanghaiist went gadget shopping today -- tired of carrying around the laptop to check emails and blogs, we are planning to upgrade our mobile phone. And we bumped into the Sony Ericsson Z610 (official link). This phone made us happy with its slim design and the nice glamour effect on the outside (despite business functionality, we want to stay fashionable -- gotta keep appearances up). The big surprise was the built-in RSS reader. Wow, keep......

Good Boonna Café: We miss bohemian charm like we miss an old-fashioned milkshake. Luckily, Boonna Café (open in two locations; Boonna 1 is on Xinle Lu, Boonna 2 on West Fuxing Lu, directly across from JZ Club) has both in spades, not to mention attentive waitstaff, a Mac G4 (how often do you see one of those in a coffee shop?), and no cell phone rings set to the blare of (bad) Korean pop. Yet.......

Today is the first of three days of jazz music in Fuxing park, and if you aren't into jazz then perhaps the enticing prospect of being allowed to sit on the grass field is enough reason to show up. Yes, folks, you heard it right- an outdoor music festival on a lawn, in China. The last time they had a music festival here, the grass was covered with some protective hard lego-like pieces of plastic......

This many come as a shock to some of you, but some of us here at Shanghaiist can be, well, a little cynical. No! Surely not, you say! Ah, but true, my friend, but true. For example, we never took much notice of the restaurant Nuova Vita, near the intersection of Fuxing Lu and Ruijin Er Lu. It had existed pretty much since we moved to the city, and considering its age and curious lack......

Shanghaiists aren’t frequent patrons of Xintiandi establishments: With a can of diet Coke going for 38 kuai, we prefer to spend our hard earned Renminbi elsewhere. But, there has always been one notable exception -- we love Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. Although the place is hardly budget (26 kuai for a medium ice latte), we like it because it’s close to our gym (no, not Physical -- Megafit, though seemingly just as rainbow friendly),......

Shanghaiist loves Boonna Cafe. Now, we have a reason to love it a little more. The artsy coffee shop, favored both by savvy locals and laowais looking for a home away from Shanghai's trendy club hopping crowd, is now smoke free … on Tuesdays. Yesterday afternoon, Shanghaiist stopped by Boonna for some icy caffeine treats and a little quiet time to ponder the meaning of life. A packed house as usual, but one decidedly smoke......

Someone just sent us this joke (in Chinese) about the upcoming Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Summit in Shanghai. The rough translation is: A Real Shanghai The SCO Summit will be held in Shanghai in June 2006. There are 20 minutes left before the start the meeting but none of the country leaders are here. The journalists are waiting. President Nie of the SCO Summit Committee started dialing numbers: “Where is Putin?!” “Mr. Putin is on......

A "cancer village" 220 km from Shanghai.Illegal abortions performed by at least three Shanghai hospitals.A little food poisoning never killed anyone. (Not true.)Oh, great. A new Tiffany store minutes from our apartment.Bokee signs agreement to distribute Movable Type blogging software in China.It was inevitable. The Beijing Olympic mascots have their own TV show.The majority of Chinese internet users are "male, unmarried, under 30, with educational levels below Bachelor's degree and monthly income less than 2,000......

Driving in Shanghai...

Shanghaiist was in the mood for jazz last night, so after a simply delicious dinner at Simply Thai, we headed up Fuxing Lu to JZ Club. Unlike the bluesy house band at Cotton Club, JZ tends more toward roots jazz and improv jams, so we were surprised when we showed up to find jazz fusion/electro/drum & bass combo This Is Junglecat setting up on the stage. Led by vocalist Jess Meider and drummer Mico, the......

Nangka Cafe on Fuxing Zhong Lu The October issue of That's Shanghai has been good to Shanghaiist thus far. Already it gave this site a rather gushing review and now it has introduced us to our new favorite neighborhood eatery, Nangka Cafe. "Nangka" is Malay for "jackfruit" -- and we're not sure what "jackfruit" is English for. We hear it is part of the mulberry family, which still doesn't help us much. In Chinese, "nangka"......

After a year of creativity and preparation, Shanghainese hip-hop is poised to spring full-force into the public awareness with "Shanghai Hip-Hop II", a promotional party co-sponsored by ShanghaiNing.com and Sony-BMG this Friday at Club Fusion. What's the occasion, you ask? The release of ShanghaiNing.com's first official mixtape: Say What You Gotta Say (有啥讲啥 or you sha jiang sha). In some respects, "Shanghai Hip-Hop II" is the culmination of a life's work for ShanghaiNing.com. The website......