A new documentary film comparing six high school students from China, the U.S. and India calls for reform of the U.S. education system in favor of the more rigorous Asian education systems. Two Million Minutes, a film developed by American venture capitalist Bob Compton, points out that students in China and India work much harder than those in the U.S., score consistently better than American students on international student comparisons, and now pose a......

By JFK Miller You may have heard by now the news that the latest World Bank estimates have China's economy as being about 40 percent smaller than previous WB estimates, ie., a mere US$6 trillion rather than US$10 trillion. So why is this important? Well, it probably won't mean a great deal to the average Chinese, even the extra 200 million who, because of the new figures, are now technically living below the poverty line......

Chronic pain. Debilitating illness. There's little fun to be had from these subjects. So hats off to Shanghai Daily and its over zealous/under zealous/possibly nonexistent subs' desk for throwing a hyperbole cherry bomb in to the toilet bowl of one individual's suffering. The following, which featured in Friday's paper, is best if you imagine it's being read by Peter Cushing: STABBING. Gnawing. Burning. Severe pain can rip your life apart and make you pray for......

Shanghai Jiaotong University (SJTU) has released its fifth annual Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) which saw American universities take eight of the top ten spots. Harvard University emerged right on top, followed by Stanford University and University of California-Berkeley. Britain's Oxford and Cambridge -- the only two non-American universities to make it to the top ten -- secured the fourth and tenth positions respectively. The top university in Asia was the University of Tokyo,......

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......

It's not the New York Times and it is certainly a bit slanted towards Beijing by the nature of its source, but the list of top ten books noted by users of book club site Douban.com is a whimsical glimpse into what young, plugged-in Chinese are reading offline these days. Here is the list as it stands today: Wang Shuo - "My Thousand-Year Chill" (Ramblings by Beijing intellectual badboy and blowhard.)Jack Kerouac - "On The......

Those of you who've been to Boston know that sound. You're on the T, cruising along Mass. Ave. underground, and you hear that announcement and you get that special feeling, knowing that you're about to arrive at one of the premier seats of higher learning in the world. And there's no reason that feeling should only be the province of a hyper-educated elite. Ever since studying abroad was reintroduced in the 1980s, Chinese people have......

This has nothing to do with Shanghai, or China for that matter. But we can't get enough of these Japanese television commercials for Suntory Boss coffee drink featuring Oscar-winner and Harvard-grad Tommy Lee Jones. Jones has been appearing in Boss ads for a year now, we think, but we first learned of the campaign recently after a friend returned to Shanghai from Japan confused about the billboards he saw all over the place featuring huge,......

A new traffic website and hotline is going to help drivers avoid the places where traffic is snarled up. Yet 10,000 more cars hit the road every month.Liu Xiang could probably have run the distance from our home to our dinner appointment in less time than it takes for us to get there by bus or taxi. He just set a new world record in the 110 meter hurdles at 12.88.Rental rates at the top......

Many American private universities have huge endowments, which are something like a trust fund, or more colloquially a "nest egg," sometimes worth billions of dollars that the universities use for whatever purposes they see fit. The size of the endowment (stop snickering now) is in no small way related to the reputation of the university. For example, Harvard University's is worth a whopping $22.6 billion (second only to the Gates foundation in net worth among......

Remember back in late 2004 when plans for a Playboy "lifestyle club" in Shanghai were announced and then halted over the span of a couple days? Well, a look at the minutes from a recent Playboy conference call with investors shows there is still hope for the Bunnies to hop over the Huangpu: Melissa Otto (Analyst) I would like to get a little bit more color on the clubs they are rolling out for next......

So it seems that Shanghaiist is not the only weblogger in Shanghai. Apart from the hardy Shanghai Webloggers Meetup ("since 2004!"), a dip across the language barrier turns up 《旅行的艺术》是本好书">dozens (if not hundreds or thousands) of Chinese webloggers, and a little more research shows that like Shanghaiist they are ready to party: this weekend, Shanghai will be host to the Chinese Blogger Conference 2005. In short, this is a Bloggercon by Chinese webloggers for Chinese......

There is some debate locally about a house cleaning company's plan to employ college students to clean the dorm rooms of other students who elect to pay for the service: While supporters of the idea say it will provide another part-time job opportunity for needy students, others say it will put poor students in the embarrassing situation of working for their richer classmates. Li Rong, general manager of Shanghai Laibang Household Service, said he came......