A few weeks ago it came to our attention that what appeared to be a large price tag-shaped sign was affixed to the front of a building under construction across the street from Zhongshan Park. The sign was under wraps, but the shape alone was enough to conjure up images of Best Buy and many high school hours spent searching in vain for movies and music that they don't keep in stock. Now despite......

By Michael Ohlsson It's 1987 in my family’s suburban California home. I've just started high school. I'm in my bedroom making a mix tape. I'm trying to mix Afrika Bambaataa's “Planet Rock” with Kraftwerk’s “Trans-Europe Express” (the original song that is sampled in Planet Rock). In the room next to mine, my little punk sister is listening to crap my hip hop friends and I make fun of, like the Sex Pistols and Violent Femmes.......

Just off the northern edge of Fuxing Park, this unusual building was the original French Club (le Cercle Francais Sportif) circa 1904. Later it was moved what is now the Okura Garden Hotel (and much later moved to Cafe Montmartre). For a while this was the French Concession's most prestigious public high school, Le College Francais. You can still see the monogram 'CFS' cast into the wrought-iron railing of the main staircase. There's also some......

Déjà vu all over again? Here it is once more, Shanghaiist's nearly quarterly review the Douban book Top Ten List: Annie Baby - "Sunian Jinshi" (Beijing-based author, photographer and blogger who writes about love and self-exploration in the big city.) JK Rowling - "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" (Official Chinese version, published by the People's Literature Publishing House.) Markus Zusak - "The Book Thief" (Australian author of Austrian-German heritage writes a WWII book......

From Southern Weekend via the Bokee blogs we learned that the controversial Shanghai high school history textbooks—the very ones that were the subject of a New York Times article last year (Sept. 1, 2006)—have been banned. In that article, Joseph Kahn claimed that China's decades old Marxist template was being abandoned and that class struggle and other mainstays of Marxist theory were being downplayed. Instead, world history and civilization figured more prominently. Bill Gates was......

This is a tale that could be told a thousand times, according to Shanghai Daily. Fourteen years ago, Shanghai resident Shi Jianlin opened her front door to find it bedecked by an abandoned baby girl. The story should have ended happily: the girl, later named Zhao, was received warmly by Shi. But Shi's own status complicated issues: as an impoverished mother of one (Shi already had a boy), Zhao could not be adopted under Shanghai......

Though it sounds like a high school-student-and-soon-to-be-cocaine-addict's dream come true, in China, there is a real market for people with an acute sense of smell and masochistic tendencies! From the unlinkable without a proxy or psychic powers BBC:China is about to unleash a new weapon in the battle against illegal polluters - humans trained to sniff out foul gases, according to Chinese media. The southern city of Guangzhou will be patrolled by "professional noses" who......

An old military base in the Daxing suburb of Beijing has been repurposed for battle against internet addiction among China's 12 to 24-year-olds. According to a new report, 14 percent of Chinese teens are vulnerable to internet addiction, and the Communist Youth League says that internet addiction is "a grave social problem" that threatens the nation. Additionally, the Chinese media has recently drawn attention to social problems related to internet addiction including a murder over......

Shanghai Sunrise, a local non-profit charity established in 1995, is looking for board members and volunteers. Shanghai Sunrise aims to help remove Shanghai families from the poverty cycle by providing education scholarships for disadvantaged students. Despite China’s compulsory education law stating that no tuition fees will be charged for nine years of education, the reality facing many families in Shanghai and throughout China that this does not cover tuition fees for high school. Often, the......

Lyrics to “Nothing to My Name” (一无所有) were already echoing in our head when we passed through the door of JZ Club on Monday night for Cui Jian's show: 我曾经问个不休 你何时跟我走 可你却总是笑我 一无所有 I have asked you endlessly, When will you go with me? But you always laugh at me with, Nothing to my name The place was packed, mostly with Chinese in their 20s and 30s. We saw just a few foreign faces scattered......

There's a definitely a buzz for fans of Chinese cinema with the release of Jia Zhangke's new film Still Life 《三峡好人》. In Shanghai and probably the rest of China, the film's theatrical release comes on December 14, the same day that Zhang Yimou's new film Curse of the Golden Flower. And while from the standpoint of the box office returns, it seems pretty clear who the winner will be, Jia doesn't at all seem flustered......

From The Search Engine Journal we discovered that Baidu won an intellectual copyright infringement case against some major music companies. From Interfax: Baidu, the largest Internet search engine in China, won an MP3 copyright infringement lawsuit against seven Hong Kong music companies today, a company official said. The Beijing No.1 Intermediate People's Court overseeing the case ruled that the accusations brought against the Chinese search giant do not have adequate legal support. "This is good......

We're not sure why Deborah Fallows is in Shanghai, or why she is writing a week-long journal for Slate. The first entry, which came out on the 13th, is the typical breathless "wow, I'm in this crazy futuristic metropolis in China and people assail me all the time with stuff to buy." We learned of this journal from the blog of Jane Dark, who analyzes Fallows' first entry from the standpoint of Marxist critical theory,......

Shanghaiist has posted before about the controversy surrounding the new high school history textbooks in Shanghai, which were thrown under the media spotlight after an article in the New York Times by Joseph Kahn claimed that the new history books were a big departure from the old books and went so far as to nearly remove Mao from China's history. You can read what the folks over at the Peking Duck thought about it this......

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......

A Chinese reporter recently called the Shanghai Education Bureau to find out what was going on with regard to the newly revised high school history textbooks that supposedly minimize Mao and other Chinese historical figures and represent a somewhat radical departure from the kind of history taught in China in the past. The reporter was surprised by the reply: No one related to the writing or editing of the new history textbooks would be allowed......

Tips, tips tips -- it’s a word that’s practically flying out of people’s mouths these days. Waitresses at Manifesto ask for it. Receipts from Zentral suggest it. The Westin Brunch includes it without even asking! What gives? There was a time not all that long ago when tips were taboo in our fair city — Shanghaiist has even had tips forcibly rejected by taxi drivers and waiters who found the very concept to be vaguely......

A former Chinese cabinet member (an atheist) and an American evangelist have published a book based on their dialogues about religion. Read it to find out if God really exists.Media reports and interviews with a a Tibetan princess -- the daughter of the 10th Panchen Lama. She's a student at Tsinghua and has recently attracted a lot of media attention.The Chinese drank 30 mln tons of beer last year.China will have its own digital TV......

Americans, and the American northwest in particular, have caught the China fever -- for why else would they decide to construct a Chinese pavilion in Des Moines, Iowa? OK, we don't really consider that a big deal, but then again we've spent some time in places like Richmond, BC (OK, let's include Canada) and Rowland Heights, California -- Chinese enclaves where you could go days without hearing English -- so perhaps we shouldn't take the......

It goes without saying that China is a country of great contrasts and irony, and we were reminded of that fact with regards to sex and sex education. A Reuters report tells us that social taboos in Chinese society still make it difficult to get across to people, whatever their sexual orientation, that condoms are a good idea if you're expecting company in any of your bodily orifices. The article says that in Hong Kong,......

Is it strange that we had bowling during gym class in high school? The end-of-class bell would ring, we'd all head down to the parking lot and pile into our respective cars and drive on over to the P-Nut Bowl. After bowling two games, we'd drive back and get to school in time for Calculus. We always thought it was normal, but based on the funny looks we get when we tell that story, maybe......

We reported earlier on an elementary school in the Songjiang District whose focus was having its 12 pupils memorize Chinese classics such as the Analects (Lun Yu) and the Book of Changes (Yi Jing). Well, that school has been closed down by the authorities, who claim that this school contravenes the “compulsory education (yiwu jiaoyu)” laws. The Shanghai Daily reports that the school will be punished for charging high tuition fees (30,000 yuan a year),......

Ever felt like you want to “escape from the modern city of Shanghai”? And drench yourself in “a captivating jungle experience unlike any other?” If your answer is “yes” and “yes”, then we have heard of just the spot for you. No, it’s not the wilds of Tanzania, nor the Amazon Rainforest -- we are, of course, talking about the newly opened Lucky Greens Miniature Golf Course, located on the sixth floor of the Cloud......

Imagine this: A high school parking lot in Irvine, a small city in southern California. It's the mid-1990s and Shanghaiist, who in his wildest dreams had never thought he'd grow up to be a blogger, is busy scraping a faux-"handicapped" sticker of a stick figure in a wheelchair smoking a bong off his car. So this is what teenagers do to relieve their boredom in the O.C. (Orange County or 橙县). Flash forward to 2006......

LAist is flashing a sad peace out to their editor Carolyn Kellogg with one hand and bumping knuckles with their new head typist L.A. blogger king Tony Pierce with the other. Where do ist editors go when they hang up the 'editorial we'? They take on MySpace, apparently. At least Ben Brown does. Austinist reminds of the just rewards of less savory careers this week and then they witness the Arctic Monkeys and We Are......

Not unlike theologians of the European middle ages, we've been pondering intractable, almost philosophical problems: For example, is it worse to put prophylactics in your hair or drink water from the Yangtze River? First, about the hair issue: A Hangzhou woman, surnamed Wang, found a box of prophylactics [in this story prophylactics means birth control pills] in her daughter's room. The girl, whose anonym is Xiao Wen, is only a senior high school student, so......

We found this interesting (kind of) report on people.com.cn (in Chinese) titled “What Are Foreigners Doing on Internet”. This report, written by three Chinese journalists, Zhong Xiang in America,Tang Huiying in France and Lin Xueyuan in Japan, says chatting online is the favourite online activity of the Chinese, Americans usually use internet to search for maps while French people usually write blogs. That sounds exactly right, because Shanghaiist, who is Chinese, is currently chatting with......

OK now, if you are over 18 years old, you have high school education, you have used internet for more than three years, you know internet pretty well -- sounds like us ... we're getting excited! -- you think you can accurately express your opinions, and most importantly, you care about establishing a "civilized internet", you are qualified be an internet supervisor, at least according to Beijing Association of Online Media (BAOM) -- first time......

Shanghaiist probably knows a little more about China than the Chicago Sun-Times. Giving them the benefit of the doubt on that one. The city does to have a music scene. Don't even front like they don't. They also have Dorito bananas. What they don't have is any more tolerance for jaywalkers. Bostonist sees Boston and Somerville each whip out their art and face off. A plagiarized novel is the gift that keeps giving, and Johnny......

Shanghaiist has always been miffed by KFC’s roaring success in China. In a country where fine dining is the national pastime, how did something as mundane as fried chicken capture the discerning palettes of 1.4 billion Chinese? Well, thanks to the good people at Yum Brand China’s (KFC’s parent company) marketing department, we now know why -- eating fried chicken makes you smarter and, better yet, helps you get the chicks, too! (No pun intended.)......