This weekend there is no lack of gigs worth checking out with some in familiar places and some in places that are new to the live music scene. Celebrating their 1st year anniversary, party promoters STD have pulled out all the stops, booking a massive space in the heart of Moganshan Road's art district. On Friday, Beijing heavy weights, New Pants, will be joined by Shanghai masters of chill, Cold Fairyland, and DJ R3. Saturday,......

We’ve known since arriving in Shanghai that there are two types of waiguoren out there: the ones with the chauffeur-driven cars, portly bellies and a company villa in a hermetically-sealed Jinqiao gated community; and the rest of us. Not that Shanghaiist is bitter or anything, in fact, we quite like the directionless romantic bent of our life at present. Which is why we’re suspicious of labels, such as this one, dug up by John at......

For any one who missed it, Cold Fairyland and the Scoff both had concerts last night at the Shanghai Concert Hall and 4Live, respectively. Yesterday afternoon Shanghaiist had spent a solid 2 hours writing an exquisite piece of prose about these two shows... but alias, the evil internet goblin crashed our computer, causing us to lose forever that beautiful essay... well, at least you won't miss out on what is happening tonight. Friday night is......

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......

For one reason or another, when it comes to nightlife, Shanghaiist has its reservations about the Bund. Sure, we do the promenade/requisite bar crawl when out-of-towners come to play but, at the end of the day, we’re just not sold on it. (Our aversion was further amplified upon recently discovering a Facebook group called “THE SHANGHAI ELITE” – yes, they’re so elite they need to shout their name wherever they go. The activities of this......

We here in the Ist-A-Verse know that we're sensational, but it's very rare that we get a chance to be sensationalistic. This week, we've decided to have ourselves a little fun and try our hand at tacky tabloid headlines, using nothing more than our favorite posts from this week. Torontoist Special Report: Rosie to Trump: "Fire 300 Bicyclists for Fraud!" On DCist: Students Go Wild for Slogans, Secrets and Sexual Harassment The action was thick......

Web TV might be the answer to the prayers of foreign media companies such as News Corp.MTV and Baidu.com are working together to distribute music videos and other entertainment content online.Wal-Mart is going to invest $1 billion and double the number of its stores in China.Health official Hao Yang says that China is starting to resemble Africa in terms of the AIDS epidemic, with 190 new infections happening per day.AIDS prevention classes piss off the......

What was this about relaxing on the last weekend of a holiday? Nonsense, that’s what it was. We’ve been busy -- actually Brad’s been busy and we tried to help him (more on that in a few), but we still managed to get the show out … albeit, a few days late. Sorry. Massive night at our GigLive @ BonBon -- ask any of the 400+ that came, we’re quite sure we don’t need to......

Have you seen the above movie? We're assuming you have, since nearly 800,000 people have watched it over at YouTube in the four days since it was posted. It's gotten nearly 2,500 comments. What is it? Let Ahree Lee, the San Francisco based graphic designer and experimental filmmaker featured in the short film, explain: Starting in November of 2001, I have been taking a picture of myself every day and I haven't stopped yet. Me......

Where to take a visitor from overseas if you'd like to show him a progressive Shanghai bar that usually has some decent live music? We were dealt this apparently daunting task this weekend. Dinner ended too late for us to make the trek out to Yuyintang for this show, so we headed to Tang Hui. What a colossal mistake. We weren't expecting much -- just maybe to hear these guys play their dueling guitars, spy......

Shanghaiist was shopping for bikes along Xiangyang Lu when, tired and bedraggled, we saw, like a mirage in the desert, a sign that promised exactly what we were craving at the moment: Illy. This is how we discovered Zurigo. Zurigo is a bit different from both the hipster enclaves where everyone stares at their laptops and stuffs their white earbuds way into their ears in order to pretend that they don’t know you when in......

Growing up, we dreamed of the day we could stroll bleary-eyed into the office after going back to the swanky hotel with an international pop starlet in one arm and a tequila bottle in the other -- except that last night, it was more of a service apartment and our starlet was actually Fan Yi Chen, with some Lawson's best baijiu … lovely guy, nonetheless, and apparently he's "kind of a big deal". Nice thing......

Even as the stores sport back to school sales (which depress us, even now), summer lingers on your friends the -ists. This week's collection of links provides some of the best, worst, and oddest bits of summer fun. So, bring your laptop up onto the roof, make yourself an umbrella drink or ten, and enjoy this week's choice posts from across the Gothamist network. Torontoist (where it's 75 degrees F as of this writing) is......

Where do you stand in the 021 Bar/Shrock.cn controversy? Shanghaiist has been light on the scene for a while and wasn't there for the height of the drama, but by reviewing the thread linked above you can get the general idea: a run-down bar in the Yangpu district run by some "rock immigrants" from Xiamen, has the support of local favorites San Huang Ji, over-enthusiastically and haphazardly organizes concerts, sometimes announcing bands who later deny......

Shanghaiist, still jobless, was heartened to read this news from the Hindustan Times about the shortage of baristas in Beijing and Shanghai: According to a survey by China's ministry of labour and social security, job vacancies for baristas in Beijing and Shanghai alone hit more than 10,000. It's no secret, coffee consumption is on the up and up. Browsing around for information in the Chinese media about the coffee shops in Shanghai, we found this......

Houstonist reports on cross-dressing thieves and undressing educators this week. A Peeping Tom defends himself with a papaya and an outraged onlooker asks Ken Lay, "TATER TOTS OR FRIES?" Also, FEMA wants it's money back. LAist are a big bunch of geeks. They're Star Trek geeks, David Duchovny geeks and Frank Gehry geeks. During their Cochella preview their readers reveal themselves to be Depeche Mode geeks. Seattlest saw their basketball team preparing to leave for......

Shanghaiist was taking a look at some of 2dog's photos when we noticed a picture of a strange confection that's been nicknamed the "Chinese pizza". Some of you have probably already seen stores and street vendors selling these things for about 3 yuan apiece. Apparently it's caught on big in Beijing and other big cities. The provenance of this "pizza" is supposedly from one of China's ethnic minorities, known as the Tujia (土家族) minority, who......

What was that NWA song again? "Love Tha Police"? "Truck Tha Police"? "Funk Tha Police"? Well, whatever it was, that song came to mind when Shanghaiist learned that every hipster's favorite Shanghai bar -- Tang Hui Pub -- was being forced to shut its doors. "We're in a quiet neighborhood, and the police are always coming in," explained bar owner Zooma, who is also the soulful and spasmodic frontman for the band Xingfu 13, which......

Get your Hipster Bingo cards ready, Shanghai's fledgling underground music scene will flex its puny indie-rock muscles this Saturday at Hong Dou Dou Music Bar near Shanghai Stadium. If Shanghaiist decides to go, that's four bingo spaces filled right there. (We'll let you figure out which ones.) Maybe five if we smuggle some PBRs in our pockets. Or, since we're in Shanghai, would REEB count? A can of REEB and a mirror equals hours of......