Everyone likes a good party, especially one with free flow champagne like last night’s M1NT pre-launch. In spite of the copious amounts of alcohol, we are sad to say this exclusive billionaire-millionaire club opened not with a bang, but with a pop. As an old China hand, maybe Shanghaiist is just too jaded to enjoy the hype, but here's our summary of Shanghai's newest club. The Good All black decor, very classy looking.Cathedral ceilings with......

More and more international and Chinese brands are getting embroiled in the tainted milk scandal. Latest news from the Straits Times:SOUTH Korea's food watchdog said on Tuesday that two more snacks imported from China were contaminated with the toxic chemical melamine, bringing the number of tainted brands discovered locally to six. The products are Ritz Cracker Sandwiches Cheese, produced by Nabisco Food Suzhou Co, and Savory Rice Crackers from Danyang Day Bright Foods Co, said......

We're sure this latest visa report from Reuters will be like music to the ears of some of you who have been waiting a few months to hear this:Visa curbs on foreigners travelling into China via Hong Kong as part of a security clampdown during the Beijing Olympics will be lifted next month, a major travel industry association said yesterday. Hong Kong, a gateway to China for foreign businessmen given the convenience of shuttling across......

Looks like our earlier warning to not eat or drink anything with dairy content for the time being bears repeating. Singapore has now found traces of melamine in White Rabbit candies, wildly popular throughout Asia. The Straits Times reports: Singapore's Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA) said samples of White Rabbit-brand Creamy Candy imported from China were contaminated with melamine, an industrial chemical that can cause kidney stones and lead to kidney failure. Authorities on Friday......

If Guo Jingjing (郭晶晶) isn't in the pool, she must be in the tabloids. Post-Olympic rumors have the diver taking her gold medals and moving to Hong Kong, where the buzz is that she may marry her boyfriend Kenneth Fok and compete for Hong Kong in the 2012 Olympics. According to this AFP story she has denied the rumors, saying at a press conference in Hong Kong: "I have no plan to move to Hong......

OMG was our first reaction when we saw this recreation of the Olympic Village in Beijing — yes, the Bird's Nest, Water Cube, the media tower and all — which took world record cardstacker Bryan Berg several days to build (in a Hong Kong shopping mall), 140,000 cards and NO super glue! We've seen the real Olympic Village, but this is awesome shit. Apparently some of Berg's works can even support up to 108 kg......

TheHong Kong Lego User Group, HKLUG, has joined in the Olympic craze, by making their own models of Beijing Olympic venues: The Lego Sport City. According to HKLUG's blog: 300,000 bricks and 4,500 mini-figures have been used to create this lego landscape, which has taken about 100 hours to build. We are especially impressed with their tiny Go China! banner. (Look carefully at the wushu scene in the second picture) and the aquatic center. More......

From Hong Kong-based blogger Thomas Crampton: The Chinese link? The Fail Whale was drawn by Chinese graphic designer Lu Yiying, who sold it on iStockPhoto for US$10, according to Jay Oatway of the Hong Kong-based Charged magazine. Thanks to Twitter’s perpetual failures, Lu’s Fail Whale now features on t-shirts and coffee mugs while other artists create kinetic Fail Whale sculptures. The Sydney-based Lu Yiying fanned the flames of fandom with a girlfriend (and the official......

We know — the on-again-off-again Disney Shanghai deal is getting kinda bawwwrrrriiiing — but latest news has it that the deal could include a major media component that would leave other media companies salivating and give Disney unrivalled access to the highly sought-after Chinese market: The joint venture agreement would give Disney a huge advantage over U.S. media rivals by allowing it to bypass foreign film import quotas and summer and holiday blackout periods, as......

From the New York Times: Foreign entertainers who have taken part in activities that China deems a threat to its sovereignty will not be allowed to perform in the country, according to a new list of rules posted Thursday on the Web site of the Ministry of Culture. The rules say that the background credentials of performers from foreign countries, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan will be scrutinized carefully. “Those who used to take part......

Photo by CEIBS We are well into the "summer of corporate social responsibility (CSR)" in China, but this news makes it official... CSR China reported here that a Corporate Social Responsibility Research Center in conjunction with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences was opened last week in Beijing:“Being a non-profit academic research institution, it is the first national research center and top theoretical research platform covering the CSR sector in China, aiming at exploring......

"'As soon as we get it from Hong Kong and bring it over and unlock it.' ... Asked about claims that the new iPhones could not be hacked, he replied: 'The Chinese are very quick at unlocking iPhones. They used to say that the PSP couldn't be hacked as well, but we hacked it,' referring to Sony's PlayStation Portable game console." We believe the price they quote for an iPhone — 3,000 kuai — is......

Hong Kong investment fund manager Zhao Danyang (赵丹阳) made the winning bid of $2.11 million in a charity auction on Friday for the privilege of having lunch with Warren Buffett. Zhao, the general manager of Pureheart Asset Management, won the right to dine with Buffett, now chairman of conglomerate holding company Berkshire Hathaway, on a day of his choosing at the famous Manhattan steakhouse Smith & Wollensky. Just who is this Zhao Danyang? An interview......

Among driving rain, rough winds and other remnants of yesterday’s tropical storm, the streets of Hong Kong are teeming today with the usual bustle of high-powered businessmen and equally serious shoppers. But there’s something new on the streets of the island metropolis: Chinese patriotism. According to a recent survey by the Public Opinion Program at the University of Hong Kong, a 58% of Hong Kongers of Chinese descent now identify themselves as Chinese or Chinese......

Fengshen, the tropical storm that ravaged the Philippines and capsized a ferry last weekend, has moved on to Taiwan and southeast China. The storm has caused schools, markets and businesses to close in Hong Kong, but thankfully no casualties. It is expected to move north to Guangdong, where meteorological experts anticipate eight inches (200 mm) of rain to fall. Fengshen was downgraded from a typhoon to a tropical storm late last night.......

Olympics China Rises: Restricting the foreign press Reuters: China urged to curb executions ahead of Olympics China Herald: Another Olympic mishap: problems in getting tickets Channel NewsAsia: Hong Kong toughens rhetoric to avoid Olympic Games protests ABC News: Athletes banned from Beijing opening ceremony China and the U.S. Blogging For China: America opens its doors, slightly, to Chinese tourists People’s Daily: First Chinese leisure travelers to U.S. greeted by music, hospitality Washington Post: In......

For those of you that have been complaining about the wet weather in Shanghai here over the weekend, our friends in southern China have been having it far worse. Heavy rain in Sichuan, Guizhou and Yunnan provinces are causing water levels in rivers further downstream in in Jiangxi, Guangxi and Guangdong provinces to rise. Of course all this is doubly bad news for Sichuan which is still reeling from last month's earthquake. Over 1.27 million......

Shanghai travelers en route to Europe have never had it cheaper, but the real winners may be Hong Kong commuters. Newcomer Hong Kong Express Airways (which launched its first SH-HK flight only three days ago) announced Thursday that it will offer a monthly package for unlimited trips between the two cities, all for around 6,000 RMB. The deal is currently available in Hong Kong for HK$6,888 (6,086 RMB) a month, and the company reported that......

Hong Kong acts to curb avian virus [Washington Post] "Hong Kong authorities announced Wednesday that they planned to kill all poultry in the territory's retail markets because of fears of a dangerous bird flu outbreak. Health officials said they detected the deadly H5N1 virus last week in chickens at a stall in the Kowloon area and slaughtered about 2,700 animals in that neighborhood to prevent its spread."China denies hacking into US computers [AP] "China denied......

In this week's edition of Opinionist, we present to you an excerpt of the speech made by Hong Kong journalist Ching Cheong made at the Society of Publishers in Asia's awards dinner on the 19th anniversary of the June 4 incident. The senior writer of the Singapore-based Straits Times was detained by Chinese authorities in April 2005 for over 1,000 days on charges of spying for Taiwan. In this speech, Ching Cheong spoke at length......

Despite some unfavorable reviews, Jackie Chan is currently riding high on the success of his mega-blockbuster Forbidden Kingdom. As such, many are overlooking his brilliant work currently gracing the international satellite television waves. But no longer. This clip comes from a recent ad campaign by the Hong Kong Travel Association (HKTA), a push to bring more attention to the city hosting the Olympic Games' ever-popular equestrian events that will no doubt help to revitalize the......

You've probably been on the edge of your seat waiting for the latest Olympic torch relay news so here it is. The beleagured sacred flame is making its way through Hong Kong today at the start of its tour of China following a few, shall we say, hiccups during the international relay. Despite the rain, the torch route has been mostly been lined with supporters throughout, many hoping to catch a glimpse of the flame......

function fbs_click() {u=location.href;t=document.title;window.open('http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u='+encodeURIComponent(u)+'&t='+encodeURIComponent(t),'sharer','toolbar=0,status=0,width=626,height=436');return false;} html .fb_share_link { padding:2px 0 0 20px; height:16px; background:url(http://static.ak.fbcdn.net/images/share/facebook_share_icon.gif?0:26981) no-repeat top left; }Share on Facebook Richard Brubaker of All Roads Lead to China talks to Magic of VisaInChina and throws in a few comments on the impact the new visa regulations will have on Hong Kong-China business:Just spoke to Magic, a well known consultant in Shanghai, about the current mess and it seems that the door opened again on the 16th…......

Fans of French film might be interested to know that Jean-Pierre Melville's 1970 classic Le Cercle Rouge (starring Alain Delon, Andre Bourvil, Gian Maria Volonte and Yves Montand) is being remade in Hollywood by none other than Hong Kong action auteur Johnnie To. What's even more weird is that Chow Yun-fat and Orlando Bloom are attached to the project. Malaysia's The Star reports that in Chen Shi-Zheng's Dark Matter the film about the Chinese physics......

None of the recent wuxia martial art epics can seem to avoid the the endemic schlockiness of the genre, so as a viewer we are just content to find one that isn't altogether too offensive in this regard. We think that Three Kingdoms manages to do that. There's some good action, though nothing you haven't seen before — the hail of spears and arrows, the beheaded enemies, the evil vixen (Maggie Q) playing pipa while......

Wong Kar-wai is celebrating the opening of his shit movie My Blueberry Nights in the US this Friday by selling some merchandise — most notably, $95 t-shirts, $50 posters, and $25 postcards. And if you want to thank him for ripping you off in person, you'll get your chance in New York at a fashion boutique store called Opening Ceremony, where Wong is going to be on Wednesday afternoon. We hope that someone tells him......

From Slate V: In Slate V's ongoing effort to bring you the worst in world cinema, our bad-movies curator, Mark Jordan Legan, has a sampling of good vs. evil epics from China, the Philippines, and Indonesia. The China entry is actually from pre-handover Hong Kong, but wow — it sure is crappy. File these films (can we use that word here?) under the so-bad-they-are-good category. We think we might like the Filipino one the best,......

As you’ve no doubt read about already here on Shanghaiist, this weekend could be one of the best for live music since we scuttled into the Year of the Rat. Therefore, you’ll forgive us if we don’t make it down to M on the Bund but instead spend our time over the next couple of days at slightly less refined venues checking out some great bands. Nevertheless, if books not beats are your thing, then......

宋祖英等联名提议:小学应增加繁体字教育_时政新闻_新闻_腾讯网 via kwoutNope, it's just a proposal so far. According to the article, some folks on the arts side of the Political Consultation Congress have written a letter calling for some level of traditional character (繁體字) education in elementary schools in China, arguing that some knowledge of traditional Chinese characters is necessary for people to fully understand the language, culture and history of China. Judging from our observations of our friends, we would say that......

The idea is simple: get five internationally reknowned directors to make short, impressionistic films about Beijing, showing the people of Beijing in their everyday lives and as they prepare for the Olympics—and in the kindest light possible. The five filmmakers were: Patrice Leconte (France), Andrew Lau (Hong Kong/China), Majid Majidi (Iran), Giuseppe Tornatore (Italy), and Daryl Goodrich (UK). You can find a rundown of each film's style and content as well as a link to......