We were walking to the metro station the other day when we saw these posters outside a defunct spa at No. 1855 Xinzha Lu, near Yanping Lu. Upon closer inspection, it seems that residents are not pleased because they have not been consulted on the proposed opening of a senior citizens' hospital on the first to third floors of their residential complex. Residents claim that the hospital was at first scheduled to be built......

By Mike Chen Where: Shanghai Renji Hospital When: June 2007......

You can pluck a Chinese patient away from the hospital, but you will never snatch his cell phone away from him! Photo from Tim Johnson of China Rises. Share with us how you see Shanghai, or China! Simply post your photos on Flickr, tag them with "shanghaiist", and we'll select one favorite image per day. Or you can simply email your photos to photos[at]shanghaiist.com.......

We seriously LOVE some of the things we hear about going on in our city. Yes, some of the people we meet here can be harsh and mean, but this story goes to show that humanity still exists in Shanghai. Two weeks ago, Rebekah Pothaar, an executive with Ctrip.com, found that her ayi's husband was in a serious motorbike collision. They went with her to the hospital and found that surgery was going to cost......

Two weeks ago, when we told you that China's new labour law was going to be a big, big thing, we had no idea it would also be the cause of some serious blood-letting. Local gangs and triads have been attacking the Shenzhen Dagongzhe Migrant Worker Centre which has been instrumental in providing legal advice for rural migrant workers and informing them about their rights under the new labour law. In separate attacks, they shattered......

This morning at 7.50am, an explosion occurred at a China Petroleum gas station located on the cross junction of Yanggao Nanlu and Pusan Lu (杨高南路、浦三路口) in Pudong. Two died on the spot, two died on the way to hospital, two remain seriously injured, and many more are injured. As a result of the blast, a metal tank was displaced 50 meters, the cars that were parked nearby were damaged, and glass windows in several neighbouring......

If you, like us, are already cursing the arrival of winter, watch this. There is a little 5 year old girl in Jiangxi who is still prancing around in her birthday suit, and revelling in the cold waters as if its still summer. Her parents say that since she turned one, the girl started showing her great dislike for clothes. She goes to bed nightly without even a blanket on, and if someone actually tried......

Overheard in the comment section of our earlier story on the Chongqing cooking oil stampede was the opinion that the pushing and shoving here in Shanghai is much worse than in Chongqing. Agreed. We see so many potential stampedes happening here everyday and wonder why more people are not getting tromped to death on a daily basis here. But this story by the Financial Times tells us a similar cooking oil stampede that occurred right......

Ladies (and guys with long hair), resist from buying those cheap hair bands you find at the mom and pop stores in your 'hood because the news is out that some of them are made from USED condoms. China Daily cites an unnamed dermatologist with the Guangzhou Hospital of Armed Police who says viruses and bacteria abound on these hair bands recycled from condoms and users could be infected with AIDS, genital warts and other......

Asia's papers keep newspaper flags flying [Asia Times] With a little help from the Internet, the future of newspapers looks bright in Asia where seven of 10 of the world's best selling dailies are published, with China, India and Japan accounting for more than half. Advertisers, the lifeblood for newspapers, are also smiling.Asian mega-cities to be swallowed up by sea [Asian Offbeat] They include Dhaka, Bangladesh; Buenos Aires, Argentina; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Shanghai (gosh!)......

Burma junta holds rally, arrests 4 activists [AP] On Saturday, the Burmese junta organized a mass rally in Rangoon to denounce Western powers and the foreign media, whom the military regime accuses of fomenting the recent protests. Officials said 120,000 people attended the event, some of whom were paid to be there. Among some of the slogans the crowds were made to chant include "Down with BBC! Down with VOA! Down with Radio Free Asia!"Singapore's......

We just received news that North Korea has expressed its intention to attend the Shanghai World Expo in 2010. How exciting is that, people! Having attended the World Expo in Hanover in 2000, we just wonder what wonderful propaganda awaits us at the DPRK pavilion in 2010! So we looked up Youtube and found this clip which we thought would be a fantastic example of what would be shown at the North Korean pavilion. Leo......

A New Zealand-born contestant of the first series of Big Brother Australia, Gordon Sloan, has died in Beijing on a suspected heroin overdose. From the Herald Sun: According to a source close to Sloan, the former reality star's parents had travelled from their home in New Zealand after their son was admitted to hospital in a coma on September 1. It is understood the devastated couple opted to turn off the life support that had......

Netizen "fyliumin" has sent in the following vid to Youku.com with the following comment: 今天去看一个病人，六张床的病房，居然来看望的男男女女有二十多人，只见孩子哭的，抽烟的，大叫的，床下堆满了各式纸箱，大都是亲友送来的外表花哨，内里低劣的营养品。中国特色的看病人模式体现了中华民族深厚的家庭观念，仿佛只有这样才能表示亲友的重视，人堆人围着一个病人拉家长，拉得时间越长，表示越亲密。但这种模式确实不利于病人休养，不利于医院管理，更不文明，反正见怪不怪了。 Today while visiting someone at the hospital, I saw 20-over visitors crammed into a small 6-bed ward. There were men and women, children crying, some were smoking, some were screaming. Under the beds were various boxes -- all presents sent by relatives and friends, full of stuff that look good on the outside but full of cheap nutrients on the......

Zhejiang Satellite TV's Citizens Take Action 《绿原公民行动》has uncovered the most extraordinary story of a woman, Wang Xiaocui (王晓翠) who has been rescued from an underground hole in Lin County, Lu Liang District, Shanxi Province. Barely 2 square meters in area, the hole was home for Wang, and this was where she would eat, drink, sleep and take care of ALL her bodily functions everyday for six long years. As it turned out, Xiaocui was bought......

DUE TO ITS SOMEWHAT GRAPHIC NATURE, THE PHOTO ASSOCIATED WITH THIS STORY APPEARS AFTER THE JUMP. 24 year old macrodactyly patient Liu Hua from Jiangsu, the man with the world's largest hand (Pic after the jump: NOT for the faint-hearted!!), has arrived at the Shanghai No. 9 People's Hospital for radical plastic surgery. He was born with a left thumb, index and middle finger much larger than normal, which grew dramatically together with his arm......

Shandong Province's Qilu TV has struck yet again with another quirky news story featured in its daily news program last Thursday -- this time of a woman who starts barking like a mad dog after getting bitten by a mad dog. In the video clip, one sees the poor woman coughing, wheezing, panting and barking like a dog, seemingly uncontrollable. She has to be restrained with cables tied to the couch, which in turn is......

A female toddler that has experienced swelling of the breasts and menstruation at 15 months of age has been cited by doctors at the Nanjiing Children's Hospital as an extreme example of the rise in the number of cases of precocious puberty all across China. One parent who always thought her 3 year old daughter, who at 1.4 metres tall, was just growing faster than her peers, but one day, she was surprised to find......

On the right is a powerful photo story of a 16 year old village prostitute, Ah-V, who eloped with her boyfriend Xiaowu from Guizhou to an unnamed province, and to make ends meet, Xiaowu makes Ah-V prostitute herself. Along the way, of course, Ah-V gets pregnant, and has to go for an abortion, but she is so poor that the only thing worth money in her possessions is a broken fan which she got from......

Even as the majority of the domestic and international press crowned Inner Mongolia native and Shanghai resident Duo Zirong for her courage to stop the truck and "save" 800 cats from the food trade on July 7, dissenting voices have been raised with regards to the character of this women. And some have gone so far as to call her — as we have heard recently from those involved in various animal rescue organizations —......

From Shanghai Daily:Central China's Hunan Province is planning to make HIV tests compulsory for people working at recreation venues to monitor the rise in HIV/AIDS cases. Hunan had reported a total of 4,379 HIV/AIDS cases by June 30, ranking eighth among the country's provinces or regions. Officials said 57.8 percent of HIV infections in Hunan were caused by drug users sharing needles, but that cases of sexually-transmitted diseases have been rising. Photo from Kat.H:......

Shanghai Daily tells us that the Shanghai Health Bureau has shut down three clinics in the city for "faulty practices", albeit just temporarily. They are namely - Shanghai Zhongtai Hospital, Shanghai Shenguang Clinic and Shanghai Hong'an Traditional Chinese Medicine Clinic. What faulty practices, we ask? Unfortunately, the paper's best practice standards do not require them to tell us anything about why the above-said clinics were shut, never mind the recent food scares and what not.......

Yes, it's hard hitting reporting like this that has people wondering how we avoid the censors. But we recently found ourself in need of an ACE bandage, known in some parts of the world as an elastic bandage. Back home, we would have just headed to the local drugstore to buy one, but we had heard some people having trouble finding them in Shanghai — so we figured we'd tell you how we found ours......

WARNING: Gruesome video Police are investigating the case surrounding six year old Xiaohui from Jiangxi's Poyang county, who appears to have been viciously assaulted, and has just been sent overnight to Shanghai's Ruijin Hospital for medical care. Six of the girl's vertebrae were found to be broken, she is now paralysed from waist down, and has been beaten to such an extent she has lost control of her urinary function. She is also coughing blood......

In a report just released an hour ago, Reuters tells us that Shanghai housing rights activist, Chen Xiaoming, who was one of seven Chinese activists awarded the 2006 Housing Rights Defender Award by the Geneva-based Centre for Housing Rights and Evictions, "has died hours after he was released on medical parole". From the Reuters report: Shanghai authorities had repeatedly rejected applications by Chen Xiaoming's family to release him on parole for treatment for a chronic......

From Wired we found this story about a 71-year-old Xinjiang man that can conduct 220V electricity through his body, allowing him not only to power up six 13-watt light bulbs and cook fish with his bare hands, but also heal people with arthritis and back problems! The Wired article calls the guy Zhang Decaux(!), while the Chinese reports call him Zhang Deke (张德科), a retired worker from a town in Xinjiang. According to the Chinese......

Housing evictions and tenants' rights have become hot button issues in Chinese society today, a flash point in the conflict between ordinary citizens, land developers, and the government. The most famous case of this, at least in recent memory, was the Chongqing nailhouse, which became an internet-fueled media phenomenon. And now, a similar situation has appeared in the Fengtai district of Beijing. A group of residents who did not agree to conditions offered them by......

My time as a hostage, and I’m a business reporter As an American journalist based in China, David Barboza knew there was a good chance that at some point he’d be detained for pursuing a story. He just never thought he’d be held hostage by a toy factory. China province head apologizes in slave labor storm Yu Youjun the governor of Shanxi province shaken by the slave labor scandal publicly apologized on Friday, as officials......

Chinese portal penalised for mocking mentally ill A Chinese website has been ordered to pay $2,631 in compensation for publishing photographs of a mentally challenged 63-year-old man dressed up like a teenage girl. China plans highway on Mount Everest China plans to build a highway on the side of Mount Everest to ease the Olympic torch's journey to the peak of the world's tallest mountain before the 2008 Beijing Games, state media reported Tuesday. Shanghaiist......

What does $205.6 million in cash look like? Here are pictures of the cash and guns seized from the Mexico City residence of Zhenli Ye Gon, who is one among six Chinese suspects from a gang, which prosecutors say illegally imported n-acetyl pseudoephedrine. Now, just imagine 205.6 Demi Moores rolling around in it.Low-key vibe to Shanghai festival. Despite Sharon Stone's presence, the opening frames of the Shanghai Film Festival were unashamedly local and curiously low......