A variety of couples took part, including some that were a bit gun-shy when it came to the moment of make-out truth, two cute toddler girls forced on stage by their parents, and even an old husband and wife in their sixties, who just sort of held each other in a mortified fashion. more ›

Hundreds of angry homeowners gathered last weekend to protest what could become a growing trend of price slashing in housing markets around China. Developers of a Pudong apartment complex started offering discounts of up to 30%, enraging buyers who had already invested in the development, as they essentially watched a chunk of their money evaporate. Hundreds gathered in the face of riot police to trample the developers' offices and show their general discontent. more ›

A group of senior citizens have taken it upon themselves to effect a mini-protest, by barricading Xikang Road near Xinhui Road in the Jing'an Temple district over a newly constructed high-rise that has robbed their homes of access to sunshine.   more ›

This sort of thing would be absurd in some other country besides China, where it can be neatly filed under 'business as usual.' A railway overpass on the Beijing to Fuzhou high-speed rail line recently completed construction, and just happens to now loom over a residential complex in Shuangdun, a small town outside the Anhui capital of Hefei. more ›

Chinese drivers, our heart goes out to you (when you're not trying to kill us on a daily basis). We know of the Book of Job-like struggles you face just to get your hands on a car, now one of the main face-maintaining/wife-snagging accoutrements in contemporary China. Import taxes and price markups are absurd: the starting cost of a 2011 BMW 650i Convertible in the United States begins at 550,880RMB ($85,550 USD), while the same car in China starts at 2,039,000RMB ($316,650 USD). more ›

"PROPERTY owners and tenants must register their contracts with the city starting in October under threat of punishment for the first time, senior government officials said yesterday. Effective October 1, new rules will start across the city as Shanghai moves to further regulate the mainstream residential leasing market. Some 30 million square meters of residential space are rented, Pang Yuan, deputy head of the Shanghai Municipal Housing Support and Building Administration Bureau, told a press conference in announcing the rules. Under the new law, real estate agencies will be responsible for such registration if they help bridge the deals, whereas individual owners and tenants should register their activities themselves with local community affairs service centers. The registration must take place within 30 days of contract signing." [Shanghai Daily] more ›

WARNING: This video contains graphic, violent footage. Viewer discretion is advised. more ›

Jiaotong University will start the installations in a few weeks time and should have its air-conditioning units operational by mid-June according to Yao Renzhong, a university official. It's the first local public university to add air conditioning to dormitories at the cost of about 20 million RMB. Other public universities such as Fudan University will soon follow suit. more ›

Just before the turn of the year, on Thursday afternoon, President Hu Jintao was reported by Shanghaiist's favourite broadcaster CCTV to have visited several low-income families in Beijing to bring them the party's heartiest new year greetings. Helping low-income residents with their housing problems, according to CCTV, was a "great matter that weighed heavily on the President's heart", hence the decision to descend from his gilded throne at the Great Hall of the People and make his presence felt among the hoi polloi. more ›

Has the Shanghai laowai (老外) bug got into you? Have you been thinking of making Shanghai your new home? If so, then before you settle down you might want to check out these new regulations. According to China's Ministry of Housing and Urban Rural Development, purchases of apartments/houses by foreigners could be restricted or even capped in a move to combat speculative money from overseas. more ›

• After having a read about the stats of disposable chopsticks...We decided that it was a moral imperative to take your own chopsticks out to eat.
• We got excited about Ricky Gervais bringing 'The Office' to China and discussed the influx of foreign television being remade for a Chinese audience.
• We were miffed when we found out that 51.25% of sold property in Shanghai remains vacant. Way to drive up rents, rich people!

One of the most frustrating parts of living in Shanghai as a middle class income holder is knowing that, while you can't afford an apartment, half the stock in the city is sitting empty thanks to zealous richer-than-you investors. That probably explains the grassroots turnout for helping Sina.com's investigation into empty houses in cities. more ›

If you've ever wanted to know the nitty gritty about preserving and/or buying one of those beautiful lane houses - or really, anything built before 1949 - still dotted along the city (especially before they get torn down and replaced by another skyscraper), Shanghai Scrap has an informative interview with Amy L. Sommers, who recently co-published "A Tragedy of the Common: Property Rights Issues in Shanghai Historic Residences" with Kara L. Phillips of the Seattle University Law Library. more ›

Over the last week or so, the Global Post has been looking into the China real estate bubble in an interesting four-part multimedia series. Besides worrying about unsustainably rising house prices - especially in Shanghai - it also checks out hte underlying causes of the bubble and examines some of the unique social customs driving prices even higher. Highlights below: more ›

It seems that the severely inflated housing market has spawned a lot of recent creativity. From the popular soap opera about the scandalous things people to for real estate to the lonely bachelor who pitched a tent on the subway to protest high prices (and the effect it has on his love life), people have been finding artistic expressions for the toll exacted on society by high property values and crippling mortgages. The latest expression is the craftily catchy "Happy Lane" by Beijing folk singer Chuan Zi. While he might be a little wanting in his singing capacity, the intensity he brings makes up for it in spades. more ›

It's no secret that housing prices are intensely inflated in China. But as the economy picks back up, people are beginning to pay attention and even worry about the consequences of a housing bubble similar to the one that's ravished the U.S. economy. more ›

Subway riders eager to experience the glory of Shanghai's new line seven on Saturday were treated to a surprise: a man pitching a tent in the subway. No, we're not talking about your typical rush hour perverts: we literally mean he had a tent and pitched it, right in a subway car. more ›

More photos on the Shanghaiist Contribute page. To see your photos on our Contribute page, use Flickr and tag your photos “shanghaiist”. Or you can email your photos to photos@shanghaiist.com and they will automatically appear on our site (and here). more ›

This a rough translation of Fan Gui's response to Sun Liping's essay (which we wrote about here): 1. Regarding Sun's first point, I believe that he has ignored a very crucial fact—the growing gap between rich and poor. 20% of the population controls 80% of the wealth, how can you say that such a status quo has "flexibility"? While Professor Sun divides the population into urban and rural, does he mean that the urban poor... more ›

On Friday, the People’s Bank of China raised mortgage interest rate and hiked minimum down payment needed for purchasing investment and commercial properties. In a joint announcement with China Banking Regulatory Commission, the PBoC said more ›

Cathay Pacific and Air China's parent company abandoned an attempt to block Singapore Airlines from buying a stake in China Eastern, as the battle for the lucrative Chinese market heats up. more ›

The Aluminum Company of America, better known as ALCOA sold its entire 7 percent stake in its largest Chinese counterpart, Aluminum Company of China, or CHALCO for short (ALCOC just doesn’t quite have the same pizzazz, not to mention potentially misleading). ALCOA acquired the Chalco stake for roughly USD $200 million back in 2001 when the Chinese firm went public in Hong Kong. And six years later, the same stake just exchanged hands for 10 times the value, USD$2 billion. 25 major institutions were reported buyers, and just to be nice, ALCOA priced the shares at 15 percent below market, how very generous! more ›

Recently while out of town, our landlord called us on our cell phone to inform us that he wanted his apartment back ASAP. Why, we asked? He wanted to renovate it, he said, but we were not convinced. You see, the few of us have been living in this apartment for coming to 3 years now, and there was this implicit agreement that we could stay on for as long as we liked, so some time back we didn't sign any lease with him, but continued to dutifully pay our rent each month (no delays) as we have done for such a long time. more ›

Security guards in a Suzhou housing complex found a nude man lying dead on a platform on the second floor while on their regular walkabouts. Police found that the man, surnamed Geng, was a tenant on the 12th floor of the complex and was working in a sauna in the neighbourhood. The night before, a woman living on the 16th floor returned home at around 3am in the morning, only to discover there was an unwelcome visitor in her bathroom, and he was nude. Naturally she screamed at the top of her lungs and ran out. Later, she discovered that her cell phone was still in the bathroom and when she went back in again (we think that's such a strange thing to do given the circumstances!), the man was gone. Apparently, her scream had gotten her peeping tom into a fluster, and he fell to his death. more ›

Pioniers, a minor league team in Amsterdam, Netherlands. In 2007, he was signed by the Beijing Tigers of the China Baseball League (more info here). The CBL season already over, Kim recently answered some of our questions via email. more ›

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". more ›

Harshing the mellows of college kids all over China, the Ministry of Education has announced a ban on off-campus student housing:

In a notice issued on Friday, the ministry instructed all universities to make the dormitories "another front for political and ideological education" to create "a good climate for the students' growth." more ›

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 land developers for compensation and resettlement are making a last stand in their homes. As you can see from these pictures (the report is in Chinese), deep 'trenches', in some places three meters deep, have been dug around the homes, making it nearly impossible for a person to enter or leave without a ladder or professional pole-vaulting skills. The electricity and water have also been cut off. more ›

From wodingg.com we discovered that Google China (soon to be China Google?) has come out with a new search engine function called Google Sheng Huo (生活), which you can use to search for stuff like housing, jobs, and stuff to buy. Basically what it does is to gather results from other websites and search engines. more ›