It no longer matters whether you believe global warming is caused by man, or "just God hugging us closer." Because Chicken Little was right, Shanghai is sinking. Reuters reports that Shanghai is considered among the world's most vulnerable urban areas to a rise in sea levels, all thanks to melting polar ice caps, the prevalent use of land subsistence in China's coastal cities and heavy construction of skyscrapers. According to Wang Pingxian, professor of ocean......

Important elements for any anti-terrorism drill — great staging, great scenery and a great location where lots of people can see you. Yesterday's "terrorist" act was effectively countered by the highly efficient security forces in under an hour.......

OK, you know we love to slag off Shanghai Daily articles even though we know it's an essentially meaningless thing to do so. Old habits die hard. We just finished reading one about the planned Fisherman's Wharf in Yangpu district, which we are told is Unlike its namesake in San Fransico with sea views and sea lions, the local FW will be built on the banks of the Huangpu River in Yangpu District, according to......

You heard that right, ladies and gentlemen... Our city's foresighted urban planners, God bless their hearts, have looked into their glassball and decided that Shanghai needs another Lujiazui — and really, soon — in three years to be exact. Well if they were able to build Lujiazui I in ten years, we have every confidence they can build Lujiazui II in three. Never ever ever doubt the ambitions of Shanghai city planners. Just build first,......

China rejects pork imports from U.S., Canada [Reuters] China has rejected shipments of pork kidney from the United States and of spare ribs from Canada after finding traces of a banned growth agent in them, in the latest volley of cross-border accusations over product quality. China's kung fu peace-keepers head for Darfur [The Telegraph] With kung fu, automatic rifles and armoured personnel carriers, China showed off its new-found power this weekend, and how it says......

MONDAY 7:30 am, Yanchang Lu Station, Line One: A 24-year-old man jumped off a platform in front of a train at Yanchang Road Station on Metro Line 1 this morning but only suffered broken toes, according to Shanghai Metro police. The man was waiting for train with his father and grandfather about 7:30am, when he suddenly jumped into the tunnel as a train was pulling in. Police said he tried to commit suicide because of......

Shanghai-made Ferris wheel applies for Guinness World Records "It is 25 meters taller than the London Eye, currently the tallest observation wheel in the world, and only cost one-eighth the price to build." Probably very safe. Six feared dead as Beijing subway tunnel collapses "A contractor had tried to conceal the collapse from authorities by sealing off the site and confiscating the workers' cell phones, it said, citing rescuers." Chinese director receives official approval......

Heading near the Shanghai Expo site today? Might want to hold your breath. This from the International Herald Tribune, originally by way of AP and Xinhua: SHANGHAI, China: Chlorine fumes injured 59 people, eight of them seriously, when a demolition worker broke a derelict tank at a construction site for Shanghai's 2010 World Expo, a doctor and reports said Monday. The workers were dismantling an old solvent plant in the Pudong district of China's financial......

If you've ever wondered about the various names that Shanghai has, you can check out this blog entry (in Chinese), which gives brief historical explanations of each. Here's an abridged translation/summary of some of those names:Shanghai. The name of the city can be traced back to 1265, the Song dynasty. Back then, what is now called the Suzhou River had two small tributaries, one was called 上海浦 （shanghai pu) and the other was called 下海浦......

Our brothers and sisters at Londonist breathed a huge sigh of relief yesterday — they no longer have to redesign their logo. They will remain, for the foreseeable future, the city with the biggest ferris wheel. Pop open the champagne, guys! They have Shanghai to thank. Our idiot city planners have decided to scrap plans to build a "spinning giant": The Shanghai Star Ferris wheel was to stand 200 to 230 meters above its Hongkou......

If you're new to Shanghai or still in that "testing the water" phase of living here, you should be well aware of Shanghai Daily's guide to living in Shanghai, called Live in Shanghai (previously mentioned here). Recently, the website added a new and useful section about shopping in Shanghai. Low on gift ideas and cash, Shanghaiist took a little dip in the danger zone by checking out the website's savvy new section. The new shopping......

A prominent Chinese statistician was fired from his government post for undisclosed reasons.Watch out for deaf mutes and close your passenger side windows, car drivers!Two football players from Shanghai Shenhua score goals in the China-Palestine game and take China to the Asian Cup finals.Don't tell us that you don't watch TV on that 240 square meter TV floating in the Huangpu River near the Bund.Monkey Peaches reports that Johnny To's Exiled (放逐) is going to......

Since "Beijingist the website" won't be happening anytime soon, we figured we'd welcome our neighbors to the north, ever so slightly, into the Shanghaiist fold. Hence, today we unveil "Beijingist the irregular feature," news and views as seen through a Beijing resident's teary-because-there-is-so-much-damn-dust-and-sand-in-the-polluted-air eyes. Occasionally, like today, we'll even allow these posts to be written in the first person -- because it's a little weird having a Beijinger refer to himself as "Shanghaiist." Today's Beijingist......

We'll admit it: When we first saw the map at ShanghaiClimb.com, we thought it might be an addendum to the "14 ways to die in Shanghai" map. But it's not (not yet, at least -- as far as we know no one died during the first month that normal folk were allowed to walk to the top of the world's longest arch bridge). On April 28, the Shanghai Yangzi International Travel Agency opened the Lupu......

Although Shanghaiist finds the Lujiazui area of Pudong rather charming (in a freaky Jetsons-on-acid kind of way), we are also aware that many people find it to be a tacky mess. So if you thought Lujiazui was a frighteningly gaudy freakshow before, this news certainly won't ease your fears now. Shanghai Daily reports that city officials are planning to add, get this, "THOUSANDS" of lights to Pudong New Area very soon, in an effort to......

Shanghaiist has seen "countdown"-style traffic lights elsewhere in China, most-recently on our drive to Moganshan last weekend (it was our first time behind the wheel in China, and for the most part, despite some annoyances -- people using the shoulder as a lane, etc. -- it was fine). Anyway, the tick-tick-tick stopwatch-style lights Shanghai pedestrians have become accustomed to are now being tried out on the city's drivers, who, incidentally, are supposed to yield to......

Last summer, Shanghaiist snapped this picture of the grassy roofs of the Jin Jiang Hotel on Mao Ming Lu. Hotel workers said the grass had been there "for some time" and that it was "mandated by the district government." Seeing as we'd never heard local cadres require anything as environmentally friendly, water conserving, or money saving as this, we were skeptical of this claim. That is, until Shanghai Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau announced its new......

Shanghaiist took a ride on the city’s brand new metro Line 4 the other day. Whilst it isn’t the major expansion to the current metro network we are all waiting for (especially seeing the entire line is yet to open), it might make getting across the city a little bit easier, depending on where you live. The line offers a new crossing between Puxi and Pudong, under the Huangpu River, between the Yangpu Bridge and......

Shanghai residents maybe be happy with their city, but half of Shanghai's white-collar 30-somethings suffer from a "wide variety" of stomach ailments.Former Shanghai DVD pirate Randolph Hobson Guthrie III pleads guilty in Mississippi.While more than half of China's broadcasters and journalists are female, only 19 percent of the stories they report are about women.A think-tank concludes that China is the world's sixth most powerful nation, "greatly dwarfed by the United States, and behind Britain, Russia,......

Some news snippets having to do with Shanghai landmarks and redevelopment: The former flower market came down yesterday. From the Sina News Center (Chinese): 2005年11月30日上午，地处上海市中心的文化广场进行了首幢建筑物爆破拆除，文化广场曾经是上海市的标志性建筑。先爆破拆除是一幢5层3400平方米17米的楼房，它的主体建筑是一个能容纳万余人的无柱剧场，该剧场爆破拆除施工将明年初进行。 One the morning of November 30, 2005, the first in what will be a series of demolition by dynamite was carried out at the Cultural Square in the heart of metropolitan Shanghai, a site that was of historical value for the city. The demolished building was a former theater......

It’s official, Xintiandi is the most popular entertainment street (even though it's not really a street) in the city according to 80 percent of respondents in a survey. Thirteen thousand votes were taken by mail, Internet and telephone from locals as well as “people from other places,” according to Shanghai Star (Nov. 10 print edition). We’re not sure if that means tourists, foreigners or aliens, but we do get a sneaking suspicion that the people......

Last week, Shanghaiist reported on the latest updates from the buildup to the 2010 World Expo, including a plan to take the "poo" out of the Huangpu River and make the water drinkable. Now, we learn that the city has launched something called the Shanghai Public Toilet Association (story in Chinese), along with www.toiletweb.cn (in Chinese), Shanghai's official website for public toilets. We are told to expect more modernized toilets and more toilets catering to......

The World Expo Shanghai is almost here! Yes, that's what we'll be saying in December 2009. Until then, we are relying on titbits of information fed to us by the Mayor of Shanghai.City Government approved the detailed construction plan for Shanghai Expo Shanghai Municipal Government has approved in principle the detailed construction plan for the red building lines of the Shanghai Expo Site on 31st Oct., revealed Shanghai Mayor Han Zhen at a municipal government’s......

That great rite of passage which is obtaning one's driver's licence just got a bit harder here in Shanghai -- applicants are now tested on obscure pieces of information called "traffic rules", and giving cigarettes to the test administrators isn't going to help you, because they now use robots, or rather, electronic devices equipped with sensors that can tell when you've made a mistake, such as forgetting to signal for a turn, or messing up......

Shanghai Daily tells us that all 17 stops on the new Metro Line 4 will be equipped with "passenger safety screens." And that made Shangahaiist say, What the hell is Metro Line 4? The Shanghai Daily story doesn't tell us where Metro Line 4 is, only that it "goes into operation at the end of this year" -- and anyone who follows announcements concerning the Shanghai metro system knows that "the end of this year"......

A team of Scientists at Harbin Institute of Technology (yes, the same folks who play soccer with robots) have devised a way to put Shanghai's ample supply of raw sewage to use before it gets dumped into the Yangtze River -- they will use it to fuel our air conditioners: Their device extracts heat from raw sewage that has been temporarily diverted on its way to the processing plant. It can also make air conditioning......

A stunt man playing the role of a man jumping to his death in the Huangpu River nailed the scene yesterday -- right down to the dying part. Police would not provide the man's name, only saying that the man was in his 50s ... and that he was dead. The accident occured near Huishan Dock on the north end of The Bund in Hongkou District shortly after 4 pm during filming of a new......

As July 11th approaches, many Shanghai residents are eagerly anticipating the celebration China's newest holiday: Maritime Day. Given the Chinese penchant for celebrating in style, Maritime Day should prove to be a momentous occasion, as 2005 marks the 600-year anniversary of Zheng He's (鄭和) nautical expeditions to Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Some even argue Zheng, everyone's favorite eunuch explorer, might have beaten ol' Chris Columbus to the New World. While many countries around......