UPDATE: We're actually having some trouble getting these videos to play here on our Shanghai ADSL connection. Anyone (in China) having any luck? OK, it works when we have our VPN turned on. Try that or maybe a proxy. Happy Super Bowl ... Monday, everyone. We hope you are well into your third beer and/or breakfast burrito when reading this. We have a confession to make. We haven't seen a Super Bowl commercial for......

A little girl from Hunan province born with her heart outside of the body and rib cage has come to Shanghai for medical treatment. The congenital defect, known as ectopia cordis, is extremely rare. In China, only two cases have been recorded and worldwide, over 200. The girl's heart is protected by only a layer of skin and nothing else, and we imagine that sleeping in any other position than on her back would be......

Golf in China: All growing, all new, all raw [ESPN.com] In China, the sport of golf is younger than Tiger Woods himself. But the game has grown exponentially in recent years, leading to more courses and the development of some pros through the Omega China Tour. But as Dan Washburn reports, all is not without struggle.PM Manmohan Singh meets Chinese counterpart in Singapore [Times of India] Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday met Chinese premier......

Maybe. China Mobile’s CEO Wang Jianzhou confirmed that his company has been in discussion with Apple to bring the wildly popular handset to China, “because our customers like this kind of fashionable product,” said Wang. But, negotiations have stalled over Apple’s subscription revenue sharing business model. In Europe and the US, Apple receives a portion of iPhone users’ data/voice revenue from their wireless carriers. China Mobile, with its 350 million user base and de facto......

According to anonymous MLB officials, the American professional baseball league is making plans to send a few teams to Beijing to play exhibition games during their pre-season spring training. The games would be held in March, five months before the start of the 2008 Olympics, and take place at Beijing's Wukesong Field, a small stadium with a capacity of 15,000 that will host the Olympiad's baseball events. The Beijing games are a part of an......

... and that is a conservative estimate, writes Bernie Leo of Shanghai Daily. We have to give it to him in the way that he succeeds to make a science out of the subject: Population figures for the city vary wildly but the latest I can find say we have 17 million permanent residents and four to five million migrants. Obviously not everyone is a spitter or expectorator. (And there is a difference. To spit......

Gil Kim is a professional baseball player from Pottsville, Pennsylvania, which we are sure you all know is the home of Yuengling Lager (and is not too far from Bloomsburg, which we are sure you know is home to the Bloomsburg Fair). After graduating from Vanderbilt University, where he was "primarily a role player," Kim spent 2006 playing with the Omron Pioniers, a minor league team in Amsterdam, Netherlands. In 2007, he was signed by......

107 hospitalized after chlorine leak in SW China 107 workers were hospitalized after a leak of poisonous chlorine gas at a chemical plant in southwest China's Sichuan Province Friday night. Japanese prostitute's job application found in China A Chinese antique collector says he's recently gained a piece of collection of high value, a Japanese's application paper for becoming a prostitute. Law to protect Hepatitis B carriers' rights A law is being revised to provide a......

The recent hoopla over poisonous, tainted, and otherwise malignant Chinese exports — toothpaste, toys, and pet food, oh my! — has left us with an unpleasant taste in our mouths (and not just the minty-fresh kind). Industrial malfeasance has become the bane of Chinese commerce, and we have no intention of downplaying the unique brand of terror experienced by a parent who realizes he just gave his kid a lead-addled plaything. But it is difficult......

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......

Farrow to kick off torch relay to protest China's Darfur stanceActress Mia Farrow unveiled plans for an Olympic-style torch relay beginning this summer as part of a campaign aimed at shaming China into cutting support for Sudan over its role in the Darfur conflict. Analysis: At what cost the Olympics?With only a year to go until the Summer Olympics, advocacy groups worldwide are ratcheting up efforts to expose the dark side of China, from......

FDA: Throw away toothpaste made in China This is in the US. In China, remember not to drink Evian. Two Die, 70 Hurt In Chinese Earthquake At least two, including a five-year-old boy, were dead and about 70 injured when an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.4 on the Richter scale hit Yunnan, a south-western Chinese province, late Saturday. Report: Chinese vice premier dies at 68 - CNN.com Vice Premier Huang Ju, a key......

Fox: Read My Tattoos, No Prison Break In China "News Corporation's (NYSE: NWS.A) Fox Television denied that it has licensed Beijing based media company Zonbo Media to remake American TV series Prison Break or any related online activities in China, reports Beijing Youth Daily." Lawsuit says Ark. company selling counterfeit Budweiser in China "Anheuser-Busch Inc. sued USA Bai Wei Group Inc. in Arkansas' Pulaski County Circuit Court, seeking an injunction to revoke Bai Wei's......

We have discussed Shanghai's new bullet trains before, and last week we actually had a chance to ride one. Condensed review: We like. The obvious advantage, of course, is time. We went to Nanjing, what was once at least a three hour journey (and in some cases five or six) is now between two and two-and-a-half hours, depending on the number of stops. (We also like arriving at Shanghai Railway Station — compared to, say,......

Officer dismissed for blogging "In China, there’s more precedent for blogging getting people in trouble with the police than there is for blogging in itself getting one getting fired. So what happens to cops who blog?" China bans firm from selling land on the moon "The company, Lunar Embassy to China, had sold a total of 49 acres (20 hectares) to 34 customers before authorities acted, Xinhua news agency said." Chinese Auditors Uncover 'Massive'......

The Private Property Party "China Digital Times has noted a Wall Street Journal article that reports on heightened sensitivities around the subject - sensitivities that may have resulted in the current issue of the business magazine Caijing being pulled and revised." China lawmaker wants Forbidden City free of Starbucks "A member of China's parliament has demanded the immediate closure of a Starbucks coffee shop set up inside Beijing's Forbidden City, the Xinhua news agency......

Chinese survey finds religion booming "Professors at East China Normal University estimated that about 300 million people - equivalent to more than 30% of the adult population - followed Buddhist, Taoist, Christian, Muslim or other beliefs." YouTube - Baidu Movie "Baidu's movie relased before its landing on Nasdaq." YouTube - baidu vs google "'Baidu PK Google, what will happen?" List of Officials Who Kill Others or Themselves "Here is an unusal list of Chinese......

Quit Smoking with Lasers "This window was on a nondescript building near my new office. The characters mean 'laser' and 'quit smoking,' begging the question: how exactly do you use lasers to quit smoking?" Metro work to throttle more roads "Among the affected areas, sections of Xizang Road S., Minli Road W. and Dalin Road in Luwan District were shut down yesterday because of Metro Line 8 construction, according to the city's Engineering Administrative......

Shanghai plaintiff files wrongful death claim against Eastman in Madison County "Clevenger claims from the first moment his boss mentioned an international assignment, he responded that he and his family would go anywhere in the world except China." Interesting story. Ax In China TV Ads, In Nod to Muslims Porcine Prohibition "'China is a multiethnic country,' the network's ad department said in a notice sent to ad agencies late Tuesday. 'To show respect to......

We remember the joy we felt (back in 2003) when we first found Chinese Gatorade, meaning real Gatorade in Chinese packaging, meaning not the expensive imported stuff at City Supermarket. We have since weened ourselves from our Gatorade addiction, but we still understand Shanghai blogger John Biesnecker's excitement upon discovering that Doritos are now being manufactured for the Chinese market. We quote: Doritos. Real doritos. In China! We have to ask: Did they have Cool......

Shanghaiist prefers sugar-free bevarages. We're not getting any younger. And we'd prefer our waistline not get any bigger. (And if it does, we'd prefer it be the result of consuming good beer.) We've been known to have friends who happen to be flight attendants bring us packs of Crystal Light from back home so we can satisfy our cravings for sweetish beverages that aren't full of sugar. In China, there are few sugar-free soft drink......

Good Boonna Café: We miss bohemian charm like we miss an old-fashioned milkshake. Luckily, Boonna Café (open in two locations; Boonna 1 is on Xinle Lu, Boonna 2 on West Fuxing Lu, directly across from JZ Club) has both in spades, not to mention attentive waitstaff, a Mac G4 (how often do you see one of those in a coffee shop?), and no cell phone rings set to the blare of (bad) Korean pop. Yet.......

On Monday, at a workshop held under the UN sponsored Internet Governance Forum in Athens, Greece, Chinese diplomat Yang Xiaokun set a new world record in cognitive dissonance as he explained in an exchange with BBC anchor and session moderator, Nik Gowing, that there is no internet censorship in China. Yang Xiaokun: First of all, I have to say that today we have talked a lot about China, and think that's rather strange because if......

As you, our ever vigilant readers are well aware, Shanghaiist is currently in the market for a new liver. Naturally, we prefer a human liver, but after reading this article from the AFP, we'll settle for anything that compliments onions nicely. $125,000!!! They had better include installation, because if this is like IKEA, then you can forget it! All joking on a very serious topic aside, China has publicly addressed claims made by the BBC......

How many Shanghaiist readers do you think live in Lyme Regis, the quaint coastal town in southwest England with a population of around 3,500? The answer is at least one. Her name is Gail Caddy, owner of the 256-year-old pub called Rock Point Inn and the Cobb Gate Fish Bar next door. Caddy has taken a special interest in Shanghai ... ever since she found out that the people behind Shanghai's Thames Town community in......

Can it be? An AIDS vaccine?. A journalism professor wins a defamation lawsuit against a blog host, one of whose blogs hosted comments that were critical of the teacher's teaching abilities. He won 1000 yuan and a public apology. Winning shows "personal dignity outweighs freedom of speech," the professor, Chen Tangfa, was quoted as saying by the official Xinhua News Agency. Is it just us or does that sound like a moronic thing for a......

It goes without saying that China is a country of great contrasts and irony, and we were reminded of that fact with regards to sex and sex education. A Reuters report tells us that social taboos in Chinese society still make it difficult to get across to people, whatever their sexual orientation, that condoms are a good idea if you're expecting company in any of your bodily orifices. The article says that in Hong Kong,......

Manchester City become the latest big European club to swing by China, as more fat cat chairmen attempt to stuff a slice of the lucrative East Asian football market pie in their already obese and money-obsessed faces. The English Premier League side take on Shanghai Shenhua on Friday night in the 2006 Shanghai International Football Tournament. Last summer, everybody who was anyone in the glitzy world of European football embarked on an Asian tour, fuelled......

Australian newspaper The Australian explains why Fosters failed in China, citing a few economical reasons: First, taking on joint venture partners even when not required to do so. Foster's brought in state-owned firms as 40 per cent partners in two of the breweries. In China, 60 per cent does not deliver effective control. It moved in time to 90 per cent, but too late ... Second, although it's a cliche often used to excuse making......

Yesterday when Shanghaiist arrived at work, the boss said, "pick up a copy of yesterday's China Daily. They've got a story about the gun holdup on [colleague's name]'s flight to Beijing." Holdup? Gun? On an airplane? In China? Let's be clear. The holdup was really a delay. But there was still a man, who claimed that -- because of his position as an "officer" -- he could carry a loaded gun on a domestic flight.......