Shanghaiist heartily recommends you read this ESPN interview with Melinda Liu of Newsweek's Beijing bureau, Raymond Zhou of China Daily, Anna Sophie Loewenberg of Sexy Beijing and our very own Maggie Rauch, who's also the founding editor of China Sports Today. This quote by Raymond Zhou caught our attention:"Personally, I only care about Liu Xiang because I feel Liu Xiang winning the gold medal is tantamount to Barack Obama winning the presidency in the United......

Modern Internet connectivity meets old-school snail mail charm in Shanghai resident Paulo Magalhães’s popular website Postcrossing.com, which allows users to send and receive postcards from friendly strangers all around the globe. Founded in July 2005, the site grew wildly popular as fans passed the news by word-of-mouth and now boasts 50,000 users in 182 countries. On the occasion of its third anniversary, Shanghaiist caught up with the Portuguese innovator just as Postcrossing hit its biggest......

Bill Gates has quit from his day-to-day role at Microsoft Corp, but he's not exactly "retiring" — the 52 year old is dedicating himself to full-time philanthropy through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the world's largest charitable foundation with a war chest of US$37.5 billion, four times the size of the next largest foundation. The amount is set to rise to US$100 billion by the end of Gates' lifetime (Note: The US philanthropy sector......

Standing a foot taller and six inches broader than anyone else on HuaiHai Lu, the young man who calls himself Red Laowai (George to his Mother) is easy to spot. Although this is his first trip to mainland China, George has already gathered a large following by recording video clips singing (mostly Communist) Chinese songs and releasing them on the internet. "I love the passion of those songs. They're just so much fun." Clips of......

Via Danwei: Media mogul, celebrity blogger and ICS host, Hong Huang (洪晃 or Huang Hung as she is known in the US) speaks to MSNBC on the recent outburst of Chinese nationalism. Her mother was Mao Zedong's English teacher. For a previous Danwei interview with Hong Huang, click here.......

So you might have heard that Jackie Chan (成龙) recently went to Australia to bury his father, who died of cancer at the age of 93.Well, what you might not have known is that Jackie Chan's father Charlie, aka Fang Daolong, had a whole other family (Jackie's mother was his second wife) that he lost touch with and then had to leave behind in 1949. There was an article called "Enter the Parents" written a......

Are you starved for techno? Real, honest-to-gosh techno? Well, Shanghai's Void crew has you covered. Several times a month they fill up LOgO and The Shelter to bring you the foot-tappinest, head-noddinest, neck-snappinest techno you ever could lay ears on. They've showcased both DJ Nomadico and Jason Hodges in Shanghai, and this Saturday March 1st they bring a little bit of Detroit and Berlin to The Shelter. We sat down with Shanghaiist football contributor and......

William Feng is the host of ICS Shanghai's travel show Getaway. New shows go out on Thursdays and are repeated across the week. Was the Getaway gig a random Shanghai opportunity or did you come here with a plan to break into this industry? I came to China originally as part of a three year plan to travel the world. The next stop was meant to be Brazil, and finally, Africa. When I first arrived,......

Master Kai Uwe Pel has been a fixture on the Shanghai Kung Fu scene for nearly six years, working at the Jing Wu school and the Long Wu International Kung Fu Centre before finally going it alone in 2006. He has spent more than 25 years in Chinese martial arts. He lived and worked in Hong Kong and then Singapore where he studied Seven Star Praying Mantis Kung Fu. Pre-war Shanghai was the site of......

Chinese director Chen Kaige’s recent movie Wu Ji (The Promise) (website in Chinese) has already surprised Chinese film fans with its US$35 million budget. Now, the premiere of the movie on Dec. 14 at Paradise Warner Cinema City offers a surprise to all of us. According to Xinhuanet news (in Chinese) a VIP ticket for premiere of Wu Ji is set at RMB 1,888. The price includes a face-to-face meeting with the director and one......