Her piano riff inferno and head banged red hair illuminate it all. Max Harman's scorching onstage passion proves she's a front lady refusing to fizzle out or fade away. The same can be said for her band mates in The On Fires, an Australian hard rock troupe that blazed their way across China with smoldering shows in Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhan, and several other locales last year. more ›

The city’s shortcomings have, in one way or another over the years, sparked constant ‘unstable behavior’ from Riz— prompting him to write screamo lyrics when everyone else in the local scene was covering Limp Bizkit, publishing an underground magazine to educate the masses about what ‘hardcore’ truly means, and even passing subtler lessons along in the classroom as a teacher because the local scene isn’t lucrative to support him fulltime. Below, Riz answers our questions about why he’d prefer to play in a city like Shanghai, and how Hong Kong has spurned and inspired him again and again. more ›

As part of his world tour Afrojack is coming to Asia and where better to spin than in the dynamic and energetic buzz of Shanghai? Both Afrojack and Shanghai are taking over more rapidly than ever on the international scene, making for a perfect duet if you ask us. more ›

CNN's Fareed Zakaria asks Singapore prime minister Lee Hsien Loong a few questions about China in a recent interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Video and transcript after the jump... more ›

Eco-consciousness is beginning to awaken in Shanghai. An increasing number of Shanghai designers have been adopting sustainable practices into their manufacturing process. I asked Heather Kaye and Itee Soni, the two designers behind FINCH Shanghai, who aims to introduce sustainability and social consciousness into their design process to the Chinese market. more ›

American broadcast news icon Charlie Rose speaks with Gary Locke. It's one of the first interviews we've seen Locke give since he was appointed US ambassador last summer. more ›

We recently chanced upon a "secret showroom" in Shanghai. It's massively exciting to go to a secret location (in this case, an apartment in Chang Ping Road) and you get to meet the designer and review his entire Spring/Summer collection! more ›

This week's episode of massively popular US podcast This American Life zones in on Apple, Foxconn, and the workers that assemble one of the the most ubiquitous device brands on the planet. more ›

Fashion Friday is a brand new weekly column that will appear on Shanghaiist every Friday, 9am on the dot. Here's where you'll find the latest on what's hot, what's not, meet designers, and get your fix on fashion events going about in town. more ›

Cutting edge music comes to Shanghai this Saturday night when the "King of UK bass music", Neil Landstrumm, performs live with local undergound techno crew, VOID. Shanghaiist caught up with the Edinburgh native on the eve of his second visit to the city, to hear his thoughts on the current electronic music scene, the differences between Shanghai and New York, noodles, faceless techno bollocks, adrenalin-pumping live electronics, and jelly botties. more ›

Okay we still can't get our hands on an embed code yet, but you can watch part of Jon Huntsman's interview on the Colbert Report here. He talks about his Mormonism and, of course, speaks some Chinese. (Just can't get enough of making those strange sounds come out of a white dude's mouth, eh America?) Ever the charmer, Huntsman obliges the usual request by saying, in Mandarin, "I wish you'd be my running mate, Stephen" (我很想你做我的副美国总统). more ›

Over at Asia Society, former Shanghaiist editor Dan Washburn has an excellent interview with Mike Chinoy, who served as CNN's Beijing bureau chief from 1987 to 1995 and is currently a Senior Fellow at the U.S.-China Institute at the University of Southern California. In the interview, Chinoy looks back at the challenges that he and other China correspondents faced in getting their work done, and how that contrasts with the situation today. more ›

One of our favorite local bands is playing a CD release concert tonight at Yuyintang and we think you should go check them out. Summer Sweat is Pairs' second album in as many years, and they've earned themselves a reputation for DIY methodology and audience-centric ethic. The duo, made up of Australian native Xiao Zhong on drums/vocals and his Chinese counterpart F on guitar, can get absolutely maniacal on stage and it really doesn't matter if you like their music or not - you'll have a great time anyway. more ›

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Regardless of (or maybe because of) the fact that the Guo Meimei controversy was made famous by online outrage via microblogs, netizens this week have come out strongly against a recent cover story in the Chinese Marie Claire (check it out for yourself in Chinese here.) Sina held a poll asking Weibo users what they thought of the piece and 87% said the magazine shouldn't print it because the media "should have higher values." Many are calling for the magazine to cancel the piece entirely, leading us to believe that most netizens don't know anything about media. Hey Weibo, if you guys don't want people talking about her, maybe YOU should stop talking about her. We really can't blame Marie Claire on this one - even we want to read what they call Guo Meimei's surprisingly "simple" answers about her life and shopping habits. more ›

Just a few days after Ai Weiwei returned to Twitter, he also gave his first post-release interview with the Global Times. Published in English only, Ai sounds rather uncharacteristically subdued. Read more on the intervew from Evan Osnos and the Peking Duck. As it was a state media interview, unsurprisingly they failed to address his experiences in detainment, but according to sources, he was subjected to "immense psychological pressure" and threatened with 10-year prison sentences. more ›

Prominent HIV/AIDS activist and Sakharov Prize winner Hu Jia (胡佳) may have been freed from a three-and-a-half-year jail sentence for state subversion, but he continues to remain technically under house arrest, with security guards following him wherever he goes. more ›

"I have to always to ask myself, 'How long can I last?' if I'm in extreme conditions such as jail." more ›

Kelley Lee is the young, talented chef and mastermind behind some of Shanghai's most famous and well-loved eateries (The Alchemist, Boxing Cat Brewery, Cantina Agave). Not long ago, she expanded Mexican favorite Cantina Agave to Pudong and had a slew of new venues open up at the Sinan Mansions complex. A remarkably tenacious business woman, Shanghaiist gets her to open up on what constitutes a good meal, how a guy should impress her over dinner, and whether she has any more plans for world, excuse us, Shanghai domination. more ›

Over the weekend, Shanghai-made expat band Moon Tyrant released their debut album Future Superhuman with a party at Yuyintang. Consisting of four musicians from Panama, Tasmania, New York and New Jersey, they play old school rock n' roll with a jazzy metal twist. Shanghaiist's Bo Hershey caught up with one of their members, bassist JC Heinbockel, who chatted with us about their new CD, the local music scene and what's next for the band. In case you didn't get the CD at the release party, you can check them out on their Bandcamp page Douban page, and soon on iTunes! more ›

The Shanghai Foreign Correspondents Club last night played host to Jia Zhangke, the man NPR recently dubbed "the most important filmmaker working in the world today." The evening began at Shanghai Film Art Center with a special screening of Jia's latest film, the Shanghai-focused documentary I Wish I Knew (《上海传奇》), released to coincide with the ongoing World Expo. The viewing was followed by a Q&A with the director down the road at Cotton's on Xinhua Lu. You can listen to to that 76-minute session right here (in Chinese with English translations). more ›

You've no doubt already heard about our Dukes of Hazzard-inspired 4th of July party coming up this Sunday at Boxing Cat Brewery on Fuxing Lu. We're really excited to have a very talented trio of musicians — they're calling themselves Boss Hogg — performing all afternoon. We recently caught up with Boss Hogg member Jeff Davis, who told us a little bit about the group. more ›

Six months after his interview with Singapore's founding father Lee Kuan Yew, Charlie Rose has sat down with his son, Lee Hsien Loong, the current prime minister of Singapore, who was in the United States last week for the nuclear security summit. In the hour-long interview, Lee fielded a wide range of questions on everything from Obama's leadership to China, Iran and India. Here's the China-specific portion of the interview which we found particularly interesting: more ›

Jeremy Goldkorn of Danwei sits down for a chat with Yang Yang and celebrated gay film director Cui Zi'en (催子恩), masterminds of the Beijing Queer Film Festival (北京酷儿影展) which took place in June this year. more ›

On Wednesday we told you about how the recent comments of Singapore's elder statesman Lee Kuan Yew made during his latest trip to the US have caused an uproar among Chinese netizens. Aside from his more controversial statements that Asia needs the United States to counterbalance a rising China and that the US needs to be "an important part" of any new East Asian architecture, Lee also gave a wide-ranging interview to the Charlie Rose Show of the PBS network. China featured heavily in the 60 minute interview which kicked off with Lee's proclamation that the United States may have half a century left as the world's dominant power. In the new world order, said Lee, the US would have to make space for China and India at the top table of the world. For the next hour or so, sit back with us and gaze into Lee Kuan Yew's crystal ball as he looks back into the past and divines the future. As always, if you're in China and still not able to watch Youtube videos, now is the time to get your VPN. Meanwhile, a full transcript of this interview is available here. more ›

We recently caught up with Shanghai-based independent filmmaker Luis Tapia of Daedalum Films, who is currently busy preparing for the May 9 premiere screening of his new documentary short about Shanghai band Hard Queen and the life of indie rock musicians in China. Seats are still available for the screening. Advance tickets can be purchased here. more ›

Go here to listen to Terry Gross' interview with Beijing-based (and formerly Shanghai-based) writer James Fallows, The Atlantic's "man in China." Fallows discusses a variety of topics, including China's extensive investment in the United States (see his Atlantic story on the topic here), his new book of China essays (excerpt on Danwei), internet censorship and his recently deceased father. Around the 24-minute mark, Fallows makes some interesting statements about how he thinks Chinese people would have voted in the recent U.S. election — we're curious how his observations compare to what Shanghaiist readers saw and heard leading up to November 4. more ›

Shanghaiist recently enjoyed a few nonfat egg nogs with DJ El Nomo, who promises to make the Shanghaiist/Cotton's holiday party "the wildest holiday blowout ever held at Cotton's on Xinhua Lu." A tall task indeed. You may recognize El Nomo from such weblogs as Shanghai Bananas. And, of course, he is ranked No. 1 worldwide in the controversial Gothamist DJ Rankings. The following is a transcript of our unfiltered discussion with Asia's very own wizard of wax. more ›

Xu Xi, author of Evanescent Isles talks to Zhang Lijia, journalist and author of the book Socialism is Great. In her book, Zhang tells her fascinating story of how she worked as a teenager in a Nanjing factory which produced missiles designed to reach North America, participated in the Tiananmen Square protests and eventually became a journalist. more ›

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 States. Because it's about more than sports. It's about shattering stereotypes that Asians are intrinsically not good at track and field."