The Chinese national team's elation from its 4-0 thrashing of Singapore yesterday was quickly dampened by news that Iraq had edged out Jordan in Group A, dashing China's hopes of qualifying for the 2014 Brazilian World Cup. more ›

Had your share of robots transforming into vehicles, lisping ground sloths that adopt dinosaur eggs and and the wizardry of Hogwarts? Here's another cinematic solution for you! Every Thursday, Vienna Café at Shaoxing Lu offers a different film choice for the Shanghai movie audience. This week's movie is a reality based border-crossing romance between a Turkish actress and her Kurdish lover. more ›

• Sichuan peppercorns: "There's a war in my mouth." [Boing Boing] "Sichuan peppercorns, oh yeah! Raven of Made with Molecules after eating them wrote, "There's a war in my mouth." They create a riot of numbing and tingling sensations, particularly if you can get relatively fresh ones (i.e. not stale from sitting around in a Whole Foods bulk bin). Raven links to an abstract about the particular anesthetic-sensitive potassium channels inhibited by hydroxy-alpha-sanshool, one of the components of sichuan peppercorns that make them so exciting."
• Death of a Dystopian: The life and legacy of J.G. Ballard [Reason Magazine] "J.G. Ballard is best known for Empire of the Sun (1984), a largely autobiographical coming-of-age novel based on his upbringing in Shanghai, where his father was a businessman, and his internment in a World War II prison camp during the Japanese invasion. For those with darker tastes, there is the cult classic Crash, a wild, transgressive 1973 novel about a community of car-crash fetishists that was eventually made into a Cronenberg film. His writing is obsessed with the territories where the organic meets the inorganic; it is absurdist, bleak, vivid, and awake to the psychological effects of media and manmade landscapes. In the words of the novelist Martin Amis, “Ballard is quite unlike anyone else; indeed, he seems to address a different—a disused—part of the reader’s brain.”
• Life in jail for killing Chinese student [News.com.au] "THE killer of a Chinese student who was left to die after being raped and choked on a roadside verge has been sentenced to life imprisonment. Danny Adam Wright, 36, was found guilty of the wilful murder and sexual penetration of Chinese student Jiao Dan, 22, in the Perth suburb of Inaloo on October 8, 2007. Justice Michael Murray told the court in sentencing Wright today that it was a dreadful incident for which Wright had failed to show remorse. He sentenced him to life in jail with a minimum non-parole period of 18 years."

NOTE: The opinions expressed in "Opinionist" columns are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Shanghaiist. more ›

In a repeat of the utter ridiculousness of the Chinese gymnastics team being made to promise to be injury- and drug-free, the latest news is that the Chinese soccer team has been offered a million dollars as a reward and made to recite the following vow:

“I pledge to advance to the World Cup, which is the professional goal that we strive for… We swear by death to kill along the bloody road of defending the honour of the motherland and realise our youthful dreams.”

The Hong Kong chief executive, Donald Tsang, says that the Chinese government is committed to a plan for letting the country's mainland investors trade shares on the city's stock exchange. more ›

Georgia Popplewell of Global Voices Online has offered a great summary of reactions from the international blogosphere to Friday's announcement that former US vice president Al Gore and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have won this year's Nobel Peace Prize. more ›

A powerful storm drenched China's southeast coast Sunday after killing five people on Taiwan and prompting the mainland to evacuate more than 1 million people, the government announced. more ›

Colleague: Haha, I understand. I'm not a very good CCP member, and not a very bad one either, but you probably can't say I'm a member anymore. I have not been paying my party membership fees for three years now, and haven't been keeping up with the meetings, so they probably struck my name off the list. more ›

The Youtube video shown here produced by Chinese Malaysian student Wee Meng Chee, 24, triggered torrents of invective from Malays, and support from some Chinese in Malaysia. more ›

Despite squandering a two-goal lead, China battled hard to put themselves within touching distance of a place in the second round of the Asian Cup after drawing 2-2 with regional footballing powerhouse Iran last night. more ›

Celebrated American writer and critic Gore Vidal was interviewed by former New South Wales Premier Bob Carr on Sunday at Glamour Bar before a full audience as the opening speaker for the 2007 Shanghai International Literary Festival. Over his career which spans more than 60 years, Vidal has produced novels, plays, screenplays, and numerous essays and pamphlets, and most recently, he published his memoirs, Point-to-Point Navigation. more ›

Officially, at least. Although anyone in Shanghai who wanted to see The Departed already has seen it on a pretty high-quality DVD, news outlets are reporting that the movie will never be shown in China's theaters. Here are the reasons according to one anonymous government source: more ›

While the rest of the world is wondering how George W. Bush will further fuck up Iraq and where Becks and Posh are going to settle in L.A., we came across a report about a concert event in Las Vegas: more ›

Photo by spiky247 taken from 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. more ›

Sorry, Henry's Brewery & Grill, at 33 Sichuan Zhong Lu (near Yan'an Lu, a block behind Three on the Bund), has us excited. We had a pint (okay, 15 ounces) of a decent draft pale ale for 30 kuai -- and it wasn't a special introductory price, either. They boast "The Best Beers on the Bund," but we think they are selling themselves short. Who else (other than Paulaner) brews their own beer in Shanghai? Where else can you get a pale ale on tap? Or a honey brown? And where else, save for the occasional happy hour special, can you get a similarly well crafted draft beer for 30 kuai? The Best Beers on the Bund? How about The Best Beers in Shanghai? And you can probably throw in Anhui, Zhejiang, Jiangsu and a dozen or so other provinces, as well. You can get a free sampler of their five beers -- just ask. more ›

Shanghaiist was never a good cheater -- we raised the hand that had the history of the American Civil War scribbled on it to hail the teacher over. Chinese students, on the other hand, are much more adept and much more high-tech about it. However, remember that these things do backfire. more ›

Something's definitely afoot in the smoky backrooms of Zhongnanhai and the smoke-free and spooky chambers of the Vatican: China is pulling The Da Vinci Code off screens nationwide. So far, there is no official reason, just conjectures. The Scotsman said that it had something to do with Beijing's relations to the Vatican: more ›

胡锦涛主席启程出访五国
Chairman Hu Jintao sets out to visit five countries, including 美利坚合众国 (the USA). Did you hear about the dinner at Bill Gates' house? more ›

The Chinese have always enjoyed a bit of schadenfreude at US President George W. Bush's expense, and the China Daily is no exception. Take a look at the picture above, the first of a series of movie posters that have been spoofed to illustrate the big news stories of 2005 (this one from the Jay Chou movie, Initial D (头文字D). Other news stories covered were the July 7 London bombings using the US television show 24 and the China's diplomatic efforts during the six-party talks with Stephen Chou's Kung-Fu Hustle. (Typical of China to use the only non-satirical spoof poster to toot its own horn). Shanghaiist also likes the second poster, which has Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Cuban President Fidel Castro, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Noam Chomsky. (Circle the one that doesn't belong in a group with the others.) Anyway, we don't get why they're bustin' W's balls. After all, he did get elected President of Iraq in the country's first free elections. more ›

Since Shanghaiist kicked off in July this year, we've inflicted opinion after opinion on you, our faithful readership. Here comes a whole bunch more. more ›

Adam Freeland, breaks DJ more ›

British PM Tony Blair came out of his visit to China a big winner after receiving China's backing for a United Nations Security Council resolution against terrorist incitement. In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on London, Blair pushed for new laws that would make public or private statements that indirectly incited terrorism an offense punishable by law. The new UN resolution, which is still in the works, is of the same drift -- it gives countries a greater mandate to stop terrorist incitement within their own borders. more ›

Researchers at the University of Michigan (Go blue!) thought it would be useful to find out who can see the forest for the trees, or literally, the grasslands for the tiger. Why they weren’t finding the cure for cancer, we’ll never know -- but they proved, once and for all, that Asians and Americans see things differently. Then, they went ahead and got their findings published by the National Academy of Sciences on Tuesday. more ›

The New York Times has a great story today about Chen Xianzhong, a native of Jilin Province determined to operate "the best Chinese restaurant ever in Iraq." There are certain, um, obstacles: more ›

He was a wise man who invented beer. -- Plato more ›