Taiwan megastar and singer-songwriter Jay Chou (周杰伦) has joined the ranks of Ashton Kutcher as a celebrity tech investor. His latest venture comes in the form of 31SMS, a mobile messaging application for iPhones and Android phones which he's hoping his star appeal will help make a WhatsApp-killer, at least for the Greater China market. more ›

In a list populated with movers and shakers such as Eddy Cue of Apple (who basically made iTunes) and Shiro Nakamura of Nissan (the inventor of the first major electric-only car for everyone), there sits Jay Chou at no. 70. The Asian music mogul is touted for his success as a singer-songwriter, which he has parlayed into a career in other media - including directing and acting. more ›

The original show was about a black-masked avenger who fought crime with an awesome car and a badass sidekick played by Bruce Lee. The latest film incarnation seems to have all those components, with Bruce Lee replaced by Taiwanese pop sensation Jay Chou. Go figure. Watch Jay smolder and drop-kick and mumble his way through the first trailer of Michel Gondry's Green Hornet flick, coming out January 2011. more ›

This week, get acquainted with one of Asia's biggest pop stars, or with local musicians making a name for themselves on the Shanghai scene. There's a little something for everyone with dubstep blended house music, a reggae-jazz fusion, East Coast hip hop and 3D-assisted electro. more ›

Jay Chou is coming! Sadly, we are on a budget here at Shanghaiist, so we can only scream about it. But maybe we scream loud enough they will give us free tickets? more ›

It's been a long year filled with trivial fun, the best of which involves the antics of celebrities, musicians, writers, and generally anyone involved in the creation of China's vibrant culture. From poetry to death hoaxes, we've garnered a lot of enjoyment from covering the diaspora of China's creative zeitgeist. And in honor of the multitudinous wonderful, scandalous and noteworthy things we've watched, experienced and digested over the past year, here's a short breakdown of our favorite gems of cultural news. more ›

Brush up on your superlatives, because there may have just been a shift of power: Jay Chou has been dubbed one of Asia's 25 most influential individuals or groups by CNNGo. more ›

Well, according to Indonesian media he is, but in reality, though, Jay Chou is doing just fine. News sources claimed that the Taiwanese pop singer had died of a drug overdose, but his record label quickly dispelled the rumors: he's just in America filming "The Green Hornet." It's not the first time that Jay Chou has supposedly died: in 2004, a Chinese website claimed that he had been run over by a truck, but that obviously wasn't true either. This attempt wasn't any more convincing: though we love him, we know deep down that Jay Chou is definitely not of death-from-overdose musician status. Shanghaiist's prediction for the next Jay Chou death hoax: death by green hornet sting. more ›

Yes, we realize Jay Chou's music all sounds the same but we love him anyway. Heck, even this mashup of fifteen (FIFTEEN!) of his songs sounds pretty good to us. Where can we get the mp3? more ›

British culture magazine Monocle has an interesting look at Taiwanese pop and its infiltration into the mainland. Despite the decades of turbulence between Taiwan and China, the entertainment mega-machine based out of Taipei has barely hiccuped in its flow from the island to its more than receptive audience here. more ›

Here's an interesting mash up between a Cultural Revolution-era Long March opera and "Ninja" by Jay Chou, created - if the video's to be believed - by Lee Tang (李唐) from Lu Xun Academy of Fine Art two years back. Is the song choice supposed to be a little ironic, considering one of the parties the Long March ended just around the beginning of the second Sino-Japanese War? more ›

Netease has released a "Top Ten Musical Singles" list, compiled from the data generated from its 200 million or so Chinese users. So what have the Chinese been listening to a lot this year? Unsurprisingly, Beijing Olympics songs, Sichuan Earthquake songs and... Jay Chou. In fact, he was so popular that his album, Capricorn, mysteriously took 7th place on a list of "singles." more ›

...and we don't mean playing the role of a teacher in a film, we mean an actual teacher. No, really. Most of us know Jay Chou (周杰伦) – the mumbling Taiwanese R’n’B superstar – as that guy who stares blankly at us from Meters Bonwe adverts on the metro, but if you thought he was just another vacant celebrity then a reappraisal may be due, as Jay will soon take up the post of lecturer in our fair city. more ›

Just as the rest of the world is getting swept away in a social networking frenzy, googling for keywords such as "Badoo", "Facebook", "Ebuddy", "Hi5" and even "Second Life", Chinese googlers it seems are a completely different species. In 2007, four out of the top ten keywords among Chinese googlers were wealth-related, searching for keywords such as "stock", "China Merchants Bank", "Industrial and Commercial Bank of China" and "China Construction Bank". Bank of China is conspicuously absent from the list! more ›

Ang Lee's steamy blockbuster Lust, Caution was named Best Film at the 44th Golden Horse Awards in Taipei yesterday, the Chinese-speaking world's most coveted film awards. It also swept away six other awards, including Best Director, Best Actor, Best Screenplay Adaptation, Best Film Score, Best Makeup and Costume Design, and Best New Performer. Here is the list of winners:Best film: "Lust, Caution" Best director: Ang Lee, "Lust, Caution" Best actor: Tony Leung Chiu-wai, "Lust, Caution"... more ›

If you think only Chinese people use Baidu, you're dead wrong. Recently, a friend of ours in the US complained that he was unable to find any more music through Baidu's MP3 search service. Not a surprise really, since that treasure trove of pirated music that is now getting sued for big bucks in a Beijing court by some of the biggest names in music including Universal, EMI, Warner, Sony BMG and their local subsidiaries,... more ›

... and spotted doing menial tasks like sweeping the roads, picking up the trash, cooking and putting up pictures of Chairman Mao. No, really, it's just the Red Laowai in his latest incarnation. Tired of singing Chinese commie propaganda songs, he became Jay Chou for a while before donning on his uniform again to become Comrade Lei Feng, the soldier in whose footsteps the youth of China have been indoctrinated to follow. In this latest... more ›

The Red Laowai (红老外) — yes, that shirtless dude in New York that's been singing communist propaganda songs such as “My China Heart"《我的中国心》, "Without the Communist Party, there is no New China"《没有共产党就没有新中国》and "Oriental Red"《东方红》and putting his videos online — has done it again. This time, he has put his shirt on, created a music video and he's singing Jay Chou and rapping. The song 止战之殇 (The Wound That Ends War) is an anti-war song in... more ›

Well...after a day of bloating ourselves on turkey and pumpkin pie (sorry Shanghaiist is American and assumes that everyone else wants to be one) the perfect cure is a night of live music. Lucky for us Convenience Store, one of Beijing's longest lasting and most reputable Brit-pop bands, is going to be playing out at Live Bar tonight. Shanghaiist has waited along time to see this band, in the past we were busy or too... more ›

200 RMB fines have gone a long way in making our streets quieter, but it looks like years of blasting the pipes have left drivers with itchy palms. Shanghai Daily is reporting that in an effort to circumvent the recent ban on horn-honking, some drivers have turned to customizing their horns to make different sounds when pressed. more ›

What have we, what have we, what have we done to deserve this? more ›

China's most popular search engine has compiled several top 10 lists for 2006, such as top 10 movies, top 10 TV series, top 10 fastest increasing search words, etc. Most of these are either based on the results in their search engine or statistics from their BBS posts. more ›

There's a definitely a buzz for fans of Chinese cinema with the release of Jia Zhangke's new film Still Life 《三峡好人》. In Shanghai and probably the rest of China, the film's theatrical release comes on December 14, the same day that Zhang Yimou's new film Curse of the Golden Flower. And while from the standpoint of the box office returns, it seems pretty clear who the winner will be, Jia doesn't at all seem flustered by the lackluster box office performance that his film has seen in the limited screenings that have happened over the last few weeks. more ›

From The Search Engine Journal we discovered that Baidu won an intellectual copyright infringement case against some major music companies. From Interfax: more ›

Being a Mandopop star seems like hard work. Endless promoting, little creative control, mediocre output, a demanding fanbase, a music market that is overrun by counterfeiting and short shelf life. It must get tiring. Wang Leehom is the rare pop star that has not only retained, but gained popularity after 10 years in the fickle Chinese pop business. On Saturday night, he brought his show to a capacity crowd of pop fans at the Shanghai Stadium. And he made it look easy. more ›

In the past few months, Shanghai has been visited by quite a few notable foreign musicians: a group of wily geriatric rockers, one-third of a has-been disco brotherhood and a spiritual singer with a love for Chinese orphans. There's also been a consistent lineup of bands playing Shanghai's underground rock scene. But what of all those poor souls in the city that yearn for some live Chinese pop music? Their prayers will be answered this summer, when a steady stream of Mando-pop talent make their way through town. more ›

The Hong Kong film awards ceremony was held last night, and unsurprisingly, there were no suprises, no upsets, nothing except the same banal shit. You can read about it here. A note about that article: It says that the HK Film Awards are the Chinese Oscars, even though Shanghaiist thought that the Golden Horse awards over in Taiwan were the Chinese Oscars. Which one is it? Or should the Golden Rooster awards be considered as well? more ›

This story tells us that Shanghai's Madam Tussauds museum will open May 1 and feature 21 wax figures of "celebrities like Jackie Chan." And we always though Jackie was one of a kind. What other celebrities are like Jackie Chan, you ask? Here's a sampling: more ›

Yao Ming is tall. He is also good at basketball. We already told you that. He is also China's top celebrity, three years running, according to Forbes. The list takes into account all that is important in life: income, television appearances, newspaper mentions, magazine covers, internet searches, and the like. (Hmmmm. We do a lot of internet searches and we weren't ranked. Likely because we weren't born in Mainland China. Same reason why Jay Chou isn't on the list.) more ›

As we told you in November, Rolling Stone, the once relevant music magazine, has plans for China. Well, now they have materialized. The inaugural issue, with Chinese rocker Cui Jian on the cover, hit newsstands over the weekend. Pictured is the copy we bought for 20 RMB on Nanjing Xi Lu (price includes a Rolling Stone baseball cap). Based on interviews with a couple news vendors in Beijing, The Times of London has proclaimed the magazine a "smash hit": more ›