Jesus seems to be making a comeback in the PRC. Since the introduction of Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox missionaries to China, many of them to Shanghai, in the Ming and Qing dynasties, Christianity has been a popular minority religion. While practice abated during Mao’s hay day, China has experienced a resurgence in past years. Just two weeks ago, we reported that Orthodox priests were allowed to lead a service in Shanghai for the first time in over four decades. An article by the Chicago Tribune shows this incident may be indicative of a larger trend of successful Christian advocacy, some of which may challenge the Chinese government’s role as supreme authority over its citizens:

As China's Christian population has climbed to an estimated 70 million, a growing number of lawyers and scholars have converted to Christianity and turned their skills to the issue of religious freedom. They are teaming up with churches to challenge the government in court, suing for the rights they believe are guaranteed under China's constitution. more ›

Air Asia, Asia's first budget airline, has just announced its latest China destination. From now on, you can fly from Hangzhou (which is just a stone's throw from Shanghai) to Kuala Lumpur at a fraction of the price! We just did a quick check on their system and if you plan ahead of time, you can expect to pay around RMB1,115 (taxes included) for the flight. You can even select your own seats on the website if you pay an additional RMB48! Kuala Lumpur being Air Asia headquarters, you can fly onward to a host of other exciting Southeast Asian destinations for that much-needed break. Other Chinese destinations currently served by Air Asia are Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Xiamen and Macau. more ›

In keeping with his practise of giving new year's predictions, US televangelist and host of The 700 Club on the Christian Broadcasting Network, Pat Robertson has fresh revelation from the Lord concerning 2008:

"What I'm praying about is China. I'm asking for 250 million in China. We haven't had that breakthrough yet but I think we're going to get it. God's going to give us China. And China will be the largest Christian nation on the face of the earth. They're going to come to Jesus."

Shanghaiist has often wondered what China would look like if it had complete religious freedom, as in the freedom to organise and set up religious denominations and associations outside of the five "official religions", and to have all these religious groups enter the free-wheeling marketplace with their books, CDs, video programmes and what not. This weekend, we caught a glimpse of that when a woman claiming to be "Jesus' sister" was arrested in the Guangdong province. She charges upwards of RMB100,000 to "heal" each cancer patient and owns three fancy villas. 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 ›

Remember the Shaanxi Temple Axe Murderer? You know, the one that killed eleven people aged 12-62 at a Taoist temple with an ax, dismembered them and fed some of their choice parts, including eyeballs, to the spotted dog that accompanied him? He was sentenced to death on October 19. For some good background on this man and his life, check out what ESWN had to say. more ›

As fall settles in and another calendar page gets turned, thoughts turn from bbq's and vacations to holidays and the realization that '06 is coming to an end. With all that going on, with change in the air, we wonder what is it that made that makes the -ists ponder? more ›

The world seems to be (perenially) on its way to hell in a handbasket, and yet sweet baby Jesus is taking his precious time to come back and make things better. In the meantime, however, there are people taking a more proactive stance. Here's something that you know could never happen in China, much less in Shanghai: more ›

Photo by the shanghaieye 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 ›

This has been a rough week for your -ist pals, though you wouldn't know it from the great posts all over the network. Plagued with server problems, our tech team (led by the great Neil Epstein) toiled around the clock to solve the glitches as they arose. Seriously, we've said, typed, and thought the phrase "server problems" more in the past week than we have for the last 35 years combined. Why not say it a few more times, just for fun? For example, SFist is sure the San Francisco Chronicle wishes they could blame server problems for this error. But this San Francisco man that appeared on "The Daily Show" is, sadly, no glitch in the system. more ›

GigShanghai: Noisy Sundays, females unite, and free BEP tickets! more ›

Blame it on the World Cup, but it’s a testament to the steady improvement of the Shanghai music scene that we now consider a weekend with four live shows “slow.” We unfortunately missed the Beijing rockers, Camel, at Live Bar on Friday night, but heard from reliable sources that they put on a fun, up-beat, pop-punk set. On Saturday, Hackbuteer played a wild show worthy of a crowd of 400 people at Yuyintang, except that there were only 40 people there. The highly underrated six-man band from Xi'an experimented with everything from straight-up rock-and-roll to an Incubus-esque combination of guitars and turntables. Best secret of the weekend, they were. And what’s better than drinking warm beer from a can in a dirty warehouse in the middle of nowhere? 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 ›

Shanghaiist has always been a little wary of traveling salesmen. Especially when their wares are of the snake oil variety. Which is why we weren't excited -- alas, nor surprised -- when we stumbled upon pray4shanghai.com: more ›

Shanghaiist has a grisly story to tell you. Zhang Zhian, a PhD student at Fudan University, is running a devilish experiment (report in Chinese) on live human subjects. He's asked 24 students to spend a week during their winter vacations away from the internet and television. Thankfully, these hapless middle school students are not being subjected to simultaneous deprivation of both TV and the internet. It's just one or the other, unless, of course they are masochistic courageous enough for both. Thus, some of the kids have weaned themselves off the internet by watching TV and doing some homework instead. According to the report, some of the kids also tried playing football (or soccer, as it's normally called), but we don't buy that for an instant. Never trust the media here. more ›

Shanghaiist isn't a Christian by a long shot, but lately we've been a bit nostalgic for the whole Christmas spirit thing, so we decided today to venture to the Community Church on Hengshan Lu (located right across from Narcissus and One Thousand and One Nights, which are perhaps landmarks for you decidedly un-Christian types) to see what was going on. In the afternoon we managed to walk into the middle of a play about some guy named Martin (played by a woman) who owned a shoe shop and was expecting Jesus to drop by. He had prepared some food and the other blandishments the Son of God might expect, but kept getting interrupted by various unexpected events involving people who needed his help and compassion. None of the dialogue in this place was uttered by the actors -- a recording was played on the PA system and the actors simply mouthed the lines, though you could barely see their lips moving, so it looked a bit like a pantomime, especially since Martin, played by a woman, had a Charlie Chaplin/Great Dictator type moustache pinned beneath her nose. Finally, when Jesus did arrive, He was just a voice from above, and told Martin, who began apologizing profusely for not serving Him well, that by serving all those people who needed his help and compassion, that Martin was in fact serving Jesus. more ›

Over this past weekend, 8 ultimate frisbee teams from across Asia gathered for the Hong Kong Pan-Asian Tournament 2005, each vying for the coveted spot at the top of the podium reserved for the tournament's champion. more ›