I guess in a land where people still go hungry, it sometimes seems a little luxurious to care about what happens to the animals - but it's hard not to have a reaction when hearing about the constant and seemingly systematic cruelty to dogs in this country. Recently, an illegal dog slaughterhouse was uncovered in Jilin Province, where about 300 dogs a day were slaughtered and then sold for their meat. more ›

So we've sat on this piece of news over the weekend and we're still not sure what to think about it. Is it super awesome that a Chinese wedding couple decided to attach a 2.16km long train to the back of a wedding gown, complete with 9,999 silk roses, in an attempt to challenge the current world record holding wedding dress (1.58km)... or is it just super tacky? Zhao Peng and Lin Rong got married in eastern Jilin province, and it took their 200 wedding guests three hours to unroll the fabric of Lin Rong's dress. After the ceremony, he cut the dress down to 1,984.1022m to represent his bride's date of birth and then added 608 crystals to represent each day they dated. The whole dress cost about 40,000RMB - probably equivalent to the annual salary of his schoolteacher bride. Source: BBC more ›

Just two days ago, a four-year-old Siberian Tiger at the Changchun Zoo in Jilin gave birth to a healthy little cub. Since we've never quite understood why Tigers were the redheaded stepchild to Giant Pandas in this country (their diets actually make evolutionary sense, for goodness sake!), we've made it our mission to publicize it whenever these furry little creatures take a step back from extinction. Hurrah for Siberian Tigers! more ›

So,the Mountain Goats have a new album out and on it is a song called "Tianchi Lake." It's about the the crater lake at Changbai Shan, in Jilin Province, on the North Korean border. (More photos from our 2004 trip to Tianchi here.) more ›

Photo by Captain Video taken from the Shanghaiist photos page. To see your photos on our photos 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 ›

An explosion at Chinese chemical plant -- no, not that one -- will not affect Shanghai's water supply ... so say the ever-reliable "local authorities." The blast occurred Thursday at the Jiangdu Chemical Plant, near Yangzhou in Jiangsu province, which neighbors Shanghai, and straddles the Yangtze River, the source of much of Shanghai's water. 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 ›