Jimmy Carter, the former US president who formalised ties with China 30 years ago, meets Premier Wen Jiabao (温家宝) in the same room where he first met the late Deng Xiaopeng (邓小平). Carter said he visited China as a young man when he was in the navy and always thought of his life and destiny as being "very close to China". Accompanying Carter were other leading former US officials, including former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and National Security Advisers Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski. more ›

Okay, Shanghaiist has got several hundred blogs on his RSS that he scans through everyday. Some things scream at us, others are quickly forgotten and yet others are hidden in some corner of our brain for (mostly useless) information ready to be used at some future point in time. There are all these bloggers that you've never met personally that you can form an impression of only after a long period of reading their blogs. You're reading them every single day, and sometimes it almost feels as though they're your friend, even though you don't really know them. It's most surreal. 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 ›

The question posed by one Glenn Beck, a program host for CNN Headline News, during his nationally syndicated radio program. Shanghaiist learned of the story from Mediamatters.org: more ›