People Daily has this short two-paragraph news item on the latest developments in starting pay for fresh graduates:The Education and Economic Research Institute of Peking University and the Institute for Higher Education recently issued the "2007 employment situation for college graduates" survey results. The investigation revealed that the employment rate of graduates in 2007 reached 70%; the average starting salary for graduates was 1,798 yuan; and half of graduates received less than 1,500 yuan. The......

Well, then: Oops. What last month we said was going to happen, this month was made official. China has scrapped May holiday, one of its three Golden Weeks, and turned three traditional festivals into national holidays. Here's how your official 2008 Chinese holiday schedule now looks: New Year's Day: January 1Spring Festival: February 6,7 and 8 (Wednesday-Friday)Tomb Sweeping Day (Qingming Jie, 清明节): April 4 (Friday)Labor Day: May 1 (Thursday)Dragon Boat Festival (Duanwu Jie, 端午節): June......

Yesterday's copy of the Wall Street Journal has a very interesting observation: that few of China's top political and business leaders these days have white hair:It is possible that could have something to do with genes, but something else is involved, too. For aging men of influence here, the dye job appears to have become as commonplace as the Mao suit once was. Though they range in age from 52 to 67, the most senior......

If you have never seen what a Chinese job fair looks like, you NEED to take a look at this clip. Recruitment fairs usually have more security guards for crowd control and police on standby than other fairs, but it looks like even the organisers of this most recent fair in Jiangxi were taken aback by the turnout. As captured on the clip, a stampede almost broke out but fortunately, it did not. The truth......

Those sounding the death knell for an Apple, China Mobile iPhone partnership maybe a bit premature. On Friday, a China Mobile spokesperson in Hong Kong confirmed(in Chinese) that discussion between the two sides is still ongoing, but didn’t elaborate on any details. China Mobile has bluntly stated that it has no intention of sharing subscription revenue with handset manufacturers, the core of Apple’s business model. And as the overwhelmingly dominant carrier in China, it is......

Sun Liping is a professor of sociology at Qinghua University, and we recently read a short article he wrote about why Chinese society is going to remain stable. There have been several writers who have written responses to Professor Sun's article, but before we get to those we'll try to translate the gist of Professor Sun's article as best we can. Sun's basic thesis is not that Chinese society is going to get ever more......

Guangdong Province is mulling a new law that will categorise all jobs into "encouraged", "restricted" and "forbidden" for foreigners in a bid to restrict the employment of foreigners and to ban them from certain jobs. Xinhua elucidates:For jobs in the "encouraged" category, the potential foreign employees will be issued permits. Employers will be charged fees for hiring foreigners for "restricted" positions. The employment of foreigners without permits will be illegal, said the spokesman, without indicating......

About 100 Chinese teachers are expected to arrive at state schools in the United Kingdom (yes, that haven of foreign language education) by next year, but schools which have already employed some of those teachers in their classrooms (which they described as "lovely") have already found problems, such as the following:"Their lack of familiarity with the English system of discipline, target setting etc is a problem.""They also tend to have different, perhaps unrealistic, expectations of......

This group of women in Guangxi Province's Nanning (南宁) have just completed their state-sponsored training and received their certification as trained maternity matrons (月嫂), who according to our favourite English-Chinese dictionary, are maids -- usually married women who already have their own kids -- that are hired to take care of mothers and their newborns ("Chinese women traditionally are confined indoors for a month after delivering a baby on the grounds that they are particularly......

China reporters probing bridge disaster "beaten" [Reuters] Chinese journalists probing a bridge collapse that killed dozens of people said they were harassed and beaten by local thugs, exposing the state-run media's see-saw struggle between control and candor. China blows up collapsed bridge in search for more victims [Xinhua] The new bridge which collapsed four days ago was blown up early Friday morning in a desperate effort to find out more victims as chances of finding......

Hu in new bid to tighten screws on rival faction, by Chua Chin Hon of the Straits Times:One has died from an undisclosed illness while another is already behind bars on corruption charges. But there appears to be no let-up in Chinese President Hu Jintao's attempts to put the squeeze on members of the rival Shanghai faction, a group of senior leaders and officials allied with his predecessor Jiang Zemin. News emerged in recent days......

PLUS brolly-toting Premier Wen and X-ray of Homer Simpson's brain! In the good old days, a career with the People's Liberation Army was often seen as an iron rice bowl and highly sought after by parents for their sons. As one of the key avenues for social mobility after the founding of the PRC, it was not uncommon to find propaganda posters like the one you see on the right extolling the virtues of the......

Shanghaiist recently wrote about the fake iPhones made in China that are already available for purchase. We found the video below that shows some of those great fake features in motion. Being Apple users we're pretty sure Steve Jobs (or the "iGod") would flip out at seeing the less-than-stellar interface design. Thankfully for Steve, the software shows it's actually a tPhone and not an iPhone. I guess we somehow missed all the tPhone hype.......

Expats it’s time to start renegotiating your contracts! The Shanghai Daily reports in the past week the price of zongzi (粽子), the delicious pyramid-shaped dumpling made of sticky rice and meat, has according to reliable sources increased by a whopping 10 percent. The treats are now fetching a prohibitive 2.50 RMB. The reason for the increase is probably due to the coming Dragon Boat Festival and the ever-rising price of pork. While there are......

From wodingg.com we discovered that Google China (soon to be China Google?) has come out with a new search engine function called Google Sheng Huo (生活), which you can use to search for stuff like housing, jobs, and stuff to buy. Basically what it does is to gather results from other websites and search engines. For example, if you want a job, you select the criterion (place, industry, salary, date information was released, etc.) and......

Wuhan Science & Technology Institute recently co-sponsored a Graduate Fashion Week in the city to showcase the talents of some 450 graduate students from all around China. Likely making this event the first major level graduate fashion week in China. The event which took place on May 8 to 12 not only paraded the designs of students on the catwalk, but had them also compete for the top positions in as many as 14 different......

Shanghai Daily predicts an "early summer" for Shanghai, with temperatures hitting 30 degrees Celsius today. The Shanghaiist Weather Center, however, says today's high will only reach 27 (our current temperature) and that temperatures will remain in the 20s throughout the week, maxing out at 29 on Wednesday. Not that 29 is exactly chilly — for all you Americans out there, that means 84 degrees Fahrenheit. Why are we talking about the weather? Well, while shopping......

Guangdong, China - 25 year old Chinese woman Yang Huiyan is now Asia's richest woman and China's richest person after her father transfers his shares to her and the company debuts on the Hong Kong stock exchange. At $9 billion, Yang is richer than George Soros, Steve Jobs of Apple and Rupert Murdoch of News Corp. But sorry guys, she is already married!Singapore - Founding father of modern Singapore Lee Kuan Yew, acknowledging the view......

We never thought we would ever see The Slits appear on a poster promoting a Shanghai event, but that day has arrived thanks to 88 New Wave who have been quietly putting on offbeat punk parties at Cs Bar. We like their eclectic and open take on punk, enjoying everything from Gang of Four to Salt 'n Pepa. Tomorrow night is themed around feminine punk grrrl power so it's time to get out your favourite......

New Internet Publication Regulation to be Drafted "Drafting a new licensing rule for online magazines is on the agenda of China’s administration of press and publication, which will require online magazines to obtain license from the government before publishing, China Business News reported." Shanghai Wifi Cafes "To counter the trend, here's our list of Shanghai cafes that still keep the free wifi faith." 5th biggest taxi company quits city's call center "Shanghai's efforts to......

Shanghaiist felt a little sad a few years back when we learnt that one of our first automotive crushes was soon to be no more. However, we felt a lot happier last week when we learnt that the MG had arrived back on the scene, and all thanks to China's oldest automotive manufacturer, Nanjing Automobile. The New York Times has a great article on how the resurrection of the MG-Rover brand is representative of the......

An unlinkable story from the South China Morning Post relays the chilling tale of Chongqing municipality's Wanzhou district, where the local government has ordered that all pet dogs be put to death because a resident died of rabies. Just when you think being a dog owner in China can't get any scarier ... The Wanzhou district government has issued a directive asking residents in the central city area to have their dogs put down before......

Director Nick Broomfield recently released Ghosts (鬼佬) on the film festival circuit. The movie tells the story of Chinese illegals eking out a living in England, and although we searched quite thoroughly on a recent trip to the states, evidently it is only showing in England at this time. Therefore, because we have yet to see Ghosts, we cannot comment much further, and instead, here is the synopsis from the movie's website. Based on true......

From February until August, Chinese TV "golden hours" (5-8pm) programming is going to go on moral diet, shedding excess and unwanted sex, violence, and moral degradation. This we learned from a Chinese report as well as Asia Times Online, where they quoted official Wang Weiping on the matter: "The country's satellite TV stations should only screen ethically inspiring TV series during prime time," Shanghai Daily quoted Wang Weiping, an official from the State Administration of......

No, pictured here isn’t the vaunted Apple iPhone, it’s a Meizu M8 … maybe. Meizu? Not exactly a household brand name next to Apple. But for what it's worth, this Chinese manufacturer does make some pretty decent, portable music/video players, seen here. Some have even managed to find their ways to overseas markets. But, not everyone is thrilled with their product, Meizu has caught some flak for what some had considered to be an outright......

We just noticed these today at the Huangpi Nan Lu metro stop. They very well could have already been there for a while, but this was the first day in a few weeks that we needed to recharge our transportation card. The machines are located right next to the two service windows we would normally go to (and today were closed). The recharge machines are very easy to use, in English or Chinese, and basically......

We came across this store during a stroll on Jianguo Lu. Having recently bought an Astro Boy (60s Japanese anime) DVD, we were quick to notice an inflatable Atom Boy or two smiling blankly next to some flashing Christmas bulb lights in a display window, and we had no choice but to go and walk in. According to Jeff, the co-owner/manager (he wasn't that specific), while both he and the other guy had day jobs......

For us in Shanghai, the keynote speach of Steve Jobs at Macworld came at around 1 am. It marked an important event in the gadget world — the unveiling of the much-anticipated iPhone. You can find A LOT OF details here, here, here, and here. First interesting thing: the name "iPhone" — just in mid-December Linksys launched its new series of iPhones. Now, Apple, Inc. took over the brand name and both parties seem to......

From Shanghai China Snippets: Recruiting staff in China is not hindered by “weird” laws that tell you not to discriminate on age, sex etc. And if these laws exist, if so, fill me in, companies don’t seem to really care. You want to hire a hot, Shanghainese, single employee between 20 and 21, light skin color, minimum height 1.65 and a max weight 50 kg, go ahead. You want to hire a blackman that can......

Because Shanghaiist is too poor to afford satellite TV, he's often had to entertain himself with China's favourite (and only) English-language channel, especially when he's suffering from insomnia. Today's news coverage includes a story of what is touted as "Asia's first Dark Restaurant" which has just opened in Beijing (we briefly told you about this on Jan. 5). The video to the right is from a Chinese-language CCTV report. The restaurant experience begins in a......