Check out John Pasden's helpful tips here (and be jealous that your company doesn't subsidize the purchasing of cool smuggled gadgets). more ›

Freshly fired from Windows Underground, Brad finally has time to blog again. Here's a snippet from "My Shanghai Story (Part 1)", about the Texan's introduction to Shanghai's underground live music scene: "About a month later John, some other friends, and I went to our first real underground rock show at the Sus2 Music Factory (a real factory!) where Reflector (反光镜) and Loudspeaker (扩音器) played a late-afternoon show to a crowd of pierced/mohawked/Dr Marten’d students. I remember complaining that Loudspeaker’s guitarist was out of tune, and when I got home I downloaded Reflector’s EP from their website. Their song 'Wuliao Contingent' (无聊军队) is still in rotation on my iPod." more ›

So in the meanwhile, Youtube remains blocked. Shanghai blogger John Pasden of Sinosplice informs us that Youtube wasn't the only unlucky fella. Revver.com and Dailymotion.com also appear to be hit. And of course Google Video was never accessible in China to begin with, so that's a no-count. more ›

And in Shanghai...
• John Pasden talks about his (Chinese) wife freaking out over his fever.
• Swiss James of ISpyShanghai recommends the Ganzhi Blindman Massage on the corner of Beijing Lu and Shaanxi Lu.
• Marc van der Chijs (of Tudou fame) shares with us the inconveniences that the cancellation of a recent China Eastern flight brought him and how he was handled.

What was this about relaxing on the last weekend of a holiday? Nonsense, that’s what it was. We’ve been busy -- actually Brad’s been busy and we tried to help him (more on that in a few), but we still managed to get the show out … albeit, a few days late. Sorry. more ›

If you've been in China for a while you know how hard it can be to find good English books, and even if you just arrived, you know it won't take long to reach the bottom of that box of books you brought over. Sure, you could pick up pirated copies of bestsellers off the back of a tricycle or pay airport prices for a somewhat better selection at Charterhouse, but because we know everyone loves free stuff, we suggest you check out John Pasden's Shanghai Book Swap tomorrow. more ›