Public hospitals in Hong Kong may stop admitting mainland mothers seeking to deliver their child in the territory to keep more resources for the use of local women. more ›

A 7.4kg (15.5lb) boy born to a 29-year-old woman in Xinxiang, Henan province is now officially the heaviest baby in the history of China. Both mom and child are fine. The world record for heaviest baby was a 10.8kg baby born in Ohio in 1879. more ›

Anti-American crusader Sima Nan (司马南) got his head stuck recently at an escalator at the airport in Washington D.C. but he can consider himself lucky that he walked away with moderate injuries. A nine-year-old boy in Beijing was not so fortunate. He died yesterday after his head got caught between two escalators at a mall: more ›

more ›

more ›

An expensive private kindergarten in Nanjing has been accused of hiring unqualified teachers from the Philippines who are allegedly mistreating kids and asking parents for more cash: more ›

more ›

A suicide bomber blew himself up in a primary school in Anze County, Shanxi Province, killing himself and wounding another 6. Local authorities say that at around 1530 on November 24, Feng Aihong (冯爱红), the suicide bomber detonated his explosives in a local primary school, killing himself on the spot. One teacher and five students who were having sports class were also wounded. However, they suffered only facial burns and there is no danger to their lives. more ›

We told you yesterday about a school bus tragedy in Zhengning (正宁) County of Qingyang (庆阳) City in Western China's Gansu province in which a minibus overcrowded with preschoolers crashed with a truck, killing 20 and injuring dozens. Public anger is now rising over the incident, which today topped the list of trending topics on Sina Weibo, China's most popular microblogging platform. more ›

A series of photos entitled "My younger brother wants to sleep", in which a schoolgirl is seen taking care of her younger brother during class, recently went viral on the Chinese internet. The girl in the photo, Long Zhanghuan, is from a small village in Central China's Hunan Province. The boy she is looking after is her 2-year-old cousin. more ›

The plainclothes "fake police" trying to "lure foreign kids into their cars" two days ago were actually legitimate police officers who simply had a miscommunication with the young students due to their poor spoken English. more ›

The outpouring of sympathy and the flood of donations from around the nation has given Yueyue's parents a major headache even as doctors continue to work overtime to save the life of the toddler caught in the Foshan double hit-and-run that has now made international headlines. more ›

Zhang Xinyang (张炘炀), a 16-year-old getting his PhD in pure mathematics at Beihang University (北京航空航天大学), earlier this year refused to defend his master's thesis until his parents agreed to buy him his own apartment. Finally out of options, Zhang's parents rented an apartment in Beijing, and lied to their son about buying it. He's found out about the ruse, but his demands for an apartment haven't wavered. more ›

Attention all parents, you'll want to take note of this one! Fake police officers have been caught trying to lure students of the Dulwich College Shanghai into their cars in broad daylight outside Carrefour Jinqiao. The following letter sent by the Deutsche Schule Shanghai and Dulwich College to parents (you'll find the English portion on page 2) was forwarded to us by a concerned reader. If you have kids attending school in Shanghai, make sure they know they should never ever talk to strangers, accept food from them, or enter their vehicles. more ›

Our friends at Hands On Shanghai have a project that we can all get behind:

Helping to serve the basic needs of orphans and disadvantaged children in Anhui、Jiangxi、Gansu、and Shanxi Province, HandsOn Shanghai, in partnership with Mifan Mama will host a children clothing drive at MVC on September 24th. more ›

We don't know where these kids came from, and we don't know where they're going. We're merely grateful for the brief moment of their childhood they chose to share with the world, which is surely a better place with their preternaturally slick dance moves in it. more ›

For most American kids, summer camp is a place where they can get together with other kids, do cool things like rock climbing and hiking, build tents and make out with the hottie in the short shorts. Now China's parents have discovered this neat little American tradition and have decided that their kids should get a taste of it too. more ›

"A MAN who laced food with rat poison, killing two children and leaving 19 others ill in south Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in 2009 has been executed, authorities announced yesterday. Li Shengguang, 68, owned the land where the Muge Township Wenda Kindergarten was built. He added poison to a meal intended for Lu Zhikun, a cook at the school with whom Li had a long-term dispute. But Lu never ate the poisoned food, and instead 21 children, aged two to five, ate meals that contained the rodenticide "dushuqiang," that is widely used in rural areas. Two children died before reaching hospital. Li was sentenced to death on August 25, 2010 by Guigang City Intermediate people's court. The decision was recently approved by the Supreme People's Court." [Shanghai Daily] more ›

Chongqing party chief Bo Xilai may have replaced prime-time television dramas with communist propaganda and assembled thousands of people to sing red songs with him, but here at the local primary school in Duping Village of Chongqing's Wushan Town, it's Michael Jackson the kids are dancing to. Every morning 10am, students at Duping Primary School will assemble in neat rows on their school field, set amid the verdant hills of rural Chongqing, and move to the King of Pop's Dangerous as part of their daily calisthenics routine. Here's the scene on a recent morning:
more ›

If you've been reading Shanghaiist for a while, you'll probably have seen some of the smoking baby videos we've posted on here. Behind the Wall points us to yet another of these videos that has popped up recently, igniting another round of debate on smoking. In this video, two young boys are seen puffing away on cigarettes on a moving train, but unfortunately, there's no information on where the train was headed, where these kids are from, and who their parents are.
more ›

"THE city is still waiting to hear whether it can alter the one-child policy and allow residents to have larger families. Local population experts have been in talks on loosening the policy with government departments, but so far there is no timetable. However, Xie Lingli, director of the Shanghai Population and Family Planning Commission, said the city was ready to act whenever an announcement was made. Shanghai has had an extremely low birth rate for years, the commission said, and the ratio of old people to young was greater than in the rest of the country." [Shanghai Daily] more ›

"A man who ran an unlicensed day-care center is facing criminal charges for molesting and raping five 10-year-old girls in Shijiazhuang, capital of north China's Hebei Province. Huang Hui, 58, began to sexually abuse the young girls after reading from a newspaper that having sex with a junior can delight and rejuvenate the older person. He would give each girl 1 yuan (15 US cents) each time to moleste them and ask them not to tell their parents, Yanzhao Metropolitan Daily reported today. Huang was arrested last December. The parents of the five girls Huang sexually assaulted were mostly migrant workers too busy to take care of their children. A woman surnamed Ma was shocked to learn her daughter was raped by Huang and called the police. Huang was charged for rape and molestation by Qiaoxi District prosecutors yesterday. The Qiaoxi District People's Court has accepted the case." [Shanghai Daily] more ›

For those of you counting, this makes baby smoking video number three. GUH. There should be a special place in hell for TV producers who label smoking babies "handsome." more ›

Yale law professor and the world's most hated "Chinese mom" Amy Chua is now doing the TV rounds, after an excerpt of her book, Battle Hymn of a Tiger Mother, appeared on the Wall Street Journal and elicited a ton of furious responses from around the world, including this blog -- as well as her own video clip by our favourite Taiwanese animators. In an interview on the Today Show, Chua told Meredith Vieira that her book is "absolutely not about how to parent or saying the Chinese way is better," but "also about my mistakes and making fun of myself and how I eventually had to pull back". Say whatever you will about Amy Chua -- she may not be the top parenting expert out there, but she's definitely a marketing whiz. Her book has climbed rapidly through the charts and now sits at #6 on Amazon. While she laughs her way to the bank, we hear her mom is livid she isn't already #1.
more ›

More photos on 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 (and here). more ›

Can someone tell us just WHO is trying to kill all of China's children right now? The latest news just in: Over 200 students, approximately a third of total enrollment at a kindergarten in Xuzhou, Jiangsu province, have been admitted to hospital for food poisoning. Few details are available just yet, but Jiangsu police are investigating. Click here for a video clip from the "Good Morning Jiangsu" show on Jiangsu Satellite TV. more ›

We thought we'd seen the last of babies taking drags off ciggs with the first video, but nope. more ›

We came across this alarming piece of "news" from the Parenting column at Cityweekend about hand sanitizers and your children (dun dun dun!). Apparently, they had just "heard" the following story about a young four-year-old named Halle who was rushed to the ER for being severely lethargic and incoherent in her classroom. more ›

When the People's Republic of China was first established in 1949, the State Council (Cabinet) designated a half-day holiday for all primary schools on June 1. This was later made into a full day's break in 1956 with The Announcement by the State Council to make June 1 Children's Day a One-Day Holiday. more ›

Tired of wondering where your food comes from? Ever wanted to make a meal from scratch--really from scratch? If so, come down Sunday and lend a hand (or bring your kids down for) Organic Gardening for Kids, the latest Roots & Shoots initiative. more ›