Results tagged “library”

There have recently been whispers all across town that Enoteca is the hottest place for wine connoisseurs right now. We were willing to give hearsay a run for its money. So we turned up, yesterday to be precise.

Over the weekend we briefly mentioned MGM Studio World, a huge indoor entertainment complex coming to Shanghai. And today we found an image of the plans — hope you like Rocky. Here's what the press release says:

Shanghaiist wants to spread the word about an upcoming charity event this Saturday night organised by members of Shanghai's Flickr community. Local Flickr identities ShanghaiSky, ThomasTribe, OppoHash (among others*) have organised a fund-raising night for local student charity, Shanghai Sunrise.

It's not the New York Times and it is certainly a bit slanted towards Beijing by the nature of its source, but the list of top ten books noted by users of book club site Douban.com is a whimsical glimpse into what young, plugged-in Chinese are reading offline these days. Here is the list as it stands today:

We've all seen those fancy-shmancy bidet/toilet combos from Japanese-brand Toto. Heck, we have even enjoyed using one every once in a while (that seat-warming feature is really nice on a cold winter's morn). We believe Kelly Chen, the Hong Kong starlet who informed us (via danwei.org) that she trusts her private washing to Toto's premium bidet technology. But we have always felt that something has been missing from Toto's tech. After pondering long hours in the library (bathroom), unable to get our thoughts (feces) out, we realised just what it is that Toto lacks.

We here in the Ist-A-Verse know that we're sensational, but it's very rare that we get a chance to be sensationalistic. This week, we've decided to have ourselves a little fun and try our hand at tacky tabloid headlines, using nothing more than our favorite posts from this week.

This service, located at ditu.google.cn, has replaced Google Local, which was at bendi.google.cn. First off, there's a couple of big differences between this and Google Maps for the US. You can't use satellite or hybrid mode in the Chinese version. If you want a satellite you have to go back to using Google Earth or other such sites, and of course it's hard to find your way there because all you see are blotches of rooftops. Ditu.google.cn just has the regular graphics.

The Shanghai Daily ran just a caption with the attached photo. Here is what they wrote:

The two up top are from the Prevention of Diseases section. On the left, we have "Go to have smallpox vaccination" (1956) and on the right, "Declaration of war on SARS!" (from way back in 2003). Look at the big version of that one to see what SARS looks like when magnified ... scary.

Today we came across The New York Times' latest installment of its "Frugal Traveler" series , and this time Matt Gross writes about our fair city of Shanghai. We will preface this post by saying it is an interesting and generally well-informed guide to spending a weekend in China, with good recommendations, although not much "off the beaten path." But, Shanghaiist wonders, does The New York Times know the meaning of the word "frugal?"

This was not a very happy week for the -ist network as one of our own, Phillyist co-editor Star C. Foster, passed away early in the week. Her wit, intelligence, and good nature shone through the site, making Phillyist an immensely fun read. She was loved by many and will be missed by all.

It was in high spirits that Shanghaiist joined BookCrossing last week. After all, we love to read, we dig the ra-ra-sharing spirit of the movement, and we have participated (happily and successfully) in other yay-serendipity collectives.

It’s true, the first Pompidou Centre in China is landing in Shanghai. According to this report (in Chinese) by Oriental Morning Post, Renaud Donnedieude Vabres, culture minister of France, and Bruno Racine, president of the Pompidou Centre (we're going to call it the "PC" from now on), the first PC in Shanghai is going to cover 10,000 square meters at the intersection of Huaihai Zhong Lu and Songshan Lu, near the site of the old French concession police station (pictured). The report was kind of vague, as they often are, but the historic building is expected to be preserved and somehow incorporated into the project.

It is interesting how different countries around the world envision themselves in the year 2020:

You know who's going to be upset about those Bikini Bandits? The Houston school system. Houstonist also reports on some redevelopment shenanigans over a landmark theater.

Americans, and the American northwest in particular, have caught the China fever -- for why else would they decide to construct a Chinese pavilion in Des Moines, Iowa? OK, we don't really consider that a big deal, but then again we've spent some time in places like Richmond, BC (OK, let's include Canada) and Rowland Heights, California -- Chinese enclaves where you could go days without hearing English -- so perhaps we shouldn't take the pavilion for granted.

The Virtual Shanghai project is backed by a team of experts from Institut d'Asie Orientale and the Institut des Sciences de l'Homme in Lyon, France, East China Normal University, Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences and University of California, Berkeley Center for Chinese Studies Library. Here's how they describe the project on the site:

Spanish-language blog chinochano admits -- partly in English, for our enjoyment -- to being a little "flag crazy" and laments the fact that China only has one flag, the national one, and no regional or provincial banners. His solution? Let local beer labels symbolize the provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions. Tsingtao for Shandong. Yanjing for Beijing. Dali for Yunnan. West Lake for Zhejiang. Hapi for Heilongjiang. And Lhasa for Tibet. He didn't mention one for Shanghai -- will we soon be standing and saluting to ... um ... REEB? (Did you know there is a REEB Dark now?) chinochano also directs us to this fantastic collection of Chinese beer labels. Hmmm. Perhaps we should swap out our REEB flag for this Shanghai beer label featuring the image of -- you guessed it -- French movie star Alain Delon.

discipline of martial arts.

Members of the Fangzhou Congregation, a house church in Beijing's Chaoyang district (they gather in apartments or other non-official sites to meet and worship) received some surprise visits last Sunday afternoon, January 15. At around 4:30 pm, two uniformed Beijing police officers and two plainclothes police (well, no one knows if they were really police) came in and said that they had to do some investigation of this congregation. The police accused the church of “disturbing the peace" (扰民）and illegal assembly, owing to the fact that the place where they had held the Sunday services had not been officially sanctioned. The usual type melee ensued, with accusations flying back and forth and tugs of war with video cameras. Why all the brouhaha over some small, insignificant house church? Because of the people in it, who are all notorious troublemakers. Yu Jie is an outspoken writer and intellectual that founded China's first PEN association, a pro-freedom of expression writer's group. Gao Zhisheng is a lawyer, and Wikipedia has this to say about him:

Shanghaiist knows that most of you are thanking your lucky stars that you got over the New Year's hangover and are not yet ready to think about the emotional hangover that awaits you on Valentine's Day IF you put together anything less than a perfect Valentine's Day for that special someone. Well, we pride ourselves on being your eyes and ears here in the city, and we've just gotten wind of a Valentine Day's package that is sure to sweep that sig other off their feet and into your bed arms.

In the context of ever-increasing divorce rates, and with Chinese parents placing pressure on their offpsring to marry, a "Lightning Round" of marriages is the next crazy attempt at finding a VW Passat, an unfurnished apartment in Pu Dong and someone else to help make paper money to burn for your deceased relatives happiness (article in Chinese). It seems that 100 people arrived in order to meet a partner, decide in a matter of minutes if they are "the one", and then marry each other there and then.

Several years ago we discovered that the Narcissus bar in Shanghai was serving whisky with green tea. At the time, we felt that this drink would provide the perfect accompaniment to the live Backstreet Boys tribute band on stage, yet we also believed it would be a short-lived fad. Until the new middle-class Chinese got ahold of it, that is.

... when I'm 64? That may or may not be on a distant horizon to you, but for Shanghai, the graying of its population poses a real challenge to society.

It's time for moon cakes again. The mid-autumn festival isn’t until September 18 -- and should thus be called the late-summer festival -- but this isn’t the first time people tried to get a head start on a holiday.

A Shanghai Daily story provides example number 1,029,349 why the Shanghai real estate market is so ridiculously inflated. With 47 square meter, semi-serviced studio apartments at Shanghai Centre going for $2,300 a month, it's no wonder Shanghai consistently manages to rank as one of the most expensive cities in the world ... all with the help of clueless foreign companies throwing piles of money at employee housing. According to the story:

At approximately 1:30 this morning, a section of Huaihai Zhong Lu was flooded by what Shanghaiist suspects was a broken water main. Local residents -- Shanghaiist included -- trudged up the sidewalk in waist-deep murky brown water to higher ground. The area affected seemed to begin around the corner of Wulumuqi Lu, by the old US Consulate building, and continue past Ambassy Court down to the Shanghai Library. At least one Dazhong taxi was stranded in the center of the street where the water was about one meter deep. Police cars blocked the street as officers looked on in bewildered amazement.