• A blog has some beautiful portraits of the various ethnic groups that make their home in China. Above, the Va group, which are mostly found in Yunnan Province. [Wenxuecity]
• James Fallows rounds up reactions and experiences with the alleged age ban for foreign teachers (no people over 60 allowed!) [The Atlantic]
• Has Super Girl winner Li Yuchun really become a god? It seems like at least one university's students are in fact burning incense to her to try to raise their luck. [Go Chengdoo]

We're not sure what it was about this photo that had us cracking up for over an hour, but we had to post it. Apparently Li Yuchun (also affectionately known as “Brother Chun”), winner of the 2005 Super Girl singing contest, has gotten a replica of herself placed in Shanghai's Madam Tussauds. more ›

Are you ready to watch the nation go star crazy? Because, after two seasons out of the limelight, a new version of the hit China idol show "Super Girls" is coming! This time around, Hunan Satellite Television is calling its karaoke contest "Happy Girls" (快乐女声). more ›

Film star Jackie Chan has donated RMB10million to help those in need following the earthquake in Sichuan province. Other celebrities have also dipped into their wallets. From CriEnglish:

"Jackie Chan also sent his consolation to the quake victims and encouraged them to hold on as "people all over the country are with you," the star said. more ›

Li Yuchun (李宇春) — the "androgynous wonder from Sichuan" who was the first winner of Super Voice Girls (an American Idol-style talent show) — recently gave a concert in Nanjing, and she performed in *gasp* a skirt! Now if you have no clue what an earth-shattering revolution Super Voice Girls represented (for the very first time, viewers were allowed to vote for their favourite singer via SMS, causing some powers-that-be to quake with fear) and... more ›

In this day and age, you can define "torture" however you want to, and for a long time, we considered the practice of inputting Chinese characters on a Mac to fulfill our definition. OS X has a built-in simplified Chinese input that does the job, but doesn't really hold a candle to any of the Windows XP input methods—and when Sogou came out with their input method, and Google copied it, we considered that battle to be over. more ›

For too long, many domestic TV entertainment channels have profaned music and the notion of competition by giving top honors to tomboys or sissy boys for being what they are - boyish girls and feminine boys - NOT for what or how they sing. The realm of music (which if not sacred should at least require some talent) suffered most when Li Yuchun, a tomboy whose voice was the weakest of all the finalists in a national singing contest in 2005, walked away with the "Super Girl" championship. Shi Yang, a boy who dances like a young woman, became a hot idol during the "My Show" contest in Shanghai last year.

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. more ›

Shanghaiist reported about the My Hero show recently and not so recently, and so here we are again, bringing you periodic reports from the frontlines. more ›

Photo by Shanghai Streets taken from the Shanghaiist photos page. To see your photos on our photos 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. more ›

"They choose to come to London, as so many have come before because they come to be free, they come to live the life they choose, they come to be able to be themselves. They flee you because you tell them how they should live. They don’t want that and nothing you do, however many of us you kill, will stop that flight to our city where freedom is strong and where people can live in harmony with one another. Whatever you do, however many you kill, you will fail." more ›

Photo from Getty Images via The Scotsman. more ›

Yao Ming is tall. He is also good at basketball. We already told you that. He is also China's top celebrity, three years running, according to Forbes. The list takes into account all that is important in life: income, television appearances, newspaper mentions, magazine covers, internet searches, and the like. (Hmmmm. We do a lot of internet searches and we weren't ranked. Likely because we weren't born in Mainland China. Same reason why Jay Chou isn't on the list.) more ›

) competition, will soon appear on collector's stamps throughout China. For its incorporation of SMS voting into its decision-making process, cultural critic Zhu Dake declared Super Voice Girls "blazed a trail for cultural democracy" in China. China National Philatelic Corp. is eager to cash in on that trailblazing, as they are set to issue a series of eight stamps (RMB 36) and a set of eight commemorative envelopes (RMB 38) designed by Guo Chenghui. more ›

It's that time of year again: the Forbes annual China celebrity list is coming out on March 8. This article (in Chinese) tells us that the top 10 has already been released, and Li Bingbing (李冰冰) has graduated to the big time, garnering top honors. The Forbes list is calculated using a "income+media exposure" criterion, and while we aren't privy to how much Li makes, we know that she graced the covers of more magazines this year than any other celeb. The rankings include 100 people, with the top ranked as follows: more ›

Super Voice Girls Li Yuchun and Zhang Liangying are in Taiwan, but on the down-low, because according to the laws stipulated by Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council, mainland Chinese cannot officially perform in Taiwan, and thus cannot hold press conferences, meet with fans, or have their names printed on the performance bill. What exactly is this performance they are holding in Taiwan, you ask? Well, from what we gather it's a charity concert, but for who or what we're not entirely sure: the Chinese title is "情聲藝動相約東南". Maybe you fans of charity concerts or Chinese pop can fill us in. It seems from the articles Shanghaiist has read that this concert is going to be a who's who of the Mandopop world. more ›

Popular Chinese internet search engine Baidu.com recently announced the 10 most popular search queries for 2005, reports the Star Daily (via the Shanghai Daily China news blog). Here they are, in order of popularity (we think): more ›

The New York Times has posted a four-minute video entitled "What's on China's TV Tonight?" It's narrated by David Barboza, an NYT writer based in China, and focuses on Hunan province, which, thanks to mega-hit Super Voice Girls, is the epicenter of China's television boom. The video shows clips of SVG -- including eventual champion Li Yuchun's awful rendition of Bryan Adams' awful "Everything I Do" -- but it also mentions a couple new shows, like the Gong Show-esque Who's the Hero?, where one guy tried to undress women and serve tea to them using a forklift and another bloody-mouthed guy set some kind of record for opening bottles with his teeth, and another show that tries to find China's next young ping pong star. more ›

Shanghaiist staff (all six officials ones plus numerous groupies) are unabashed devotees of the Super Voice Girls, so imagine our pleasure when we found out that Li Yuchun, the androgynous wonder from Sichuan and final winner of the contest that sent tingles and shivers down the spine of people throughout China, became a cover girl. Sort of -- she made the cover of a Special Issue of TIME magazine called "Asia's Heroes". more ›

, produced and broadcast by the state-owned Hunan Province Satellite Television Station. The program's full name is Mengniu Yoghurt Super Voice Girls -- Mengniu being one of China's leading dairy product brands. more ›