Lost Laowai brings our attention to the following soundbyte of a conversation between an Air China pilot and the control tower of the JFK Airport in New York. In it, the pilot fails to understand anything that the traffic controller was saying and his English was so garbled that he might as well have been speaking in Esperanto -- a language that is deemed so important that China Radio International's website has a version in it! more ›

Our round-up of some of last week's highlights from China's English-language blogosphere: more ›

Remember that Chairman Mao bag that you...your "friend" bought the first time you came to China? These bags are found all over China and they are easy to spot. The bags are dark green with a red star or red portrait of Chairman Mao on the flap. Usually, the bags will contain some quote from Mao's The Little Red Book (the second best selling book in the world, by the way), written in red Chinese... more ›

The blog Lost Laowai has started a group writing project called "If I Knew Then What I Know Now." The general idea is for other bloggers to write about what they thought about China before actually moving out here and how different the reality actually is. Once the writer has finished the post, he/she can notify Lost Laowai and have it put up on the consolidated submission list for everyone's reading pleasure. more ›

Our round-up of some of last week's highlights from China's English-language blogosphere: more ›

Our weekly round-up of some of the highlights from China's English-language blogosphere: more ›

After attending the massive NeoSpring Creative Festival on Suzhou Creek, Shanghaiist had high hopes for the so called Creative Box, or Ushigokoro. The concept behind this gallery is displaying art in tiny boxes; anyone can apply to display their works. They currently have an exhibition called "Lost and Found", in which participants bring in whatever they find on the street to add to the exhibition. The rest of the gallery is filled from floor to ceiling with 20 x 30 x 20 cm boxes that display everything from postcards to T-shirts to jewelry. more ›

Last August you might have read Howard French's New York Times article on Chinese subtitle teams, which explains who these seemingly anonymous people, who offer Chinese viewers timely, subtitled versions of popular TV shows such as "Desperate Housewives," "Prison Break," and "Lost." The NYT article got a lot of attention from Chinese netizens as well as the media, for example in this recent Chinese article delves further into this subject and works as a good follow-up to French's article. more ›

A Xinhua report dated Jan 11 tells us of a problem we all knew was bound to happen — that there will be MANY lonely Chinese men in the years to come. more ›

This has nothing to do with Shanghai, or China for that matter. But we can't get enough of these Japanese television commercials for Suntory Boss coffee drink featuring Oscar-winner and Harvard-grad Tommy Lee Jones. Jones has been appearing in Boss ads for a year now, we think, but we first learned of the campaign recently after a friend returned to Shanghai from Japan confused about the billboards he saw all over the place featuring huge, and not particularly flattering, head shots of the craggy-faced Mr. Jones. more ›

The Maxïmo Park show last night—gig two of a two-city China tour—was a highlight of the weekend, despite the silly earliness of it all. (Friday’s 2 Many DJs show was a bust — good mixes, but no band and no dancing room does a sour Shanghaiist make — though the One Love party at LOgO salvaged the night.) more ›

On the heels of yet another show brought down by the man (add Jet Echo’s Saturday show at Live Bar to that list), a night of power ballads was just what we needed. While our friends might be few, they did have an eighth row seat to the Sydney duo’s Halloween show at the Shanghai Grand Stage. more ›

CNN reports that foreign cartoons will banned from Chinese TV during the "golden hours" of 5-8 pm, effective September 1. more ›

We love the title of this Shanghai Daily article: “Tourist festival great for boozers.” Whoever wrote that title is hereby invited to write for Shanghaiist -- don’t worry, you’ll fit right in. more ›

For our recent trip to the US, we decided to check out American Airlines' nonstop service from Shanghai to Chicago, which they launched in April. Since moving here in 2002, we have primarily used Northwest Airlines' Shanghai-Tokyo-New York route, save for a couple legs on JAL and Air Canada, whose website is embarrassingly incompatible with Safari. American is now our airline of choice for flying home. Here are some notes on our travel experience: more ›

Now that our personals site is up and running, we have once again been reminded just how many hot chicks women this fine city of ours has to offer (single or otherwise), and getting in shape has skyrocketed on this Shanghaiist's to-do list -- just below finally getting around to watch Lost. With our new found enthusiasm for anything workout related, this article , “Shanghai’s top 5 jog spots”, in the latest issue of City Weekend piqued our interest. more ›

News that China was creating its own domain names that use Chinese characters has created quite a hubbub among techie types recently. Some of the controversy was a misunderstanding, apparently, but some are still worried that China is somehow circumventing "the system." Shanghaiist is not a techie, so we defer to those who know more about this. (But we always found it a little odd that those who don't speak or read English had to write URLs in "English" to surf the web.) Here are some links that will either clear up some confusion regarding this topic, or cause more confusion: more ›

Since Shanghaiist kicked off in July this year, we've inflicted opinion after opinion on you, our faithful readership. Here comes a whole bunch more. more ›

Greetings, music fans. Below you will find, in Shanghaiist's humble opinion, all the music you should have been listening to in the first half of 2005. And if you haven't been able to check these albums out yet, you still have plenty of time to load them on to your mp3 player of choice before 2006. Five Shanghaiist contributors submitted five albums each for a total and 25 -- and they wrote exactly 25 words about each one (exactly, only if you are very lenient with your rules of hyphenation). And yes, we are aware that these "Best of the Year (so far)" lists should really happen at the end of June and not at the end of July. But we're a start-up blog in China -- you expect us to be organized? more ›

The Shanghai Daily has declared The Year of the Yao "a bomb" -- which means the movie has now attained that status on both sides of the globe. The story says: more ›