Snail mail is here to save your marriage! China Post is stepping it up a notch with a new inventive way to keep the fire alive for couples: to combat rising divorce rates (which have quadrupled in recent years), China Post is offering newlyweds the opportunity to have heart-felt letters delivered to each other 7 years after their wedding day. more ›

Chinese Valentine's falls on the seventh day of the seventh month of the lunar calendar every year -- that's today! Li Anne of Next Media Animation gives us her (slightly twisted) version of the story of the cowherd and the weaver girl. more ›

This could be a scene right out of a mass wedding conducted by the Moonies, but it is actually part of the centennial celebrations of Beijing's prestigious Tsinghua University. Over 400 couples, among them the faculty members and graduates of the university, took part in the two-day mass wedding that began on Friday. more ›

"Even though I've lost everything, it would be okay if she were still alive."
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As is the way with unsubstantiated rumors, people are now coming out to (also anonymously) come to the defense of the maligned party. The Shanghainese Tiger Wife who hired thugs to beat up her cheating husband may not have had a cheating husband at all, according to something that popped into our tips box: more ›

The Western head of this (for now unnamed) international school’s Hongqiao branch was caught cheating on his Shanghainese wife with, surprise surprise, his (also Chinese) secretary. This school head and his wife have been married for a number of years, and have young children. The wife, who is well-connected, responded to her foreign husband’s infidelity by hiring a group of thugs to put him in the hospital (a “beat him up, but don’t kill him” type of thing). So now he’s indeed in the hospital, with a swollen, unrecognizable head. more ›

According to Shanghai Daily, massively popular microblogging platforms like Sina and Sohu are quickly becoming the best new way to find love in China. So guys, you can forget texting, calling or god forbid talking to the girl. Now you can find true love in three simple steps: 1) locate female 2) lurk 3) initiate contact. more ›

In this episode of Sexy Beijing, Sufei hits the streets and asks Beijingers what they think of Shanghai girls. She then interviews Mina Hanbury-Tenison, the author of a Shanghai Girls, Uncensored & Unsentimental, a book she wrote based on conversations with a friend called Lan Lan. more ›

True love exists! It really does! Maybe not in Shanghai, but in a smaller city not far from here -- Suzhou. more ›

As if China’s hormonal and horny students haven’t got enough to contend with. With universities getting all up in their "are you or aren't you a mistress" business and some high schools already patrolling the halls for kissing couples, now "God" has gotten in the way of them even learning about doing it... at least in Yunnan. more ›

• After having a read about the stats of disposable chopsticks...We decided that it was a moral imperative to take your own chopsticks out to eat.
• We got excited about Ricky Gervais bringing 'The Office' to China and discussed the influx of foreign television being remade for a Chinese audience.
• We were miffed when we found out that 51.25% of sold property in Shanghai remains vacant. Way to drive up rents, rich people!

Thanks to a culture "with a tradition of arranged marriages where romantic love is disruptive," when Chinese people talk about dating and crushes, they tend to use slightly different terms than their counterparts in the West: it's anxiety causing, it's scary, it's depressing. But despite all that negativity, it looks like, at least on a neurological level, their brains are firing up with exactly the same type of romantic fervor. more ›

Ah, Singles Day, how ambivalent we are to you. It's nice to have an Anti-Valentine's Day, but it doesn't feel any more joyous to actively celebrate solidarity in solitude. And while we never did get that singing Celine Dion card, or anything at all, we did find a pretty interesting list from Chinese netizens: China's 11 most eligible bachelors! more ›

Ah, the innocence and beauty of young love: our cold, rational hearts are always warmed a bit when we see couples walking around in the throes of their first fling. Relationships are a curious time for new lovers: trying to feel each other out, learning to love and be loved, and of course, actually learning how to make love. more ›

On-line dating is already one of the most successful business ventures to spring out of dot com mania, but it looks like one Shanghai based company is going to take the dating service idea one step further. more ›

While the Shanghaiist is all for 父爱 (loving your fathersfatherly love), we're hoping most fathers wouldn't quite want you to love them in this way. Source: Happy Rainbow Daily more ›

The Chinese media is rife with reports of a 25 year old Shanghai woman, Chan Juan (pseudonym), who supposedly gave up her RMB10,000 job, spent RMB100,000 in search of the ideal husband and cycled over 2,000 kilometres from Guangzhou to Shanghai to attend a matchmaking party that was organised just for her. She was promised by the organiser that 1,000 young men would be waiting for her but eventually only two men showed up, one from Shandong and the other from Zhejiang. More than 30 candidates from Shanghai were said to have indicated interest but all chickened out at the last minute.
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Some 3,000 single men and women gathered last week at the Luwan Stadium for a mass matchmaking session, and by all appearances it looked like a very successful event. The men lined up in rows while the women went past them (do we detect some sexism there?) and if anyone liked each other, they could have a quick chat and exchange numbers. Some speed dating event that will make even the Moonies with all their lavish mass weddings eat their heart out. more ›

This new episode of Queer As Folk Beijing, China's first independent gay video podcast, discusses long distance relationships. Has technology, cheap phone calls and the possibility of phone- or cam-sex made it easier for people in long distance relationships? Interesting questions that are relevant to both gay and straight couples. 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 ›

A Date With Lu Yu《鲁豫有约》is one of the most influential talkshows in China which has been known to constantly push the envelope and to broach topics previously considered too hot to touch. One such episode is the one below which features two homosexual men from the Sichuan Province — who, long before the word "gay" had entered the Chinese lexicon — married each other, adopted a son and have been together for 21 years. more ›

Share with us how you see Shanghai, or China! Post your photos on Flickr, tag them with "shanghaiist", and we'll select one favorite image per day. Or you can simply email your photos to photos at shanghaiist.com. more ›

Here, Shanghai, were your favourite stories for the month of February: more ›

People’s Daily reports that Tianjin-based China National Computer Virus Emergency Response Centre warns Chinese Internet users of a Valentine’s ‘virus’ which may spread through emails and on-line chat services (such as QQ and MSN): watch out for "Vbs_Valentin.A" in “attachments disguised with Valentine blessings for February 14.” Now who would like to mislead us naïve lovers on such a day like February 14? more ›