Steve Buscemi and Southern Barbarian owner Feng Jianwen (Credit: Southern Barbarian) Next time, Steve, stay for some Grandma's Mashed Potatoes. Trust us. It's not every day that a Golden Globe and Emmy award nominated actor shows up unexpectedly at the launch party for a small photo exhibit at a Yunnan restaurant in Shanghai, China, but that's what happened yesterday when Steve Buscemi stepped in from the rain to check out Ying Tang's "Balance" at......

Back in January, we told you how much we loved the food at Southern Barbarian, the great Yunnan restaurant that some people complained was too far away because it was north of Beijing Lu. Well, we are happy to report Southern Barbarian has moved farther south, and now resides amongst a cluster of art galleries and shops near the intersection of Maoming Lu and Jinxian Lu (just one subway stop from Shanghaiist headquarters). The......

Sunday night we headed down to the House of Blues and Jazz to check out the new band from New Orleans, “Continuum”. They started a couple weeks ago but already have their groove on, with an easy stage presence that shows they are comfortable playing together and a group sound that is starting to come together nicely. Front man Thaddeus Ford, who plays the trumpet and acts as MC, is a 6th generation New Orleans......

Search YouTube for "Shanghai" and "Halloween" and the above is what you get -- a Halloween street party on Maoming Nan Lu from way back in 2001 (back when they allowed street parties on Maoming Nan Lu). Ah, those were the days! We'll keep this short, because we have a bomb shelter to decorate. We're looking forward to seeing your costumes tonight! What: Shanghaiist Underground Halloween Party When: Saturday, October 28, 9 pm - late......

Shanghaiist doesn’t eat much spicy food, but every time we pass a xiaolongxia (小龙虾 or "little dragon shrimp" or "little lobsters" or crayfish -- the most popular food in Shanghai now) restaurant, we always try really hard to keep ourselves from drooling. The idea of cracking the crayfish, sucking out the meat and licking the messy goodness off our fingers is way too enchanting. Mmmmmm. (We realize this is strange talk coming from the site's......

Nadnerb, a commenter on our "Center of Shanghai" post from yesterday, pointed out that the trapezoidal building in this Google Maps satellite shot was the old Jingwen Flower Market: [I]ts just a skeleton of concrete pillars and wire now. The whole area west of maoming nan lu is being ripped up. Do you know why? I heard it was for some music plaza or block or something. The flower market came down in November and,......

Back in February, Wired Magazine ran a story on the center of the USA according to Google Maps. The -ist network of sites, being geographically organized, was quick to pick up on this meme, giving us the center of New York and of Washington D.C.. Inspired by the pirate within us, Shanghaiist rose to the challenge of finding the X that marks the spot and discovered that this is not such a simple calculation for......

Bob Boyce, restaurateur...

Goodbye beautiful bunches of roses for 10 yuan. Goodbye piles of cheap Christmas decorations. Goodbye grumpy man who sold us a money tree. Goodbye woman who tied together beautiful corsages for our wedding, only to add the world's gaudiest bow at the bottom. Farewell. Adieu. You will be missed. The Jingwen Flower Market, which was at 225 Shaanxi Nan Lu (and also had a gate at Maoming Nan Lu, which was a happenin’ bar strip)......

First, 19-year-old Zhu Bin got expelled from Shanghai University because his teachers found him in his dormitory bed with his girlfriend back on March 24. Zhu said he was sick and his girlfriend was nursing him back to health. And although we don't really buy that story -- we've all suffered from that "illness," Zhu -- we feel sorry for the guy. And what the hell were his teachers doing in his dorm room? Zhu......

If -- unlike Shanghaiist -- you watch kung fu films for the technical proficiencies of the martial arts sequences rather than for the hilarious subtitles ("You bastard! Try this melon!"), then you'll probably get a kick (literally) out of this month's visit by the Songshan Shaolin Temple Wushu Institute. Thirty monks from the Institute -- the most famous of the many kung fu organizations found in Shaolin in Henan Province -- will take part in......