Touring season has official started for Chinese bands and this weekend Shanghai is bursting with shows worth checking out. Tonight the action starts early with three Xian bands playing at Yuyintang. Both Hush and 24hour Party People have played in Shanghai before and put on solid shows. This time they are joined by punk band Sucker. If you miss tonight's earlier show, you don't have to feel like a total bum, all 3 bands will......

A last-minute add to the program over at JZ, the Copenhagen-based group called Jazz Kamikaze who have been getting rave reviews will be playing this thursday night at JZ Club. In fact, when Shanghaiist was in Copenhagen last February, we didn't hear the band but got to jam a bit with some of the players in it. They were great, very creative and vibrant musicians. And killer players! So we're expecting a great show from......

Sorry to be giving Edison a bit more air time than he deserves, but we just COULD NOT pass this one up. Just when we were wondering when it would happen, some entrepreneurial chap in Hong Kong has already gone ahead to design some Edison Chen t-shirts, created a MySpace page for it and an online store! The t-shirts cost HK$170 a pop (not sure if they'll deliver to Shanghai) and come in 3......

This video entitled “这个女人太要了” ("This girl wants it too much") uploaded to Youtube just five days ago has received over 317,000 views and raised a storm on the Chinese internet. It shows a young Chinese couple hugging and kissing at a subway exit point before finally saying goodbye. Well, it turns out that the clip was taken via the surveillance cameras that you see all around subway stations and the (really annoying) voices in the......

See the Chicago Improv All-Stars!...

Baidu has released its video search report, and Kaiser Kuo of the Ogilvy China Digital Watch translates and summarises some of the key findings. Interestingly, “adult-related” search terms account for 34.14% of daily search volume, followed by celebrity-related (14.74%), TV serial related (12.48%), and animation-related (12.21%) searches. Google is reportedly under investigation in China for tax evasion, says Paul Midler of The China Game.Chinese Skype users now exceed 25% of the global total.While venture capital......

Yes, that was our reaction when we saw these pictures, but sorry to disappoint all you Facebook whores (that includes ourselves!) out there, the image on the right is just a Facebook clone, Xiaonei.com (校内网). It looks like the portal was started around 2005 (less than two years after Facebook was born), and since then, it has grown exponentially to cover around 2,000 university campuses in Greater China. They have just recently started to......

So both Myspace and Friendster have their own China versions. Now Kaiser Kuo of Ogilvy Digital China Watch points us to a report on China Business News (第一财经日报) which cites an “industry insider” who says that Facebook plans to release additional language interfaces and intends to enter the China market as early as December this year. The paper also claims that "Facebook has given up its initial plan to set up its own China-based site......

Who is Yacht ? Yacht, a musician you will love like a rainbow after the rain, or a lollipop after visiting the dentist. Any one remember the Blow? Well, the Blow’s last 2 albums was 90% Yacht and Yacht is made up of one man….the multi – talented Jona Bochtolt. Happy, positive rainbow music on speed, Yacht might currently be best known as that guy who used to be in the Blow or for......

Singapore Season, a series of cultural diplomacy events that started in London in 2005, has been kickstarted in Shanghai with a sell-out concert by pop star JJ Lin at the Hongkou Stadium last Sunday. About the only show throughout the entire series of events that has a Shanghai connection is Little Toys, a remake of the Chinese classic silent film 小玩意 (ie., little toys), starring 1930s screen goddess Ruan Lingyu (阮玲玉). This production won standing......

A couple days ago we asked for your photos and videos from the Yue Festival last week in Shanghai, and yesterday Archie from Spli-t Works, the event's promoter, sent us a link to the video embedded in this post. Looks like Ozomatli got up close and personal with the Shanghai crowd. Shanghaiist reader T also has a set of photos from the Yue Festival on Flickr. More pics here. Another Shanghaiist reader, who we assume......

Just started listening to a Brooklyn band called Bishop Allen. Enjoying it so far, and one song immediately jumped out at us. It's call the "The Chinatown Bus." Here's a snippet of the lyrics, apparently inspired by a trip to Shanghai: And I remember Shanghai How I wasn't sure just what was safe to eat The chickens pecked and wandered at the barefoot of the children hawking figurines of workers smiling What's the Chinese word......

Shanghai Daily tells us that city officials have shut down Dofor.cn (now taken offline) - a portal here that's been posting videos of the Japanese manga and anime series Death Note which has been banned nationwide in China for supposedly promoting death fantasies: The novel tells the story of a teenage boy who receives a special notebook. Whenever he writes the name of an enemy in the book, along with a description of how and......

The Absolute House mailing list must be just about the only one we don't receive email from, because we only learned recently (by seeing an ad in a magazine) that Jennifer Gentle, a band from one of our favorite "indie" labels SubPop, will be performing there on June 24th (when Shanghaiist will conveniently be visiting Singapore). Because we know you are wondering: No one in Jennifer Gentle is named Jennifer — it's a bunch of......

Shanghai. It is all happening. Here's the proof: Friday, June 1st The Millionaire Fair Tired of your staid millionaire lifestyle? Shanghaiist is. Well, you better join us as we swing by the Shanghai Exhibition Center this weekend to get some new ideas. No. 1000 Yanan Road, Shanghai. Big Beer Bonanza at Kommune American Beer Craft Partners have iced thirty different beers from ten different breweries. The rest is self explanatory. A beer-filled night wouldn't be......

How to write a China article "If you can’t find a taxi driver whose political views match those of your readers, then just make one up. Call him Mr. Wang, inform your public that he only earns a hundred dollars a month, and they’ll believe any old crap you write." When Jerry Yang Talks China, Run for the Doors "Focus instead on the fact that every time Jay Yang has taken charge of Yahoo!'s......

Thanks to a tip from vadaga, Shanghaiist learned that now you only have one option to login to your existing MySpace 麦斯贝 account page in mainland China - use of an anonymising proxy. At the time of writing, any attempts Shanghaiist has made to access its existing myspace account using myspace.com are met with time-out errors and the classic connection error response caused by the Great Firewall of China. Users can still view their myspace......

They are also the "best live act I saw at Midi," according to Shanghai blogger and DJ Michael Ohlsson. Now, it should also be mentioned that Micheal does marketing for 4live, where British dance/soul/electronic/funk/disco band Kava Kava is playing at 9 pm tomorrow night. But Michael likes good beer, so we trust his word. And if you need another opinion, some guy on YouTube says "Kava Kava are the shit." Entrance is 50 kuai. Check......

Recently, Shanghai has had its fill of hip hop, indie rock, and classic rock artists come to perform for the expats locals. We'll now get a bit of the pop and R&B vocal genres with the recent announcement of Christina Aguilera's Asian tour dates, which includes a stop in Shanghai. It will be her only concert in China ... sorry, Beijing. The tour is part of Christina's Back to Basics tour, featuring songs from her......

This is a little old, but we have a feeling many of you haven't seen it yet. From what we have read and seen (front row last month at Yunfeng Theater) of ?uestlove, drummer for The Roots, we always thought the man also known as Ahmir-Khalib Thompson would be a pretty cool guy to hang out with. And then someone told us to check out his blog on MySpace and now our new goal in......

Remember we told you MySpace China would come online yesterday? Well, we lied. Actually, Sohu IT lied — they got some bad info. Thankfully they weren’t too far off. As of now 1 am on April 27th, a day later, MySpace China is up and running. We’d love to give you a first hand review, but the site just went live 30 minutes ago, we haven’t had much time to explore. One thing we can......

Say wha? Yea 麦斯贝 (mai si bei), somewhat better known as MySpace, is launching its Chinese site in two days, or so say the good people at Sohu IT. The wildly successful social networking site is supposed to have had a complete local makeover, but if “麦斯贝” is any indication of that effort, we aren’t going in with high expectations. Other than a vague phonetic resemblance to "MySpace", the Chinese name carries no meaning of......

The upcoming May holiday sees a Shanghai band heading to the US and a US band (not Pretty Girls Make Graves) coming to Shanghai. We'll start with the band that will be playing in Shanghai, because we are staying in Shanghai over the holiday and we are selfish. Locksley formed in Madison, Wisconsin, and then made an excellent career decision and moved to Brooklyn. They will play 4 Live on Friday, May 4 at 9......

We're feeling a little lazy this afternoon. Could be the weather. Could be that we are distracted thinking about 21 kuai pints of Pale Ale. Anyway, we thought it a good time to share with you this music video. We downloaded the album last year but didn't see the video until recently. Thought you might enjoy it: It's a little bit more peaceful than that other video that has been floating around. Listen to more......

Has the destruction of Wujiang Lu got you down? Need a quick picker-upper? If so, you might think about heading down to Henry's Brewery & Grill for a nice dose of comedy to turn that frown upside down. Does Henry's sound familiar to you, oh dearest reader? That's because it will also be the host of Shanghaiist next Happy Hour. Okay, that's enough self-promoting. This isn't the first time there's been some stand-up comedy on......

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. Torontoist Special Report: Rosie to Trump: "Fire 300 Bicyclists for Fraud!" On DCist: Students Go Wild for Slogans, Secrets and Sexual Harassment The action was thick......

A quick update on what you are doing Saturday afternoon and evening. We are happy to announce that the Shanghaiist Happy Hour at ENO will feature food prepared by the wonderful people at iiiit!. They have come up with a special menu (with special prices) for the party: Mexican Tacos with Salsa – 10 RMBHot Dogs – 15 RMB½ Ham & Cheese Sandwich with Salad – 15 RMB½ Latin Chicken Sandwich with Salad – 15......

We have a friend who we swear is paid by the New York Times, because all he ever does is send us links to stories from that rag. The latest is entitled "Singing and Doing the Hustle in Austin" and covers the South by Southwest Music Festival, which is an indie music fan's wet dream (it ended on Sunday). The story mentions that more than 20 percent of the musical acts in the festival came......

We've been getting a lot of emails asking us when we're having our next Shanghaiist Happy Hour (and by "a lot" we mean "more than one"). We finally have an answer — Saturday, March 31 — less than two weeks! We will expand on the details of our first gathering since October (remember Halloween?) later, but here are the highlights: • When: Saturday, March 31 (4 pm to ???) • Where: ENO, 139-23 Changle Lu......

"Lost in Beijing" seeks OK from China censors "After seven days spent re-editing the adult drama 'Lost in Beijing,' producer Fang Li said Friday that he and director Li Yu have agreed on 65% of the cuts requested by China's Film Bureau. The movie is scheduled for a February 16 premiere at the Berlin Film Festival." James Bond arrives in China - not shaken not stirred "Craig chatted with fans and signed autographs at......