Results tagged “mystery”

Mystery men set fire to themselves near TianAnMen Square, Beijing

Three people set themselves on fire in Downtown Beijing earlier this afternoon, according to Xinhua. The three sat in a vehicle and started the fire at around 3pm at the intersection of Chang'an Ave and Wangfujing Ave, a busy shopping area less than one kilometer from Tiananmen Square.

Was the exploding cellphone actually a home-made bomb?

The exploding cellphone incident in Guangzhou, which killed a young man at a Lenovo store, may have had some of us scrambling to make sure our cellphone batteries weren't going to be the end of us too.

You may remember (one of) 2006's big Chinese internet controversies regarding the alleged British male English teacher blogging about allegedly bonking Shanghai's finest, the enraged response from China's self-styled moral guardian Dr. Zhang Jiehai, and the subsequent online-witch hunt for the alleged perpetrators?

Shanghaiist was browsing around on SHExpat Forums yesterday, and came across a thread discussing the loss of one of Shanghai's renowned cheap eating establishments — Turk's.

Shanghaiist asked its contributors (and a few "music people" in town) to list their five favorite albums released (or yet-to-be released) somewhere in the world in 2006. Got a list of your own? Submit your favorite 2006 music as a comment to this post. Enjoy!

Having never purchased a real Gucci product, we have no idea whether "hang dry" is mentioned in the product care instructions as what to do after hand washing your handbag with a bar of Omo in the sink outside. We have to assume it is, since we highly doubt any owner of a Gucci handbag would fail to follow the rules, considering how expensive Gucci merchandise is. We couldn't see the labels on the other items hanging on the line -- a windbreaker, some panties and a pair of porn shorts[1] -- but we are assuming they were Gucci, too. As we said, we are not very familiar with Gucci's product line.

OK, last month we learned about a Dalian factory that turns corpses into art, or at least what some people might consider art. And now the curious have their chance to see, and touch, the real thing (well, it might be the real thing -- some people think the "corpses" are fake). The upcoming “Corpse Exhibition” is going to open in Shanghai on April 28 after touring many major cities in China including Beijing, Guangzhou, Changsha and Shenyang.

Looks like leftist/author/poltician/TV personality/wearer-of-sunglasses Li Ao spoke at Fudan University today after all, despite reports that his plans had changed. The controversial 70-year-old, an advocate of both free speech and the unification of Taiwan and China, is making his first trip to the Mainland since his family fled to Taiwan in 1949. Hi speeches last week at Beijing University and Tsinghua University created quite a stir and some confusion. According to the New York Times, "Li chided China's leaders for suppressing free speech, ridiculed the university administration's fear of academic debate and advised students on how to fight for freedom against official repression" at Beijing University, prompting authorities to impose a blackout on coverage of the rest of Li's China visit. But at Tsinghua, Li said China was in its "halcyon days" and he "lauded the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) several times, saying that while China was bullied by Western powers in its modern history." Li reportedly admitted that the government had "asked him to eliminate political content from his talk" at Fudan. Did he? Well, since Shanghaisit has never been too good at learning foreign languages, we don't know just yet. There appears to be video footage of the speech (in Chinese, of course) at the Phoenix TV website. (We're hoping ESWN will translate it soon -- he translates everything else.)

Searching for something to do tonight? Shanghaiist got an email earlier today that may or may not include what you are looking for. Shanghai indie-music veterans Crystal Butterfly -- they've been around since 1998, so that makes them old-timers in this city -- take the stage tonight at Xintiandi's ARK Live House. Doors open at 9 pm. Their much-delayed studio debut Shenmi Luxing (Magical Mystery Tour) was released in May and the self-described "space rock" band is expected to drop its follow-up Menghuan Senlin (Forest of Illusions) in September. Local rag 8 Days says the Butterfly "jams hard and throws down the crowd pleasers their fans demand. ... [T]heir live show is rock solid." Allegedly, audio samples of their music are available here, but it only seems to work on a PC running Internet Explorer, thus Shanghaiist was unable to tune in. But a friend was. His take? "Kind of sounds like INXS." Let's just hope their music is more original than the English title of their debut album.

1