After leaving Beijing's Capital Airport Saturday evening with his wife and two children, blind dissident and self-taught lawyer Chen Guangcheng has touched down at Newark-Liberty International Airport and headed straight for New York University. more ›

Via AP: "A work featuring one ton of handmade porcelain sunflower seeds by Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei will be a highlight at a contemporary art sale at Sotheby's Wednesday night in New York. The sackful is estimated to bring $600,000 to $800,000." more ›

China's rampant smoking problem is not only bad for the health of its people, but might also prove detrimental to the health of the entire economy. Non-communicable diseases like cancer are taking their toll on China's workforce as they account for 80% of nation's deaths (almost 20% more than the global average), and consume 70% of all health spending. The tobacco industry alone has been implicated in the deaths of 1 million people (though the actual figure is probably substantially higher). more ›

"Jeremy Lin isn't handsome enough. I hope that in the future that when I'm with my husband, people can say to me jealously: 'Wow! So your husband is actually Jeremy Lin.' I feel like handsomeness counts as food, but basketball can't count as food." more ›

Jeremy Lin gets the NMA treatment after the Knicks' guard became an overnight sensation over the past week. Lin scored 23 points (including a dunk) while notching another career-high ten assists in a 107-93 Knicks' win against the Wizards in Washington D.C. The only thing that could make this story better is if Whoopi Goldberg took over as coach. more ›

The basketball-loving city of New York is currently in a mild tizzy over the revelatory play of Jeremy Lin, after Lin shot 58.8% from the field to score 28 points and dish out 8 assists (both career-highs) against the Utah Jazz in a 99-88 win. more ›

On Saturday night at Madison Square Garden, the New York Knicks' Jeremy Lin (林書豪) officially went and got himself a hefty piece in a 99-92 win against the New Jersey Nets. Having been firmly planted on the bench all season (and all career, for that matter), Lin stepped up and gave an electric performance in front of the Knicks faithful at the Mecca of Basketball, scoring a career-high 25 points (with 12 coming in the 4th quarter) while dishing 7 assists and nabbing 5 rebounds. more ›

Sister Feng, the self-promoting literary genius, was recently spotted outside of Columbia University on Manhattan's Upper West Side (she previously demanded husbands who were Tsinghua or Peking university graduates), handing out fliers with her requirements for a husband written in English. And though we can't confirm if Sister Feng will definitely be starring in that Japanese porno, we can confirm that she is no longer interested in Asian men! more ›

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Xinhua News Agency recently blew big money on ads in New York City's Time Square, but apparently people still have no idea what it is they sell. more ›

Conan O'Brien salutes the Yankees-hatted Chinese food delivery men of New York City for a comedy bit, by experiencing a hectic day of running around with hot orders of sweet and sour soup and chicken fried rice. Along the way, he deals with rude customers, spilled drinks, and other assorted hi-jinx. more ›

This is just plain hilaaaarious: Cops in NYC have arrested a worker at a funeral supplies shop in Chinatown that sells joss paper and other papier-mâché items that Chinese people the world over like to burn for their deceased family members. more ›

The new Miss Universe China, Luo Zilin, is in New York City, preparing for the big pageant and she's been living for the last few weeks in the home of none other than Yue-Sai Kan, the TV personality and businesswoman who has a cosmetics label named after her. more ›

When you think of major cultural figures of 1980s New York, names like Jean-Michel Basquiat, Run-D.M.C. and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles all come to mind. Though Ai Weiwei might now rank as a towering contemporary art sage, he could hardly be considered to have been in the same league during the cultural moment when New York was a cheaper and more authentically shitty place to live. The new show at the Asia Society Museum in Manhattan, Ai Weiwei: New York Photographs 1983-1993, is Ai's personal record of his twenty-something nascence, fleshing out his pre-famous years of gestation for the now-interested New York audience. more ›

When Chinese students learn English, they learn how to speak with perfect English accents, or standard American accents. Those who actually end up in England/America are sure to be in for a surprise to learn that most English people/Americans don't speak that way. more ›

Currently 'disappeared' artist Ai Weiwei's work, 'Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads', has just been unveiled at the Grand Army Plaza in New York City, with Mayor Michael Bloomberg speaking out on Ai's present detainment. Bloomberg declared that the occasion was 'bittersweet,' and that the lack of information regarding Ai's whereabouts was 'disturbing.' more ›

Our mothership Gothamist reports that on Sunday, "hundreds of people gathered by the Chinese Consulate on the West Side Highway to protest the arrest and detainment of artist Ai Weiwei as part of a worldwide protest against China. The protesters reenacted Ai's Fairytale: 1,001 Qing Dynasty Wooden Chairs, an installation of 1,001 late Ming and Qing Dynasty wooden chairs at Documenta 12 in 2007 in Kassel, Germany." See all the wonderful pictures here. more ›

Photos via news.163.com more ›

Shanghai may have topped the ranking of China's 10 most luxurious cities, but as far as China Daily is concerned (surprise, surprise), this city just ain't a world-class city yet. Ok, fair enough, maybe Shanghai doesn't have as much to offer in terms of art, theater, music and literature but did writer Chen Weihua really have to go on and on about the hundred ways in which New York City is better than Shanghai, as if there weren't other world-class cities around? We're not sure how much of this article was self-deprecation, and how much of it was pure penis envy. You decide. more ›

Jeremy Goldkorn of Danwei points us to this video now circulating widely on the Chinese interwebs. In the clip, a CCTV News anchor speaks with Tong Ye, the channel's New York correspondent who has just stepped out of a press conference on the recent Times Square car bomb. Here's the dialogue as translated by Danwei:

Anchor: The press conference has just ended, we're going live to our correspondent in New York, Tong Ye. more ›

If you've ever been in New York and wanted good Sichuanese food, you've probably found yourself at Wu Liang Ye: with so few authentic options, your choices are pretty much limited to them and Grand Sichuan. Though this isn't Shanghai news, it's still pretty interesting: we never knew that the Chinese government owned the restaurants! In the wake of a labor dispute with their workers, it seems that the Village Voice did some uncovering, and gives you the issues behind why the laborers are having such a hard time seeking justice: more ›

The Grand Opening of the Channel One mall complex is this Saturday, September 19, and to celebrate, it'll be running a "New York Impressions" week. more ›

Last month the Fashion & Style section of The New York Times published Riding the It Factor, putting forward the Dutch bicycle as the new fashionable "It object" on the New York streets in these times of "Great Downturn." more ›

A lot of us over here have friends that we miss terribly over in the U.S., but our repeated pleas to have them come and visit are usually met with a sad shrug and something along the lines of, “We're in the middle of an economic crisis over here. I ain't got funds, man.” more ›

Shanghai made it to 4th place in Forbes' list of the world's tallest cities with a total of 21 towers climbing over 700 feet. The current tallest is the Shanghai World Financial Center, at 1,614 feet, but it'll be surpassed by the Shanghai Tower, which is expected to be completed in 2014 and reach heights of 2,000 feet. It was beat out by Dubai, Hong Kong and, at number one, New York City. more ›

Randy Cohen, New York Times "The Ethicist" columnist, might be inclined to think so. Granted, Cohen's anti-auto podcast from last week is about Manhattan, but several of his arguments already seem applicable to Shanghai (and, in 2020, when our city's subway system looks like this, there will be few ethical excuses for owning personal cars in most of Shanghai). Cohen lays out five reasons why cars and Manhattanites shouldn't mix. Here's No. 1: "Cars kill. If you introduced a transportation system by announcing, 'It'll only kill 40,000 people a year,' it's hard to believe it would gain widespread popularity." (The number of "traffic deaths" in China was down to 73,484 in 2008, but up 100 percent over the last 20 years.) Listen to all New York Times podcasts here or subscribe via iTunes. They're all free. more ›

Danwei directed us to the embedded six-month old video of a short local NBC News piece on a Chinese-made three-wheel "car" available from a dealer in Webster, New York (it's actually available in several places in the U.S., like Michigan). The Webster dealer (we think this is his MySpace page ... yes, MySpace) claims women love the Wildfire WF650-C. The jury is still out on that one. more ›

Frenchman in Shanghai 《上海的法国人》, a cover of Sting's 1987 hit Englishman in New York, by Roubichou Gauthier. more ›

By Benjamin Cohen more ›

Wong Kar-wai is celebrating the opening of his shit movie My Blueberry Nights in the US this Friday by selling some merchandise — most notably, $95 t-shirts, $50 posters, and $25 postcards. And if you want to thank him for ripping you off in person, you'll get your chance in New York at a fashion boutique store called Opening Ceremony, where Wong is going to be on Wednesday afternoon. We hope that someone tells him that the US is facing a recession and that the real incomes are not increasing for the average American. $25 for a postcard? You can get four lattes in Manhattan for that price! Sheesh! more ›