Looks like Jennifer 8. Lee of the New York Times is up to her old tricks again, highlighting the ostensibly huge gulf between what goes for Chinese food in the States and the kind that Chinese people actually eat. This time around, it's the fortune cookie that gets the attention. Check out this clip of folks here in China getting introduced to fortune cookies for the first time; read Lee's article here.......

That's the headline of a New York Times story about the controversy surrounding a now much-talked-about photo of the men's Olympic basketball team from Spain (See: "Spain's Olympic Basketball Team: Racist? Or just stupid?" for details). Oddly, the story has nothing to do with any possible punishments the Spaniards would face (honestly, we can't think of any — the bad PR and embarrassment should be punishment enough), but the story does offer a little bit......

... comes from The New York Times. Check it out and let us know if you have found anything better.......

Is the air quality at the Beijing airport really that bad? The New York Times has the story (and some photos): The masks they wore were specially designed by and issued to them by the United States Olympic Committee. The U.S.O.C.’s lead exercise physiologist, Randy Wilber, had advised U.S. Olympians to wear the masks on the plane and as soon as they stepped foot in Beijing. Two of the cyclists wore the masks on the......

On display on Yahoo!'s news site for a good 24 hours: a picture of the five Olympic mascots standing on Tiananmen Square ready to welcome visitors under the headline "Tiananmen Square Massacre Remembered". Yahoo! has since blamed the boo-boo on an "automated gallery feature", writes Tania Branigan of The Guardian.Adam Minter of Shanghai Scrap spotted this "anonymous" China sourcing which we still can't for the life of us believe made it to the New York......

As the Chinese government goes about in its last minute preparations for the long-awaited Olympics, elsewhere in Sichuan Province, local officials are pressurizing parents whose children have died in the May 12 earthquake to accept hush money. Sign a contract to get a cash payment plus pension or risk further trouble from the authorities? Very, very disturbing. [Source]......

From the New York Times: Foreign entertainers who have taken part in activities that China deems a threat to its sovereignty will not be allowed to perform in the country, according to a new list of rules posted Thursday on the Web site of the Ministry of Culture. The rules say that the background credentials of performers from foreign countries, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan will be scrutinized carefully. “Those who used to take part......

From Al-Jazeera English:The Beijing Olympics are still 5 months away but they're attracting attention for all the wrong reasons. Human rights campaigners have been staging protests, demanding China be called to account for its human rights record in Tibet. Owen Fay reports on protests designed to place pressure on Beijing. Related stories: New York Times: Tibetan Marchers Arrested in India AHN: Tibetan Exiles Embark On Hunger Strike In India To Protest Against Arrests International Herald......

It wasn't until we read this interview in Salon with Jennifer 8. Lee (and that's not a typo, folks), New York Times journalist and author of the book The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food, that we suddenly realized that it has been forever since we've had beef with broccoli or General Tso's chicken. We think it's because we haven't made room in our ordering agenda given the unbelievable amount of......

The International Herald Tribune has a great new article entitled Shanghai: The allure of individualism which explores the rising trend of young Chinese designers setting up shop to sell their own stuff. And they are not cheap.The New York Philharmonic has just left Shanghai for Beijing on its Asian tour that also includes Hong Kong and Taiwan and a landmark concert in Pyongyang. The New York Times talks about the disappointment of principal oboist Wang......

Amsterdam-based World Press Photo earlier this month announced the winners of its annual photo contest, the world's largest and most prestigious for press photography. Shanghai-based photographer Ariana Lindquist, an American who shoots for the New York Times, TIME and other publications, won first prize in Arts and Entertainment for her portrait of a girl in an anime costume at Shanghai Stadium. We think the least all Shanghaiist readers could do is buy Ariana a drink......

If anyone happens to be hankering for some nostalgia, m97 Gallery might be a good place to head to this weekend. The gallery will be presenting a double-shot dose of street photography today with the opening of Dutch photographer Robert van der Hilst’s “Shanghai 1990-1993” and American photographer/journalist Howard W. French’s “Disappearing Shanghai”. The observations by two veteran photographers of a rapidly changing Shanghai over ten-plus years should be reason enough to traipse over to......

Photo by Michael D Manning Chinese espionage New York Times: Justice Dept. Announces Arrests in 2 Chinese Espionage Cases AHN: Pentagon Analyst, Boeing Engineer In Hot Water For Spying For China Red Orbit: U.S. Space Secrets Sold to China Monsters & Critics: Taiwan accesses damage after US unveils Chinese espionage New internet purge Guardian Unlimited: China launches new internet purge AP: China Targets Internet in Crime Sweep Xinhua: China to tighten supervision over "virtue......

We've all been hearing reports about the nightmare caused by the snow, or what Xinhua calls "China's war on snow havoc", which isn't quite as felicitous a phrase as the "US War on Terror", but hey, at least it's more real! The New York Times, among other media outlets, talks about the sense of anger and resentment that people are feeling about what some consider as a lack of preparation on the government's part. From......

By Jos H.L. Kurstjens Around Shanghai New York Times: Plan to Extend Shanghai Rail Line Stirs Middle Class to Protest AFP: Shanghai metro apologises to kissing couple in Internet video Xinhua: Shanghai aims to become national trendsetter AFP: Beckham to play in Shanghai China Daily: Shanghai to base growth on service industry The New Year Chill AFP: Snow storms cause deaths in China ahead of Lunar New Year AP: Heavy snow in China strands......

Recently, Tudou's Marc van der Chijs commented on how he knew the bubble in the Chinese stockmarket had to burst soon when he found out that his driver, too, had jumped headlong onto the stock bandwagon although he had zero understanding of how stockmarkets work. You will find an echo of that sentiment in Al-Jazeera's latest report on China's current stockmarket frenzy. Meanwhile, David Barboza of the New York Times says China wonders if its......

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......

A China Daily report dated 14 December 2007 suggesting that Beijing may make a temporary exception for banned foreign publications such as Playboy and The Sun has travelled around the world and created a mini-furore and lots of confusion back home here. Here are the offending paragraphs:All pornographic material is prohibited on the mainland but a temporary exception could be made for the Games, according to the biggest importer of foreign publications in the country.......

The environment Shanghai Daily: People's Square set to shine with solar power Xinhua: Chilling effect from Great Hall of the People China Daily: Shanghai running out of cemeteries New York Times: A Shanghai Hotel Goes Green China Digital Times: More Than Four in Five Chinese Glaciers Retreating - People Online China Digital Times: Deal With Global Warming: Try Not to Divorce - China Youth Daily Travel AFP: China produces first home-grown bullet train: report......

Déjà vu all over again? Here it is once more, Shanghaiist's nearly quarterly review the Douban book Top Ten List: Annie Baby - "Sunian Jinshi" (Beijing-based author, photographer and blogger who writes about love and self-exploration in the big city.) JK Rowling - "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" (Official Chinese version, published by the People's Literature Publishing House.) Markus Zusak - "The Book Thief" (Australian author of Austrian-German heritage writes a WWII book......

If you've been browsing the DVD shops lately, you might have already come across Nanking, a documentary—of sorts—about the Nanjing massacre of 1937. The film consists of three elements: first-person accounts from survivors and eye witnesses, including Chinese civilians and soldiers as well as Japanese soldiers. These are all real people, telling their stories on film. Then there actors portraying some of the people, mostly Europeans and Americans, that played a role in setting up......

Back in the office and just can't concentrate on work? Here's a bunch of useless links we gathered that you can entertain yourself with (while pretending to look oh-so-busy)! The Opposite End of China pulls out more old China news from the New York Times archive. Eye-catching headlines include: "Moslems capture West China cities", "Sinkiang capital falls", "Mohammedans capture Urumchi, Nanking may send mediator", "New state is formed by Eastern Sinkiang", and "The Living Buddha......

This story dated October 12, 1964 comes from Michael Manning who's blogging from Xinjiang in The Opposite End of China. He found it while fiddling around with the The New York Times Archive which now allows subscribers to access news reports from as far back as 1851. Interesting look into the China of the past and its geopolitics! How far we've come since the days of the cold war.......

... and the rumor-mill is running in overdrive. Recent reports suggest that Shanghai Party Chief Xi Jinping's (习近平) recent entry into the race - apparently at senior leader Zeng Qinghong's (曾庆红) insistence - has shaken things up; forcing Hu Jintao to make some last-minute maneuvering. The Jiang Zemin and the Hu Jintao camps both want their own guy to take over the top-job in 2012, and each are doing their best to make it happen.......

Just a few days ago, the New York Times researcher Zhao Yan (赵岩) was freed after three years in prison. Today, we hear Li Yuanlong (李元龙), 47, a journalist who was jailed in 2005 for posting subversive essays on the Internet, has also been freed. Li, who wrote under the pseudonym Ye Lang (夜狼) or "Night Wolf," used to work for Guizhou Province's Bijie Daily《毕节日报》which we understand to be a paper with a really tiny......

People who made the news this week Zhao Yan (赵岩), the Chinese journalist jailed in 2004 while working for the New York Times is expected to be freed this weekend. Zhao was charged for revealing state secrets after a Times report was published that correctly predicted the retirement of Jiang Zemin (江泽民) as president and Communist Party chief. He was also accused of fraud for taking RMB20,000 from a village official. Prior to joining the......

From Southern Weekend via the Bokee blogs we learned that the controversial Shanghai high school history textbooks—the very ones that were the subject of a New York Times article last year (Sept. 1, 2006)—have been banned. In that article, Joseph Kahn claimed that China's decades old Marxist template was being abandoned and that class struggle and other mainstays of Marxist theory were being downplayed. Instead, world history and civilization figured more prominently. Bill Gates was......

China is a Democracy, But Not Copy of the West, by Zhu Jing of the Chinese Embassy in Nairobi for the East African Standard, [via A Glimpse of the World]:China practises a unique democratic experience, which is beneficial, reasonable and fruitful because it suits the country and has stood the test of time. The political party system that China adopts is consultative under the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC), which is different......

Fingers crossed: A wise man once proclaimed Backyard Cafe, tucked behind the Bridge 8 complex on Jianguo Lu, to be the purveyor of the best steak in Shanghai. We agreed that, dollar for pound, Backyard was a deal not to be missed. A buy one get one free Enjoy Shanghai coupon sweetened our visits. Which is why we were distressed when we read on Sherpa's helpful little scrollbar that Backyard has been closed. Diligent as......

Briton Nick Young, founding editor and publisher of the China Development Brief (we're surprised this website is still up and running), has been ordered to shut down his politically-sensitive newsletter here and has been accused of 'conducting unauthorised surveys'. He also faces possible deportation and a 5-year ban from China. Danwei surmises that the shutdown may have been caused by a number of factors, including "a recent China Development Brief party attended by more than......