Just as Europe is hoping for China to be its sugar daddy financial savior, tourism industries throughout the Asia Pacific region are bending over backwards to court Chinese tourists and the revenue boost they represent. We thought a special round-up on the subject was in order. more ›

A 22-year-old Chinese male studying engineering in New Zealand has hit the Eternal Shame jackpot, after he was caught with a stash of 10 anime porn DVD's in his luggage at Auckland Airport. more ›

25-year-old Shanghai student Xiao Zhen pleaded guilty in a court yesterday for the murder of a taxi driver in Auckland, New Zealand. more ›

Models showcase the body painting works by New Zealand artist Men Bourk and Chinese painter Ren Zhongni at the Chongqing-Auckland International Body Painting Festival on May 8, 2011. The artists combined various iconic images of the two cities into their paintings. more ›

New Zealand's prime minister has denied China's request for extra compensation for Chinese families who lost children in the Christchurch earthquake. Chinese ambassador Xu Jiangguo had made repeated "indications" that the Chinese would like more money, citing the one-child policy and claiming Chinese families would suffer more from the loss of their only breadwinner. While no official request was actually submitted for more money, here's what New Zealand prime minster John Key had to say in response: more ›

Just in from Down Under. Chinese Ambassador to New Zealand Xu Jianguo has said he's indicated "many times" to the New Zealand government to provide extra compensation to the parents of the seven Chinese students killed in the recent Christchurch earthquake on the basis that they have lost their sole offspring and future breadwinner because of the one-child policy. more ›

Most of you have no doubt heard about the devastating earthquake that struck Christchurch recently. Over a hundred people were killed after a 6.3 magnitude earthquake struck the city and the death toll continues to rise daily. In light of the disaster, the New Zealand community in Shanghai and friends are banding together to hold a earthquake appeal ball on Saturday, April 2. more ›

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U.S. President Obama has nominated the first openly gay person to become an ambassador and - would you look at that? - he's based in Shanghai! Shanghai Pride, for real. David Huebner heads the China Practice and International Disputes Practice of Los Angeles law firm Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton from its Shanghai office. While his position still needs to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate, he's been nominated to be ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa. Source: Bloomberg more ›

It's the last full week of August, the rains have subsided and things are finally settling down in the city. Maybe that's why this week is looking a bit empty, as everyone detoxes unwinds from a crazy summer. more ›

Daily allowance on long-haul flights: NZ$55 (RMB310) more ›

Note: we couldn't find a way to embed the video, so click on the image to check out the site. Also, for some reason the piece on Hamilton House is at the beginning and very end of a separate and longer business report, so don't recoil when the image moves from young attractive diners to an older male business reporter. more ›

"China's giant centre Yao Ming will undergo surgery Monday to fix a stress fracture in his left foot, the Houston Rockets announced on Saturday." more ›

The last time an anchor from our favourite TV channel made it to the news, he created such a brouhaha that culminated in the eviction of one coffee company from the Forbidden City. In the news this time is New Zealand-born anchor Edwin Maher who for many years before arriving in China was a weatherman with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. The Los Angeles Times published a profile of Maher that started it all off. It... more ›

This week's Shanghai pub news HAMILTON HOUSE: Hamilton House Restaurant and Bar (137 Fuzhou Road 福州路137号) opened last week and is located at the corner of Fuzhou and Jiangxi Roads, opposite the Metropole Hotel and a couple of blocks back from the Bund. Hamilton House is a 1930s art deco building with nice high ceilings and reminds me of many bars in Melbourne. On the ground floor (i.e. first floor for you North American readers)... more ›

Who is Yacht ? more ›

China will offer religious services for foreigners arriving for the 2008 Olympic Games, an official in charge of religious affairs said. more ›

Calling all Shanghai entrepreneurs! Come meet new faces and get to know other like-minded individuals at this week's NextStep event which features Tony Mustafa of Essential Finance. All are welcome, no membership required, and no cover charge.


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Our Shanghai champions that went to the finals of the Cocktail World Cup held in Queenstown, New Zealand, have come back and done us proud! Unshaken by an itinerary that included some really extreme cocktail shaking via bungy-jumping, on top of a mountain and on a jet boat, Cross from Vault and Alex from Volar (together with Johnsen from Aria in Beijing) emerged fourth after Teams Vegas, New Zealand and England. Okay, so they weren't tops but it appears they did manage to wow some of the biggest mixologists around like New York cocktail king Dale DeGroff. more ›

A New Zealand-born contestant of the first series of Big Brother Australia, Gordon Sloan, has died in Beijing on a suspected heroin overdose. more ›

In other Shanghaiist news, our favourite media blog Danwei has offered your correspondent a very special Toilet Bowl Award as part of their recent Model Worker's Awards for "posting regularly about news that no one else is finding, and translating some of the more interesting stuff on the Chinese Internet". We have also been singled out for our "excellent contribution to the toilet sector, for the posts Shanghai artist's Nike poo, and especially for the video displayed at this page: New bidet that doubles as enema and colon cleanser." We wish we could take all the credit for it but the first story came in as a tip while the second one was a quite a boo-boo on our part. We've actually since unpublished the post (but somehow it still appears), reason being, one of our colleagues already wrote about it earlier this year. Anyhow, we shall graciously accept our toilet bowl and promise to polish it religiously. more ›

As Malaysia celebrates its 50th birthday, the unity of the nation has shown cracks along racial and religious divides. Meanwhile, former premier Mahathir Mohammed is recovering after heart surgery more ›

From just 300,000 in 1978, the number of foreign visitors to China reached 22 million in 2006, excluding arrivals from Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan.

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Never unhappy to hear about new pizza joints opening in the city, Shanghaiist is excited to find out that one of the most controversial pizza chains in the world might be coming to China; Hell Pizza. We say might because Shanghaiist isn’t sure at this point and we are waiting for official word from the franchise, but we did stumble upon this site, which may or may not be associated with the official Hell Pizza chain (same logo though). Also of note, this site mentions that Hell Pizza is interested in the China market: more ›

Shanghaiist needs a massage. On Saturday we took part in the 2007 Great Wall Marathon, a race of 42.195km (26 miles), including two stretches of about 9km each on the Great Wall itself. The rest in the countryside. About 1,300 runners — a lot of Americans, some South Africans, Australians, Mexicans, Dutch, Danish, British, a few French ... and even four goats and an Olympic female mountain biker from New Zealand — took part in the marathon. We all started at 7.30 am ... and seven hours later, Shanghaiist completed the race, with sore legs and sunburned shoulder. But how proud we were! more ›

During the golden week, Shanghaiist published the rumor that world class diva Christina Aguilera (the artist formally known as X-tina) would be coming to Shanghai to belt out some of her latest hits. At the time of the announcement, Ms. Aguilera was awaiting approval from the Shanghai government censors, something Jay-Z is very familiar with. At the time, Shanghaiist was "praying on every dumpling" that the censors would approve the concert because we are big... more ›

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. more ›

Image of Yang Huiyan, now China's richest person, from China Daily. more ›