A former Immigration Minister of New Zealand, Tuariki John Delamere, has slammed the 76 percent state-owned Air New Zealand as a 'flying sweatshop' for paying its 30 Shanghai-based flight attendants a quarter of what its home-based crew was getting, and less than the legal minimum wage in New Zealand. Here's the mile-high wage gap as revealed by the New Zealand Herald:China-based flight attendants: Annual base pay NZ$6240 (RMB 35,200) Hourly rate (Herald calculation based on......

Can't get enough about Hamilton House? We came across this short video piece from New Zealand's TV3 on our very own Hamilton House, which we enjoy visiting quite a bit. General Manager Richard Xavia is a Kiwi, and the angle of the piece is about how a place like Hamilton House is attractive to the increasingly sophisticated tastes of the young elite. Not a mind-blowing point to make for those of us here, of course,......

Landscape lights switched on again in Shanghai [Xinhua] "Shanghai switches on its landscape lights on Friday night after a lapse of more than four weeks. "Shanghai Cancels Art Exhibition [NY Times] "An exhibition of works by the artist Zhang Huan, right, was canceled by Shanghai’s local government just before it was to open this week at the Shanghai Art Museum. The Shanghai Cultural Bureau, which oversees the museum, declined to comment on Friday, as did......

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......

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)......

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......

Chinese property tycoon buys "Shanghai Island" in Dubai [IHT] Hu Bin, a Chinese property tycoon said Wednesday he has paid US$28 million (€20 million) to buy an artificial 40,000 square meter island in Dubai — which he plans to call "Shanghai Island" — is part of a development called "The World" that includes 300 islands made from reclaimed land in the shape of a world map. China Summons U.S. Envoy to Protest Dalai Lama Medal......

Tonight 8pm NEXTSTEP @ Vintage Living 3F, 2068 Nanjing Xilu, by Yongyuan Lu, T: 6249-0469 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. Wednesday 8pm Shanghai Skate Nights @ Shanghai Concert Hall 523 Yan'an Dong Lu (near Xizang Lu) The bi-weekly Shanghai SkateNights continues to gather......

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......

A New Zealand-born contestant of the first series of Big Brother Australia, Gordon Sloan, has died in Beijing on a suspected heroin overdose. From the Herald Sun: According to a source close to Sloan, the former reality star's parents had travelled from their home in New Zealand after their son was admitted to hospital in a coma on September 1. It is understood the devastated couple opted to turn off the life support that had......

Woohoo! It looks like a Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway is coming our way soon that will cut travelling time from 13 hours to under five hours! Shanghaiist can't wait! This will undoubtedly give those darned Beijing-Shanghai "air express services" a run for their money! In other travel news, ANA will commence a code-sharing agreement with Shanghai Airlines and Air China on flights operated by ANA and Shanghai Airlines between Tokyo's Haneda Airport and Shanghai's Hongqiao......

Indian Ocean / Malacca Straits - Five-power naval exercise gives China the jitters [New Zealand Herald] Are the warships from the United States, India, Japan, Australia and Singapore that are exercising together this week off the east coast of India harbingers of a new military alliance in Asia to contain China? Singapore - Pair of seats on inaugural A380 flight go for $100,000 [USA Today] Singapore Airlines, the first carrier in the world to fly......

Tuesday saw a new champion being crowned at the Shanghai Regional Finals of the 42 Below Cocktail World Cup at Bar Rouge. Although we were expecting to see a lot more fancy shmancy juggling and tossing, there was a wide variation in the style of cocktails, and plenty of showy tricks -- liquid nitrogen, torches, fancy garnishes and what have you. Cross from Vault Bar & Lounge, who used to be a chef, showed......

Originally expected to overtake France as the number one tourism destination in 2020, China is now tipped to do so six years earlier in 2014, according to the World Tourism Organisation. A story released today by our favourite English paper attributed this to the Olympic rush and "a rising global fascination in all things Chinese". It also included some staggering statistics from the China National Tourism Administration: From just 300,000 in 1978, the number of......

Kaiping Diaolou inscribed on World Heritage List The Diaolou (watchtower house) of Kaiping, China, was inscribed Thursday World Heritage status by the 31st World Heritage Committee meeting in Christchurch, New Zealand. The Diaolou of Kaiping thus became the 35th World heritage site, also the first of economically prominent South China's Guangdong province. City life expectancy rises to 80.97 The average life span of local residents last year hit 80.97 years, up from 80.13 in......

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......

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......

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......

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......

Guangdong, China - 25 year old Chinese woman Yang Huiyan is now Asia's richest woman and China's richest person after her father transfers his shares to her and the company debuts on the Hong Kong stock exchange. At $9 billion, Yang is richer than George Soros, Steve Jobs of Apple and Rupert Murdoch of News Corp. But sorry guys, she is already married!Singapore - Founding father of modern Singapore Lee Kuan Yew, acknowledging the view......

The cheat is on - a look at adultery around the world "Urban parts of China show about 18.3 per cent of the married men cheating." Zhou claims first for China, Lel wins again "Zhou came to London to gain experience in an event she only began training for in 2002 and promptly gave warning to her better-known rivals that she would be one to watch at the world championships in August and next......

Tonight, New Zealand punk jazz prodigy Aron Ottignon descends upon Shanghaiist’s favourite weekly, Freaklub. Critics have ladled some lavish praise upon the 23-year-old pianist, who began tickling the ivories — “really playing!” Ottignon insists — at the age of one, when most of us were still trying to wrap our heads around the concept of left-foot-right-foot-left-foot-right-foot. At age 11, he picked up what was to be his first of many jazzman accolades — New Zealand’s......

According to the Shanghai Youth Daily (via CRI), 10 women have been scammed selected to make a trip out to Silicon Valley to meet the potential loves of their lives. Apparently, an online dating website is organizing a tour in partnership with an agency in northern California for wealthy professional women who simply don't have the time to find a good man here in Shanghai. Scheduled for next month, the tour will match these women......

That's what some people are saying. According to China Radio International, the Shanghai Morning Post reported earlier this week that Spider-Man 3, expected to be one of the summer's biggest blockbuster movies, got the seal of approval from China's censors and will "open in theaters on the Chinese mainland on May 1, even though it won't be released in the United States until May 4." Pacific Epoch also reports this, citing the Legal Evening News......

The Private Property Party "China Digital Times has noted a Wall Street Journal article that reports on heightened sensitivities around the subject - sensitivities that may have resulted in the current issue of the business magazine Caijing being pulled and revised." China lawmaker wants Forbidden City free of Starbucks "A member of China's parliament has demanded the immediate closure of a Starbucks coffee shop set up inside Beijing's Forbidden City, the Xinhua news agency......

Intercontinental football comes to town tomorrow night in the shape of a fascinating clash between Australian side Sydney FC and local favourites Shanghai Shenhua in the Asian Champions League. The match signifies the dawn of a new era in Asian football, as the A-League side enter the Asian fray for the first time since Australia quit the Oceania confederation a year ago to join the Asian one. And with typical Aussie bravado, Sydney FC captain......

There's a few things in this life that start with the letter M that Shanghaiist doesn't like. Malingerers, marmite, and men with no moustache but full beards (OK, the last one is a bit of a stretch M-wise). Some would say that these are irrational and ill-conceived categorisations, but there is another one on the list that isn't — and that is mosquitoes. And it looks like Shanghaiist isn't going to enjoy our coming summer......

Shanghaiist has learnt that if you synchronize the seminal Pink Floyd record The Dark Side of the Moon with the evening footage displayed on the Aurora building in Lujiazui, certain previously hidden messages are unearthed. For instance, one of the lines from the song “Money” -- “I'm in the high-fidelity first class traveling set” -- corresponds with a figure on the screen pointing towards the penthouse suites of the Pudong Shangri-La Hotel. Later, when the......

Shaanxi peasant's diary--spanning 60 years--is published He started in 1941 and kept it until 2001, and now the sixty year diary of over 2 million characters has been published. (article in Chinese) NEWS BERLIN FILM FESTIVAL BOSSES ORDER CUTS IN CHINESE MOVIE Now it's Westerners asking the Chinese to cut out parts of their films? Comment is free: Sexual development Daniel A Bell asks whether China might not learn from Singapore and consider the......

Realtor accused of power theft "Jones Lang LaSalle, a global real estate management firm, is under police investigation for alleged theft of a huge amount of electricity at a luxury residential property in Shanghai." Police probe mass murder in Pudong fish pond "More than 10,000 kilograms of fish, which were being raised for sale to restaurants and wet markets, were found dead in the pond on Tuesday." Love/Perfect/Change Ends in Shanghai; Will Tour China......