As you’ve no doubt read about already here on Shanghaiist, this weekend could be one of the best for live music since we scuttled into the Year of the Rat. Therefore, you’ll forgive us if we don’t make it down to M on the Bund but instead spend our time over the next couple of days at slightly less refined venues checking out some great bands. Nevertheless, if books not beats are your thing, then......

Take a walk down Panyu (Fanyu) Lu from the Film Art Centre and you will soon pass by the SH508 restaurant. It occupies a slaughtered renovated colonial mansion adorned with a huge neon sign. Unknown to the proprietors, reviewers and most of the customers, this is actually the former family home of British writer J.G. Ballard. Ballard is famous in the mainstream for two works. Crash laid out a disturbingly explicit ‘psychoscape’ in which the......

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.......

Troubling news has emerged over the last day regarding the tragic killing of a man in Tianmen, Hubei province. Clashes started last Monday over a failed promise by the city government to move a garbage dump away further away from a residential area. About fifty or so chengguan (城管) or 'city managers' were called in to control the crowd. Wei Wenhua, a manager at a local government-owned construction company with no apparent connection to the......

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......

If tourism officials have their way, visitors to Beijing in 2009 will not only have to climb the Great Wall of China, but also the Great Wheel, says Ben Blanchard of Reuters. At 208 metres tall, the Great Wheel will be the world's largest ferris wheel — higher and bigger than both the London Eye and the Singapore Flyer which opens in March next year. Our eyes were drawn to these lines in the Reuters......

Shanghaiist's mailbox has been inundated by emails from all you naughty girls out there asking when the launch party to that Shanghai Hairy Crabs nude rugby calendar will be held. Well, gurls, mark your calendars and save the date! The action happens this Thursday at MAO from 8pm onwards! RMB200 gets you a Solid Vodka open bar, snacks, a goody bag, and yes a copy of that calendar (we know you've been waiting for it).......

Eating with chopsticks can be tricky for those of us who first picked them up quite late in life. Even though we've been using them for a while, our frequent spillages suggest that we need to refine our chopstick wielding skills. Success in this endeavour will generate the same level of praise hitherto reserved for baby faced Channel V presenters and NBA basketball stars. We may exaggerate, but thanks to Gomestic (via Lifehacker) we have......

If you've been still wondering how the woman who rammed her bike into the bus actually managed to do it, this one takes the cake! Today's Shanghai Daily tells us of a truck that got stuck under a bridge while trying to force its way through on Songxing Road in Baoshan District yesterday at 7pm. In fact:Police said the driver knew the crane bases on his truck were taller than the bridge, but he still......

OK, we all know about the Great Wall, the Great Firewall and the Great Green Wall. All that is old news now. Get this: China is now building a 6 million yuan, 40-kilometer (25-mile) long, 1 meter (3.3 feet) high wall around Dongting Lake in Hunan Province to guard against the 2 billion field mice that have been on the run from the flooded Yangtse River. Already, the mice have destroyed about 520,000 hectares (1.3......

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......

It's not been a good month for climbers in Sichuan Province. Ok, that's an understatement. It's been a damn awful month. At the beginning of July, the body of accomplished twice-climber-of-Everest Christine Feld-Boskoff was discovered on the remote mountain peak of Genyan Massif, half a year after the body of her partner in mountain-climbing was found (we told you how the two prominent mountain-climbers went missing here and here). Boskoff was believed to have died......

The blog Lost Laowai has started a group writing project called "If I Knew Then What I Know Now." The general idea is for other bloggers to write about what they thought about China before actually moving out here and how different the reality actually is. Once the writer has finished the post, he/she can notify Lost Laowai and have it put up on the consolidated submission list for everyone's reading pleasure. For a while......

Still recovering from your May Holiday partying? Well, there's no respite. Here are a few things that Shanghaiist is keeping an eye on over the coming week. Thursday May 10th Photography Exhibition Reception: Shanghai - The New Noir. Photography exhibitions appear to be a 2007 trend. Tonight, see the opening reception of photographer Heungman's collection. The exhibition contrasts the great metropolies of New York and Shanghai, and explores their lurking "sinister energies". Shanghai: The New......

You never know about reports issued on April 1, but we have good reason to believe that a recent Chinese report about the lack of sex that middle-aged Chinese couples have might be true. According to that report, issued by some population studies center, over 30% of middle-aged couples have, mostly due to stress and responsibility and busyness, given up their sex lives (放弃性生活), while 41% still maintain some kind of regular sex life. By......

Avril Lavigne’s new single, “Girlfriend” from her new album The Best Damn Thing is already a hit, currently sitting at #5 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart in the U.S. What makes Avril’s newest song unique is that she recorded an alternate version of the song partially sung in Chinese. In order to capitalize on her popularity in (East) Asia, she recorded the chorus of the song in Mandarin, as well as Japanese......

Last Saturday, Shanghaiist was invited to attend the unveiling of Shanghai's newest gallery space, m97. Once we negotiated the tricky shared building entrance, we made our way to the second floor and was immediately impressed by the physical space and airy nature of the gallery. The grand opening featured an exhibition of by emerging Beijing photographer and artist Jiang Zhi titled "Things Would Turn Simpler Once They Happened". Immediately we had diametrically opposing thoughts. "How......

We have seen GPS units in Shanghai taxis before, but the one we saw yesterday (pictured) seemed a little cooler than most (if the word "cool" can in fact be used to describe a GPS unit in a taxi). What caught our eye was the device's handwriting recognition feature. Once we told our cabbie the destination, she took out a stylus and wrote the address on the color screen. Then the GPS pinpointed the location......

Just what exactly is the attitude of people in Shanghai towards luxury items? It seems, from some reports, that China is the third largest market for luxury items after the US and Japan, with the added benefit of less taxes to "curb barbaric luxury consumption." Once the province of super-rich (men), luxury goods consumption in China is now in part being driven by women. Another interesting phenomenon is that people in Shanghai are more cynical......

Director Nick Broomfield recently released Ghosts (鬼佬) on the film festival circuit. The movie tells the story of Chinese illegals eking out a living in England, and although we searched quite thoroughly on a recent trip to the states, evidently it is only showing in England at this time. Therefore, because we have yet to see Ghosts, we cannot comment much further, and instead, here is the synopsis from the movie's website. Based on true......

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......

Last October, Shanghai Daily announced plans for a city-wide wireless broadband network: Once completed, it will be the first citywide wireless broadband network on the Chinese mainland, the commission officials said. Shanghai Telecom Co Ltd and China Mobile's Shanghai Branch have signed agreements with the commission to invest a total of 40 billion yuan (US$5 billion) to improve local IT infrastructure, including the wireless network. "Every one can access the broadband network at anytime from......

Lucky for Shanghaiist, we won't be. But we certainly feel for people who will be stuck in the city for the holidays. So we've compiled an incomplete list of a few things to keep you occupied while your friends are back home drinking eggnog and getting wasted with family around the Christmas tree. The first time Shanghaiist went to the Yinqixing Indoor Skiing Resort was back in the SARS era (2003). We went back this......

After almost half a year, Shanghai’s iconic “alternative lifestyle nightclub”, Home Bar, officially reopened last week under its new brand, Pinkhome. It has been transformed from its previous existence into what is China’s first gay multiplex including a dance club, restaurant/lounge, and hotel. As some readers may remember, there was a pre-soft (is that a word?) opening last October for the bar, after which the establishment was closed again until renovations were completed. For those......

More than you ever wanted to know about buying fruit from street vendors In City Supermarket strawberries (cǎo méi - 草莓) cost 34 RMB per 1/2 kilo! That is why the locals buy them from the guys in the street like in the photo. But if you are a foreigner you will get ripped off. So let us see if we can even the balance. Here are various tricks that you might encounter from the......

We're sure there are other members only bars in Shanghai, but they would actually require memberships for you to enter. Not Southern Cross, at 1276 Huaihai Zhong Lu, not too far from Huating Lu and across the street from the No. 2 entrance for the Changshu Lu metro stop. The sign outside says "Member's Bar" and the door is locked. But all you need to do is knock on the door and pay 50 kuai......

Don’t panic yet, but seriously, it might be inappropriate to say "Bund 18" in the future. According to this Eastday report (in Chinese), one of the 2006 government projects -- cleaning up the city's street names -- is going to be finished by the end of this year. There are 838 roads involved in this project: 146 road names are going to be written off, 154 road names are going to be changed and 225......

Christopher St. Cavish, motorcycling philanthropist...

Hu Run unveiled his annual list of the richest folks in China (that Hu Run can find info on) yesterday in Shanghai. Once again, Shanghaiist contributors missed the cut by a few billion kuai. Bummer! In a list of names that we know very little about and care little for, there is one interesting twist: A new king has been crowned ... or queen rather. Huang Guangyu after sitting atop the exclusive list for two......

This morning, via Micah's blog, we learned of this posting on Rockself.com: 紧急通知:堂会取消9月1日后的全部摇滚专场演出 作 者：堂会 来 源：堂会 更新日期：2006-9-2 浏 览 量：211 9月8日，9月15日，9月22日（后海大鲨鱼，美好药店，新裤 子）的演出因面临不可抗拒的阻力和困难而取消，特此紧急通知 。望大家相互转告。 对此，堂会表示抱歉和遗憾。 让想看演出的朋友失望了，一旦问题解决 ，堂会仍将继续组织摇滚演出，也希望朋友们继续支持！谢谢！ 堂会酒吧（电话：021-54034408) Emergency Notice: All live rock performances after Sept. 1 are canceled Author: Tang Hui Source: Tang Hui Updated: 2006-9-2 Traffic: 211 Performances on Sept. 8, Sept. 15, Sept. 22 (Queensea Big Shark, Glamorous Pharmacy, New Pants) are canceled due to unsurmountable forces and difficulties. Please tell your......