Shanghai's dishonest internet users may be punished with restrictions on certain business activities in real life, a senior official announced on Wednesday. more ›

A cross-dressing garbage collector has won national sympathy after his house was burned by a fire and he was subsequently ridiculed by both news commentators and video site Tudou. more ›

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Online donations are still pouring in from all corners of China and around the world as supporters of the dissident-artist Ai Weiwei chip in to help him out with the RMB15 million fine for tax evasion that he's been given 15 days to cough up. It's a spontaneous, collective middle finger that they've thrusted at the powers that be for the injustice they see in the 81-day detention that Ai was put through last year as authorities scrambled to prevent the Jasmine Revolution from spreading to China. more ›

On Tuesday, dissident-artist Ai Weiwei (艾未未) who was freed not too long ago from an 81-day detention, was slapped with a RMB15 million fine for tax evasion, a princely sum he has been given 15 days to cough up. The very next day, his mother Ai Ying (高瑛) and brother Ai Dan (艾丹) announced that they were mortgaging the former residence of his father, the poet Ai Qing (艾青). Following calls on Twitter by Shanghai human rights lawyer Li Tiantian (李天天) and feminist scholar Ai Xiaoming (艾晓明, no relation) to send money, his supporters also swung into action, setting up Alipay and Paypal accounts to collect donations. more ›

Following a legal tussle over its name (we wonder with whom), three-year-old online supermarket SmartDirect has now been rebranded as FoodBox and it may be found at FoodBoxChina.com. more ›

Now this changes everything. Taobao has just launched its own online supermarket at http://chaoshi.taobao.com/ . Currently on trial in Shanghai, the service is expected to go live in Beijing, Hangzhou, Shenzhen and Guangzhou in the upcoming weeks. more ›

Despite Chinese people being some of the most enthusiastic internet users in the world, we all know that China and the internet don’t exactly go hand in hand…actually that’s probably an understatement. We are all subjected to the great firewall of China, but it seems that the government (accidentally?) opened the gates earlier this year; but instead of removing the censorship, they hijacked US web traffic. more ›

Here's a reason not to shut down those health websites: a recent survey from the Social Investigation Center of China Youth Daily found that 79% of Chinese youth find out their "sexual knowledge" from the Internet, compared to only 32% from school and 31% from parents. "There is a severe lack of formal sex education in China, so many teenagers turn to the Internet," one moderator of an online sex-ed forum said. Of note though: the survey was conducted online. more ›

Remember when text messaging wasn't that big of a deal? Way back before touch screens and T9, when your elders had barely gotten used to having a cellular phone on them? Well, the halcyon days of instant communication technology are long gone - if you're one of the "after 90" generation, you've grown up in constant contact with friends, family and the rest of the world. more ›

It's Thursday and you're slouched in your office chair bored out of your f*cking mind. We're here to help with the following two suggestions: You can download and play the new game, Jumpman, OR put the video below on loop + fullscreen, and loose yourself in its strangely hypnotic, mesmerising and enchanting visuals. Until your boss decides to jump on you from behind, that is.
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A site where cosplay enthusiasts can act out the online game Counterstrike, has been set up close to the ruins left by the Sichuan earthquake. According to the site's manager Dai Jun, the area's collapsed buildings make a good setting for the game. People in the area have protested against the park, but Dai Jun, quoted in Xinhua news says that the bereaved will find consolation in the reconstruction of tourist attractions, rather than in prayers alone. "How to restore the local tourist market and benefit the local villagers should be at the top of the agenda". more ›

Ever tried to check out Taobao, but couldn't make heads or tails of it? more ›

Beginning Jan 1, Mengniu, one of China's leading dairy firms, has launched a new advertising campaign entitled "Happy Niu Year" which is scheduled to run on television, in print and online, all the way through to Feb 9. The word "Niu" is a play on the Chinese word "牛" which means cow (as well as ox and bull) and this year happens to be the Year of the Bull. This is the first major ad campaign by a Chinese dairy company since the melamine scandal struck late last year. The television commercial for this campaign follows after the jump more ›

Via Andrew Sullivan we learn of this extraordinary project: more ›

• Chinese online trading site, Alibaba, plans to expand to Europe. The company behind the site will open a London office, as part of a project called "Road to London", which aims to encourage Chinese companies to invest in the next Olympic host city.
• As we told you earlier, an album called Songs For Tibet, was released on iTunes just three days before the Olympics, causing its online store to be blocked in China. Now however, iTunes Music Store has been reopened, in a new and Songs For Tibet-free version, somehow the censors have managed to block access to this album, without blocking the entire site.
• Baidu's new e-commerce platform will offer 10.000 beta testers free online stores and domain names.

Beijing resident Yang Jia, stood trial on Tuesday at the Shanghai No 2 People's Intermediate Court for murdering six Shanghai policemen in July this year. As we told you earlier Yang was caught and interrogated by Shanghai police for riding a stolen bicycle on October 15, 2007. After he had been released Yang sued the interrogating officers for psychological damage and later returned to the police station and killed six officers. more ›

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

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According to a report released by China Internet Network Information Center, online shopping expenditures in the first half of 2008 total 16.2 billion RMB, with Shanghai leading the way in per capita consumption. Looks like China's netizens are doing more than just stirring up trouble. more ›

April 1st marked the birth of Comme à la maison, the new French online magazine based in our beloved city. more ›

Shanghai Securities newspaper came out with an article that claimed that they had a contact that says that tax authorities are investigating Google China for tax evasion. Moreover, they are not just looking at the company's taxes, but individual income taxes as well — including those of Lee Kai-Fu, Google's man in China, who is rumored to owe more than 5 million RMB in unpaid taxes. The report says that there is a several month grace period during which you can pay back the whole thing, but so far, we don't know if Lee or Google are in any serious trouble. Google spokesman say the whole thing is a fabrication and that they have not received any audit notifications from the tax bureau. more ›

It’s shaping up to be a bad week for the State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television (the catchily acronymed SARFT) – and it's still only Wednesday. Recent events surrounding bans of video sharing site Tudou and then actress Tang Wei (汤唯) seem to suggest that SARFT is slipping into farce. 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 ›

BAIDU RAPPED FOR SPREADING THE PICTURES; CHINESE COPS ARREST 10 SUSPECTS IN SHENZHEN more ›

China Daily: Shanghai to base growth on service industry more ›

This video entitled “这个女人太要了” ("This girl wants it too much") uploaded to Youtube just five days ago has received over 317,000 views and raised a storm on the Chinese internet. It shows a young Chinese couple hugging and kissing at a subway exit point before finally saying goodbye. Well, it turns out that the clip was taken via the surveillance cameras that you see all around subway stations and the (really annoying) voices in the background were Metro staff. Shanghaiist doesn't quite understand Shanghainese, but here are two choice quotes:

“哦呦！这个女的还满好看的！” more ›

China Digital Times: Deal With Global Warming: Try Not to Divorce - China Youth Daily more ›

Honestly, when China threw a shitfit after German chancellor Merkel met the Dalai Lama, we really didn't give a hoot, in part because we've given up on seeing our dream of Tibetan secession realized in our lifetimes. But one thing you might not have known is that this diplomatic contretemps spilled over to affect our fair city. There was supposed to be a week long symposium sponsored by Der Spiegel at the Duolun Museum... more ›

The Red Laowai (红老外) — yes, that shirtless dude in New York that's been singing communist propaganda songs such as “My China Heart"《我的中国心》, "Without the Communist Party, there is no New China"《没有共产党就没有新中国》and "Oriental Red"《东方红》and putting his videos online — has done it again. This time, he has put his shirt on, created a music video and he's singing Jay Chou and rapping. The song 止战之殇 (The Wound That Ends War) is an anti-war song in... more ›