Shanghai-based Daedalum Films takes you on a walk through the Song Qing Ling Memorial (宋庆龄陵园), a little known cemetery in western Shanghai home to the remains of Song Qing Ling, numerous other Chinese personalities — and scores of foreigners who came to Shanghai mostly during its early boom years in the mid-1800s and early 1900s, some identified by simple gravestones, and some anonymous. Song Qing Ling Memorial, 21 Song Yuan Lu (宋园路21号). Map.......

You heard that right, ladies and gentlemen... Our city's foresighted urban planners, God bless their hearts, have looked into their glassball and decided that Shanghai needs another Lujiazui — and really, soon — in three years to be exact. Well if they were able to build Lujiazui I in ten years, we have every confidence they can build Lujiazui II in three. Never ever ever doubt the ambitions of Shanghai city planners. Just build first,......

WARNING: CONTAINS DISTURBING IMAGES Last weekend, four hungry tigers at the Shenyang Glacier Zoo killed and ate a Siberian tiger they had lived with for five years. The cash-strapped zoo, it was revealed, had not been able to feed the tigers with sufficient food for the last two years. Earlier this year, the brutal treatment of animals in China came under international spotlight, but for a totally different reason. This report by Sky News reminds......

We’re sure everyone has forgotten due to a lack of media coverage, however, Shanghai will be hosting the 2010 World Expo. In order to prepare for Shanghai’s debut on the world stage, several construction projects are underway. After all, Shanghai has to upstage former World Expo hosts, such as Knoxville in the US, Hanover in Germany, Aichi Prefecture in Japan, and the main rival, the 2008 host Zaragoza, Spain. The newest construction project, announced......

It's true, the outdated but once beloved term "W.C." is going to be flushed down the crapper of history (at least in Beijing) before the Olympics, to be replaced by the more widely-used "toilet." But more interesting than that is what they are planning on doing with road signs:Also on the list are road signs. Use of the romanized form of Chinese, known as "pinyin," will be replaced by the actual English word, except for......

Baidu Sued For Copyright Infringement "Video downloads of Guangdong Meng Tong Culture's licensed historical costume drama series "Zhen Guan Chang Ge" were found on Baidu space channel (hi.baidu.com). ... Meng Tone is asking Baidu to pay 440,000 Yuan in compensation." China vows to revamp leprosy villages "The disease has now been officially eradicated in China, but the villages remain partly because the patients were unable to rebuild their lives after being institutionalised for decades."......

Japan Probe's post entitled "Disneyland in China?" has already received a lot of linkage since it appeared May 2. We just saw it today, so we apologize if we are telling you something you already know. (You may also have seen a story on the topic in The Standard from April.) From The Standard we learn that Beijing's state-owned Shijingshan Amusement Park boasts the slogan "Disneyland is too far" and "features a replica of......

Late last year, Shanghaiist ran several stories on the abhorrent Animal Olympics event held in Shanghai. Such was the media and public backlash against this event, we didn't expect to see performances of its ilk again in Shanghai. Optimists like us are often proven wrong. Shanghai Wild Animal Park, the organisers of last year's Animal Olympics, appear to be up to their old tricks. We mentioned yesterday that the UK's Daily Mail ran photographs......

In a city with dirty air and very little sunshine, why not start building public parks underground? That's the thinking of Shu Yu, deputy director of the Shanghai Urban Underground Space Development Institute, which has already started working on China's first "green park" located beneath the Earth's surface. When do they plan on completing this project? If you said "2010" you are today's big winner. The China Daily story didn't mention where in Shanghai the......

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......

As 2006 ends and 2007 begins, the -ists look back not at the past week, but at the past year. So here it is, your Best of 2006 Spectacular. And from all of us at the -ists, happy New Year! Austinist was all about controversy as new construction to increase urban density ran rampant in 2006, as did threats to the city's image from gigantic corporations looking to set up shop in town, leading to......

What would be your response if we were to pose the question, "what is better than a black bear and a white Siberian tiger sporting traditional sevillanas dresses, adorned with flowers and dancing a Spanish Flamenco under the bright lights of a ballroom platform, televised for all of the world to see?" Well, if you're like us, then kangaroo boxing and monkey-ostrich pair jousting may come to mind. But, now, it seems that some international......

After Shanghaiist learned from Shanghaiist that street names changes are in the works, we thought it appropriate to post about something we recently found at a Chinese bookstore: a series of maps of old Shanghai. The bookstore (Ji Feng in the Shaanxi Lu subway station) had maps from 1927, 1932, 1948, and 1956. Each map is printed on old-fashioned, yellowish paper and comes in a little folder with the date printed on top. Although we......

Zhang Rongkun is the first person to get arrested in the Shanghai corruption scandal.A reporter who wrote about corruption in the city of Shaoyang was freed, though his conviction on charges of extortion was not overturned.Shanghai's not the only place with corruption problems: Shenzhen joins the club, with five judges under investigation for taking bribes.The Chinese women's gymnastics team won the World Gymnastics Championships, upsetting the United States and winning their first ever team medal......

Imagine this: A high school parking lot in Irvine, a small city in southern California. It's the mid-1990s and Shanghaiist, who in his wildest dreams had never thought he'd grow up to be a blogger, is busy scraping a faux-"handicapped" sticker of a stick figure in a wheelchair smoking a bong off his car. So this is what teenagers do to relieve their boredom in the O.C. (Orange County or 橙县). Flash forward to 2006......

Sampaist is on the scene in São Paulo beginning this week to become the only ist south of the Equator. Editor Leandro M. Pinto leads the paulistanos down there. You can protest someone at his office, sure, but when the whistle blows at the end of the day can you follow him home? D.C. has sports fans, apparently, and elephants aren't really cut out for zoos. There's this trick where you can read information from......

A couple items of interest from the ever-unlinkable South China Morning Post's online Mainland news rundown. These are quick hits that often leave many facts open to interpretation: Shanghai Evening News: Sand from Hainan provides ‘golden beach’ for Shanghai The metropolis’ first “golden beach” will open at the end of this month, to be filled with refined sand shipped from Hainan province. Construction of the 1.3 square kilometre artificial beach, which began in October last......

We often hear about how "easy" living in Hong Kong is and how "expensive" it is. This is the first time we've heard of the scores of elderly, poor and neglected Hong Kongese (or is it Hong Kongers?) who live in cages: Official government statistics show that there are 150,000 Hong Kong people living in cages, cubicles, rooftop huts, hallways benches, parks and streets. In bureaucratic lingo this is called "inadequate housing." Government data for......

Although Shanghaiist finds the Lujiazui area of Pudong rather charming (in a freaky Jetsons-on-acid kind of way), we are also aware that many people find it to be a tacky mess. So if you thought Lujiazui was a frighteningly gaudy freakshow before, this news certainly won't ease your fears now. Shanghai Daily reports that city officials are planning to add, get this, "THOUSANDS" of lights to Pudong New Area very soon, in an effort to......

Via p2pnet.net (and also seen on chinatechnews.com and Pacific Epoch) we learn that the Ministry of Culture has banned four video games: Blood Rayne II, Obscure, AV Mahjong and Kong Bu Lao Long (Horrible Cage). Some aren't surprising. Blood Rayne II (despite being "completely bereft of Nazi zombies") and Obscure ("inspired by the teen horror genre") were singled out for violence. (We assume Counter Strike and WarCraft fall under the category of "good" violence.) And......

A couple stories that you may have seen on Shanghaiist recently have ended up in the mainstream media. Earlier this month, tipped by Danwei, we told you of some backward policies involving ayis and buses found on the Shanghai Racquet Club's website. Reuters today picked up on the story some 11 days after it first appeared on Danwei and Shanghaiist. Apparently the Beijing News recently ran a story on the situation -- which has since......

Now that our personals site is up and running, we have once again been reminded just how many hot chicks women this fine city of ours has to offer (single or otherwise), and getting in shape has skyrocketed on this Shanghaiist's to-do list -- just below finally getting around to watch Lost. With our new found enthusiasm for anything workout related, this article , “Shanghai’s top 5 jog spots”, in the latest issue of City......

LAist has so much fun this week! They go to E3, where they overhear the timeless remark "Man, this is where nerdy girls get laid." Is that a promise? They also give us this week's best CDs and make us realize that LA is the best place to use Zillow. Ah, Houstonist. They're biking to work, that is, if they can figure out how to get there. That's right, Mapquest says "Houston had the......

... the pre-Civil Rights Movement American South, that is. Danwei informs us of a good reason to boycott the Shanghai Racquet Club (other than the fact that we can't afford it and are awful at tennis): This is from the New York Times obituary for Rosa Parks: On Montgomery buses, the first four rows were reserved for whites. The rear was for blacks, who made up more than 75 percent of the bus system's riders.......

Good ol' Micah, who hasn't posted on Shanghaiist for quite some time, is busy working on a translation of the above titled essay. Here's how it begins: 即使你很高傲，即使你很懒散，即使你很羞涩，即使你很偏激，只要你来到上海，而又不想自我封闭离群索居，总会沾染上几丝上海独有的小资情调。假如你喜欢上海，而又不是愤青，熟读以下文字，可以帮你提前热身，让你尽早溶入上海的风花雪夜中。 No matter whether you are a dandy or a vagrant, whether a church mouse or always the center of attention, when you come to Shanghai, even if you lock yourself in solitary confinement, you can't help but be infected by the city's unique bourgeois spirit. So if......

Last summer, Shanghaiist snapped this picture of the grassy roofs of the Jin Jiang Hotel on Mao Ming Lu. Hotel workers said the grass had been there "for some time" and that it was "mandated by the district government." Seeing as we'd never heard local cadres require anything as environmentally friendly, water conserving, or money saving as this, we were skeptical of this claim. That is, until Shanghai Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau announced its new......

The BBC, long blocked by Chinese web censors, appears to be following in Google's footsteps regarding the internet in China. Shanghaiist finds foreign news organizations self censoring more disturbing than search engines. Who is next?Wu Xianghu, the deputy editor of the Taizhou Evening News, "died of liver and kidney failure after he was severely beaten by police enraged by reports in his newspaper about their work." He was 41. ESWN has photos of the attack.......

Although this story was reported a month ago, Shanghai Daily is claiming that a couple of days ago, the Shanghai Airport Authority unveiled a blueprint for the future that will double the amount of uncomfortable places to try to sleep passenger and air cargo volume at Pudong International Airport in 2015. They state that "a second major terminal comprising 480,000 square meters is scheduled to be finished in 2007 to the east of the existing......

The city's new South City Long Distance Transportation Center is set to open on the 10th of this month, offering buses to all kinds of far-flung places.Let the deification celebration of Liu Xiang's achievements continue. All kinds of Liu statues and sculptures are turning up in city parks.Capitalism is great and we should all be happy: according to this report, Shanghai has again outdone itself in being on the receiving end of foreign investment, this......

Japanese car maker Toyota will start manufacturing its hybrid gas/electric Prius cars in China next month. The cars will be made in Changchun, in northeast China's Jilin province, where lots and lots of cars are made. This marks the first time Priuses have been manufactured outside of Japan. We'd like to think that this move will encourage more Chinese to buy the more environmentally friendly hybrid, but we have our doubts. So does this expert......