Did you know that most of the shops and restaurants that have opened in villas around the French Concession don't actually have licenses for them? According to Shanghai Daily, they are a "threat" - "making householders' lives a misery and turning the area into yet another commercial zone." Interesting - it makes you wonder which is worse: having shops refurbish old buildings in the area and disturbing residents in the process (the Tianzifang model) or kicking out everybody so that it can just be yet another purely commercial/luxury housing development (Xintiandi model). Shanghai Daily has a poll about it, though they don't quite phrase it the same way. more ›

A post on the Guardian’s Environment Blog today laments over Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s weak showing at the unprecedented International Tiger Forum happening in Russia this week. Contrasting him with Russian president Vladimir Putin (the environmentalist’s Rambo who shoots at whales with crossbows and traps polar bears, all in the pursuit of science!) Wen appears not only timid but apathetic: more ›

The former Garden Bridge was closed to all traffic on February 29th and workers have been hard at work preparing the bridge for tomorrow's trip. At approximately 9:30 in the morning when the tide is at its lowest point, a barge will be positioned under the bridge. Four hours later, the boat will have risen enough to lift the bridge off its foundations and shuttle the structure across the Huangpu to Pudong's Minsheng Dock. Once there, it will undergo 9 months of repairs and maintenance work before being returned to its original position at the mouth of the Suzhou Creek. more ›