“Above is heaven, below is Hangzhou", as the Chinese saying goes (上有天堂，下有苏杭), but if you're unfortunate enough to be a wild boar in the lake-endowed city, you may find yourself snuffling up to the big trough in the sky sooner than you hoped. Yes, after indiscriminate killing so effectively solved the feral dog and water logged rat infestations China has suffered of late, open season has been declared on Hangzhou's tuskiest residents. Apparently, the not-so-wee......

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......

Whenever there is a crisis or a natural calamity, there are the people who lose money and then there are the entrepreneurs. It seems enterprising businessmen have decided to cash in on an outbreak of rodents in the Dongting Lake area in Hunan province which saw an estimated 2 billion mice on the run from the flooded Yangtse River by taking the matter into their own hands - literally. China Daily says trucks full of......

Fox: Read My Tattoos, No Prison Break In China "News Corporation's (NYSE: NWS.A) Fox Television denied that it has licensed Beijing based media company Zonbo Media to remake American TV series Prison Break or any related online activities in China, reports Beijing Youth Daily." Lawsuit says Ark. company selling counterfeit Budweiser in China "Anheuser-Busch Inc. sued USA Bai Wei Group Inc. in Arkansas' Pulaski County Circuit Court, seeking an injunction to revoke Bai Wei's......

The term 'food poisoning' is taken to the next level in China, with reports that not only have ingredients from China been killing pets, but have now killed up to 365 humans too. The New York Times reports that a safe additive used in cough syrup was substituted with diethylene glycol (an industrial solvent and a prime ingredient in anti-freeze) by Chinese companies. When exported from China, the syrup was labelled as 99.5 percent pure......

China's hospitals and in particular, Chinese hospital food, do not necessarily have the highest of reputations. Now the whole scare factor of heading off to a Sino hospital has just raised that little bit more with the recent story that a poisoner is at large in a Harbin hospital restaurant. The latest incident caused 203 illnesses and one death at Harbin's Heilongjiang Provincial Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine. Both staff and patients were affected by......

Several Chinese reports have come out about Shanghai's new policy for dealing with its supposed "dog problem": using retired military dogs to police the other dogs. If you have no idea what the hell that means, join the club. It is some idea that came out of various political meetings in Shanghai, where officials discussed the dog issue. It seems that there are still lots of unregistered dogs, enough to outnumber the number of registered......

Here at Shanghaiist, we think the Letters from China blog has been busy carving their own blogging niche by reporting on yet another novelty condom available here in China. Not content with sharing the news that police warrant card and Lei Feng frangers were to be found in China, they have now identified the big bopper — Chairman Mao condoms: Recently, a sex shop near the Nanyuan Road bus stop in Suzhou has chosen a......

Several months ago, we heard about a Shandong woman named Wang Jing who created a website denouncing her own father as an adulterer (report in Chinese). On Feb. 5, a local court ruled that the website, which contained writings denouncing Wang's father Wang Zhihua and his alleged mistress Li Cuilian, was "insulting" and ordered that Wang Jing take it down. In August, Li had filed a lawsuit against the younger Wang. The "insulting" verdict is,......

At the risk of becoming Kunmingist for the day, we wanted to pass along info on a Kunming rapper who looks like he could be China's answer to Digable Planets (are we showing our age?). Here's a snippet from GoKunming's profile of Hu Xuan: Only a year ago, Kunming native Hu Xuan was in the thick of the rat race in the fast-paced coastal metropolis of Guangzhou, working as a journalist during the day and......

Officially, at least. Although anyone in Shanghai who wanted to see The Departed already has seen it on a pretty high-quality DVD, news outlets are reporting that the movie will never be shown in China's theaters. Here are the reasons according to one anonymous government source: "There is no chance The Departed will be shown in mainland cinemas because the US side declined to change a plot line describing how Beijing wanted to buy advanced......

Out of this world, exquisite, unbelievably good-tasting meat on a stick. This is not your two-a-penny BBQ vendor to be found peddling rat meat outside VIP Room at 3am, the food at Naughty Barbecue (táo qì shāo kǎo - 淘气烧烤) will blow your head off. Better yet, the owner, Hán Lóng, and his girlfriend, Polly (Zhū Mǐn), are so friendly and cool that you’ll be happy to spend as much money here as you can,......

This morning we came across two pieces of news, both about sex and sexuality in China, one interesting, the other depressing. We'll start with the good news. The Fourth Guangzhou sex festival kicked off on Saturday. We don't know for sure, but it seems that Guangzhou is a pretty liberal and tolerant place when it comes to sex and sexuality -- a report from two years ago said that they were planning on including sex......

A China-focused blog called The 88s had a post earlier this month entitled "Subway Markets," which compared Shanghai's subway system with New York's. (The anonymous author behind The 88s splits time between New York and China, not sure if that means Shanghai or not.) The post's conclusion: Shanghai's subway system is cleaner than New York's. To get the obvious out of the way: Shanghai’s subway system is one of the world’s youngest. But I don’t......

It's "rat breeding season" in Shanghai and the city is running a "rat sweep" campaign through November 11. "Businesses and residents will be able to get information about rats, how to control, catch and kill them, from their local health campaign office." Lovely.The first Miss Hooters China was crowned recently -- and there are three of them. "I can meet new friends, broaden my mind and have fun," said Zhou Shouya, one of the winners......

Shanghaiist's gym is moving. And since we found out about this rather abruptly -- and there's a decent chance it might be your gym, as well -- we figured we'd spread the word. We go to the Megafit on the corner of Huaihai Zhong Lu and Danshui Lu, not too far from the Huangpi Nan Lu metro stop. Not a bad gym. Spacious and clean (well, save for that rat we saw there a little......