Results tagged “reviews”

          

Face it, Shanghai is a dirty city. Toss in the humidity and high-quality Shanghai smog, and by the end of a long day, your skin feels so grimy you could have just had a nice little romp in the heart of a metro construction site. Understandably then, we were pretty stoked to check out Skin City 5.5, a new spa opened just last month by a young entrepreneur from New York. The name comes from the spa's goal to return skin to its natural pH balance of 5.5.

A few years ago, locally-based writer and publisher Graham Earnshaw began releasing a series of out-of-print books about China pre-1949 and, more specifically, the interactions between foreigners and locals during that period (a copy of Carl Crow's Foreign Devil's in the Flowery Kingdom which made to Shanghaiist was particularly excellent). These books were extensions of an earlier web-based project, the Tales of Old China website, which has a remarkably extensive library and picture database cataloging the rich and fascinating colonial history of China.

Let the “Good Times” roll! Yes, Shanghai *finally has dosa (at least 10 types) and idli served with coconut and tomato chutney. With Vedas, Bukhara, Indian Kitchen, Masala Art and other Indian establishments here for years, you would expect these South Indian delights to have landed in Shanghai long ago, but to our knowledge this is a first.

We left a little disappointed after The Analog Girl's gig at La Bella Cafe last Saturday. Recent hype aside, we had been hooked on the Singaporean musician's 2005 The TV Is On album and had been in eager anticipation ever since to catch her live. Never mind that the venue was intimate and our mojito well-mixed, The Analog Girl only performed a few tracks off her new EP Sometime Next Galaxy, scarcely lasting half an hour when the gig schedule promises an hour and a half.

(2008 Edition) brought to you courtesy of the nice people at Immersion Guides (affiliated with the unfortunately named That's BJ Magazine/website/thebeijinger.com). We have a lot of Chinese guidebooks, but we have yet to encounter one quite so thorough as this one. At just over 700 pages, it leaves no stone unturned*. Covering everything from buying art to child rearing, it's a valuable resource for tourists and residents alike.

In a genre that, perhaps more than any other in music, is driven by overt egos and self-worship, when a record opens with the words "Chinese hip-hop — a long way to go", you have to worry a bit about what will follow. This bluntly honest statement from Shanghai rapper BlaKK Bubble at the start of Hip-Hop.cn's new downloadable mix-tape is at times proven to be painfully accurate on this free release, but there are also some highlights.

We know he's meant to be quite a bit more brilliant in concert than we saw the other night, but it seems as though a few things conspired to make Harry Connick's Shanghai show this past Sunday less great than it really should have been. For one, the role that the rest of the band played was way too small — it seems that we heard more from Bjork's brass section the week before! And when they were playing, you could barely hear them as the piano and voice were so much higher in the mix and the horns got drowned out. We fell asleep at the beginning of the show, with all the solo piano and mellow vocals happening. Then it was the same 2 or 3 players taking horn solos all night, and there was only one trumpet solo in the entire show! It makes you wonder what the heck was going on for this to happen, after all the hype about this great big band.

Worst. Wong Kar-wai movie. Ever.

In our past life as a public relations executive, we were always surprised at how China's media world appears to be in sort of a pre-Cambrian age with as many publications going out of business as there are coming in. Call up all the journalists you've invited after a press conference and there always be bound to be one or two publications that have folded up. Well it appears we haven't quite come out of those pre-Cambrian times yet, and at least the expat magazine circle is beginning to feel the heat. Hot on the heels of the closure of News Views Reviews comes the demise of Hint Magazine. We just received this in our mail from the editors of the publication:

Dear Friends of Hint Magazine,

Continue reading "Hint Magazine calls it a day"

Compiled by Shanghaiist Staff

Lads, next time we recommend splurging on a six pack from Sherpa's. Or Old Speckled Hen is only 11 kuai around corner from Shanghaiist headquarters. So bring over some "tucker" and we'll throw back a few.

We attended the Chicago Improv All-Stars show at Henry's last night ... and we enjoyed ourselves. It kind of had the feel of a theme party at a friend's house (assuming that friend was very popular, brewed their own beer, had a very large living room with poorly placed pillars, was bad at training their staff and charged guests RMB 280 at the door). If you have ever seen an episode of Whose Line...

In preparation for the upcoming National Day holiday and the enormous amount of tourists that it will bring to the city's eateries, top restaurant review website Dazhong Dianping (roughly "Reviews by/for the Masses") has posted a list of the best locations to indulge in five of Shanghai's local specialties:

Like half of the population of Shanghai, we attended the launch of the Bund Brewery last Friday. Free flow beer, bring it on. Consequently, like half of the population of Shanghai, we were sweating more than the scantily clad men in last Thursday's photo of the day. But, again, free flow beer, bring it on.

Shanghaiist has learnt that if you synchronize the seminal Pink Floyd record The Dark Side of the Moon with the evening footage displayed on the Aurora building in Lujiazui, certain previously hidden messages are unearthed.

Shanghaiist was browsing around on SHExpat Forums yesterday, and came across a thread discussing the loss of one of Shanghai's renowned cheap eating establishments — Turk's.

Shanghaiist asked its contributors (and a few "music people" in town) to list their five favorite albums released (or yet-to-be released) somewhere in the world in 2006. Got a list of your own? Submit your favorite 2006 music as a comment to this post. Enjoy!

Joy of joys, Shanghaiist discovered a new beer last night. We were at an opening party for the new tudou.com (formerly toodou.com) office up on Suzhou Creek, and we found a slab or two of Blue Cowrie Beer sitting atop the bar. “Cowrie” as in the shell, which makes the cowboy motif on the label a little difficult to work out. At any rate, here are some of the beer’s vital statistics:

Since Shanghaiist kicked off in July this year, we've inflicted opinion after opinion on you, our faithful readership. Here comes a whole bunch more.

This weekend Club One is holding its grand opening, DJ Zohra will be pumping uplifting house at Rojam, DJ Boro brings the electro to Fabrique ... (thanks SmartShanghai!) "But wait!" you cry. "Where are the guitars? Where are the jam sessions at smoky bars that the police come to shut down at 1 am?" Well, Shanghaiist hears you. Read on for this week's concert preview:

Greetings, music fans. Below you will find, in Shanghaiist's humble opinion, all the music you should have been listening to in the first half of 2005. And if you haven't been able to check these albums out yet, you still have plenty of time to load them on to your mp3 player of choice before 2006. Five Shanghaiist contributors submitted five albums each for a total and 25 -- and they wrote exactly 25 words about each one (exactly, only if you are very lenient with your rules of hyphenation). And yes, we are aware that these "Best of the Year (so far)" lists should really happen at the end of June and not at the end of July. But we're a start-up blog in China -- you expect us to be organized?