For those with little money and fewer scruples, a new business is taking off in town — wedding venue scalping. With this being the popular marriage year of the Olympics and lucky number 8, demand for reception spaces has been at an unprecedented high throughout the city, forcing many to contact the new wedding banquet resale moguls who reserve spaces in advance and charge desperate couples a fee to use them.A Hong-Kong based human......

... and going with strange girls who want to practise their English to coffee shops is STILL a bad idea, folks. Yet another chump — this time a Swedish guy on a business trip — has fallen for the time-honoured scam by following a pair of temptresses who were "dressed like university students" (so wearing mortar boards, presumably) to the Manabe coffee shop on the 3rd floor of the Brilliance Shimao Plaza, Shanghai Daily reported......

With the amount of shame emanating from the pictured women's body language, you'd think the cop was busting a Shenzhen whorehouse. But no-- this is Nanjing Lu East, and the scam is overpriced tea. But don't go reporting your local Starbucks to authorities, yet. This morning at 12:30AM police raided Taihe Teahouse based on a report from three French tourists who racked up a 7,455 yuan ($920) bill in one short hour. The Frenchmen allege......

Designer Tang Pushes Fashion in China David Tang is famous for founding the Shanghai Tang label that put Mandarin-collared shirts, cheongsam dresses and other Chinese-style fashion on boutique shelves from New York to Paris. Booming stock market cures man's paraplegia Not only can the man walk to the nearest brokerage in 20 minutes, he made 60% profits on his returns from the market. Entrance at Nanjing Road E. Station to be closed Not the......

Shanghaiist has a lot of guys on the staff (for a reason we just can't fathom — we really want more female contributors). So, naturally, a tip posted in our Shanghaiist Forums about Shanghai playing host to an International "Miss Bikini" Competition caught our attention. Our first thought, why wasn't this in Sanya — the home of everything World competition related? Our senses quickly restored, we realised that a whole bunch of mega-babes wearing next......

OK, so it's a bit difficult to type like Elmer Fudd, but you can always find inspiration by trying Google in Elmer Fudd language. But back to the news: The World Tribune informs us that: China’s Communist Party has ordered media outlets to tone down reporting on the financial scandal that led to the dismissal of Shanghai Communist Party leader Chen Liangyu. The scandal is expected to implicate other senior Communist Party officials, including possibly......

As fall settles in and another calendar page gets turned, thoughts turn from bbq's and vacations to holidays and the realization that '06 is coming to an end. With all that going on, with change in the air, we wonder what is it that made that makes the -ists ponder? Phillyist is concerned that the war on Trans fats could affect it's beloved cheese steak sandwiches, something for which we should all be concerned.......

If it weren't for our life as an -ist, we're not sure we'd ever leave our apartment. Fortunately, to fully -ist, one must seek out the new, the fresh, and the unknown. Brand new, or just new to us, that's what we're all about this week. Phillyist keeps it fresh by getting a new motto, learning to prioritize, and taking in an experimental indie rock show. Torontoist does their first post in franglais, gets ready......

Shanghaiist was scanning the Shanghai Morning Post and decided, after reading just the main headlines, that we could indeed spare the seven jiao needed to purchase this paper. On the top left hand corner we noticed an ad for 嗨！ 上海 (最 HIGH 的 上海生活门户） which translates to "Hi! Shanghai (the most HIGH Shanghai lifestyle portal)". What we found there was a cookie-cutter portal which tries to be everything for everyone. A headline from the......

This Xinmin Evening News story (in Chinese) tells of Mr. Zhang, a labourer from outside of Shanghai, who arrived in our blurry city to find work. He correctly thought it was pretty cool to be a security guard, even if there is an element of risk involved. The recruitment methods of one company caught his eye, which effectively rents out guard dogs to other security companies and guards. If you are an employee of this......

So fellas, here's the deal: She pays you RMB 300,000 before you start living together, and then, if through your industriousness you get her pregnant, you get the remaining RMB 500,000. This ain't a movie -- not even a bad one. This is the ad that Miss Zhu LiLi puts out in some Guangzhou newspapers. There may indeed be a sucker born every minute, and we think that a good proportion of these suckers will......