With the recent bus blasts in Kunming which claimed three lives and suspicious SMS messages to warn some residents from taking buses on the day of the explosion, the Shanghai government is taking no changes with the Olympic soccer matches being held in Shanghai Stadium. 1600 cameras will be installed into buses on 68 routes passing the stadium as well as an array of other fire extinguishing and safety devices. Click here for original Chinese......

"Kim Soo-seok, 44, a South Korean, is accused of abducting a young fellow countryman who studied in Shanghai in a bid to extort 300 million won (US$295,000) from the victim's wealthy father. His two alleged Chinese accomplices, Jin Mingyu and Chi Minhao, both ethnic Koreans, face charges of illegal detention before the Shanghai No. 1 Intermediate People's Court. The two alleged accomplices pleaded guilty, but Kim said he was entrusted by a friend in South......

Photo by UrbanNat More photos on the Shanghaiist Contribute page. To see your photos on our Contribute page, use Flickr and tag your photos “shanghaiist”. Or you can email your photos to photos@shanghaiist.com and they will automatically appear on our site (and here).......

The ground has been broken for the new Hongqiao Transport Hub which will cover an area of 240,000 square meters and contain facilities for both high-speed and normal trains. In service before the 2010 World Expo, the hub is expected to reach an annual turnover of 52.72 million people by 2020. Meanwhile, new security measures at the Shanghai South Railway Station mean that only travelling passengers will be allowed onto the platform and family and......

A guest at Tomorrow Square on People's Square has alerted us to this document entitled "Safety measures for the tenants of Tomorrow Square for the Olympic period" posted in the building. The document starts off quite innocently like this:Recently, while the security situation has become of great concern both internationally and domestically, anti-China movements have become increasingly bold, with Tibetan and Uyghur separatist groups openly declaring war, proclaiming that they will use violent measures to......

You have been warned. ("Rubbers" is another term for "galoshes.")......

View Larger Map Remember when Google's English-language map of Shanghai was, save for some groovy satellite pics, pretty much blank? Remember that? You should. It was like a week ago. Anyway, thanks to a tip on our Contribute Page, we learn that the map has gotten a makeover. To do this, looks like Google has teamed with MapABC, that same firm that does Google's Chinese maps and the same firm City Weekend is experimenting with......

From the New York Times: Foreign entertainers who have taken part in activities that China deems a threat to its sovereignty will not be allowed to perform in the country, according to a new list of rules posted Thursday on the Web site of the Ministry of Culture. The rules say that the background credentials of performers from foreign countries, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan will be scrutinized carefully. “Those who used to take part......

If you've got lots of cash to spare, this news will get you wet. A new 20,000 square foot private club is going to open in the penthouse floor of the 24-storey Cross Tower on Fuzhou Lu by the Bund which is soon going to be renamed M1NT Tower after the name of the exclusive club also present in Hong Kong and Cannes. What makes this club special is that it is owned by members......

The Beijing-Shanghai rivalry received some international media attention earlier this week, and the prognosis wasn't good. The Washington Post writes that while Shanghai has the global industry, business and sophistication stemming from early European colonialism, Beijing has the upper hand, at least in this round. The two reasons: the government and the Olympics. The historic city of emperors, modern capital and center of CCP power, Beijing's status as China's political hub is undeniable. As for......

This just in from a reader tip. Via the easternmiles.com newsletter: In order to guarantee safety of civil air transport during Beijing Olympic Games period, Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) has decided to implement special inspection measures in Beijing Capital Airport, Shanghai Hongqiao and Shanghai Pudong Airport, airports in Qingdao, Tianjin, Shenyang, Qinhuangdao, Shijiazhuang, Taiyuan, Jinan, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Hefei, Changchun, Harbin, Huhehaote, Dalian, and airports inside Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and Tibet Autonomous Region......

Photo by NoLimitsTw More photos on the Shanghaiist Contribute page. To see your photos on our Contribute page, use Flickr and tag your photos “shanghaiist”. Or you can email your photos to photos@shanghaiist.com and they will automatically appear on our site (and here).......

By Dedric Lam With the world looking at China leading up to the Games, China continues to make a concerted effort to meet the social standards of Western developed countries. In addition to public service announcements teaching people to be civil to each other, the powers that be (in this case the Jing'an Municipality) have have even gone as far as launching a volunteer guerrilla campaign to bribe people with small gifts to clear their......

In previous years it was the most eagerly awaited fixture on the Chinese football calendar. Dalian and Shanghai Shenhua, the two pre-eminent footballing powers in the country, have 10 championship titles and seven runners-up honours between them in the 14-year history of the Chinese professional league. The fact that all the runners up spots, and only two of the ten titles belong to Shenhua, made it all the more poingant in their crushing 3-1......

Colour us excited! Jackie Chan (成龙) — the man who was the subject of the first post ever to be written on this blog — is going to have a museum named after him! Renovated from old factory buildings located out in the *sshole of nowhere in Shanghai's Putuo District, the museum will house props and costumes from Chan's movies, photos and other memorabilia. This makes him the world's second person to have a museum......

His name is Chen Jun. He's 18-years-old. And he was captured this morning in rural Anhui province, hundreds of kilometers from Shanghai. Some, actually most, facts are vague: In addition to cash and a laptop computer police say belonged to the victim Diana O'Brien, Chen was allegedly carrying "a weapon." We're also somewhat puzzled by this sentence: "The statement said police narrowed down suspects to Chen after they received reports that a medium-sized man was......

Photo by CEIBS We are well into the "summer of corporate social responsibility (CSR)" in China, but this news makes it official... CSR China reported here that a Corporate Social Responsibility Research Center in conjunction with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences was opened last week in Beijing:“Being a non-profit academic research institution, it is the first national research center and top theoretical research platform covering the CSR sector in China, aiming at exploring......

"'As soon as we get it from Hong Kong and bring it over and unlock it.' ... Asked about claims that the new iPhones could not be hacked, he replied: 'The Chinese are very quick at unlocking iPhones. They used to say that the PSP couldn't be hacked as well, but we hacked it,' referring to Sony's PlayStation Portable game console." We believe the price they quote for an iPhone — 3,000 kuai — is......

30th floor view taken by Jakob Montrasio More photos on the Shanghaiist Contribute page. To see your photos on our Contribute page, use Flickr and tag your photos “shanghaiist”. Or you can email your photos to photos@shanghaiist.com and they will automatically appear on our site (and here).......

Liu Genshan, "Shanghai's King of the Road," has been detained on suspicion of bank loan fraud involving 4.6 billion yuan ($671 million). The highway and property development tycoon, one of China's richest men, was held for questioning by officials a week ago, the Shanghai Daily reports. According to AFP, police are investigating Liu's transactions in connection with the Yongjin highway, which opened in 2005. Liu was first accused earlier that year of moving 3 billion......

In the past 24 hours, the number of Western news agencies reporting details and speculations about Diana O'Brien’s death have multiplied. Shanghai police have stayed quiet on the death though, refusing to report details to foreign press. The result is a series of conflicting stories, most of which point to the model’s death occurring in her own Shanghai apartment building, not on Chongming Island, as we reported yesterday. Some sources say that she was killed......

"According to the draft, the social-insurance policy expansion will cover expats working for city employers, foreigners who have acquired permanent residency and residents of Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. If it is approved, qualified candidates will be allowed to join the city's pension, medical and industrial-injury insurance systems on level terms with their Shanghai-native counterparts. People who have been paying into the city's pension fund for an accumulative period of 15 years before retirement age......

You go first... no you go first! One might imagine this kind of bickering taking place near the swings during recess, but at a gathering of world leaders? According to PBS's Thirteen/WNET, that is exactly what is happening at this year's G8 discussions. China and India say it is up to the developed world — the biggest polluters — to take the lead in the fight against climate change. But President Bush has said that......

Photo by tud5000 More photos on the Shanghaiist Contribute page. To see your photos on our Contribute page, use Flickr and tag your photos “shanghaiist”. Or you can email your photos to photos@shanghaiist.com and they will automatically appear on our site (and here).......

Via CraigsList: "Young, sexy, flirtations staff required for a new topless bar - Pudong." Curiously, the ad doesn't specify a preferred gender for applicants — go get 'em, guys. (And yes, as far as we know, topless bars are illegal in China.)......

The body of a 22 year old model, Diana Gabrielle O'Brien, from Salt Spring, British Columbia, has been found on Chongming Island, where she was on an overnight modeling assignment. We haven't found any report of it yet in the Chinese press, but numerous Canadian media are already on the story. Apparently, O'Brien had not been happy in Shanghai with the modeling assignments she was getting here, and had already been telling friends that she......

Move over Mao! The Beijing Olympic stadium is taking over as symbol of China pride, at least on newly-issued 10 RMB notes, which feature the stadium and Greek statuary, but no portrait of the Chairman. Mao’s absence from the currency marks the first time in nearly a decade that he hasn’t been prominently featured on Chinese cash.Mao’s image may be on the decline, but there is one thing China will never relinquish — the bicycle.......

Parts of Shanghai are experiencing blackouts today because sizzling temperatures have led to an exploding electricity demand and the city's power grid is, quite simply, unable to cope with everyone reaching for the a/c. A local power official tells Shanghai Daily that the city's power grid is fully loaded, all backup power generation systems are in use and blackouts may have to be introduced to help the city cope. This summer, the State Grid Corporation......

Brit/Aussie pop star Amy Pearson (don't know her? neither do we.) has a video that recently came to our attention not for its cliched lyrics and overwrought vocals, but because it was shot in our city. Feel free to mute, sing along in front of the mirror or just fast forward to 3:12, when the major Bund shots start.......

If you're dying to see a drag show like no other, you are in luck! Starting yesterday at the Shanghai Grand Theatre, the Broadway musical Hairspray made its debut in Shanghai and will continue to play nightly for about two weeks. After that, they are off to Beijing for a week of performances. Based on the 2002 Broadway musical (which was based on the 1988 movie), Hairspray is a celebration of American music of the......