The craze for Chinese language learning The Economist: False Eastern Promise: The craze for teaching Chinese may be a misguided fad Ken Carroll: The Economist at its misguided worst The Peking Duck: Is the rush to study Chinese a time-wasting fad? The Pudong petrol station blast Shanghai Scrap: China National Petroleum to Dead Workers: Blame Yourselves. Wang Jianshuo: Diesel shortage caused traffic jam The lifestyles of the rich and famous Sydney Morning Herald: Britney......

Another week, another edition of Shanghaiist Reads. SH and Shanghai Talk are on the clock … SH With Shanghai fashion week in full bloom, it’s hardly surprising that the bulk of SH’s coverage is devoted to hot young designers, hot fads, and hot, hot hotness. “Design Time” is a no-frills sampling of the city’s rising fashionistas, though it’s probably safe to say that an all-gray background is hardly the most fashionable layout to accompany all......

This week’s editions of SH and City Weekend, summerviewed. (That’s a combination of summary and review. Look it up.) SH Where’s the love for our senior citizens?, asks SH, taking a double-edge stance in their coverage of Double Ninth day. Charity organizations and other philanthropic projects attempt to raise awareness among the city’s youth, but it’s not exactly clear from the article’s guardedly optimistic tone how productive these efforts are. Says octogenarian Shen Renjin: “There......

Shanghaiist Reads returns—to the delight of some, to the dismay of others—with a blow-by-blow markup of the Oct. 20, 2006 issue of SH. Get your highlighters out, kiddies: FBC (Foreign-Born Chinese)—it’s a way of life, not an identity crisis. Mercifully, SH steers their coverage away from asking, “But do they truly fit in? Those poor, confused FBCs?,” by presenting a varied cast of entrepreneurs, talk-show programmers, and marketing consultants. Of course, dreaded buzzwords like “roots”......

A summary of what's in Shanghai's magazines This time around, SH/8 Days and City Weekend are in the crosshairs. And guys, we say this purely out of love: Y'allz need to step your web game up so that we can start linking to the articles themselves, rather than indulging our Wikipedia cravings. [Update: links have been added to the SH/8 Days write-up. Huzzah!] SH/8 Days: It’s an ad ad world in the October 13 issue......

How does the other half live? Shanghaiist is talking about our print media counterparts — you know, the ones that have actual deadlines and office space to fuss over. We won’t pretend to put ourselves in their shoes (well, some of us might, seeing as how we occasionally swing both ways — in the non-biblical sense, of course), but we can, at least appreciate an alliterative headline, a punchy lead, and some slick, savvy reporting.......