The boxer shorts rebellion [Mara Hvistendahl, The New Republic] "You'd think that the younger, Internet savvy generation of Chinese twenty- and thirtysomethings would be the ones guiding China into better relations with the West. Instead, they seem to have glanced toward the rest of the world and turned back, appalled."Avoid tall buildings [Adam Minter, Shanghai Scrap] "Half the steel material sold at wholesale markets and now being used in construction has failed quality tests."Shanghai-Hangzhou express......

For those of you that found that video of that Guangzhou train station stampede too gruesome to watch, then please, DO NOT click on this video (h/t to Global Voices). The clip contains images of dead bodies, and in fact it's so gory we're surprised that it hasn't been removed from Youku yet. On 29 January at 7.40am, a bus travelling from Chongqing flipped over a 40 metre cliff because of the frozen road conditions......

If you visit Contrasts Gallery on Jiangxi Lu now, you will find lots of migrant workers have actually made it their temporary home, but that is not some avant garde artist doing his latest exhibition. Here's a note from reader Arjen van der Schoot who loaned one of his paintings to the exhibition that is currently being held hostage by the workers:Contrasts Gallery on Jiangxi Road opposite Hamilton House over a disputed RMB 1 million......

If you have friends and family from overseas who are planning to visit for the Olympics, you may for their own sake want to subject them to a friendly frisk before they board their homeward flight. According to reports picked up on by Shanghai Scrap, the World Customs Organization is going to leave no stuffed panda unturned in its fight against counterfeit Olympic goods. The head of the WCO, Christophe Zimmerman, seems to be out......

Xinhua has announced that from next month on, international passengers will no longer need to fill out quarantine forms when they enter China, and as Shanghai Scrap notes, the changes are just in time for the bird flu season!In yet another ridiculously redundant ranking, Forbes has named Shanghai as the 10th most densely populated city in the world. The data used by Forbes is highly questionable though. According to them, Shanghai has a population of......

... with SCAA's Christmas gala which happens this evening at 6.30pm at O'Malleys! RMB 100 at the door gets you a glass of Champagne, two standard drinks, comfort food, lots of free gifts and one Holiday Raffle ticket for a chance to win over 100 prizes totaling more than RMB 150,000! For those of you on the hunt for Christmas trees but don't know where to get them, Smart Shanghai has the answers! 'Tis the......

Adam Minter of Shanghai Scrap describes his uneasiness at finding a medicine vending machine on the edge of "the city’s best (if not largest) fake market". Honestly, since Xiangyang was torn down, we're not too sure which other fake market has taken over as "the city's best fake market". This is a really kickass machine, and Adam's got some great close-ups too. Hop on over to his blog for some ‘Cold and flu medication,’ ‘Fever......

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......

Yet another diplomatic tussle looms large between Beijing and the Vatican in the days ahead. It all started when the Catholic News Agency sent out the following really short story a few days ago, alleging that the Bible is "among objects prohibited at the 2008 Beijing Olympics":Organizers of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing have published a list of “prohibited objects” in the Olympic village where athletes will stay. To the surprise of many, Bibles are......

Typhoon Wipha might have been a no-show, and even though Typhoon Krosa was not expected to be as big as Wipha, the whistle it whipped up on our seventh floor apartment did mean we were hardly able to sleep all night (although the rain does appear to have stopped for now). Our friend who works at the Taiwanese international school here tells us some of his colleagues and students were unable to return to Shanghai......

People who made the news this week Zhao Yan (赵岩), the Chinese journalist jailed in 2004 while working for the New York Times is expected to be freed this weekend. Zhao was charged for revealing state secrets after a Times report was published that correctly predicted the retirement of Jiang Zemin (江泽民) as president and Communist Party chief. He was also accused of fraud for taking RMB20,000 from a village official. Prior to joining the......

An increasing chorus of bloggers (including ourselves) have written extensively about the recent anti-competitive price-fixing moves by Chinese fast food chains, instant noodle manufacturers, milk producers and state-owned airlines. Now, even China Daily columnist Raymond Zhou has contributed his own tune to the cacaphony of voices in an article Thou shalt not collude on pricing. From the article: Thou shalt not collude on pricing, the regulatory god said unto the Moses of industries in most......

Shanghaiist is somewhat of a frequent flyer to Beijing, and because he isn't employed by some big multinational but rather runs his own little business, he can only afford to put himself on cattle class and often has to scour the internet for the cheapest available deals. We especially love this nifty little function on eLong.com which shows you the cheapest available flight within a week of your selected departure date. That has worked to......

PLUS brolly-toting Premier Wen and X-ray of Homer Simpson's brain! In the good old days, a career with the People's Liberation Army was often seen as an iron rice bowl and highly sought after by parents for their sons. As one of the key avenues for social mobility after the founding of the PRC, it was not uncommon to find propaganda posters like the one you see on the right extolling the virtues of the......

Imagethief: Are Chinese journalists too credulous at press conferences? : Journalists everywhere have been guilty of occasional credulity. Nevertheless, it seems to me that China's media is at a rather different state of overall development than Western media. It also carries with it the legacy of having grown quite recently from filling a much different social role than Western media. This is not meant to be a comparative criticism, or a judgment on whether Chinese......