A Shanghaiist reader recently encountered people selling tiger claws on the road here in Shanghai. While this is an unfortunately common occurance (very much so around China and even in this city), this encounter is worthwhile as both a reminder of the situation tigers face and a warning about what you should (or shouldn't do) when encountering the people selling illegal animal products. more ›

Shot by Jakob Montrasio along Zhapu Road in Shanghai with a Sony Cinealta PMW EX1 for Father John, an upcoming feature film by Meiwenti Productions. more ›

We'll keep this quick. It's beautiful outside and half-price beers await. more ›

It may come as a surprise to some people to learn that the national sport of Ireland is not, as is generally supposed, drinking. Nor is, it would be appear, soccer, given the country's 5-2 drumming at the hands of lowly Cyprus last week. more ›

GigShanghai: Trannies, 5 dollars and moon cake more ›

Any readers out there check out the shows? Let us know how it was in the concert. more ›

GigShanghai: Northern grunge, Tanghui strikes back and Akufen more ›

Blame it on the World Cup, but it’s a testament to the steady improvement of the Shanghai music scene that we now consider a weekend with four live shows “slow.” We unfortunately missed the Beijing rockers, Camel, at Live Bar on Friday night, but heard from reliable sources that they put on a fun, up-beat, pop-punk set. On Saturday, Hackbuteer played a wild show worthy of a crowd of 400 people at Yuyintang, except that there were only 40 people there. The highly underrated six-man band from Xi'an experimented with everything from straight-up rock-and-roll to an Incubus-esque combination of guitars and turntables. Best secret of the weekend, they were. And what’s better than drinking warm beer from a can in a dirty warehouse in the middle of nowhere? more ›

GigShanghai: A blues messianic, Recycled music, nose fetishes more ›

GigShanghai: Dance rock, a smashed bass, a Tang Hui challenge more ›

If your initials are EC or MF and you entered our SUBS ticket contest, check your email. You either won ... or you have the same initials as someone else in Shanghai. Both possibilities are exciting! more ›

Today is the fifth day of the fifth lunar month. What does that mean to you? Well, probably nothing (unless you happen to be using a lunar calendar). But if you're keeping track, you'll know that it is Duan Wu Jie, also called the Dragon Boat Festival or the Dumpling Festival. As these names suggest, the two main symbols of this Chinese summer holiday are dragon boats and rice "dumplings", which you know as zongzi. more ›

Win SUBS tickets! more ›

Photo by Shanghai Streets taken from the Shanghaiist photos page. To see your photos on our photos 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. more ›

Here's the lineup for the concert: more ›

Basically people post photos in the forum and other people comment on them. Lots of pics of mini skirts and tall boots. There are main threads for Shanghai, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Europe/America. more ›

Tim Kao, musician more ›

One week from now you should be busy coating your stomachs with milk, getting ready for the 100-kuai-all-you-can-drink special at Shanghaiist Happy Hour III at Shuffle Bar. We have settled on the bands for the evening of Friday, April 21, as well. Kicking things off at around 10 will be local indie-pop outfit Ferris Wheel, followed by blues rockers Mint. more ›

Photo by Shanghai Streets taken from the Shanghaiist photos page. To see your photos on our photos 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. more ›

Some of Shanghai's best live rock and an all-you-can drink open bar for 100 kuai ... all inside one of the city's coolest new venues for live music? Yeah, that'll work. Set aside April 21 -- should be a fun night: more ›

Shanghaiist remembers when they first appeared on street corners throughout the city. Shanghai's crossing guards look like lost UPS workers with whistles. And we've always felt kind of sorry for them. Because they have no real power -- they can't issue tickets, or even official warnings -- and everyone knows this. So pedestrians ignore them. And all the crossing guards can do is blow their whistles louder. Shanghaiist was a crossing guard in elementary school. Back then, in the mid 1980s, it was the cool thing to do for an 11-year-old. Not the case for a 40- or 50-year-old in Shanghai, as Howard French points out in the International Herald Tribune: more ›

Fireworks may be dangerous and all, but they sure do make for a wild, wild night. Here's hoping you all are recovering nicely and have a plan to enjoy today's unusually excellent weather. Some Chinese New Year links: more ›

新年快乐! Xin Nian Kuai Le! Happy Chinese New Year! Happy Year of the Dog! Happy everything from all of us here at Shanghaiist. Eat well. Drink well. And don't forget to let go of the firecrackers. more ›

The Shanghai live music scene really started to pick up in 2005, and thankfully occasional Shanghaiist contributor Brad Ferguson was there to document it with his camera. He has chosen his 12 favorite concert photos and posted them over at his website dedicated to the Shanghai underground music scene, Shanghai Streets. You can also view the pics at his Flickr site. It's an impressive collection, especially considering Brad only got started with concert photography a few months ago. To the right is a collage of the 361 live music photos Brad uploaded to Flickr last year. The amount of red in the image shows how much a boon to the scene Live Bar has been. Shanghaiist thinks the collage would make a nice cover for the 2006 concert photo calendar Brad should put out. more ›

Howdy folks, and welcome back to this week's indie music preview, brought to you by Фёдор Миха́йлович Достое́вский (that's Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky) and the letter Ф (English equivalent: f). more ›

Strumming her banjo and singing in English and Chinese, Abigail Washburn performed traditional American music last night at the Cotton Club with three esteemed bandmates. Playing a mix of bluegrass, country, gospel and old-time music, the former Beijing resident was joined by eight-time Grammy winner Béla Fleck who is considered the best banjo player in the world. With Casey Driessen on the fiddle and Ben Sollee on the cello, the packed club audience enjoyed a musical treat of a quality rarely found in Shanghai. more ›

Ever wonder what it takes to get a gig in a rock club in Shanghai? Evidently, all you have to do is walk the city streets carrying a guitar. Oh, it might also help if you are white. To wit: more ›

We hate to sound like we're shilling for Live Bar, but with ten shows in the five weeks since they officially opened, the Yangpu dive is fast becoming the number one venue for live rock music in Shanghai. Three consecutive concerts this past weekend meant six long cab rides, 13 bands, and innumerable (20-kuai!) pitchers of beer. more ›

Last weekend was quite a stunner, what with Japanese punk, Korean horror-movie music, and a new addition to the C's revival (better than "200 people turning up to DKD wearing mp3 players and dancing in their own heads all night"); but we live in the city where 酒不醉人人自醉 ("people, rather than alcohol, enebriate") and with a population of 13 million, the party doesn't stop so easily. Read on for this week's contributions to our city's tradition of bacchanalia. more ›

With a name that sounded more like an advertisement for a Julu Lu massage parlor than a concert, we weren't sure what to expect from Free Touching, Sunday night's "free noise and improv" event at Live Bar (it didn't help that we misread 噪音 -- noise -- as something else). While there was no actual touching involved, it did turn out to be a very visceral experience. more ›