Urban webzine SmartShanghai has closed down its online forum. After five odd years of heated discussions and raging debates, it was determined that the SmartShanghai Forum did indeed address and solve all the world’s problems, and it was decided that its purpose as a bastion of free speech and intelligent discourse was no longer required. So we’re taking a break from it for a bit, waiting for the world to get completely awful once again,......

... 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......

Have you ever wondered what life must be like for someone who is watched everywhere she goes, whether she's eating, drinking, sleeping, shopping? It's the reason why Shanghai photographer Don Yap has tagged her "jailbird" in one of his recent portraits of her. Watch Paris eat xiaolongbao at Nanxiang and sip tea at Yuyuan, and go shopping at Lu Kun's (the greatest PR coup scored yet by any Shanghai-based designer!). The Shanghai municipal government......

Potatoes grown from seeds that mutated in space while aboard a Chinese spacecraft are the newest culinary fad in Shanghai. This potato, dubbed the Purple Orchid Three, is supposedly going to be popular choice for upscale Valentine's Day dinners: Several Shanghai restaurants have developed dishes using Purple Orchid Three 'space potatoes,' claiming that the unusual colour of the vegetables represents the 'nobility and romance' of Valentine's Day, the official Xinhua news agency said. Hong Kong......

Here is how we ended up at Cafe Transat over the weekend. We were planning on taking a friend for dinner at A Future Perfect, but they were hosting a private function. So, we started leafing through our Enjoy book to find a replacement and, well, restaurants are listed alphabetically, Cafe Transat starts with a "C", the description sounded pretty good ... and we were hungry. (And, as usual, we ended up forgetting to use......

We first found about the Sandwich Express on Smart Shanghai and decided, after reading their review, to give it a try. We ordered a sandwich with the stuff we like: pesto, eggplant, cheese, lettuce, tomatoes. It wasn't half bad, but we're not sure we would agree with SS's conclusion: "their manager 'promised with her tongue' that their sandwiches are among the best available in town, so naturally we had to see for ourselves, and pleasingly,......

Shanghai Daily tells us that some cinemas will maintain their half-price ticket Tuesdays, while others are selling full price tickets on the money-spinning love-based day. "I think their approach is understandable," said Wu Hehu, deputy manager of Shanghai United Cinema Lines, the city's biggest cinema chain. even though we're already very rich, we want to suck money from pressured youths like the RMB-obsessed vultures that we are "No one wants to miss Valentine's Day's huge......

Ya Ke Xi on Nanjing Xi Lu Opposite the Shanghai TV station and up a usually puddle-filled alley (even on sunny days, somehow), you can't miss a very respectable Xinjiang restaurant, Ya Ke Xi (Map -- from Smart Shanghai). There are several Xinjiang places around town, all of which we love dearly, but the offer of a dancing man or a woman (it seems to be pot luck which one you'll get on any particular......

Hungry for turkey?...