• After reporting that The Office was on its way to China, we offered you an insight on what you could expect.
• We were rather surprised that the Henan Airline investigation revealed that some 200 airline pilots have fake resumes and flying histories. We were even more surprised that these pilots have been allowed back on the flight deck! No matter, we always preferred trains anyway...
• A rather LARGE can of worms was opened when we featured Morrissey in our ‘Quote of the Day’. He referred to Chinese being a ‘subspecies’, see what fellow readers thought here.

A couple of weeks ago, Christopher St. Cavish wrote a long expose on local Belgian restaurant Chambar after its owner threw one too many fake reviews and threats around. Now, just days after St. Cavish's retirement from food writing, a tipster's informed us that the piece suddenly missing from the SmartShanghai site. What's going on?! more ›

• We love Western publication tourist guides - and here's one for the Bund (set to reopen March 28!). Things you should do on our beloved Waitan include... going to Three on the Bund, going to M on the Bund and checking out the Peace Hotel. Sounds expensive! [Sydney Morning Herald]
• Pudong is cracking down on illegal "Expo families" i.e. people that are claiming to be home-stay host families in order to lure unsuspecting Expo tourists into their hovels. They face maximum detentions of 15 days and cash penalties up to 1,000RMB. [Shanghai Daily]
• Apparently China has a big problem with drug resistant tuberculosis, something that at least Shanghai is trying to solve. Now people with that form here, as well as those who have not yet recovered from the disease, will be able to take advantage of free treatments. [China Daily]

So the rumors we heard over the weekend at Kiito's were true ... and sooner than expected. According to SmartShanghai, China West — the outfit that brought, among others, Norah Jones, James Brown, Black Eyed Peas, The Roots, Incubus, James Blunt, Kanye West and Kylie Minogue to China — was "unable to maintain a profitable bottom line" after five years here. SmartShanghai says China West is "bowing out of the Chinese market for 2009," so perhaps they not ruling out a return to the market in 2010 or beyond. Either way, a shame. And then there was one? (OK, maybe two.) more ›

SmartShanghai has put together a compilation of the best and worst event flyers found on their website last year. Our favourite one has to be this flyer you see on the right, designed by I Love Shanghai for a party last January. We're sure the party went down well (no pun intended) on many a moustached man and cunning linguist in town. more ›

Urban webzine SmartShanghai has closed down its online forum. more ›

... 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... more ›

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... more ›

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. more ›

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 our Enjoy coupon anyway.) more ›

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, she was spot on." We haven't exactly had a representative sample of sandwiches in Shanghai, and years and upon years of peanut butter and jelly from Mom has created a palate only nominally more refined than that of a caveman, but it was undoubtedly a decent sandwich -- or was it just a case of pesto working its magic? more ›

"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 business potential." more ›

Ya Ke Xi on Nanjing Xi Lu more ›

Hungry for turkey? more ›