The friend who invited me to Huaxi's 50th anniversary first advertised the weekend as some kind of helicopter festival: "Hey free helicopter rides, wanna go?" First instinct: No thanks, don't want to die in China. But then he told me it was Huaxi, now internationally renowned as "China's Richest Village" and home to one of the tallest buildings in the country, a state-of-the-art medical hospital, a fake Great Wall, and 2,000 super wealthy villagers all living in huge houses with luxury cars. more ›

Life in Huaxi, supposedly China's richest village, just keeps getting better. The tiny village, which is a little over twice the size of the Vatican City and home to 380 households, recently launched its own skyscraper, the Zengdi Kongzhong New Village Tower. And now, officials have given journalists a glimpse into the presidential suite of the much-vaunted Longxi International Hotel which is housed inside the building. Said to be one of the largest single hotel rooms in all of China, the "super five star" suite costs an eye-popping RMB100,000 a night (and yes, that's the right number of zero's). more ›

Enough about Hangzhou or Suzhou, we've found a new holiday destination for anyone searching for a break from monotonous city life. Depicted as a “dystopian” Chinese village, the richest village in China has its villagers working 7 days a week at factories for open access to housing, luxury cars, clothing and even free cooking oil. With its heart set on turning itself into a tourist hotspot, Huaxi has released plans to purchase its own fleet over the next 5 years. With two helicopters in possession, costing them a hefty 90 million yuan, two pilots are set to start trial tourist flights later this year. more ›

Oh no! Remember those lovely mash up shirts of ObaMao, the combination of everyone's favorite pseudo-socialists? Turns out that the government is making stores selling the shirts and swag in Beijing take them off the shelves while the US President is in town. What a shame: we've been dying to know what he would think of them! More importantly, where on earth (specifically in Shanghai) can we find these? more ›

Tonight could have been the night that changed your life. The (International) Noise Conspiracy, "one of the wildest and most uncompromising live acts out there" flying in from Sweden, were to take total charge over the Yuyintang stage, but thanks to certain National Day-flavored machinations, it was cancelled. more ›

Jeremy Goldkorn of Danwei speaks to Zhang Lijia, journalist and author of the new book Socialism is Great. Zhang worked as a teenager in a Nanjing factory which produced missiles designed to reach North America, participated in the Tiananmen Square protests and subsequently became a journalist. more ›

This latest piece of excellent work from Tony Cheng of Al-Jazeera has some eye-opening footage of what life looks like in Nanjie village (南街) in Henan province, supposedly the last place in China that is run along Maoist lines, where everything has been renationalised and collectivised. The clip reveals that the "village" is really a town that doesn't look all too bad at all, but it also does leave us with a few questions in our minds because the last time Nanjie hit the news, it was said to have finally succumbed to capitalism after it was revealed by the Chinese press to have chalked up arrears of 1 billion yuan and went into bankruptcy. more ›