If you have the 35-year-old Swede in your HSBC Champions office pool, you're sitting pretty. Fasth is 8-under after 17 holes and currently holds a 4-stroke lead on the opening day at Sheshan International Golf Club, in Shanghai suburbia. But don't gloat too much — it's only 12:30 pm Thursday and there are guys named Mickelson, Singh, Cabrera, Garcia, Goosen, Els, Choi and Harrington in the field. No Woods, though, for the first time since... more ›

Around a week ago, Shanghai Daily ran a story entitled "Top tourism sites named": more ›

From Caddy's email to us: more ›

We think we've finally figured out why so many people here carry umbrellas. They're not for sudden thunder showers. They're not for keeping skin fair and white. They're for keeping crap from falling on your head. From the Shanghai Daily: more ›

We reported earlier on an elementary school in the Songjiang District whose focus was having its 12 pupils memorize Chinese classics such as the Analects (Lun Yu) and the Book of Changes (Yi Jing). Well, that school has been closed down by the authorities, who claim that this school contravenes the “compulsory education (yiwu jiaoyu)” laws. The Shanghai Daily reports that the school will be punished for charging high tuition fees (30,000 yuan a year), not having a government license, and because children are required to get nine years of compulsory education. more ›

Yep, we have one. And it even leans more than the one in Pisa. But very few people know about it. And even fewer visit it. Only 2,100 people made the trek to Huzhu Baoguang Tower during Spring Festival -- and, in China, 2,100 is statistically zero. The reason? No one knows how to get to the tower, located in Tianma Mountain Park in Songjiang District which, 40 kilometers (the story says "kilograms") from city center, might as well be in Anhui province. It's not a fun commute. more ›

We think we can safely say that SLICE is Shanghai's best English-language magazine about golf. This is, of course, not a difficult title to lay claim to -- kind of like saying Acropolis is the city's best Greek restaurant. (It's the only one, and we still have nightmares about our only visit there three years ago -- sometimes the nightmares are about the "moussaka," other times they are about the roach that crawled across our table.) But SLICE, which debuted in October, isn't playing the game like it's the only game in town. It's a slick little magazine that, style-wise at least, gives all the local English language rags a run for their money. This week, TIME Asia even gave SLICE a nice plug. more ›

A planned metro line -- No. 9 -- will stretch from Songjiang District, in western Shanghai, to Chongming Island, traveling through Xujiahui, and Waigaoqiao in Pudong, according to Shanghai Daily. It will travel through an 8.9 km tunnel between Pudong to Changxing Island, and then, perhaps, over a 10.3 km bridge from Changxing to Chongming. All of this is scheduled to be completed by -- you guessed it -- 2010. The tunnel and bridge, both under construction, are already designed to handle automobile trraffic. The plan, which also includes a 6.3 km elevated highway on Changxing Island, has a price tag of $1.56 billion -- and that's without factoring in all the subway stuff. Shanghaiist just suffered through a week of excruciating bus rides out to godforsaken Songjiang District for the recent pro golf tournament, so we're all for connecting it to the city via subway. Currently, the only way to access Chongming Island is on a ferry. The island is supposed to become home to the world's first eco-city -- not sure how all this added traffic will work with that. more ›

Shanghaiist, filing this from the media center at the HSBC Champions golf tournament, is sleep-deprived and feeling kind of lazy right now, so instead of trying to be original we will copy and paste from something we wrote last night for ESPN.com: more ›