Well, opening today in France, at least. We first told you about Summer Palace, the controversial film from Shanghai-born director Lou Ye, last May. Since then, the director of Weekend Lover (1995), Suzhou River (2000) and Purple Butterfly (2003) has been banned for five years from making films in China for submitting Summer Palace to the Cannes Film Festival before it was approved by government censors. This was Lou Ye's second ban — Suzhou River got him two years. more ›

If you've ever wondered about the various names that Shanghai has, you can check out this blog entry (in Chinese), which gives brief historical explanations of each. Here's an abridged translation/summary of some of those names:
• Shanghai. The name of the city can be traced back to 1265, the Song dynasty. Back then, what is now called the Suzhou River had two small tributaries, one was called 上海浦 （shanghai pu) and the other was called 下海浦 （xiahai pu). The town being constructed was near the Shanghai Pu, hence the name.
• 沪 (hu4). If you've ever taken a look at Shanghai license plates, you've seen this character. It's commonly used to refer to Shanghai in the news as well. A hu was a kind of fishing tool commonly used in the area. It was made of bamboo, and you stuck it in the river during high tide, and when low tide came around you had a hu load of fish!
• 申 (shen1). This name is still in use today, as Shanghai is sometimes referred to as 申城 (shen cheng), and in the Shanghai football team Shenhua (申花). Shen is from the name of a Warring States period aristocrat whose "nickname" was 春申君 (chun shen jun). Back then, the Huang Pu River often flooded because of the high riverbed and silting, and this guy took it upon himself to fix things up, building waterways and dikes to alleviate the problem. The Huang Pu was renamed the 申江 (shen jiang), and soon shen stood for Shanghai.

A couple scoops on the local dining scene from SH mag's Jarrett Wrisley, one scoop that looks more promising than the other. more ›