Work began Tuesday on a high-speed rail line from Shanghai to neighboring Nanjing, creating an even stronger link between the two economic powerhouses. Authorities say travel time, currently two hours, will be cut in half and that the line will be open by July of 2010, just in time for the World Expo. Seem to good to be true? Marc van der Chijs certainly thinks so, pointing out that a vehicle with a maximum speed......

A Date With Lu Yu《鲁豫有约》is one of the most influential talkshows in China which has been known to constantly push the envelope and to broach topics previously considered too hot to touch. One such episode is the one below which features two homosexual men from the Sichuan Province — who, long before the word "gay" had entered the Chinese lexicon — married each other, adopted a son and have been together for 21 years. VIDEO......

Less than a month after airing this commercial featuring Richard Gere driving the new Fiat Delta from Hollywood to Tibet, Italian automaker Fiat has been forced to withdraw the ad, and issue a statement extending its "apologies to the Government of the People's Republic of China and to the Chinese people". Readers of this blog (a group which no doubt excludes anyone from Fiat or their agency) will be aware that Richard Gere is a......

One week after last month's deadly Sichuan Earthquake, we brought to you the heartrending story of Chen Jian (陈坚), a young man who was pinned under the rubble for 73 hours, but unfortunately didn't make it after rescuers managed to extract him after working on him for six hours. Today, Zhang Qian (张倩), the reporter who was by Chen Jian's side in his last moments still breaks down whenever she thinks of him. In this......

Nationalism has made its way into Olympic advertising as as this new television commercial by Chinese sports brand Anta shows. JWT Shanghai (part of the WPP Group) conceptualised the ad for Anta, saying it was "inspired by Chinese people’s response to the earthquake". Said the China chief executive of the agency, Tom Doctoroff:“We decided to extend the brand message from individual glory to national glory, encouraging everyone in China to stand tall through these obstacles.”......

So that live fish key chain souvenir didn't turn out to be very official, but this latest Olympic cheer, "Go Olympics! Go China!" (奥运加油！中国加油！) definitely is, as it comes with the stamp of approval of the Party Office of Spiritual Civilization Development and Guidance (GODPP), the Ministry of Education, BOCOG, and CCTV. There are four highly complex moves to the cheer, but don't worry because Danwei has this step-by-step pictorial guide to help you along.......

By Thalia Kwok CCTV suddenly discontinued broadcasting NBA games in the midst of semi-finals on May 24th and has yet to provide an explanation. Chinese NBA fans are in an uproar over missing the Western Finals. Speculation is starting to circulate through the local BBS that the ban may be political. Last May*, Ira Newble of the Cleveland Cavaliers (now plays for the Los Angeles Lakers) released a letter signed by most of his teammates......

ESWN draws our attention the heart-rending story of Chen Jian. Be very sure you watch all the way to the fourth video, or don't watch at all if you don't intend to cry today: Part 1: It's May 15 at the start of this video, and 26 year old Chen Jian has already been trapped under the rubble for 73 hours. While waiting for the lifting equipment to arrive, he chatted with the reporter Zhang......

More photos on the Shanghaiist Contribute page. To see your photos on our Contribute page, use Flickr and tag your photos “shanghaiist”. Or you can email your photos to photos@shanghaiist.com and they will automatically appear on our site (and here).......

Well, it's all over the news. Hunan TV is going to do a Chinese version of the hit US TV show Ugly Betty. According to a report from the BBC, the lead character—the Chinese Betty—has already been chosen. A Chinese article that we read, dated March 7, says that Hunan TV wants to hold nation-wide auditions to find the ugliest girl possible. So we're not sure what the case is, but in any case, whoever......

It’s shaping up to be a bad week for the State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television (the catchily acronymed SARFT) – and it's still only Wednesday. Recent events surrounding bans of video sharing site Tudou and then actress Tang Wei (汤唯) seem to suggest that SARFT is slipping into farce. First off, there were attempts to mash Tudou due to alleged pornographic content on the site – as we reported a few days ago.......

By Kenneth Tan and David Feng Not good news: Tudou may be in for a squashing by the Chinese mainland authorities, specifically, the State Administration for Radio, Film and Television. A Sohu IT report claims that the presence of porn -- a big no-no on the Chinese Internet -- was all that it took for the potato (which is the Chinese translation of "tudou") to be squashed. The squashing is long-term and has no set......

Chinese television actually isn't as bad as most of us are inclined to think, we've chanced upon informative talkshows and documentaries on interesting subjects sometimes. But the rest of the time, horrendous TV commercials are on hand to remind us why we're better off watching bootleg DVDs or Project Runway on Tudou.com. Should anyone think nothing can be more jarring than Mr Whipple, then they haven't seen the latest TVC by Shanghai-based wool clothing brand,......

We think we'd be all right if we never, ever watched the CCTV Spring Festival gala again, but we almost regret it this time because we missed out on some real doozies, like Zhang Ziyi's terrible lip-synching episode and as well as the slight faux pas, made by one of the hosts, that China's south was in the midst of an "abundant spring" even though many of the southern provinces are facing the worst winter......

Japanese investigators have found 'no abnormality' at the dumpling factory in Hebei Province at the centre of a food safety scare in Japan after hundreds of people suffered from pesticide poisoning from eating the dumplings. Traces of pesticide were found on the outside of the dumplings and not in the fillings, leading investigators to point to "deliberate poisoning, rather than accidental contamination". This idea, however, has been rejected by Chinese experts.The world's most powerful music......

UPDATE: We're actually having some trouble getting these videos to play here on our Shanghai ADSL connection. Anyone (in China) having any luck? OK, it works when we have our VPN turned on. Try that or maybe a proxy. Happy Super Bowl ... Monday, everyone. We hope you are well into your third beer and/or breakfast burrito when reading this. We have a confession to make. We haven't seen a Super Bowl commercial for......

A new directive by the Chinese censorship board, also known as the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT), has banned producers of erotic movies, including their directors and leading actors, from participation in domestic film awards. Violators may be banned up to five years from the movie industry and recalcitrant studios may even have their licenses revoked. Xinhua quotes a report by the Beijing News that details exactly what kind of content SARFT......

We have a confession to make: We have been known to watch the occasional episode of America's Next Top Model. Odd that while living in America we refused to watch trashy American reality shows (other than The Real World, which we allowed in on a grandfather clause) and now that we live in China and own a Filipino TV satellite (that we won't shut up about) we seemingly can't get enough of them. What can......

The last time an anchor from our favourite TV channel made it to the news, he created such a brouhaha that culminated in the eviction of one coffee company from the Forbidden City. In the news this time is New Zealand-born anchor Edwin Maher who for many years before arriving in China was a weatherman with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. The Los Angeles Times published a profile of Maher that started it all off. It......

Since Net Nanny lifted her ban on YouTube, we have been catching up on the some of the vids that we missed during the year-long ban...okay, it wasn't that long. Looking for any excuse to waste time and avoid Christmas shopping, we watched every episode available of the first season of Project Runway Canada (the other PRC in our lives). It's the Canadian version of the very popular (especially among the LGBT crowd) American show,......

Yet more news on China's HIV/AIDS situation, and this time from a most unlikely source. Did you know, dear readers, that Naked News, the "program with nothing to hide" that has its news anchors strip as they read the news, has male strippers newsreaders too? Apparently this program is targetted mainly towards the gay market (which makes us wonder if the program will ever have a market among women)? We were surprised to learn that......

Heres' a public service announcement to (illegal) satellite TV users from Shanghaiist: Don't put stuff on top of your satellite receiver box. We had gotten in the habit of placing the occasional DVD or DVD sleeve on top of our satellite box, which is covered by a bunch of small vents. Not long ago, while working at our computer (surprise, surprise) at around 1 am, we heard a popping noise coming from near the TV......

Two nights ago, Canada’s CBC aired a documentary titled China’s Sexual Revolution. It was shot in Shanghai and Beijing using hidden cameras and interviews with academics and pop culture figures. While we haven’t yet seen the thing, it apparently cobbles together AIDS, bar culture, and the manufacture of sex toys to look at how China is “a country that’s quickly becoming X-rated.” In the trailer, the camera pans a Shanghai disco as the narrator solemnly......

Baidu rolled a new feature as of yesterday—a person of the month, which you can see in their logo. They say that they pick the person based on searches done in their engine, so it's a bit like Google Trends meets Time Person of the Year on a monthly basis. This month it's Xu Sanduo (许三多), a character from a popular TV series called Soldier Sortie(士兵突击), which has become one of the more popular shows......

Forgive us, but we enjoy watching a game of American football every now and then (yes, even after that ugly display in London). Last year, we got in the habit of watching the NFL's Sunday and Monday night games on Monday and Tuesday morning here in Shanghai while we answered emails, fed the dogs and did other important things (we watched on ESPN Asia via our Filipino satellite system). Right now, for example, we'd be......

Oh boy, we are just beginning to love the things that we can show you here now that Youtube is back. And with these two freshly-uploaded videos, you have two different broadcasters — Australia's Channel 7 and Al-Jazeera English — and their take on the topic of "Made in China". China has just overtaken Japan as Australia's largest trading partner. The spate of headline-grabbing product quality issues, particularly the high profile toy recalls made......

So, as some of our commenters in a previous post brought up, Youtube is indeed back! So what was behind the temporary block — was it the 17th Party Congress or was it Youtube's Hong Kong/Taiwan versions? I guess we will never know. But enjoy it while it lasts people. You never know when the block will come back up, but when it does, you know you have VPN to fall back on ;-) There's......

Don't be too surprised if you're walking down Nanjing Lu next month and you see a bronze chariot rampaging down the street. War hasn't arrived. It's just one of the shoots for the Hollywood blockbuster The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor which stars Jet Li as Emperor Qin Shihuang, alongside Brendan Fraser and Michelle Yeoh of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon fame. We hear it's a massive production (like anything isn't in China), and they're......

Asia's papers keep newspaper flags flying [Asia Times] With a little help from the Internet, the future of newspapers looks bright in Asia where seven of 10 of the world's best selling dailies are published, with China, India and Japan accounting for more than half. Advertisers, the lifeblood for newspapers, are also smiling.Asian mega-cities to be swallowed up by sea [Asian Offbeat] They include Dhaka, Bangladesh; Buenos Aires, Argentina; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Shanghai (gosh!)......

2,000 sex-related ads dropped from Chinese television and radio [People's Daily] About 2,000 advertisements adjudged to be sexually suggestive have been dropped from television and radio broadcast across China over the past two weeks, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) said on Wednesday. Work on Beijing-Shanghai high-speed rail to start by end of 2007 [AFP] Work on a long-awaited high-speed rail linking Beijing and Shanghai is expected to start by late 2007,......