It's Sunday! Kick back with Shanghaiist with this light-hearted Survivor-type documentary on three British businessmen looking for their big break in China: cushion manufacturer Tony Caldeira, ex-colonel Peter Williams who's looking to sell his energy-saving device to the Chinese, and controversial kitchen retailer Vance Miller who has built a huge business by undercutting everyone else and selling cheap Chinese kitchens in the UK. These three characters will remind you of people you have met in China. And watch out for Vance Miller. He is our hero. more ›

... at least that is what Shirley Phelps-Roper of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas would have us believe (h/t to Danwei). She recently wrote in to China Daily columnist Raymond Zhou after reading his opinion piece on recent comments by Chinese celebrity Sun Haiying (孙海英) who not too long ago ignited a huge debate with his comments that homosexuality was unequivocally "criminal in nature" ("同性恋就是犯罪“):

Dear Raymond more ›

Ooooh yeahhh, crab lovers rejoice for it is that time of the year again when Suzhou's Yangcheng Lake (阳澄湖) hairy crabs go on sale! Thank God the algae that bloomed in Lake Tai in Wuxi and Dianchi Lake in Kunming decided to spare the Yangcheng Lake so we can still have crab this year. more ›

Thank God it's Friday, and it's two and a half hours left to the Shanghaiist Happy Hour! Come alone, or with friends, colleagues or dates! Come right after work, or come late! more ›

We just watched this episode of Mythbusters on the Discovery Channel and thought you might get a kick out of it. Thank God for YouTube. Here's the official description: more ›

We're not sure whether Shanghai is becoming less safe, or whether the local media is covering more violent crimes, or whether we're just getting more paranoid in our old age. Regardless, there's a guy in Pudong stabbing women and stealing their handbags. Shanghai Daily has the disturbing details: more ›

Chinese holidays -- or "golden weeks" -- have always confused Shanghaiist. The "official" days always seem to be announced at the last minute (like less than two weeks before the actual holiday) even though based on past holidays you can pretty much guesstimate when the golden week will be. Adopting a "when in China" stance, many foreign companies in China wait until the last minute to tell employees what days they will actually have off. The end result is a mad rush of about a billion people to get out of town. Thank God for ticket agents. more ›

This is a couple weeks old, but we just learned of it today. Thank God we managed to refrain from SMSing porn this month: more ›

We wonder what 2Pac would have thought about this: more ›

The Shanghai Daily tells us that the city's "red hot alarm was sounded yesterday for the second time this summer." Shanghaiist isn't sure if the alarm is audible or not -- we can't hear much over our air conditioner, which we bet will likely shut off soon due to a power outage. The red hot alarm sounds "when temperatures are between 35 and 38 degrees" -- 95 to 100 degrees Fahrenheit -- and we assume it just stops working if it gets any hotter than that. Temperatures hit 36 degrees (97 F) yesterday, which is what the Shanghaiist weather center is reporting now. But it feels like 43 degrees. Forty-three degrees! That's 109.4 degrees Fahrenheit! more ›

If you're like Shanghaiist, you like going to the movies. And if you're like Shanghaiist, you rarely go to the movies in Shanghai -- because, well, most of the movies that show here are crap. (And because you can buy 10 DVDs on the street for the price of one ticket to the theater.) Thank God then for the Shanghai International Film Festival, which concludes this weekend. Finally, we get some indie and art house fare on the big screen. Right? Right? more ›