From Al-Jazeera English:

The Beijing Olympics are still 5 months away but they're attracting attention for all the wrong reasons. more ›

China confirms presence of toxic substance in bead toys [Economic Times] China's quality control watch dog has confirmed that the bead toys which the US and Australia have recalled in millions over safety fears contain toxic substance. US sees no rapid shift in China's currency reserves [AFP] Amid a plunging US dollar, China has again threatened to diversify its mountain of dollar foreign reserves but US officials are unperturbed while experts do not see a... more ›

According to anonymous MLB officials, the American professional baseball league is making plans to send a few teams to Beijing to play exhibition games during their pre-season spring training. The games would be held in March, five months before the start of the 2008 Olympics, and take place at Beijing's Wukesong Field, a small stadium with a capacity of 15,000 that will host the Olympiad's baseball events. more ›

Pigs are back in the headlines once again, and with a vengeance. Here is an interesting juxtapose of three pig-related news stories found via the informative China Digital Times. more ›

Even a hundred TV-shows cannot hide that something is seriously wrong in the way quality control is done in this country. And yes, there is now a fair amount of China-bashing going on, but that is very well deserved China-bashing. But the question what Mattel, and other companies, have been doing to stop this scandalous export of faulty products is a question that is all too easy ignored. Of course it is awful that millions of American children might be in danger when they bite on their toys, but has anybody already looked after the thousands of Chinese workers who have been painting those toys? They must have been exposed to much higher dangerous levels of lead than any of the children involved... It is shocking to see that Mattel get almost the role of a victim, instead of that of at least a fellow conspirator.

This morning, I heard the news that half of Beijing’s bottled water is counterfeit. I was horrified. It seems that illegal factories fill the used plastic bottles from the tap or with perfunctorily filtered water. The bottle tops and tape that they use to seal the bottle look identical to the genuine ones. The bottles aren’t sterilized and the number of mold fungi and e. coli bacteria that have been found in such water can easily make drinkers sick. An industry report quoted by Beijing Times calculates that more than 100 million bottles of such water were sold last year. The profit derived from these illegal sales exceeded 1 billion RMB, or about $12 million. As a Chinese, I am used to reading about dangerous fakes. But this case really enraged me. This is water that many of us drink every day, after all. And the whole reason people pay extra for bottled water is for the quality—and safety. The Beijing Times did a story a couple of days ago that revealed the illegal business has been going on for five years. One unlicensed water bottler told the newspaper: “I filter the tap water before filling the bottle because I am a moral person and I don’t want to get people sick.”

The Beijing Haidian District Art Vocational School (北京市海淀区艺术职业学校) has found itself in the centre of a controversy when a video clip of several students abusing a 70-year teacher was circulated online on video sharing sites and enraged netizens across China, sparking a debate over the state of the morals of Chinese youths today. Angry netizens have overwhelmed the school's website (now inaccessible) with comments, and hackers have blacked out the website. more ›

For our Beijing readers, from James Kynge: more ›

We don't know honestly. We ride Shanghai's metro every day and have only used Beijing's a couple times back in 2004. Still, seeing Beijing ranked No. 9 (and Shanghai unranked) in this list of the top 11 underground transit systems in the world surprised us a bit — because all the China subway hype we hear is about Shanghai's fast-growing system (or maybe that's just because we live in Shanghai?). Here's what the list, from Virgin Vacations, said about Beijing's system (which ranked one spot ahead of Hong Kong's): more ›

DNA technology has lead many to ponder what could actually be in the world. For some of us, our links with DNA technology stays closer to a key tool in the endless variations of CSI and as a means to revive lost species in Jurassic Park. more ›

From The Search Engine Journal we discovered that Baidu won an intellectual copyright infringement case against some major music companies. From Interfax: more ›

The Beijing News recently reported on the unveiling of a 24-carat gold-plated 7-metre high statue of Chairman Mao in Changsha, capital of his home province of Hunan. more ›

July 31 was "Chinese Valentine's Day" or qi xi, and in a calculuated attempt to subvert the hegemony of the Western version of the holiday, there were loads of public qi xi activities across China's cities. For example, what better way to celebrate love than a kissing contest? We found mention of three, in Beijing, Wuhan, and Taipei (all of these come with pictures, it's worth a look). more ›

Robots will perform tai chi at the Shanghai 2010 World Expo: more ›

In Beijing, a Norwegian exchange student has suddenly found himself in the epicenter of a campus wide crisis, with thousands of students calling for his expulsion. more ›

Maybe we'll try to hit the MIDI next year, although it doesn't seem like it will be the same. The movie's message is that the festival is getting more corporate -- selling out, as they say -- and that next year people selling homemade T-shirts, buttons and other souvenirs won't be welcome. more ›

The famous first line of Tang dynasty poet Bai Juyi's poem on the Jiangnan region goes like this: 江南忆，最忆是杭州 (I recall fondly Jiangnan, and most of all Hangzhou). Well, Hangzhou's been getting its fair share of media buzz lately. For example, Taiwan's Lien Chan, who of late has become the Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist) Party's ambassador of good will to China, was mugging it up there yesterday with his surgically enhanced wife. We hear that a f*ckload lot of people are going to be around during the World Expo in 2010, and the 27 minute Maglev train will make trips between Shanghai and Hangzhou a breeze. In fact, it could be even faster than that, but they have to slow down the trains: more ›

Photo by 2 dogs. Yep, Shanghaiist's favorite little cafe has added a new location: Boonna 2, 57 Fuxing Lu (opposite JZ). more ›

From ChinaTechNews.com, a story that would make IBM proud: more ›

The Beijing Tigers are gunning for a sweep today in their best-of-five China Baseball League championship series with the Tianjin Lions. Game 3 starts at 3 pm today at Beijing's Lu Cheng Stadium. A win would give Beijing its third consecutive CBL title. According to the league website (English version) today's game will be broadcast by Beijing Television, and Shanghaiist admittedly has no idea whether we get that channel in Shanghai or not. We'll be surfing the channels at game time, and if we find the game we'll post the channel info here. (UPDATE: We can't find the game on our TV, not even on BTV-1. But we did find golf, cycling, badminton, archery, tennis, bull fighting and, yes, the Teletubbies.) more ›