The Los Angeles Dodgers take on the San Diego Padres this weekend at Beijing's Olympic baseball stadium. Seating capacity is limited to 13,000 spectators, and sure enough Emma has sold out their allotment of the cheap seats here in Shanghai. We're curious as to the scalper situation in Beijing, but for the risk-averse, other Chinese ticketing websites still have a small number of tickets left. A little internet sleuthing can still get you into the RMB 88 section! As far as the line-ups, San Diego is bringing a mix of veterans and new players to Beijing:

The Padres traveling contingent includes players with substantial experience in the Major Leagues (closer Trevor Hoffman), up-and-coming regulars (Adrian Gonzalez and Kevin Kouzmanoff) and a host of players who will play in the Minor Leagues in 2008.

None of the pitchers on the roster played more than 16 games in the majors last year. Non-roster invitee Chan Ho Park, who is seeking to revive his career, is the most experienced with 11-plus years of major league service, and will be joined by pitchers including Hong-Chih Kuo, Eric Stults and Eric Hull, who spent most of last year in the minors.

Earlier we had reported that America's favorite pastime might soon be making its Chinese debut and now it's official. The China Series 2008, as its being called, will feature two games between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the San Diego Padres on March 15-16. The games will be held at Beijing's Wukesong Baseball Field, which will also be used for the upcoming Olympics. No word yet on when tickets will be available or how much they will be. more ›

Xinhua: British PM visits Shanghai more ›

Not too surprising, we suppose. They broke ground on this at the expo site today, More from the Shanghai Daily: more ›

Baidu has released its video search report, and Kaiser Kuo of the Ogilvy China Digital Watch translates and summarises some of the key findings. Interestingly, “adult-related” search terms account for 34.14% of daily search volume, followed by celebrity-related (14.74%), TV serial related (12.48%), and animation-related (12.21%) searches. Google is reportedly under investigation in China for tax evasion, says Paul Midler of The China Game.Chinese Skype users now exceed 25% of the global total.While venture capital... more ›

Georgia Popplewell of Global Voices Online has offered a great summary of reactions from the international blogosphere to Friday's announcement that former US vice president Al Gore and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have won this year's Nobel Peace Prize. more ›

... and we thought Xinhua's mistake of illustrating a story on the causes of the debilitating disease multiple sclerosis with an X-ray photo of Homer Simpson's brain was bad! more ›

The China arm of the International Ramen Manufacturer's Association (IRMA) (which is basically the international association of instant noodle makers) has been given one big tight slap by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) for price fixing. more ›

The China Daily translation staff has a case of the sillies! Earlier today it got a little "freaky." Now it's getting handy:

Donations can be in money, goods, blood, organs and bone marrow. But what happens when you mix heartfelt charity with a handful of self-gratification? Sperm donation.

Share with us how you see Shanghai, or China! Simply post your photos on Flickr, tag them with "shanghaiist", and we'll select one favorite image per day. Or you can simply email your photos to photos[at]shanghaiist.com. more ›

Though it sounds like a high school-student-and-soon-to-be-cocaine-addict's dream come true, in China, there is a real market for people with an acute sense of smell and masochistic tendencies! From the unlinkable without a proxy or psychic powers BBC:

China is about to unleash a new weapon in the battle against illegal polluters - humans trained to sniff out foul gases, according to Chinese media. more ›

Yesterday afternoon, Shanghaiist noticed on its Twitter stream that some China-based users were having problems accessing the newly redesigned (wonderful in fact) Danwei site. Blocked blogger, The Weifeng Radish, noted it can only be accessed by an anonymising proxy. Prolific Shanghai blogger and journalist Fons Tuinstra over at The China Herald popped out a post musing about their situation. more ›

Shanghaiist loves lists. We've embraced the love of lists ever since we picked up Nick Hornby's novel High Fidelity. So when browsing the morning news yesterday, our honed powers of list detection and surveillance led us to discover that Shanghai has been included in yet another list. Not just any pokey little list might we add, but The Economist magazine's 2007 Worldwide Cost of Living Survey (WCOL) for expatriate workers. more ›

Danwei told us about The China Blog, a group blog by the China correspondents for TIME that launched this month. The writers are Simon Elegant (Beijing), Bill Powell (Shanghai), Austin Ramzy (Hong Kong) and Susan Jakes (Beijing). Looks like it could be a nice addition to the fold if they can keep posting on a regular basis. more ›

Photo by kumo36 taken from 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. more ›

The China premiere of The Painted Veil last night at Shanghai Museum* had a red carpet and champagne (and prom decorations), but it didn't have Naomi Watts or Ed Norton, the film's two stars. Curiously, Norton was in Beijing on Friday for a Painted Veil press conference — why not have the main press conference and the premiere in the same city? Some of the Chinese stars of the film were in attendance, including familiar face Anthony Wong (黄秋生), who for some reason thought it would be a good idea to tuck his blue jeans into his cowboy boots (unfortunately, we haven't found a photo of that). more ›

If you made it as far as page 75 in the June issue of That's Shanghai, congratulations: You're almost halfway there. And if you've seen page 75, you've noticed that it was an ad for pop/hip-hop group Black Eyed Peas, who are bringing their Monkey Business Tour to Shanghai's Grand Stage on July 20. (Monkey Business the album came out almost exactly a year ago and received an average score of 45 out of 100 on Metacritic.) There is no ticket information on the ad, but there is a reference to the site of China West Entertainment, the Shanghai-based promoter of BEP's two Mainland gigs, Shanghai and July 18 at the Beijing Exhibition Center Theater. The China West site shows that tickets will range from RMB 280-880. They aren't on sale yet, but you can sign up to be notified when they are made available. BEP is also playing Hong Kong on July 16 at the AsiaWorld-Arena. Tickets start at HK$380 and go up to HK$780. (We weren't able to find any of these shows listed on BEP's offical website or other tour sites.) more ›

Shanghaiist called it a long, long, looooong time ago: Senator Chuck Schumer is a blithering idiot. more ›

The self-proclaimed "special one", Chelsea Manager Jose Mourinho (or Jose Moaninho as he's known to British football fans) was not feeling quite so special last night as Barcelona over-powered his dull Chelsea side in every department. Despite running away with the Premier League this year and last year, Chelsea have faultered in the Champions League, even with the benefit of not-so-squeeky-clean Russian Billionaire Roman Abramovich pouring money into the team (440 million pounds -- $765.3 million -- in total since he bought the club in 2003, half of that going to buy new players). more ›

Following the publication of two reports (here and here) by China Labor Watch and the National Labor Committee back in mid-December, it would appear that the US retailing behemoth Wal-Mart may find itself up against it, even in the smallest of ways. Fifteen workers from developing countries around the world, including China, have had a class-action suit filed on their behalf, claiming that they were paid less than the minimum wage, had overtime payments withheld and were, in some cases, beaten by their superiors in the workplace. more ›

"What is best in life: Crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of the women!" more ›

Drew Taylor (aka KidPlastik) escaped Salt Lake City for a month last fall and visited China. He recorded some of his trip with a video camera, edited the results, set them to music and posted the whole thing on the internet for all to see. Ain't the internet grand! more ›

We wonder if there will be major brawls between basketball and soccer fans this week in Shanghai. We sure hope so! Because this week as soccer is being played inside Shanghai Stadium, basketball -- or, at least, some sexed-up replication of the sport -- will be played outside. Something called the NBA Jam Van starts its three-month, 10-city tour of China in Shanghai this week. Billed as "the NBA’s premiere interactive touring program" (there are others?), the NBA Jam Van will annoy soccer fans July 28-31, from 11 am to 7 pm daily. Here's exactly what the NBA PR people want Shanghaiist to tell you about it: more ›

According to ChinaTechNews.com, Zhang Baoquan, president of real estate giant the Jindian Group has said his company will invest RMB 3 billion ($362 million) in the "coming years" to open 200,000 digital EVD theaters in China. Shanghai will be the testing grounds with eight to 25 -- kind of a big range -- EVD theaters. The China Film Corporation and Huaxia Film will also be involved, the three-sentence "story" said. Other published reports showed that something called the Polly Culture Group is part of the plan, as well. more ›

That's China Daily's headline for this story, which they copied and pasted from its original source, U.S. News & World Report. The story, originally titled "The Shanghai High Life," is annoying and vapid and tells the story of Lily Wang, a "typical Shanghai yuppie." Or perhaps the author was trying to show that the life of a typical Shanghai yuppie is annoying and vapid? more ›