By Kenneth Tan and David Feng more ›

Diving queen Guo Jingjing (郭晶晶) has been slammed left right and centre for her less than stellar behaviour at a press conference after taking home the silver for the women's 3m springboard final at the "Good Luck Beijing" FINA Diving World Cup where she was edged out by team mate Wu Minxia (吴敏霞). more ›

Shanghaiist is happy to learn that we finally have a chance to break free from the shackles of political impotence and actually make somewhat of a difference in the increasingly heated U.S. presidential campaign. Democrats Abroad, the overseas branch of the U.S. Democratic Party, is holding its first global presidential primary from February 5th through the 12th. For the first time, expatriates who are American citizens have a chance to vote in the Democratic primary without having to mail in an absentee ballot (or for states that have caucuses, travel back home). According to the organization's press release: more ›

All ye lucky yuletide souls whose employer's lack of the Scrooge gene has enabled ye to escape Shanghai over the Xmas break, rejoice! Those of you flying back into China after January 1 no longer need to fill in that pesky health declaration form. Although Shanghaiist kind of enjoyed the pre-landing self-diagnosis ritual. Just how many avian flu carrying fowl had we fraternized with over the past month? And could the hail of sputum from the guy sitting next to us develop into full-blown SARS? These questions, along with which fellow passenger to scrounge a pen off, took our thoughts away from the strip of tarmac hurtling at horrific speed towards our plunging aircraft. According to the national quarantine watchdog and civil aviation regulator (quoted in The Guardian), "The move aims to simplify immigration procedures and improve efficiency." Dunno how this would have any affect on queues, seeing as people fill out the forms in-flight, though apparently from from February 1, people with no goods to declare won't have to fill in customs forms when leaving or arriving in China, which may speed things up slightly, judging from the confusion over said forms we've witnessed at Pudong International. more ›

Two weeks ago, when we told you that China's new labour law was going to be a big, big thing, we had no idea it would also be the cause of some serious blood-letting. Local gangs and triads have been attacking the Shenzhen Dagongzhe Migrant Worker Centre which has been instrumental in providing legal advice for rural migrant workers and informing them about their rights under the new labour law. In separate attacks, they shattered... more ›

The space station, the Olympic pigs and white-collar wages Shanghaiist scans thousands of China headlines every single day, and believe us, we do want to believe all the news we read here in China, but every now and then, we come across something that makes us remind ourselves to take EVERYTHING we read with a great pinch of salt, no matter how authoritative the source may sound. Just yesterday, for instance, China Daily reported that... more ›

The Chinese Communist Party, the world's largest political party with some 64 million members opened its 17th Party Congress yesterday. With over 2,200 delegates from all over the nation, the congress was opened by parliament chief Wu Bangguo with the national anthem, followed by a moment of silence marked for Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Liu Shaoqi, Zhu De, Deng Xiaoping, Chen Yun and other "martyrs of the revolution" before President Hu Jintao began addressing the party. A great sense of expectation there as you can see on the video now that the party has just begun, but as the days go by, we will no doubt see more and more of these scenes instead. more ›

In other Shanghaiist news, our favourite media blog Danwei has offered your correspondent a very special Toilet Bowl Award as part of their recent Model Worker's Awards for "posting regularly about news that no one else is finding, and translating some of the more interesting stuff on the Chinese Internet". We have also been singled out for our "excellent contribution to the toilet sector, for the posts Shanghai artist's Nike poo, and especially for the video displayed at this page: New bidet that doubles as enema and colon cleanser." We wish we could take all the credit for it but the first story came in as a tip while the second one was a quite a boo-boo on our part. We've actually since unpublished the post (but somehow it still appears), reason being, one of our colleagues already wrote about it earlier this year. Anyhow, we shall graciously accept our toilet bowl and promise to polish it religiously. more ›

Earlier this year, the tiny Caribbean island of Grenada suffered a huge diplomatic embarrassment at the inauguration of a US$40 million China-financed stadium built as a gift from Beijing when its police band decided it would perform the Taiwan anthem instead of the March of the Volunteers. more ›

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 ›

The 7th Chinese National Games for the Disabled concluded on Sunday in Kunming city of southwestern China's Yunnan province. With 815 gold medals in the Games this year, Chinese athletes broke 91 world records in track and field, swimming and weightlifting. Over 4,000 athletes from 31 provinces and municipalities as well as Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions participated in the event. The National Games for the Disabled are held once every four years. The next will be held in Hangzhou city of Zhejiang province in 2011. This year's games are considered an important exercise for the Beijing 2008 Paralympic Games, as China will select athletes through this event for the Paralympics. There are over 82 million disabled people in China. more ›

Image of Yang Huiyan, now China's richest person, from China Daily. more ›

Are you in the Chinese stock market? No, this isn’t a reprint of the post from last month. We ask because yesterday, both the Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges dropped about nine percent, registering their biggest decline in a decade, surpassed only by the sell off the day after late reformist leader Deng Xiaoping died in 1997. more ›

From the Daily India we learn that China's statisticians messed up in their calculations of the national divorce rate.: more ›

Sunday. Usually, a quiet, contemplative day in the Blogosphere. But not here in the Ist-a-Verse. Nonono! Just look below and see all of the wild and crazy stuff our staffs are up to. more ›

A survey found that Shanghai is the most shi shang (时尚, i.e. fashionable, hip) city in China. OK, to be more precise, the study asked the respondents to tell them what they thought the most fashionable city in China was. The respondents were made up of people in first-tier cities with 3,000+ RMB monthly incomes and 1,800+ RMB incomes in second-tier cities. There were some other noteworthy findings in this study. Like, 50.75% of Shanghai people prefer to be single (only slightly higher than the national average), while the number of people preferring a "weekend marriage" was higher than the national average. The report notes that the number of people that preferred the 丁克 (ding ke=transliteration of DINK=acronym for Double Income No Fuckin' Kids) dropped and now hovers near the national average. more ›

According to a recent survey, Shanghainese men spend on average 17.1 minutes per day looking at themselves in a mirror. That's 8.5 minutes more than the urban national average for men. We think 17 minutes seems like an awful long time (even if you stare into a mirror while blow-drying your pubes in the gym locker room .... yes, we're talking about you). And we also think this survey is sketchy at best — how can you measure the amount of time people spend looking into mirrors? Are they just basing it on answers people give to the question? Do any of you have any idea how much time you spend each day in front of a mirror? more ›

It may come as a surprise to some people to learn that the national sport of Ireland is not, as is generally supposed, drinking. Nor is, it would be appear, soccer, given the country's 5-2 drumming at the hands of lowly Cyprus last week. more ›

Late last month, we told you about the Shanghai Wild Animal Olympics, and we probably didn't infuse the post with the proper amount of outrage. Thankfully, some commenters picked up our slack and even directed readers to the animalsasia.org website, which includes information on how you can help put an end to such disgusting displays. We will now quote that information here: more ›

In her August 31 appearance on the Taiwanese talk show Red Storm, Meng commented: more ›

Photo by raincontreras 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 ›

"Chinese players have to go overseas to play. I mean, they should go there alone and fight for their positions on the teams. This is the only way to lift the overall level of Chinese basketball." more ›

Photo from harryalverson's Flickr page. more ›

One step closer to a worker's paradise!

A few days back, Shangahiist wrote about how half of the city’s white collar workers rarely if ever go out, but we never quite explained why. While our staffs and half a dozen interns are still hard at work trying to pin down the exact reasons behind this sociological conundrum, we did just have our first breakthrough revelation: From our friends at the titillating and informative Asian-Sirens.com, we learned of this interesting tidbit: more ›

DCist is screwed in the event of an oil crisis. Not that we're not all screwed in the event of an oil crisis, just D.C. is more screwed. Don't sell your car yet, District resident, a cabbie can kick you to the curb if he doesn't like your address. Not even Metro can save you now. more ›

OK now, if you are over 18 years old, you have high school education, you have used internet for more than three years, you know internet pretty well -- sounds like us ... we're getting excited! -- you think you can accurately express your opinions, and most importantly, you care about establishing a "civilized internet", you are qualified be an internet supervisor, at least according to Beijing Association of Online Media (BAOM) -- first time we've heard about this group -- in this Sohu report. more ›

Shanghaiist has always been miffed by KFC’s roaring success in China. In a country where fine dining is the national pastime, how did something as mundane as fried chicken capture the discerning palettes of 1.4 billion Chinese? Well, thanks to the good people at Yum Brand China’s (KFC’s parent company) marketing department, we now know why -- eating fried chicken makes you smarter and, better yet, helps you get the chicks, too! (No pun intended.) more ›