Jonathan Watts, Asia environment correspondent for The Guardian, spent the weekend at an auction in Beijing attended by well-heeled buyers ready to pay top dollar for spirits and tonics with tiger, rhino horn and pangolin ingredients. Watts watched silently at first, but eventually decided to reveal he was a journalist so he could ask staff about the illegality of the stuff on sale. Here's what happened: more ›

Last month a rare Siberian tiger was found dead in Heilongjiang, and this month another has been caught on film in the same region. more ›

Three days ago, there was a small blip in the news regarding excited wild life enthusiasts spotting a rare Siberian tiger. Today, a Siberian tiger, possibly the same one, was found dead only 5 days after the initial sighting. more ›

TIGERS ENGLISH ALL DAY. more ›

The wonderful thing about Tiggers / Is Tiggers are wonderful things / Their tops are made out of rubber / Their bottoms are made out of springs / They're bouncy, trouncy, flouncy, pouncy fun, fun, fun, fun, fun / But the most wonderful thing about Tiggers is I'm the only o----RED TEAM MOVE.TANGO DOWN!!! more ›

Even using the most generous estimates, the world's current liger population is only around 70 or 80. Some, like National Geographic, even put it as low as 30. But whichever number you use, we can add several more ligers to that now. Four liger cubs were born on May 13th at a Shandong wildlife reserve. Two cubs didn't make it, but the other two--one male, one female--are doing well. Their mother was a Manchurian tiger and their father, an African lion. According to National Geographic, these large feline hybrids will carry some interesting capabilities: "The faintly striped, shaggy-maned creatures are the offspring of male lions and female tigers, which gives them the ability to both roar like lions and chuff like tigers—a supposedly affectionate sound that falls somewhere between a purr and a raspberry." more ›

A Shanghaiist reader recently encountered people selling tiger claws on the road here in Shanghai. While this is an unfortunately common occurance (very much so around China and even in this city), this encounter is worthwhile as both a reminder of the situation tigers face and a warning about what you should (or shouldn't do) when encountering the people selling illegal animal products. more ›

A surprisingly subversive and violent video created by a Beijing-based animation studio has been circulating widely throughout the Chinese internets since Monday (it was taken off Tudou and now only exists on Youtube). It makes reference to a wide range of inharmonious news items, such as the melamine milk scandal, the Li Gang scandal, violent demolitions, and the beating of protesters, and ends with what looks like a call for the violent overthrow of the government (the tigers) by the people (the rabbits.) more ›

A post on the Guardian’s Environment Blog today laments over Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s weak showing at the unprecedented International Tiger Forum happening in Russia this week. Contrasting him with Russian president Vladimir Putin (the environmentalist’s Rambo who shoots at whales with crossbows and traps polar bears, all in the pursuit of science!) Wen appears not only timid but apathetic: more ›

We've mentioned that it's been a bad year for tigers thus far, ironic since it is The Year of The Tiger, but it seems like every other week just piles on more sad tiger preservation news. At least 11 Siberian tigers were found starved to death in a zoo in Shenyang, northeastern China. more ›

Has anyone noticed that the Year of the Tiger seems to have brought with it a lot of unfortunate tiger-related news? First, there was that Siberian cub who died two days after he was found. Now, a Bengal tiger killed his keeper at the Shanghai Zoo over the weekend, dragging his body around his cage as visitors looked on in horror. Apparently, someone had forgotten to feed the tiger the day before. Today, some more details have come out: the tiger will be kept in isolation for now, but will be reintroduced "when the time is right." Also Li Zhonglin, the 53-year-old deceased zookeeper, is thought to be at fault, but his mistake won't affect the amount of compensation his family receives. more ›

In much sadder conservation news, the first Siberian tiger cub to be found in the wild in two decades died just two days after being discovered. more ›

One of the many benefits of being in China at the moment is that occurrence of the word "tiger" in our media generally has nothing to do with the fallen golfer. A quick perusal of China Daily turns up a playful laundry list of tiger-striped merchandise on which children of all ages can blow the contents of their red envelopes. In between its shout out to Beijing furniture mega-stores and mention of "tiger head shoes," the article brings up an interesting point for discussion: more ›

We've mentioned before that we will continue to support the baby tiger cause on this site, if only because we feel they always get second billing to baby pandas, despite being evolutionarily superior. China Daily has an absolutely adorable photo gallery up on its site of South China tiger cubs that were bred in Henan province. Four cubs were born at the Wangcheng zoo in Luoyang in April, and now that they're two-months-old and doing very well, they are being called “a major breakthrough in the artificial breeding technique of the endangered species.” The LATimes had more info about this specific tiger breed, noting that South China tigers are physically smaller than their Bengal and Siberian tiger cousins and with more widely spaced stripes. Chairman Mao was not a fan of them, ordering them eliminated because they were "pests." Their number plummeted in the following years and they were thought to be extinct until one was spotted in the wild for the first time in decades in 2007. Go tigers! more ›

Baby pandas usually get the lion's share of the attention, but did you know China had a serious Siberian tiger breeding program in place as well? A center located to the northwest of Harbin, in Heilongjiang, has been working on churning out tiger cubs since 1986. more ›

A few months ago, we informed you of the latest information about the 15th edition of CBS' Survivor: China, to be held...in China (surpise, surprise). In a few short weeks, the show will debut after filming its episodes during July and August. As the stentorian narrator in this early promo for the show says, "For the first time, a major American show goes behind the Great Wall to shoot entirely in China. It's a place... more ›

Pioniers, a minor league team in Amsterdam, Netherlands. In 2007, he was signed by the Beijing Tigers of the China Baseball League (more info here). The CBL season already over, Kim recently answered some of our questions via email. more ›

Would you believe that we get emails fairly regularly from people looking for even the most basic information about the China Baseball League? We wrote a story about the pro league back in 2004, and it's a testament to how little English info about the league exists out there that it's still one of most widely read CBL sources on the internet (it helps that Wikipedia linked to it). And so we have people asking us about everything from how they can play in the league to how they can watch a game ... or even if the league exists anymore (and lately that actually has been a pretty good question). Shanghaiist's last post about the CBL came in July 2005. Shortly thereafter the league saw a change at the top — Tom McCarthy, the American who helped found the league, left, and when he did, information about the league in English dried up (look, their English website still thinks it is April 2005). And throughout last season, the Chinese version of the site sat unchanged, as well. (Tianjin beat Guangdong for the title, for those of you still on the edge of your seat.) We think we're going to give the CBL another chance in 2007, however. They've updated and redesigned their website (they even have a countdown to opening day ... which is Friday). And we're really jonesing to watch some baseball action. The MLB season has started, but our satellite TV is down and we've been too lazy/busy to burn or buy a new card and we doubt our internet connection could handle MLB.tv. And while the CBL is a far cry from the big leagues (or even the minor leagues) there's something nice about an afternoon spent at the ballpark. And where is the Shanghai ballpark? Well, the Eagles are back in Pudong's Congbei Stadium, near the intersection of Yunlian Lu (云连路) and Qihe Lu (齐河路) . Here is a map and public transportation directions (in Chinese) courtesy of Baidu. You'll see that it is much easier to hop in a cab. We called up a college student who we met at a game a couple years ago (his English name is Goose) and he hooked us up with the 2007 China Baseball League Schedule, which you can see in English and Chinese by pressing on the "Continue reading ..." link below. Goose also invited Shanghaiist readers to visit his baseball BBS website. So check out the schedule, after the jump, but keep in mind that Shanghai's first home game isn't until April 20. Maybe we'll see you there? If the concessions situation is the same as it was in the past, we should plan on packing our own beer and hot dogs, not to mention peanuts and Cracker Jacks. Also on Shanghaiist
Beijing Tigers could win China baseball crown today
Wild Pitch? Major League Baseball to open China office
Ouch! China clobbered by Japan in World Baseball Classic Related
Basbeall league gets Japanese help (Xinhua)
In search of baseball's Yao Ming (Shanghai Diaries)
MLB invests in China’s baseball growth (Shanghai Diaries)
Take me out to the bangqiu bisai (Shanghai Diaries)
Buy me some peanuts and … soy sauce rice crackers? (Shanghai Diaries) Photo of Goose from danwashburn.com. more ›

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Shanghaiist headed over to Xujiahui Park last weekend to meet French artist Patricia Peides, who is visiting Shanghai to participate in the first Shanghai International Biennial Urban Sculpture Exhibition, part of the 2005 Shanghai Art Fair. 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 ›