In the pictures we shared a week back of Yao Ming's first day in class, we interpreted his face as an open book of frustration and WTF? Turns out we were right on the money, as Yao himself admitted in a press conference he was "totally lost." more ›

Mao Xinyu (毛新宇), the PLA general who is famous for being the grandson of Chairman Mao and little else, has a new part-time gig -- teaching at the Guangzhou University Songtian College. The general will be the new brainwasher instructor for 66 students in Mao Zedong Thought (is anyone surprised?), which, far from dying out, has been enjoying something of a resurgence with the revival of the left in recent years. more ›

In what's become an annual tradition that began six years ago, the Yu Ming gymnasium at Wuhan's Central China Normal University (华中师范大学) serves as the venue of a mass sleepover for the the parents and family of incoming freshmen. This year, nearly 600 mats were provided for anxious family members who spent the night, not to mention other amenities made available, including sheets, towels, shower facilities and hot tea. more ›

It's all speculation at this point! Less than 24 hours after he announced his retirement, the Chinese media are going wild with rumors of what comes next. In a recent exclusive interview with Xinhua, when asked whether he'd consider going into business or politics like other retired athletes, Yao Ming responded: more ›

"Chinese like win in tongue, but I like win the real. iPad will still be brought into classroom. Formal wears are still required. I still keep all my opinions as yesterday. Nothing changes! I win all the real. You can claim victory in tongue, but nothing more." more ›

Last week Peking University sparked heated debate when it announced a new reeducation'consultation' program targeting, among troubled students, those "with radical thoughts." The university of course claims to be operating in the interest of the students, but the policy has resulted in an storm of criticism online and off, many drawing the all-too-obvious comparisons to Orwellian thought police and the Cultural Revolution. Yesterday, China Daily reported that university officials have now "delayed its introduction to allow more time for further discussion." more ›

Proof that Chinese college students do something other than study day in and day out. A humorous peek into university dorm life: in this video, a few roommates band together for a rousing performance of Yellow River Cantata (黄河大合唱), a patriotic 1939 army rally song. Mad props to the toothbrush-waving conductor and stay with the video until 1:23 because one of the guys gets so caught up in the music he falls out of his bunk. more ›

★ John Pasden checks out the Shanghai Sculpture Park in Sheshan and, despite the cost, finds it to be pretty awesome. more ›

Well gee, we guess this city is prohibitively expensive. Shanghai college students looking for romance can't catch a break - not from snooping Anti-PDA patrols and definitely not from their meager moneybags. According to Enovate, most college students get some allowance from their parents every month, but it's a pittance if you actually want to get romantic... more ›

You may have noticed two otherwise inconspicuous high school students recently featured on the front page of the Xin Jing Bao (The Beijing News), and if not, you probably noticed that something strange was going on earlier this month. In both instances, the gaokao (高考) is to blame. more ›

On Wednesday night, a Virginia Tech (维吉尼亚理工大学) graduate student from Beijing was decapitated in a cafe on the campus of the university. Yang Xin, 22-years-old, was starting her first semester as an accounting graduate student. She had only been on the campus for 13 days. more ›

Fudan University, frequently ranked the 3rd best university in China, just kicked-off their fall session of “Homosexual Health and Social Science” on September 16th. When it commenced in 2003, there was just 1 student officially enrolled, but standing room only in the actual class. What a surprise! more ›

According to the Shanghai Daily, this Sunday, over 500 students tried to use false admission notices to register at Shanghai Normal University's school of mathematics and science. As the school denied having issued any admission notices at all, there was little doubt about the authencity of their documents: "The university authority was quite confused by the sudden influx of 'check-in' students," said one of the university's publicity officials. "It is almost impossible for a single school to enroll so many students at a time, let alone unqualified ones". This attempt says quite a lot about the desperate measures a failed gaokao, university admission test, can lead to. more ›

People Daily has this short two-paragraph news item on the latest developments in starting pay for fresh graduates:

The Education and Economic Research Institute of Peking University and the Institute for Higher Education recently issued the "2007 employment situation for college graduates" survey results. The investigation revealed that the employment rate of graduates in 2007 reached 70%; the average starting salary for graduates was 1,798 yuan; and half of graduates received less than 1,500 yuan. The employment rate of college graduates is worse than that of junior college students. more ›

Time to top-out your public transport cards, all RMB 999 folks, Opening Day is upon us! The Shanghai metro system will soon be welcoming into the family "three lines and two segments," as the opening as been nicknamed, consisting of new Lines 6/8/9, the 2nd northern extension of Line 1 and the final stretch of the Line 4 loop line. Thanks to "planning with Chinese characteristics" it is still unclear whether the first day of operation will remain on the original 28 of December, or be pushed back to December 29. Whenever it is, on that day Line 6 will begin shuttling Pudong'ers up and down their side of the river, Line 8 will bring civilization to the northern boonies we call Yangpu, Line 9 will make quarantining those rowdy university students out in Songjiang that much easier, Line 1 will become twice as crowded as it already is, and Line 4 will mess with our sense of direction by abandoning the concept of terminal stations. more ›

... and going with strange girls who want to practise their English to coffee shops is STILL a bad idea, folks. Yet another chump — this time a Swedish guy on a business trip — has fallen for the time-honoured scam by following a pair of temptresses who were "dressed like university students" (so wearing mortar boards, presumably) to the Manabe coffee shop on the 3rd floor of the Brilliance Shimao Plaza, Shanghai Daily reported... more ›

If you have never seen what a Chinese job fair looks like, you NEED to take a look at this clip. Recruitment fairs usually have more security guards for crowd control and police on standby than other fairs, but it looks like even the organisers of this most recent fair in Jiangxi were taken aback by the turnout. As captured on the clip, a stampede almost broke out but fortunately, it did not. The truth... more ›

WARNING: GORY IMAGES This video clip is circulating big time on the Chinese internet right now, and has received over 470,000 hits and 5,000 comments on Youku within less than a day. And it is just plain disgusting. A security guard at Wenzhou University beats a helpless dog to death as students videotape from above. From the sounds of the students yelling out to the security guard, we imagine they are at a student dormitory.... more ›

Déjà vu all over again? Here it is once more, Shanghaiist's nearly quarterly review the Douban book Top Ten List: Annie Baby - "Sunian Jinshi" (Beijing-based author, photographer and blogger who writes about love and self-exploration in the big city.) JK Rowling - "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" (Official Chinese version, published by the People's Literature Publishing House.) Markus Zusak - "The Book Thief" (Australian author of Austrian-German heritage writes a WWII book... more ›

Chronic pain. Debilitating illness. There's little fun to be had from these subjects. So hats off to Shanghai Daily and its over zealous/under zealous/possibly nonexistent subs' desk for throwing a hyperbole cherry bomb in to the toilet bowl of one individual's suffering. The following, which featured in Friday's paper, is best if you imagine it's being read by Peter Cushing: STABBING. Gnawing. Burning. Severe pain can rip your life apart and make you pray for... more ›

PLUS LEE KUAN YEW AND HIS ROLE IN SINO-SINGAPORE RELATIONS The last week has seen top leaders zipping between China and Singapore to cement ties and sign new deals. Let's take you through the high-profile visits one by one before diving deeper into more detail (Warning: Long article!): Goh Chok Tong visits new Shanghai party chief and the Singapore-Suzhou Industrial Park Last week, Singapore's Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong swung by Shanghai to visit her... more ›

Those of you that were fans of the gritty documentary realism of Li Yang's first feature, Blind Shaft, will probably take an intuitive liking to Blind Mountain for that very reason. Li Yang's use of regular folks--non-actors--always feels like a breath of fresh air, especially after watching movie/pop-star bloated films we've recently watched, such as Lust, Caution and King of California. The story: it's the early 1990s somewhere in bumblefuck northwestern China, and a Bai... more ›

Nanheyangrouchuan is the most unabashed China-basher and the most hated commenter/troll in the English-language China blogosphere. If you still haven't heard of him by now, check out the trail that he has left all over the Internet, and some of his comments left on this blog. This is possibly the most unconventional interview we've ever done on Shanghaiist (not to mention the "riskiest"), and some of you are probably going to wonder why we are... more ›

We told you previously of China's great vision to be a "harmonious society" by 2020 — yes, that year when paradise will come to earth if nations around the world all accomplish their visions. Now, it looks like there is even a "harmonious ranking" to help us measure how "harmonious" we are, and it has been created by Shanghai's very own East China University of Science and Technology (ECUST) [华东理工大学]. Out of a possible 100, Shanghai scored 84.97 points — the second highest among 30 domestic provincial capitals. Beijing topped the rankings, edging Shanghai to second spot with a score of 86.45 (Dang! Three cheers for Beijing!), but even harmonious Beijing is no match for Shenzhen which came in tops in a separate ranking for cities at 86.80 points. more ›

Sun Liping is a professor of sociology at Qinghua University, and we recently read a short article he wrote about why Chinese society is going to remain stable. There have been several writers who have written responses to Professor Sun's article, but before we get to those we'll try to translate the gist of Professor Sun's article as best we can. more ›

There recently was bit of kerfuffle over the exhibition of certain group of historical pictures at the Guangzhou Sex Culture Festival: these pictures, unlike many of the other exhibits, featured some inter-species passion. According to an informal survey of twenty exhibition participants, there were those that a) supported showing such pictures b) did not support such pictures and c) those that were just "observing" and didn't really hold any opinion. Most of those that supported... more ›

Yes, that was our reaction when we saw these pictures, but sorry to disappoint all you Facebook whores (that includes ourselves!) out there, the image on the right is just a Facebook clone, Xiaonei.com (校内网). It looks like the portal was started around 2005 (less than two years after Facebook was born), and since then, it has grown exponentially to cover around 2,000 university campuses in Greater China. They have just recently started to pan out their services to cover high schools and companies (though one wonders how they would do it with a name like that because "校内“ literally means "in school"). more ›

So both Myspace and Friendster have their own China versions. Now Kaiser Kuo of Ogilvy Digital China Watch points us to a report on China Business News (第一财经日报) which cites an “industry insider” who says that Facebook plans to release additional language interfaces and intends to enter the China market as early as December this year. The paper also claims that "Facebook has given up its initial plan to set up its own China-based site like MySpace has done with MySpace.cn, but will instead acquire an existing SNS in China." more ›

So in the meanwhile, Youtube remains blocked. Shanghai blogger John Pasden of Sinosplice informs us that Youtube wasn't the only unlucky fella. Revver.com and Dailymotion.com also appear to be hit. And of course Google Video was never accessible in China to begin with, so that's a no-count. more ›

Right: GoogleTechTalks presents Professor Teng-Kee Tan, a technology entrepreneurship expert with the Singapore-based Nanyang Technological University who talks about Competing and Collaborating in China with Bi-Cultural Competence. Pretty interesting stuff if you operate on a strategic level at work. And if you have 66 minutes to spare! more ›