The Bahamas. Again. One medal for every 153,725 Bahamians. They were followed by Jamaica, Iceland, Slovenia, Australia, New Zealand, Norway, Cuba, Armenia and Belarus. Of the 87 nations that won medals, China ranked No. 68. The United States was No. 46. India brought up the rear. This is all good info to have the next time you tire of your friends arguing over who really "won" the Olympics. [Source]......

Chuck Culpepper of the Los Angeles Times has been tracking this and as of his latest posting yesterday, the Beijing Olympics "MPC" leaders are — you guessed it — Armenia. Australia is No. 2. USA? 30th. China? 40th. (We have a feeling the Aussies might climb back to No. 1 after their efforts in the pool this morning.) Australia is not the two-time defending MPC champs, however. That honor goes to the Bahamas, which has......

Nationalistic optimism hits its worldwide high in China, a new survey by PEW Global Attitudes Project has found. Eighty-six percent reported being happy with their county’s direction, with 82 percent positive about the national economy. These numbers have risen startlingly in the past six years, growing 38 and 30 percentage points respectively during an era when many nations, including the United States, have seen severe declines. Chinese national pride may be up, but personal satisfaction......

That's right, expert auditors sports prognosticators PricewaterhouseCoopers have already determined China will out-medal the United States, 88 to 87. Says, the AP, "The report lists significant factors behind a country's performance at the Olympics since 1988, including population, average income level and being the host nation." We're still rooting for September.......

Touring season has official started for Chinese bands and this weekend Shanghai is bursting with shows worth checking out. Tonight the action starts early with three Xian bands playing at Yuyintang. Both Hush and 24hour Party People have played in Shanghai before and put on solid shows. This time they are joined by punk band Sucker. If you miss tonight's earlier show, you don't have to feel like a total bum, all 3 bands will......

In an unexpected turn of events, China has announced that is willing to throw face to the wind and reenter human rights talks with the USA. ``The Chinese side is willing to keep contact with the U.S. in all areas,'' Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said today at the end of a Beijing press conference with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, neither elaborating nor giving her the chance to respond. ``We're ready to resume......

Earlier this week the heat in our bedroom pooped out. The weather on Friday hit a promising 18 degrees and we thought our prayers had been answered, but no such luck. Xinhua has put much of China back on a code red weather alert and it looks like we're head right back to highs in the single digits. Anhui and Jiangsu in east China, Hubei and Henan in central China and Shanxi and Shaanxi in......

Have you got an opinion? Starting this week, we will publish an opinion piece from readers on selected weekends, so if you feel like you've got something to get off your chest, email it to us at info AT shanghaiist DOT com and if we like it, we will publish it under this column. This week, a reader takes on That's Shanghai's Erik Peterson's review of Beijing punk band Snapline's new CD. All views expressed......

In a surprise move that if enforced will lead to an undoubtedly cleaner Shanghai and China in general. The powers that be have decided that as of June 1st those ultra thin plastic bags (.025mm) that accompany virtually every purchase in China will be banned. The regular thickness plastic bags will still be allowed, but grocery stores and other vendors will be forced to charge for those bags and prices will need to be clearly......

In no particular order 1. Glenfiddich 40 year old: Blended with whiskies from Grant's 1920s and 1930s vats, this special Glenfiddich was sweet, smooth and very long in taste. We sampled this recently at Constellation Bar, together with another dozen or so whisky fanatics, the bottle being one of only 600 bottles in the world. Estimated retail price for this very special Scotch, according to the Constellation manager, would be about RMB3000 per dram! 2.......

According to a blog essay we found, a recent poll by Harris Interactive showed that of 6,000 people from France, Germany, Italy, the UK, and the US, the overwhelming majority considered China the second most powerful nation in the world after the USA. We did some searching on the internet, and couldn't find mention of that report. We tried on Harris Interactive's site as well, but no dice. Perhaps we haven't looked hard enough? Or......

Don't put on your party hats; no, leave those stupid little things at home. This is the weekend is all about Halloween and ghoulish costumes. Kicking things off tonight is the STD (great inspiration when designing your costumes) Halloween bash. Locals Banana Monkey and the Drop Kicks will be joined by Xian based 24-hour Party People... the icing on the cake being Misfits cover band, Horror Business. Nothing goes better with ghouls'n'ghosts than a little......

Who is Yacht ? Yacht, a musician you will love like a rainbow after the rain, or a lollipop after visiting the dentist. Any one remember the Blow? Well, the Blow’s last 2 albums was 90% Yacht and Yacht is made up of one man….the multi – talented Jona Bochtolt. Happy, positive rainbow music on speed, Yacht might currently be best known as that guy who used to be in the Blow or for......

Comments below don’t necessarily represent the Shanghaiist’s point of view or opinion regarding the Canadian government (we don't want them to hold a grudge and kick us out of Canada too!)… we just received it recently from the Busdriver promoter and thought it was kind of funny… shows are still on in Beijing and Shanghai…..and we are as giddy as a school boy in the girls locker room to see Busdriver play live! “Nothing......

The latest issue of TIME Magazine has an interesting story of a US-based company that has just set up shop in where else but Inner Mongolia, to feed the millions of hungry Chinese who are now looking to eat something other than pork: Earlier this year, Western Cattle started to raise Holsteins on an American-style ranch and feedlot built in the wide open spaces of Inner Mongolia. Their goal: deliver truckloads of well-marbled beef to......

Indian Ocean / Malacca Straits - Five-power naval exercise gives China the jitters [New Zealand Herald] Are the warships from the United States, India, Japan, Australia and Singapore that are exercising together this week off the east coast of India harbingers of a new military alliance in Asia to contain China? Singapore - Pair of seats on inaugural A380 flight go for $100,000 [USA Today] Singapore Airlines, the first carrier in the world to fly......

Japan's idea of 'broader Asia' partnership irks China [Sydney Morning Herald] The Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, has called for a "broader Asia" partnership of democracies to include India, the US and Australia but omit the region's superpower, China. Jailed dissident's wife under house arrest in Beijing [The Guardian] The wife of jailed Chinese activist Yuan Weijing is under house arrest tonight less than 24 hours before she was due to fly to the Philippines......

Shanghaiist is going to give Senator Clinton the benefit of the doubt -- that she actually knows better but is just being the politician that everybody expects her to be. But the following infuriatingly pandering comment puts Senator Clinton right up there with the lovely Senator Schumer on this Shanghaiist's "too-political-for-America's-own-good" list:"We have to have tougher standards on what they import into this country," she said. I don't want to eat bad food from China......

Jakob Montrasio points us to a most unbelievable ranking of the world's top 25 cities with skyscrapers published by the German magazine Spiegel: 1: Hongkong, China. 7422 skyscrapers. 2: New York City, USA. 5445 skyscrapers. 3: Singapore 3503 skyscrapers. 4 million people. 4: São Paulo, Brazil. 3012 skyscrapers. 10 million people. 5: Seoul, Korea. 2831 skyscrapers. 6: Istanbul, Turkey. 2093 skyscrapers. Over 10 million people. 7: Tokyo, Japan. 2074 skyscrapers. 12 million people. 8: Rio......

Back in the late 1980s, we were of the opinion that the Oaktown (Oakland, California, USA) was a fetid, hopeless, de-industrialized, white-flight created shit-hole, but all of that was changed sometime around 1990 with the arrival of Oakland native MC Hammer onto the music scene. If America had gorged itself during a whole decade on the fashion excesses of pop stars, Hammer was like the long belch after the meal, but even if we had......

Whenever there is a crisis or a natural calamity, there are the people who lose money and then there are the entrepreneurs. It seems enterprising businessmen have decided to cash in on an outbreak of rodents in the Dongting Lake area in Hunan province which saw an estimated 2 billion mice on the run from the flooded Yangtse River by taking the matter into their own hands - literally. China Daily says trucks full of......

It is now official: The Great Wall has been chosen as one of the new Seven Wonders of the World in an unprecedented global vote that drew nearly 100 million internet and telephone voters. In fact it received the most votes among the 21 finalist sites (not very surprising as China has one of the biggest internet populations?). Other sites that have been recognised as new wonders include: Petra, Jordan The statue of Christ the......

Although the Olympic Games are over a year away, a preview of what's to come next summer has arrived in Shanghai this week. Shanghai is the host for this year's Chinese National Gymnastics Championships, featuring some of China's best and brightest gymnasts. China's men's team AND women's team are the defending World Champions. The preliminary competitions finished up last weekend, with the team finals finishing today and tomorrow, and the individual competitions (all-around final and......

Fox: Read My Tattoos, No Prison Break In China "News Corporation's (NYSE: NWS.A) Fox Television denied that it has licensed Beijing based media company Zonbo Media to remake American TV series Prison Break or any related online activities in China, reports Beijing Youth Daily." Lawsuit says Ark. company selling counterfeit Budweiser in China "Anheuser-Busch Inc. sued USA Bai Wei Group Inc. in Arkansas' Pulaski County Circuit Court, seeking an injunction to revoke Bai Wei's......

Shanghaiist thinks there aren’t enough cars in Shanghai. The air, quite frankly, is incredibly clean. There’s nary a spot of traffic. And really, couldn’t taxi drivers be more conscientious by honking their horns just a LITTLE more often? Shanghai needs more cars. Definitely. And what better place to encourage additional consumption than the Shanghai Auto Show! The Shanghai show has become a major stop on the automotive circuit. GM, BMW Audi, and many others are......

For those expats out there who've ever wondered what it might be like to get behind the wheel of an automobile here in Shanghai, this is your lucky day. Thanks to the USA Today, that bastion of impartial journalism and cutting-edge video game development, you can now race the streets of Shanghai on 10 circuits in one of five super charged hot rods—all for the low price of only US$19.99. Think of how much money......

These days, Shanghaiist is rarely surprised about anything that happens in China. However, we did think that this news story did come from a little out of left-field. A Henan-based investor group is constructing a 21-kilometre (13 mile) long metal Chinese dragon as a tourist attraction. The dragon's body forms a nine-metre (27-foot) high wall running along a ridge-line, with the dragon's head rising 10-metres (30-feet) above the surrounding land. This project plans to cover......

The annual Shanghai International Literary Festival, taking place throughout March, is one of those gems that make Shanghai such a fantastic city. The festival consistently brings some of the biggest names of the contemporary literary scene to the city to discuss their craft in the unusually intimate surroundings — the Glamour Bar or the Crystal Room at M on the Bund. Shanghaiist is really looking forward to this year’s festival, which includes lectures, discussions, and......

Yesterday, for the first time since China launched it's professional football league in 1994, Beijing Guoan beat Shanghai Shenhua on their own turf. The capital outfit beat Shenhua 2-0 at Yuanshen Stadium in Pudong, but the historic first was over-shadowed somewhat by the furious reception reserved for new Shenhua owner, online gaming tycoon Zhu Jun. He masterminded an RMB 150 million merger between Shenhua and rivals Shanghai United just a few weeks before the season......

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......