Let's do a quick recap of all the major food safety news so far this year: We've got cadmium in our rice, steamed buns that are actually recycled, "beef" that's actually pork, epilepsy-causing eels, cancer-causing fruit juice, cholera-inducing frogs, worm eggs in our mineral water, and exploding watermelons. If all that's still not enough to make you want to stop eating and drinking for the rest of your time in China, here's more. more ›

"The drought has pushed up the price of vegetables and freshwater fish in Shanghai. The retail price of green-leaf vegetables such as bok choy is now 8 yuan (US$1.23) per kilogram, 30 percent higher than before the drought began. The price of fish, such as perch and mandarin fish from Jiangxi and Hubei provinces, has risen 30 to 40 percent due to short supplies. The output of hairy crabs, from Anhui, Hubei, Hunan and Jiangxi provinces, is expected to decrease. Crabs will also be smaller because they will absorb less nutrition due to the change in their environment. Though the price of this year's crop hasn't been fixed, a price rise is unavoidable, fishery experts said." [Shanghai Daily] more ›

If you’re able to drag yourself away from the Asian Games on your teevee at home (I’m assuming you all tuned in yesterday for women’s judo, badminton tourneys, men’s chess, and of course “Latin Jive” dance-offs) then we’ve got you covered with our weekly list of whatever brouhaha is going down around town this Monday through Thursday. In the line-up this week: premature Christmas bazaars, another one of those neat Shanghai photography nights, a clown on a bicycle, and some free booze! more ›

We read a fair amount of China-related news, and it's hard not to get a bit apathetic about it all, since so much of it seems to revolve around the same few topics. Slate's article, however, touches on something we don't normally hear about: China's tomato products industry.:China, it turns out, now grows more tomatoes for processing—the kind that get turned into ketchup, pasta sauce, salsa—than any place in the world besides California, and maybe... more ›