Important elements for any anti-terrorism drill — great staging, great scenery and a great location where lots of people can see you. Yesterday's "terrorist" act was effectively countered by the highly efficient security forces in under an hour.......

A 24 year old woman from Jiangsu, Wang Cheng, is all smiles again after a successful operation in Taiwan on her rare condition, elephantiasis, which has hit her since the age of six and caused her legs to treble in size to about 50 kilos. Wang's condition had baffled doctors at major hospitals in Shanghai, Beijing, Nanjing and Zhengzhou but help came in the form of a Taiwanese Buddhist group Fo Kuang Shan which......

Interesting vid by Chris Pereira of Work in Progress [h/t to Danwei]. Wonder if he wrote the song himself?......

The Olympics mean a whole hell of a lot to China — it didn’t take a crazy guy on a bicycle to help us figure that out. But why? In this video, Chinese take a break from their daily activities to try to explain the motivations behind the Olympic madness, which they say range from national health and unity to international recognition and understanding. Despite the hassles of the past few months, this is the......

From aujourdhuilachine.com: The Chinese web is astir with the news of a video showing a 17-year-old girl being repeatedly beaten by a group of girls and raped by four boys. A year after the actual events, a daily Chinese newspaper relates the story. On July, 3rd, a Mr Xiong contacts the Chinese daily newssite nndaily.com and tells them about the video: "I hope you will look into that." A journalist watches the video, showing a......

From France24: Twenty-five years after China opened up to the west the Chinese are paying a price. Today the country has the fastest-growing obesity rate in the world and one quarter of its urban youth is overweight. Previously on Shanghaiist Chinese obesity balloons......

UPDATE: As we suspected, Miss Venezuela did win the contest. 80 of the world's most beautiful ladies are in the Vietnamese city of Nha Trang fighting for the Miss Universe crown today, and one of them is Miss China Wei Ziya, whose close up interview is featured here in the video on the right (also here, here and here). Hot favourite of the punters on betting website Bookmakers.com is Miss Venezuela (and wow, she does......

As we mentioned earlier this week, the Ted Koppel special "The People's Republic of Capitalism" is currently airing on the Discovery Channel in the U.S. For those of you who can't wait for the bittorrent, here are some clips from the series, most of which was filmed in Chongqing. The People's Republic of Capitalism: The American and Chinese economies are irreversibly intertwined. Not to rub it in or anything, but this particular Shanghaiist is currently......

Within just three days of the introduction of the new Olympic bills noted for their absence of Chairman Mao's portrait, the price of the 10 yuan bills has shot up a hundredfold, with some collectors willing to part with RMB1,100 just to get hold of one of them. Some traders at Beijing's Madian Philatelic Market expect prices to come down to about RMB300 eventually.......

Lam Thuy Vo of the Wall Street Journal discovers that China has been training close to 600 women in the art of cheerleading with the help of cheerleaders from the New England Patriots, the U.S. football team, and Chinese choreographers. The ladies were selected in 24 competitions nationwide and will be cheering at every Olympic event — and not just basketball and volleyball events. Intent on injecting Chinese characteristics into what is otherwise an......

Ted Koppel, former anchorman for ABC's Nightline, has a new four-part series on the Discovery Channel entitled "Koppel on Discovery: The People's Republic of Capitalism." The show began last night, and according to the New York Times, it offers an in-depth perspective on "an emerging capitalist economy tethered to an authoritarian government" by interviewing millionaires, peasants, drag queens and students. Adam Segal, a senior fellow in China studies at the Council of Foreign Relations, tells......

Liu Wenli is a bit of a celebrity in China. A police officer serving in Xicheng District of Beijing's Police Security Bureau, Liu is often seen chatting with the many tourists visiting the Wanshan Pavilion of Beijing's Jingshan Park. He is fluent in English, the first ever person in the police force to receive an Advanced-level Oral English Certificate. But check this out. Regardless of your nationality, Liu can offer you salutations in 13 languages......

President Sarkozy, the first world leader to say he would not attend the Beijing Olympics as a way of protesting China's handling of the Tibetan protests in May, has eaten his words after meeting Chinese President Hu Jintao at the ongoing G8 summit, saying he would attend the opening ceremony after all.......

Coca-Cola's latest commercial push before the Olympics features the TV commercial "Shuang City," starring Yao Ming as a torch bearer leading fans to the "Bird's Nest" stadium and shot by cinematographer Christopher Doyle (best known for working with directors Wong Kar-Wai and Zhang Yimou). Of course, as WSJ's Sky Canaves describes it, the commercial plays up the "feel-good" aspects of the Games: divers jump from skyscrapers, gymnasts leap through the streets and giant balloons emerge......

Brit/Aussie pop star Amy Pearson (don't know her? neither do we.) has a video that recently came to our attention not for its cliched lyrics and overwrought vocals, but because it was shot in our city. Feel free to mute, sing along in front of the mirror or just fast forward to 3:12, when the major Bund shots start.......

Chairman of China Southern Airlines, Liu Shaoyong (刘绍勇) piloted the inaugural flight from Guangzhou to Taipei yesterday carrying 258 passengers. On landing at the Taoyuan International Airport, the 100 or so mainland tourists were given a warm welcome including this lion dance and an Taiwanese aboriginal dance you see in the video, but later in the day, they were also greeted by Falun Gong members at a popular tourist site. This first encounter remained civil......

Last Wednesday's episode of The Riz Khan Show on Al Jazeera English dealt with Chinese industries in Africa. Khan hosted a debate among three experts on the subject: Richard Behar, an investigative journalist and author of an article this month in Fast Company titled "China Storms Africa;" John Afele, former director of the International Program for Africa at the University of Guelph; and David Shinn, former U.S. ambassador to Ethiopia. The question on the......

This report from France 24, an international 24-hour news channel, profiles the Hui community in Ningxia province in Northern China. Of the 20 million Muslims currently living in China, half belong to the Hui community, and one fifth of this community lives in Ningxia. The episode shows the special schools where Hui children learn Arabic and the Koran along with the regular Chinese curriculum. It also describes the Hui healthcare system, which blends treatments based......

Chinese art is where it's at, especially in our own city of Shanghai, says this video featuring interviews with curators at MOCA and Moganshan. The swelling popularity of the genre is evidenced by an impressive statistic — in 2004, Sotheby’s auctioned off $3 million in Chinese art, a number that increased to $70 million last year. Respect for the burgeoning art scene doesn’t just come from abroad, but from China’s own youth, who are becoming......

It's hard to name a global brand that has had smarter China marketing practices than Nike. The series of advertising shorts above, first posted on YouTube two years ago, features everyday Chinese who can't help but turn their day-to-day lives into athletic showcases. A flat round cracker in a university cafeteria becomes a discus; a pair of boys use a repairman's bucket as a basketball hoop; a young woman uses judo moves to take......

In this interview with the South China Morning Post, Yao Ming fields questions related to his injury, his chances of playing at the Olympics and the Sichuan earthquake.......

The 60-seat China-made turboprop MA600 has been unveiled in Xi'an amid great fanfare. It is some 300 kilogrammes and 40 percent more fuel-efficient than its predecessor, the MA60, 122 orders of which have been received since it was introduced. While most of the foreign orders seem to be from African countries like Zimbabwe and Zambia — not the most exciting aviation markets — the China Aviation Industry Corporation has ambitious plans to take over its......

A Date With Lu Yu《鲁豫有约》is one of the most influential talkshows in China which has been known to constantly push the envelope and to broach topics previously considered too hot to touch. One such episode is the one below which features two homosexual men from the Sichuan Province — who, long before the word "gay" had entered the Chinese lexicon — married each other, adopted a son and have been together for 21 years. VIDEO......

If you were cooped up at home all day yesterday like us because of the heavy rains, then you probably have no idea that over a dozen roads were flooded all across the city. We heard parts of Huaihai Lu (where we live) were also flooded, but we were blissfully unaware of all that in the safety of our own homes. Anybody has pictures?......

This latest piece of excellent work from Tony Cheng of Al-Jazeera has some eye-opening footage of what life looks like in Nanjie village (南街) in Henan province, supposedly the last place in China that is run along Maoist lines, where everything has been renationalised and collectivised. The clip reveals that the "village" is really a town that doesn't look all too bad at all, but it also does leave us with a few questions in......

This latest video from China's Green Beat takes a look at the waste that results from excessive packaging in food, the associated cultural reasons that come along with it and how we can do our part to solve the problem.......

This cute little ad was created for Mentos by ad agency BBH Shanghai [h/t to Punk Planning]......

Less than a month after airing this commercial featuring Richard Gere driving the new Fiat Delta from Hollywood to Tibet, Italian automaker Fiat has been forced to withdraw the ad, and issue a statement extending its "apologies to the Government of the People's Republic of China and to the Chinese people". Readers of this blog (a group which no doubt excludes anyone from Fiat or their agency) will be aware that Richard Gere is a......

From Danwei: "But conspicuously missing from the list are the Big Three of the Chinese Youtube clones: Youku.com, Tudou.com and 56.com. Although 56.com has been off line for nearly two weeks after an apparent porblem with the authorities, these three websites have the largest amount of funding of any video websites in China, most of it foreign. By most accounts they are also the most popular video sites in China."......

Left: Preview of a groundbreaking documentary, Jesus in China, by Evan Osnos on PBS Frontline/World. Osnos also reports of the explosive growth of evangelical Christianity in the Chicago Tribune, and notes how underground churches in China these days are, well, not so underground anymore. Also of interest are these two audio slideshows: "Christianity sweeping China" and "Bible empire grows in China" as well as this v-log by Osnos. Right: France24 says Ningxia is China's......