When I first entered college in New York, I used a scan of my Chinese visa, a little Photoshop expertise and a laminator to give me a convincing enough "Chinese Resident Card" with a fake birth date to pass as someone 21+. It worked because I was a girl and convincingly Chinese enough to not have any other ID with me. Not surprisingly, my little operation hardly holds a candle to the Chinese fake id-making professionals. more ›

It seems 'gold-diggers' will be victims of the latest crackdown aiming to restore 'morality' to China. After a contestant on the Jiangsu Television matchmaking show, 'If You Are The One' (非诚勿扰), said she was after a wealthy man with a flashy car, government officials ordered all matchmaking shows in China to get rid of sexual innuendo and ban any talk of women 'gold-digging'. more ›

Just as Sino-US tensions seemed to be easing after months of discontent, the US has risked irritating Beijing a little more. This week, the Washington Post reported that the US State Department has decided to fund the Global Internet Freedom Consortium (GIFC), an Internet freedom group run largely by F4lun G0ng practitioners. more ›

Foreign journalists in China are still waiting for answers after their Yahoo email accounts were hacked into last week. more ›

• Washington Post lies [China Daily] "How can the Washington Post choose to project the good being done by the Chinese government for the Uygur ethnic group to convey the exact opposite? It must be an obsession to ensure that every report about Xinjiang after the Urumqi violence in early July should be an attack on the Chinese government and its policy. How else can such groundless reporting and accusations be explained?"
• China says Falun Gong ban 'works' [BBC] "A Chinese official says the country has been successful in efforts to crack down on the spiritual movement Falun Gong, 10 years after it was banned. Li Anping, from the China Anti-Cult Association, told a national newspaper that people now realised the true nature of the movement. But Falun Gong still exists, and has organised protest events outside China to mark the anniversary."
• Amazing Stat: California Uses More Gas than China [Wired] "Given all the news coverage about the rise of the Chinese economy, you could be forgiven for thinking that the world’s most populous country is hogging all the world’s resources, while the developed nations are fighting for scraps. But, at least with transportation fuel, you’d be wrong. California alone uses more gasoline than any country in the world (except the US as a whole, of course). That means California’s 20 billion gallon gasoline and diesel habit is greater than China’s! (Or Russia’s. Or India’s. Or Brazil’s. Or Germany’s.)"

On the Washington Post is an amazing amalgamation of audio clips and transcripts of former CCP Premier Zhao Ziyang about the tragedy-that-must-not-be-named. Zhao, who fell out of favor partially because of his comments against Deng Xiaoping, was largely ignored for the last 16 years of his life and almost erased from history. When he died four years ago, the party reacted by forming an "Emergency Response Leadership Small Group" and declaring "a period of extreme sensitivity. more ›

• Gothamist found that an explosive set off outside the Times Square army recruiting center may be similar to five past bombings in New York City.
• Seattlest worried when severed right feet and bottles of rat poison started washing up on local beaches.
• Shanghaiist was surprised by Bjork's rooting for Tibetan independence at her concert (see video), and the political fallout has only just begun.
• SFist debated the merits of new bronze plaques that will be placed in locations where San Francisco's homeless have died.
• DCist was obliged to respond to the worst Washington Post Outlook column ever published, in which conservative writer Charlotte Allen tried to make the case that women are dumb.
• LAist found Satan's ice cream truck trolling the streets, and they recorded the music.
• Some crafty Torontoist readers didn't like the dearth of ski hills in downtown Toronto, so they just built one of their own on their deck and (of course) recorded a video of them all taking turns on it.
• Bostonist knows the city's subway and bus system, the MBTA, has problems. So does this 17-year-old who submitted a report and told the MBTA brass how to fix it.
• Phillyist explored the possibility of an Ivy League prostitute, while their commenters debated the most ethical approach to proving or debunking the story.
• Londonist spent a little too much time looking at airbrushed operatic private parts, and enjoyed an enlightening comment from someone who was there. more ›

"China's inflation likely hit a new 11-year high of 8.3 percent last month on the back of rising food prices, state media reported Sunday, triggering speculation of a modest hike in interest rates." more ›

China's premier on Wednesday extolled the prosperity the Communist government has brought to many Chinese, yet he sounded an alarm that inflation could derail the country's rapid emergence. more ›

Xinhua: Spielberg slashed by Chinese, but his movies still admired more ›

Just three days after Straits Times journalist Ching Cheong regained his freedom, China has released yet another media man — Yu Huafeng (喻华峰), general manager and deputy editor of the Southern Metropolis News《南方都市报》, the Guangzhou-based paper that is one of China's boldest and most critical papers. more ›

This is definitely one of the best pods we've seen on China's sex workers so far. Laura Ling of Current TV, goes around China and finds that the sex trade, while virtually non-existent 25 years ago, is now booming everywhere. She also almost got into trouble with some local mafia (which brought back some nasty flashbacks of our own encounters with them a few years ago), but fortunately she got away with it and her tape! more ›

• Nature News cites an EU report that finds that the real value of a Chinese scientist's wages is the lowest among the 38 countries surveyed. Yes, Chinese scientists make even less than Indian scientists. (h/t to Global Voices )
• CNNIC announces that China now has 72.82 million blogs and 47 million bloggers. That's one quarter of all Chinese netizens.
• The Little Red Blog bets against Baidu and roots for Google in the year 2008.

Colleague: Haha, I understand. I'm not a very good CCP member, and not a very bad one either, but you probably can't say I'm a member anymore. I have not been paying my party membership fees for three years now, and haven't been keeping up with the meetings, so they probably struck my name off the list. more ›

Photo of Liu Xiang in a Coca Cola ad from spicedfish. more ›

The Indian government on Tuesday invited six aircraft manufacturers including Boeing Co. and Lockheed Martin Corp. to bid on a contract for 126 combat planes worth up to $10 billion. more ›

This Youku video shows some women offering old men massage hanky-panky, all out in the open in an unnamed city, for as low as RMB5! The world's oldest profession is alive and well in China, and it is everywhere. more ›

Are there any Living Buddhas among the enlightened readership of this blog? You have been informed: With immediate effect, all your reincarnations must receive government approval, and if not, they will be deemed "illegal or invalid" by the State Administration for Religious Affairs (SARA). more ›

Shanghaiist has a fondness for elephants retained since our childhood exposure to Barbar. In mid-May we linked out to a Washington Post report that stated that the world's illegal ivory trade was being facilitated by Chinese-run smuggling rings that have extended their reach into Africa over the last decade. more ›

For most of the day yesterday, we here at Shanghaiist were wondering if we should post anything about the horrific mass shooting at Virginia Tech, a university in the United States. On the surface, the answer should have been an easy "no" — Blacksburg, Virginia, is nowhere near Shanghai. But news started to trickle in about the suspected killer: He was Asian, possibly Chinese. And then, yesterday morning, Chicago Sun-Times columnist Michael Sneed posted a story labeled "exclusive" that started out like this: more ›

It seems like, all across the network, folks were up to no good. Maybe it was all the green beer from last weekend... more ›

Not being content with constructing fine automobiles that are capable of outperforming a Ferrari F430 on Shanghai's Tianma circuit, Chery Automobile has announced a joint-venture with Uruguay-based armoured car company, Bognor Automotive Manufacture and Assembly, to produce a bullet-proof version of their mid-range Eastar sedan here in China. more ›

The Blood of Yingzhou District, a film tha follows the lives of childen in Anhui who have lost their parents to AIDS, won the Oscar for best documentary short earlier today. We haven't seen the film, and doubt it will be showing up in Shanghai theaters ... well, ever. Doesn't seem like the type of thing our friendly local DVD vendors would carry either, although we have been surprised before. Has anyone seen it? more ›

Olympic Games.

The Washington Post reports that the former next president of the United States, Al Gore, is going to put on some massive live shows to help persuade the world to take global warming and climate change seriously:

At the news conference Thursday announcing this summer's ambitious "Live Earth" concerts -- designed as an exercise in "mass persuasion" about threats of global warming -- Al Gore described his vision: a 24-hour musical extravaganza across seven continents, featuring as many as 150 of the world's top recording artists, introduced by an army of "celebrities and thought leaders" (think: Cameron Diaz and Richard Branson), playing before a total live audience of a million people, and reaching 2 billion more via television, radio and the Internet on July 7.

The foreign cities hosting the stadium-size concerts will be Shanghai, Sydney, Johannesburg, London, Rio and Kyoto, Japan.

The State Environmental Protection Agency said faster-than-expected economic growth meant that sulfur dioxide emissions increased by nearly 1.8 percent, or 463,000 tons, over the previous year, according to a report on its Web site. An even more damning report from Germany's magazine talks about how China's environmental failures are impacting the rest of the world. more ›

As 2006 ends and 2007 begins, the -ists look back not at the past week, but at the past year. So here it is, your Best of 2006 Spectacular. And from all of us at the -ists, happy New Year! more ›

On Friday, Chinese protesters clashed with Japanese coast guard ships and helicopters off the coast of the East China Sea islets, known as the Diaoyutai (钓鱼岛) in China and the Senkakus in Japan. The islands are located 170 km (100 miles) northeast of Taiwan and 410 km (250 miles) west of Japan's Okinawa island are a long-standing source of dispute between China and Japan. In brief, Japan claimed the islands in 1895 when it colonized Taiwan, but the United States controlled them after World War II and returned them to Japan in 1972. While they are currently administered by Japan, the Diaoyutai are independently claimed by Japan, China, and Taiwan. The islands are uninhabited but surrounded by rich fishing waters, and it is believed that they sit above vast underwater oil and gas deposits. more ›

So everyone is reporting what we warned you about. Here's what the AP said: more ›