And you thought they'd never get to it! Ctrip.com is now looking a lot more like a dot.com because you can now finally pay for that ticket you booked online via Paypal and with your foreign credit card. As far as we can remember, the last time we tried to book a ticket with our foreign credit card, their customer service staff directed us to fax in an authorisation letter to allow them to charge......

Andrew Lih reports on some websites newly accessible in Mainland China leading up to the Olympics. They include: BBC Chinese, Wikipedia Chinese, Radio Free Asia and Apple Daily HK newspaper. Lih is quick to point out that "there are plenty of sites still blocked in China, including Tor Project, Amnesty International, Wikia, The Pirate Bay, AboutUs.org, and LiveJournal." Lih's bet on when unblocked sites will be reblocked? "8 hours and 8 minutes after the Olympic......

In a critical post about a new search engine awkwardly-named Cuil, the folks at popular blog TechCrunch posted a screen grab of a Cuil search for "TechCrunch" and said: "And I have no idea who that person is next to the results for our 'About' section." Why it is none other than Shanghai's biggest R.E.M. fan, Sam Flemming, head honcho of Internet Word of Mouth research and consulting firm CIC. So, that answers the "who"......

Well, you might want to check out these Chinese website search plugins for your browser. Some work for IE7, too. [Source]......

The China Internet Illegal Information Reporting Center (CIIIRC) issued its first blacklist of websites containing "harmful information" on Monday. The websites were found to be spreading "low and vulgar content," according to Danwei, and had been previously sent orders to delete the illegal content, but the demands were not heeded. In an effort to "shame" them, the CIIIRC decided to expose the names of these websites on its blacklist. The sites include: http://club.qingdaonews.com/ http://bbs.cjn.cn/main.html http://et.21cn.com/......

View Larger Map Remember when Google's English-language map of Shanghai was, save for some groovy satellite pics, pretty much blank? Remember that? You should. It was like a week ago. Anyway, thanks to a tip on our Contribute Page, we learn that the map has gotten a makeover. To do this, looks like Google has teamed with MapABC, that same firm that does Google's Chinese maps and the same firm City Weekend is experimenting with......

Modern Internet connectivity meets old-school snail mail charm in Shanghai resident Paulo Magalhães’s popular website Postcrossing.com, which allows users to send and receive postcards from friendly strangers all around the globe. Founded in July 2005, the site grew wildly popular as fans passed the news by word-of-mouth and now boasts 50,000 users in 182 countries. On the occasion of its third anniversary, Shanghaiist caught up with the Portuguese innovator just as Postcrossing hit its biggest......

The miracle of miracles has happened, and 56.com has come back online, more than a month after it was shut down. While the company had promised a revamp, the website looks pretty much like it did before. Pacific Epoch tried to find out more, but the company is keeping its lips tightly sealed on what exactly transpired within that month.......

As the globe gazes towards China, it’s no surprise that some of the world’s best eyes have been attracted to the country to capture its image on film. Photographers old and new, local and foreign, have explored the nation’s landscapes, objects and people and are exhibiting their art in a place anyone can see it — the internet. For those who may never see the striking images in person, the visuals provide a partial description......

From Al-Jazeera:China is on course to join Japan and the US as a leader in the art of animation. Zhongnan Animation, is one of China's top animation studios — but fledgling at only 5 years old. There are approximately 1,000 employees working there and trying to compete in an industry dominated by Japan and the United States. As Al Jazeera's Melissa Chan reports, it is a lucrative market and China already has an audience of......

Since Monday, we've been having problems accessing Facebook here and thought we were the only ones having that problem. Tuesday, we began to hear from friends of ours all around China complaining of the same problem, on the Shanghaiist Contribute page and among the China Twitterati. And then this piece by the WSJ's China Journal appeared, devoting five full paragraphs to Facebook's mysterious outtage. God forbid the day when we have to turn on our......

The famed Shaolin Temple has started its own online store on Taobao, and everything we've seen there looks like a bargain — from this Kinnara engraving (RMB1,800) to this god-knows-what-it-is (RMB9,999). The store, which opened a month ago, has sold a whopping 24 items. Reuters details all the praise Chinese netizens have for the temple's latest commercial venture here. Shanghai-based Ebay subsidiary Kijiji.cn has just announced its rebranding to Baixing.com. The company headed by Shanghai......

China Digital Times reports that a new virus is being distributed through e-mails with anti-China headings that ask readers to click on what looks like an embedded video player, but instead release a brutal virus onto the machine. Messages with subjects like “China is paralyzed by new earthquake,” “2008 Olympic Games are under the threat,” and “A new deadly catastrophe in China,” should be treated as potentially harmful.......

Last week Shanghai saw the introduction of ">handy tri-colored boxes in communication stores throughout the city to be used to recycle or properly dispose of cell phones. The initiative could make a huge impact in helping the city's environment: Shanghai Mobile reports 3.2 million phones are trashed in the city each year. The local trend may be indicative of a nation-wide movement. During his recent visit to China, Samsung CEO Lee Yoon-Woo announced the company’s......

Following a hot tip from the New York Times we were able to find Facebook's newest member, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao (温家宝). Initially Shanghaiist was excited about the prospect of being friends with 'Grandpa,' but then we realized he had more friends (13,280 supporters as of now) than all of the contributors combined and more supporters than the Shanghaiist fan page. Just leave it to the older generations to make it uncool for everyone else.......

Two recent cases have shown that the Chinese Internet is probably more alive than you ever thought it to be... Case 1: "The Liaoning Girl": Gao Qianhui (高千惠), a 20-year old girl from Shenyang, Liaoning (in northeastern China), took aim at the recent earthquake in Sichuan. The 3-day period of mourning took away Internet games from the girl, which made her more than unhappy. Unfortunately, the nearly 5 minute-long clip, which was also posted on......

With over 30,000 dead, another tens of thousands missing, and 200,000 injured, coupled with a broken down mobile/land line and transportation system, many people are on a frantic search for each other, and Google mobilised 100 of its employees to help create a custom search engine entirely dedicated to helping people find their friends and loved ones. Other nifty tools found on this feature-rich page include Google Maps integrated with the latest earthquake and relief......

Chinese reports have been saying that around May 1, Google China unveiled its Onebox search function, which allows you to find movies and movie times. If you've used Google in the US, you are probably familiar with this function, it's the thing that sits atop the regular search results, as you can see in the pictures. The main key words are the movie, the name of the theater, and the city that you live in.......

Graham Webster of CNet blog Sinobyte reports that William Chang, chief scientist for Baidu, told the WWW2008 conference in Beijing yesterday, "'There's in fact no reason for China to use Wikipedia, a service based 'out there'... It's very natural for China to make it's own products," and hence all of us should be good boys and girls and use Baidupedia instead. He of course conveniently forgot to mention Chinese Wikipedia remains blocked.HiPiHi, the Chinese clone......

Since we broke the story on CNN's site outtage in China yesterday, the story was picked up by top US blogs such as Mashable and Gawker, although mainstream media continue to be strangely silent blissfully unaware of what happened. CNN's PR machine has since leapt into action as it seeks to explain what happened. This morning we received an email from CNN Worldwide's Director of Public Relations, Jennifer L. Martin, directing our attention to their......

Since we told you about the MSN (L) China campaign yesterday, the mainstream media in China has lapped it all up. Shanghai's Dragon TV today claimed a whopping 5 million MSN users. And just as you're wondering where the hell they plucked that figure from, Xinhua today quoted a paltry 2.3 million MSN Messenger users, and even has a very authoritative source to back that up:MSN China spokesman Feng Guangshun released the figure on Thursday.......

digg_url = 'http://digg.com/microsoft/L_China_Nationalists_on_MSN_Messenger_heart_China'; Like Wang Jianshuo and Eric Hu, we were pretty surprised to see that this is what our MSN messenger looks like at the moment. Says Eric:Over half of my Chinese-Chinese friends on MSN have put the badge on their contact names, in defiance of all the anti-China bullying that they’re undoubtedly reading about in the Chinese newspapers, watching on the Chinese news, and scouring over on the hundreds of blogs and......

Shanghai Securities newspaper came out with an article that claimed that they had a contact that says that tax authorities are investigating Google China for tax evasion. Moreover, they are not just looking at the company's taxes, but individual income taxes as well — including those of Lee Kai-Fu, Google's man in China, who is rumored to owe more than 5 million RMB in unpaid taxes. The report says that there is a several month......

It can be hard work sometimes trying to find decent home grown bands in China. That’s not to say that there aren’t plenty out there, just that — as we’ve discussed before on these pages — the country generally, and Shanghai in particular, still has a way to go before a proper ‘scene’ is established. You can thank your lucky stars, therefore, for the good people over at Neocha. Already the leading website in China......