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EastSouthWestNorth has translated an excellent story on the translation crisis in China that first appeared in Phoenix Weekly. It talks about the more than 1,000 foreign literary works that are translated and published in China each year (and we assume that number is still growing). The story laments over the "awfulness of the translations, the crudeness of the translators and the absence of critical reflection on what is happening". It then looks into why translation... more ›

Back in April we did a post on the top ten books favored by the users of Douban.com, a book review and recommendation site. Since that time, tastes have changed and new books have been released so it's about time to take a new look at the site's top ten: more ›

Shanghaiist likes reading sciencey stuff. We are often seen browsing through the archives of Science Magazine, The Scientific American and New Scientist magazines akin to how your Mum might flick through weekly gossip rags like Who Weekly or OK! magazines. more ›

We at Shanghaiist know that you are busy people (or that at least you try to act like busy people when your bosses are around). That's why we launched a Favorites page a while back. On it you can find the most popular Shanghaiist posts based on comments and votes (the "Recommend This!" link you see at the bottom of each post). So if you are rushed for time, you can just visit that page to see the posts other people are talking about. And for those rare occasions when you aren't busy, it's also a good page to play with for a while — you can sort our most popular posts by day, week, month, year and all-time. Did you know our most commented post ever is "Just say no ... to Christmas" from December '06? How depressing: Eighty-two comments on that one. more ›

Shanghai's little slice of designer heaven just got a little fatter. Bridge 8, the creative compound that houses 4 Live and what some respected critics say is the best steak in town, has reached its artsy tentacles across the street in an expansion that will see some real estate open up for new and existing tenants. One of those is the new Point to Life bookstore, with a collection dedicated entirely to the rich category of design. more ›

And there's no reason that feeling should only be the province of a hyper-educated elite. Ever since studying abroad was reintroduced in the 1980s, Chinese people have had a major jones for Harvard and the rest of the Ivies. There are tons of books with Harvard as the subject, and especially popular among those are ones that tell about how a Chinese student managed to get in or raise a kid that got into Harvard. more ›

We are writing this while choking on second-hand smoke at a Huaihai Lu cafe/eatery. Our choice, we know, but we had a meeting here and then decided to have lunch — and now we are having our neighbor's Marlboro Lights for dessert. Anyway, a nice little midday reminder of why we prefer to work at home. But is relief on the way? According to the latest Access Asia Weekly Update, maybe so. (Keep in mind that the author of the Access Asia newsletter is a fervent supporter of smoker rights, who refers to pansies like Shanghaiist as "killjoys who think they are going to live forever."): more ›

We pretty much knew, even before we stepped into the theater, how this film was going to play out among the critics: more ›

We've never been to the knockoff DVD shop called Blockbuster ... and now we'll never get a chance to. The real Blockbuster has seen to it that the place -- which apparently is of the overpriced, 10 kuai per DVD, Kade Club ilk -- lose its name. This is from Access Asia's Weekly View on Asia: more ›

Shanghaiist has posted before about the controversy surrounding the new high school history textbooks in Shanghai, which were thrown under the media spotlight after an article in the New York Times by Joseph Kahn claimed that the new history books were a big departure from the old books and went so far as to nearly remove Mao from China's history. You can read what the folks over at the Peking Duck thought about it this issue here and here. It seems that only one or two people there managed to compare the new history textbooks in Shanghai, which move away from the "great man" theory of history, with a somewhat similar movement in teaching of American history towards more social and cultural history, along the lines of (and this perhaps isn't the best or only example) Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. more ›

Although, Shanghai’s No. 1 fruit fly is usually up for a night of loud music and cheek-to-cheek dancing with a crowd of gay men, lately work has been grueling and we lack the energy required to compete for space on a podium at Club Deep (trust me … as one of the only women in the club we still have to elbow our way through a bunch of other shameless exhibitionists). These days, we have been in search of a quiet oasis where we can hear our friends talk and are not entertained distracted by the meat market going on around us. more ›

You know who's going to be upset about those Bikini Bandits? The Houston school system. Houstonist also reports on some redevelopment shenanigans over a landmark theater. more ›

While scanning some headlines today, one jumped out at us: "SHANGHAI NECK-LICK." It's from the LA Weekly, a story about attending a punk rock show: more ›

Oddly enough, our random internet search process seems to turn up a lot of stuff about China -- and in this case, an article about freedom of religion, publications about religion, and book culture in China from none other than -- who else -- The Turkish Weekly. This article is, for people who don't know much about the subject, quite informative. The writer visits some general bookstores (such as the Shu Cheng in Shanghai) as well as state-sanctioned religious book shops, where you can get Bibles, Korans, and more devotional type books. more ›

Imagine this: A high school parking lot in Irvine, a small city in southern California. It's the mid-1990s and Shanghaiist, who in his wildest dreams had never thought he'd grow up to be a blogger, is busy scraping a faux-"handicapped" sticker of a stick figure in a wheelchair smoking a bong off his car. So this is what teenagers do to relieve their boredom in the O.C. (Orange County or 橙县). more ›

The week starts out right when a sucker punch on the field lands Chicagoist in the middle of a Sox/Cubs throwdown and the fists continue to fly in the comments. Despite suburban resident Ms. Pinney's best little try no books will be banned anytime soon and the El is really really gross. more ›

The Southern Metropolis Weekly's latest print edition had an interesting article about videos and movies online. The article profiled and compared some of the people working in this area and analyzed the business models and economics behind each. One of the people profiled was none other than Hu Ge, the Shanghainese man that caused a stir with his parody of The Promise, director-turned-hack Chen Kaige's latest attempt to waste several hours in the lives of innocent and hard-working people. That parody, a short film called A Bloody Case That Started From a Steamed Bun, got Hu Ge in trouble with the aforementioned hack, who threatened Hu with a lawsuit. The net result has been to make the once unknown Hu Ge into a cause celebre cum indie movie rebel. Not suprisingly, he's gotten some offers, most notably, to make another parody, this time with the approval of the filmmakers. The filmmakers behind the film 血战到底 (Karmic Mahjong). We think that the media might have already seen the parody version (which is basically advertising for the film itself) and were disappointed: Hu himself acknowledges that he made Steamed Bun for fun and because he was pissed off, whereas Karmic Mahjong is already comic and a bit of a spoof (we will review it soon), making it hard for him to find the inspiration. Unlike the first film, however, he isn't allowed to bring in bits and pieces from other movies and TV shows or music -- otherwise known as copyrighted material -- which also made his job harder. These days, Hu is living in a house in the suburbs where has a "studio" and is hatching plans to make a real, live-action film on digital video. The problem is, not many people have expressed interest thus far in investing in it. more ›

Our favorite weekly email newsletter says so: more ›

The British highbrow magazine Prospect has come out with its 2005 list of the 100 most influential "public intellectuals" in the world, which ranges across nations, disciplines and professions. The list includes five (ethnic) Chinese, all of mainland extraction, but not all of whom are living or working in mainland China. more ›

What is the deal with local magazines making drastic changes and leaving their readers in the dark? First it was 8 Days and its unannounced switch to SH Weekly. And now That's Shanghai -- in an unrelated move, we assume -- has given itself a facelift. The September issue has a new look and the cover is emblazoned with gold lettering proclaiming itself a "Collector's Edition." But inside the magazine Shanghaiist finds nary a word explaining to readers the thinking behind the redesign, no explanation about what makes this edition so collectible. And don't bother looking for insight on the magazine's website -- on Sept. 4, they still had an image of August's issue under the words "This Month's Magazine." It's a shame, really, because the new look is a big step in the right direction. While the content is mostly still the same, the magazine looks cleaner and classier now, and they've livened things up a bit with some well-placed color. more ›

Yes, that's all, folks. Local weekly English-language magazine 8 Days -- that band of merry castoffs from the pre-awful-website days of that's Shanghai -- has published its last issue. (Grab a copy, put it in a Ziploc bag, and then 10 years from now throw it away when you realize it will fetch absolutely nothing on eBay.) 8 Days, which launched less than nine months ago, is disappearing with no formal announcement, no goodbye. Sure, rumors have been swirling for months and there were two pretty big hints on Thursday's cover -- headlines said columnists Tiffany and Mel were getting the axe. Although, to be fair, those moves could have easily been mistaken for sound editorial decisions. more ›

Shanghai finally has an answer to Okay Airlines! The first of Shanghai Spring Airlines' Airbus 320s arrived at Hongqiao Airport earlier this week, and the budget airline expects its first flight to Shandong Province's Yantai to leave on July 18. The China Daily makes it seem as though Yantai is the only destination Shanghai Spring currently has permission to fly. more ›