In Cafetique, Shanghaiist reviews coffee shops and cafes around Shanghai that provide the two things our writers need most in life: caffeine and wireless internet. How does your neighborhood hangout spot stack up? more ›

The word on the street is that Hangzhou is the first city in China to have free city-wide wifi coverage (much to the chagrin of Shanghai residents), but is it true? more ›

Air China, the world's largest carrier by market capitalisation and also the world's most profitable airline, begins inflight wifi trials on a Boeing 737-800 flight departing from the Beijing Capital Airport tomorrow. As soon as it receives approval from regulators, it will begin rolling out the service starting from its domestic flights. And the best part of it all is, they're not looking to charge us a single cent for it! more ›

All you online lurkers, trolls, and traffickers, say goodbye to anonymity! The Chinese government has recently decided to kick up its web monitoring many a notches by requiring public wi-fi locations to install a public security software that provides officials the identities of the web users. more ›

Reports the Straits Times, a total of 500 public telephone booths in downtown Shanghai have been equipped with WiFi hotspots - which might actually make people use them! The spots are currently in central, highly trafficked areas like Yuyuan, Yanzhong Park and People's Square, but will soon be expanded to cover the whole urban area. Unfortunately though, it's not free - you need to pay about 3 fen per minute and possibly already have a China Telecom account. more ›

In Cafetique, Shanghaiist reviews coffee shops and cafes around Shanghai that provide the two things our writers need most in life: caffeine and wireless internet. How does your neighborhood hangout spot stack up? more ›

• Following Chris St. Cavish’s departure from Smart Shanghai, we’ve been slightly starved of food gossip. To fill the void, we gave you our three favourite food blogs in our ongoing feature; Threesday.
• Our quote of the day has once again provoked much discussion. This week Gao Xiaosong, China’s Got Talent judge, referred to all Shanghainese men as wimps. This has resulted in men from Shanghai demanding an apology, as well as a lot of discussion from our readers. Have your say here.
• Trying to avoid the ‘there’s something fishy’ pun when talking about the fish section in Chinese supermarkets, we all know that animal rights campaigners are probably going to want to avoid the sea food section in order to avoid the buckets of live frogs, turtles etc. Imagine some peoples surprise when they stumbled across shark’s heads. This has thus led to speculation that Wal-Mart is selling shark meat.

Starting this month, everyone in Shanghai should be able to go online for free at airports, cafes and shopping malls for two hours a day if they have a mobile phone account, says China Telecom. To get this deal, all you have to do is type your mobile phone number into China Telecom's WLAN welcome portal (which I assume pops up when you try to get on) - a temporary password will then come through to you in an SMS. I haven't tested this yet, but anyone outside on this lovely day willing to give it a go? more ›

Last time we checked in, there were over 5000 Shanghai Wi-Fi hotspots around town here. Now, apparently that number has risen to a whopping 10,000, though there's a catch. The Wireless City project, which began in 2008, has brought Wi-Fi access to most downtown areas of Shanghai... as long as you've either subscribed to or purchased cards from China Telecom and China Mobile. China Mobile charges five cents per minute and China Telecom charges around 50 cents per megabyte. Huh - guess I'll just stick to the coffee shops I'm used to... at least that's free. more ›

Lord knows, the first thing we do when we're about to go to a new city is compile a list of places (coffee shops, hotel lobbies, we don't care) where we can get free wi-fi. Luckily for anyone entering Shanghai now, USA Today and JiWire have actually gone through the trouble of compiling a huge list of wi-fi locations in this city. You can even sort by what kind of venue you're looking for - whether you're planning to have a pint while surfing the net, or if you need a full-fledged business center. Of course, if you really wanted to never go without, you could also order a wi-fi detector off Taobao. more ›

According to Yahoo, the iPhone is now one step closer to its official Chinese launch. Apple has finally applied for a Chinese network access license for the phone, and last week submitted it to the Telecommunication Technology Labs for testing. more ›

Most Shanghaiist readers are familiar with legendary dive bar C’s and with the music pub Logo too. Darkness, taxi rides and alcohol make the rest of the area a bit of a blur but we have the benefit of living there. more ›

Shanghai will always be a step ahead of the capital, Beijing, when it comes to some things. Like freeways — Shanghai got the Huning Freeway first (back in 1988!). And now, wifi freeways. more ›

Have you got an opinion? Shanghaiist has started publishing opinion pieces from readers on selected weekends, so if you feel like you've got something to get off your chest, email it to us at info AT shanghaiist DOT com and if we like it, we will publish it under this column. more ›

As June 15th (iPhone launch date) draws near, for us tech enthusiasts, it could only mean one thing: We are that much closer to the launch of Meizu’s Minione, formerly known as the M8 (or the iPhone clone). Actually, we have no idea when the freaking thing will be released, but its gotta be getting close, and yesterday, from Uberphones, by the way of Gizmodo, we gleaned a few more juicy bits about the Meizu offering: more ›

So a writer from The Gazette, a popular Montreal newspaper, was in China recently. And he was awed by the same things that most writers who haven't been to China recently are awed by: the shiny skyscrapers, the intoxicating energy, the pirated DVDs. But the writer's trip to China also coincided with the "most exciting Quebec election in decades," and he desperately wanted to follow the news from back home. And thanks to this thing called "the internet" he was able to ... in Beijing. In Shanghai, he claims, it was a different story. Here is a snippet from the story, entitled "Don't try reading The Gazette online in fashionable, ultra-modern Shanghai": more ›

BlogSpot blocked again, among others more ›

A quick follow-up to last Friday's post, "Whisk whacks free Internet — a trend?." Sunday's New York Times ran a story that might be of interest to those of you who have interest in the topic of WiFi and its freeness. The piece, entitled "What Starbucks Can Learn From the Movie Palace," discusses how some American eateries are handling the WiFi issue — FYI, it ain't free at Starbucks or McDonald's (yes, McDonald's has WiFi) — thus, it is not 100 percent relatable to our Shanghai situation ... but what is? more ›

Spring appears to have, er, sprung, at least temporarily, in most of the Ist-A-Verse, so naturally, we're all feeling pretty good. (Yes, we know that spring doesn't start till later this month. Just let us enjoy our weather!) And that makes us that much more eager to share all of the nifty things we're up to... more ›

We love WiFi — Shanghaiists are sociable folk, and this Shanghaiist in particular has fallen into an easy Sunday routine of catching up on news and email with a cappu and sandwich at local cafés. We like having a “third space” — a local hangout where we can meet up with friends, have the occasional coffee, and wile away the hours. We’ve already mentioned a few recent faves, and celebrate the expansion of free internet across our city as evidence of an emerging café culture beyond the ubiquitous Starbucks. more ›

For us in Shanghai, the keynote speach of Steve Jobs at Macworld came at around 1 am. It marked an important event in the gadget world — the unveiling of the much-anticipated iPhone. You can find A LOT OF details here, here, here, and here. more ›

This was not a very happy week for the -ist network as one of our own, Phillyist co-editor Star C. Foster, passed away early in the week. Her wit, intelligence, and good nature shone through the site, making Phillyist an immensely fun read. She was loved by many and will be missed by all. more ›

So, go ahead: Describe your Shanghai to the rest of the Earth. (And would someone please get working on the Google Maps mashup that labels all of the city's WiFi hotspots?) more ›

Shanghaiists aren’t frequent patrons of Xintiandi establishments: With a can of diet Coke going for 38 kuai, we prefer to spend our hard earned Renminbi elsewhere. But, there has always been one notable exception -- we love Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. Although the place is hardly budget (26 kuai for a medium ice latte), we like it because it’s close to our gym (no, not Physical -- Megafit, though seemingly just as rainbow friendly), because it’s well air-conditioned and smoke free, and above all ... because it has free wireless internet. That is until today: The wireless service, while still free, isn’t exactly working. more ›

This just came in to our news desk: WiFi cell phone will soon make their debut in Shanghai. Kick ass! Errrh … only one question, what exactly is a wifi cell phone? So, we took some time out from gawking at hot chicks online and went to work. more ›

Torontoist throws down the gauntlet and challenges all comers: pillow fight, bitch. They also stand up for a fellow blogger taking heat from the TTC and welcome city-wide WiFi. more ›

How does that Arcade Fire song go? "I woke up with the power out, not really something to shout about." Well, that is our theme song for the day. The power is out on a large chunk of Nanjing Xi Lu -- no street lights during the middle of the day on one of the city's busiest streets ... beautiful -- and we live on Nanjing Xi Lu. So our power is out. A sign in the window of Zara says power should be back on by 2 pm. Yes, businesses on one of the main shopping streets had to close for this. Doesn't seem like an accident, either. Looks more like a planned work day. Couldn't they have chosen a better time of day (or night) to do this work? Anyway, with no internet at home, we headed to Element Fresh for what we thought was free WiFi. But there they told us to get the "free" WiFi we had to buy some kind of Shanghai Center card. So now we are at Blue Frog on Tongren, where the internet is indeed free ... but a little bit dicey. Things may be quiet here for a little while. Sorry. more ›

The China Daily reports that an expansion to Shanghai's Pudong International Airport is expected to be completed by 2007 and cost $1.23 billion. The expansion includes a third runway and a new terminal, upping the airport's capacity from 20 million passengers per year to 60 million. Eleven million used the airport last year. more ›