All the things you'd want to do this Monday through Thursday. On the schedule this week: Wine tasting and cocktail making on Wednesday, both free. M1NT's fabulous white party returns and the Fairmont Peace Hotel is conducting a Somerset Maugham literary salon. Read on (or check out our calendar) for more! more ›

Kommune is well-known for many things: its outdoor seating, cappuccinos the size of your face, afternoon barbecues. Now adding to that list is a new monthly event they're calling "The Wine Democracy," where customers choose the next month's house wine in the best form possible: with a free wine tasting. more ›

Grape Wall of China recently released their results for the best wines retailing in China for under RMB 100. Next dinner party at our place, we expect we'll be seeing some of these proffered at the door. A dozen expert and consumer judges met in Beijing for the Grape Wall Challenge and tasted 23 red wines and 21 white wines that retail for less than RMB100 in China. They rated each out of 20 points, while the consumers had four choices - “love it“, “like it“, “dislike it” or “hate it“. more ›

• Developers hope to avoid 'skyscraper curse' [China Daily] "Hoping to avoid the "skyscraper curse," China's cities continue to reach for the sky. While most of the world's major construction projects have been put on hold, new skyscrapers are under construction in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and several smaller cities, defying the global economic slowdown. Developers believe China will prove to be an exception to the "skyscraper index" - popularly known as the "skyscraper curse" - proposed by financial analyst Andrew Lawrence. In 1999, Lawrence noted that major financial crises often follow the construction of record-breaking skyscrapers."
• Grape Wall Challenge: Top ten white wines under RMB100 [Grape Wall of China] "On March 13, a dozen expert and consumer judges met in Beijing for the Grape Wall Challenge and tasted 23 red wines that retail for less than RMB100 in China."
• Prepaid card woes multiply in Shanghai [China Daily] "The Shanghai Committee of Consumers' Rights and Interests Protection yesterday urged consumers opting for prepaid cards to be on guard, in view of the rise in related complaints in the city. The committee said it received more than 4,000 complaints in 2008, up 14 percent than in 2007. Most of these complaints have to do with beauty and hair salons or fitness clubs that often shut down without notifying their clients, said the commission. The credit remaining on the cards issued by them thus becomes invalid."

We dropped by Hamilton House last Friday for lunch, something we should have done earlier maybe. (Actually, we had headed over on Thursday but the restaurant was closed for a private wine tasting event.) So there was a decent lunch crowd – enough to make you want to enter yet not too many people to make you wonder if you’ll need to wait all day to get served – and the lunch menu seems quite a bargain, RMB 90 for 2 courses or RMB 120 for 3. more ›

There have recently been whispers all across town that Enoteca is the hottest place for wine connoisseurs right now. We were willing to give hearsay a run for its money. So we turned up, yesterday to be precise. more ›

"Visitors in Shanghai are allowed to shoot hoops with Yao Ming, play football with David Beckham and Ronaldo, and sing with Hong Kong pop music band Twins." more ›