Set back from the junction of XinLe Lu and XiangYang Lu, opposite a blue-domed Russian Orthodox Church stands the Mansion Hotel. A limestone building in manicured grounds, this place gives off the same whiff of 1920’s luxury that you see in the grand old financial institutions of the Bund; if you like Hamilton House you’ll love this place. On the fifth and highest floor, the Mansion Veranda restaurant is one of the nicest terraces in......

We were taking an afternoon stroll down Xiangyang Lu today in our pajamas when we had our first ever encounter with Shanghai's high-tech parking meters. The meters aren't exactly new; according to the Shanghai Municipality website the first were installed in 2005. There were 141 meters at the beginning of the year installed across 22 road sections, but that number is now up to 555. Yes, we don't get out much, but we were still......

Shanghaiist went gadget shopping today -- tired of carrying around the laptop to check emails and blogs, we are planning to upgrade our mobile phone. And we bumped into the Sony Ericsson Z610 (official link). This phone made us happy with its slim design and the nice glamour effect on the outside (despite business functionality, we want to stay fashionable -- gotta keep appearances up). The big surprise was the built-in RSS reader. Wow, keep......

Hotwind (热风) has been around Shanghai, according to this source, since 1996, but we didn't discover it until a few years after we got here. From our point of view there are two problems with shopping for clothes in Shanghai: It's sometimes hard for men of the American fashion persuasion to find suitable clothes in Shanghai. While there's a certain generic overlap in your average street/casual wear styles, it's hard to find things that fit,......

Shanghaiist was shopping for bikes along Xiangyang Lu when, tired and bedraggled, we saw, like a mirage in the desert, a sign that promised exactly what we were craving at the moment: Illy. This is how we discovered Zurigo. Zurigo is a bit different from both the hipster enclaves where everyone stares at their laptops and stuffs their white earbuds way into their ears in order to pretend that they don’t know you when in......

Today we bid farewell to Xiangyang Market -- and as you can guess, there are loads of people trying to cop their last fix of kitsch and knockoffs. The Shanghai Daily reports that there were so many people (double the normal amount) that they have decided that Xiangyang's curtain call is going to come a little earlier than the usual 9:30 pm today. Shanghaiist was at Xiangyang last night, but it wasn't the usual Xiangyang,......

It finally happened. Sometime between the early evening last night and this afternoon, Shanghaiist's bicycle was stolen. Yes, it was locked. Twice. And no, we did not bring it into our apartment, to the collective shock and incredulity of our landlord and the retired woman that minds the front entrance of our apartment block. Shanghaiist had naively believed that the four flights of stairs we schlepped the thing every time we used it (almost daily)......

Sideways on Xinle Lu ... And we listen to whatever Snoop says, and heck, we even use his search engine. Shanghaiist recently discovered a little store by the name of Sideways on 144 Xinle Lu which among other things, sells some paraphernalia. You can get some pipes in the 100-200 RMB range, but a real bong will set you back at least 300 RMB. The biggest bongs in the store cost about 700-800 RMB. You......

Watch! Bag! Shoes! Looka Looka!...

If you don't already have plans for some Halloween party somewhere in Shanghai tonight, Shanghaiist suggests you head on over to Tang Hui Pub. In fact, just bring that costume along and go to Tang Hui anyway. This well-loved, hard-rocking bar is having its goodbye party tonight. We mean goodbye as in see you later, at a different, larger and more central location. Shanghaiist also reported back in September on some of the other reasons......