An Associated Press video on the Taiwanese Presidential elections Just in time for Easter, YouTube has come back from the dead after an absence of around a week. As we reported last week, the block was most likely due to certain sensitive content, a move that has left some people questioning whether Google/YouTube were involved at all. Unfortunately, its resurrection doesn't appear to be fully complete — some video clips don't seem to load......

It’s shaping up to be a bad week for the State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television (the catchily acronymed SARFT) – and it's still only Wednesday. Recent events surrounding bans of video sharing site Tudou and then actress Tang Wei (汤唯) seem to suggest that SARFT is slipping into farce. First off, there were attempts to mash Tudou due to alleged pornographic content on the site – as we reported a few days ago.......

Editor's Note: This is an update to that flash mob we told you about earlier. The writer was the organiser of the event. Following the example of NYC-based drama group “Improv Everywhere,” an assembly of people gathered on Nanjing Road last Saturday at 3pm to "freeze in place at the same time." Although it was raining a little and many couldn’t make it on time, the event was a great success in terms of......

People who made the news this week Kim Jong-Il, the President of North Korea, has met up with Wang Jiarui, the head of the international department at the Central Committee of China’s Communist Party, in Pyongyang on Wednesday. According to South Korea's Chosun Ilbo, when Wang voiced his explicit dissatisfaction with the DPRK's failure to meet its nuclear disarmament deadline, Kim said, “The present difficulties are temporary and can be conquered.” Kim also made a......

As mentioned before, US expatriates are, for the first time, able to vote in a global primary, meaning that they get their own set of delegates during the primaries, which decide each party's respective presidential candidate. This particular event, held on Tuesday at the ecologically sound and coolly designed URBN hotel, was well attended. Computers were set up to help people register, liquor and hors d'ouevres helped people mingle, and Barack Obama's victory speech from......

Photo from Why Democracy If you think Chinese children can't get any more obnoxious, go watch Please Vote for Me (via YouTube in five parts - p1, p2, p3, p4 and p5), an award-winning indie documentary and pay special attention to Cheng Cheng, the pudgy kid who is one of the three students running for the position of class monitor. He then gets increasingly irksome as he sabotages fellow elects and manipulates his classmates......

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. China Gets Beijing and Shanghai Ready for the 2008 Olympics and 2010 Expo By Jeffrey Wasserstrom China's economy is booming like never before and......

This video entitled “这个女人太要了” ("This girl wants it too much") uploaded to Youtube just five days ago has received over 317,000 views and raised a storm on the Chinese internet. It shows a young Chinese couple hugging and kissing at a subway exit point before finally saying goodbye. Well, it turns out that the clip was taken via the surveillance cameras that you see all around subway stations and the (really annoying) voices in the......

Thanks to the commenters on that last post, especially the one that alerted us to videos of the protests/marches that were on the Taiwan Youtube site. There were two that we found, embedded below. The first one is just a short clip of people walking around during the day. The second is from Xujiahui in the evening, with more chanting, from the evening of January 6. Oh yeah, and to the commenter who mentioned that......

Just as the rest of the world is getting swept away in a social networking frenzy, googling for keywords such as "Badoo", "Facebook", "Ebuddy", "Hi5" and even "Second Life", Chinese googlers it seems are a completely different species. In 2007, four out of the top ten keywords among Chinese googlers were wealth-related, searching for keywords such as "stock", "China Merchants Bank", "Industrial and Commercial Bank of China" and "China Construction Bank". Bank of China is......

How a CCTV-5 news-reader aired her marital grievances at the launch of the new Olympics channel This was just too good to pass up! From John Kennedy of Global Voices:Friday was meant to be a big day for China's main sports channel CCTV-5, with a lavish ceremony attended by top station executives held to celebrate its official change of name to The Olympics Channel. It got a bit bigger when a visibly upset Hu Ziwei,......

We apologize in advance for another post about another YouTube video, but our editor is still in Hong Kong on an unanticipated visa run and we are busy trying to figure out what to pack for a trip that includes both Florida (83°F/28°C) and Pennsylvania (36°F/2°C). So, why don't you watch the embedded video highlight reel from October's Yue Festival, more than 2.5 months in the making. Looks like everyone is having a pretty good......

We have a confession to make: We have been known to watch the occasional episode of America's Next Top Model. Odd that while living in America we refused to watch trashy American reality shows (other than The Real World, which we allowed in on a grandfather clause) and now that we live in China and own a Filipino TV satellite (that we won't shut up about) we seemingly can't get enough of them. What can......

We who live in Shanghai have to have a soft spot for Filipino cover bands — there could be one waiting around just about every corner in certain parts of the city. And so despite having nothing to do with Shanghai (or China), we thought we'd post this tip we got from reader Ryan Martin this morning via email: I don't know if you guys covered this but the singer of a Filipino cover band......

Since Net Nanny lifted her ban on YouTube, we have been catching up on the some of the vids that we missed during the year-long ban...okay, it wasn't that long. Looking for any excuse to waste time and avoid Christmas shopping, we watched every episode available of the first season of Project Runway Canada (the other PRC in our lives). It's the Canadian version of the very popular (especially among the LGBT crowd) American show,......

Despite the fact that Kevin Rudd - the fluent Mandarin speaking leader of the Australian Labor Party - is widely predicted to romp it in at the Australian Federal election this coming Saturday, it seems he's not taking any chances. The latest salvo in Rudd's "earnestness offensive" according to the Sydney Morning Herald, takes form in a seven-metre billboard of The Great Rudd (see right) that has been suspended above Cameron Road in Hong......

We know we've been posting a lot of videos lately, but this one was too engrossing not to pass along. It's Christopher St. Cavish, former motorcycling philanthropist and current food writer at SH magazine, eating a live baby octopus at a Korean restaurant in Shanghai. According to the YouTube page: It was for a magazine article, stupid, tasted terrible, and fueled by alcohol. We saw Chris on the street recently, so we can confirm that......

Oh boy, we are just beginning to love the things that we can show you here now that Youtube is back. And with these two freshly-uploaded videos, you have two different broadcasters — Australia's Channel 7 and Al-Jazeera English — and their take on the topic of "Made in China". China has just overtaken Japan as Australia's largest trading partner. The spate of headline-grabbing product quality issues, particularly the high profile toy recalls made......

Shanghaiist keeps you up-to-speed with the latest in Australian politics. Remember Kevin Rudd, the Australian Labor Party leader that impressed us all (and President Hu Jintao) with his kickass Chinese skills? Some 23 year old law student with too much time on his hands decided to poke fun at the ongoing Australian election campaign by uploading a Youtube video of Rudd, depicting him as revolutionary leader Chairman Mao. And it was a hit —......

So, as some of our commenters in a previous post brought up, Youtube is indeed back! So what was behind the temporary block — was it the 17th Party Congress or was it Youtube's Hong Kong/Taiwan versions? I guess we will never know. But enjoy it while it lasts people. You never know when the block will come back up, but when it does, you know you have VPN to fall back on ;-) There's......

So both Myspace and Friendster have their own China versions. Now Kaiser Kuo of Ogilvy Digital China Watch points us to a report on China Business News (第一财经日报) which cites an “industry insider” who says that Facebook plans to release additional language interfaces and intends to enter the China market as early as December this year. The paper also claims that "Facebook has given up its initial plan to set up its own China-based site......

Marc van der Chijs spends the weekend watching sailing races at Dianshanhu, a lake about 50 km outside Shanghai, and recommends it as a great weekend greataway. Membership at the sailing club starts at just RMB2500/year (gawd, that's cheaper than our gym membership), and you can rent boats there by the hour, if you're not bringing your own boat along, that is. Driving on the way to the lake, Marc catches sight of a......

There is no end in sight to the good news. Not only is Youtube blocked, but Blogspot is also back behind the Great Firewall, now that the 17th Party Congress is over. Nobody has to put up with this sh*te really. Grab your VPN now, and enjoy the Internet as it was meant to be. Picture from slider22......

So in the meanwhile, Youtube remains blocked. Shanghai blogger John Pasden of Sinosplice informs us that Youtube wasn't the only unlucky fella. Revver.com and Dailymotion.com also appear to be hit. And of course Google Video was never accessible in China to begin with, so that's a no-count. But the mainstream media don't seem to be bothered with the Youtube block. If you don't believe me, just compare for yourself by clicking here and here. For......

On finding out about the Youtube block, these were the first reactions of Chinese blogger Ken Wong:昨晚YouTube发布了香港分站也即繁体中文站时，我还可以正常访问所有YouTube站点，而今天一大早起来，就发现已经全部撞墙了（广州电信ADSL）。看了一下昨晚读者朋友们的反馈，他们也和我一样。暂时还不知道该说什么好，或者一个字就够了：扌喿！ Yesterday when Youtube released its Hong Kong / Traditional Chinese version, I could still access Youtube normally, but this morning when I woke up, I found that it had been bummed (I'm on Guangzhou Telecom ADSL). Comments on yesterday's post from readers suggest they experienced the same thing. I don't really know how to respond to this, except......

As many of you would know by now, Youtube has been blocked in China. Looks like we got happy too soon about the unblocking of Blogspot.Danwei asks if the block has come as a result of the ongoing 17th Party Congress. Well, Marc van der Chijs, founder of the Shanghai-based Tudou.com, doesn't think so: The reason? Probably not directly the ongoing 17th National Congress in Beijing, then they would have blocked the site last week......

English teaching is big business in China, and everyone seems to be trying to cashing in on it — everyone from big global names such as Berlitz to local players with less than orthodox methods. Just look around you, students are literally devouring their English language textbooks (and dictionaries) — on the bus, in the fast-food restaurants and just about anywhere. One of the companies that has benefited greatly in the rising interest in English......

Burma junta holds rally, arrests 4 activists [AP] On Saturday, the Burmese junta organized a mass rally in Rangoon to denounce Western powers and the foreign media, whom the military regime accuses of fomenting the recent protests. Officials said 120,000 people attended the event, some of whom were paid to be there. Among some of the slogans the crowds were made to chant include "Down with BBC! Down with VOA! Down with Radio Free Asia!"Singapore's......

Via China Net Investor, this interview of the founders of Shanghai-based dot.com Tudou.com, Gary Wang and Marc van der Chijs, serves up one very juicy tidbit of information — that Tudou.com is already streaming more minutes of video content every month than YouTube (15 billion minutes per month versus 3.5 billion)! Then in a self-deprecatory turn, Wang turns around to say that those numbers are never really accurate. Those numbers should really be cause for......

We just received news that North Korea has expressed its intention to attend the Shanghai World Expo in 2010. How exciting is that, people! Having attended the World Expo in Hanover in 2000, we just wonder what wonderful propaganda awaits us at the DPRK pavilion in 2010! So we looked up Youtube and found this clip which we thought would be a fantastic example of what would be shown at the North Korean pavilion. Leo......