All stories about "Shanghai"

Shanghai's SH magazine has pooled

Shanghai's SH magazine has pooled a list of the city's leading chefs' favorite spots. Restaurant recs include picks the place with the best back-alley barbecue, a 24-hour spa serving spicy Korean food, and a noodle house that's been in business since 1878. For more secret Shanghai spots, check out Shanghaist's response piece, which includes its readers' own recommendations. [via]

It seems that Bjork's recent

It seems that Bjork's recent comments (her screaming out "Tibet, Tibet" over and over during a recent performance in Shanghai) may have repercussions. "Talk of Tibetan independence is considered taboo in China, which has ruled the territory since 1951," and the Chinese culture ministry did not take the incident lightly. The government has announced that they will "further tighten controls on foreign artists performing in China in order to prevent similar cases from happening in the future." [BBC]

The IHT looks at the

The IHT looks at the latest in up-and-coming fashion in China, through the eyes of Lorraine Justice, head of the school of design at the Hong Kong Polytechnic. She says of today's emerging Chinese designers: "There is a pragmatism and experimentalism and a visual impact." So where's the best place to find frocks from these designers? Head to Shanghai's Chang Le Road, at the boutiques and design collectives that have sprung up in the former French Concession. [via]

Gross: A Shanghai subway worker

Gross: A Shanghai subway worker who took security camera footage of a couple kissing on a train platform and posted it online has been fired by the company that runs Shanghai Metro. Grosser still: The video became a major hit on Youtube, and the company will be compensating the couple who reportedly were harassed after being identified by net voyeurs. I'd link to the clip and post a still from the footage here, but every now and then, I actually try to be sort of classy. [AP]

Looks like NYC isn't the

Looks like NYC isn't the only place this week to experience construction site mishaps. Several people were injured, especially the ones seen flying out of the building, during a gas explosion and fire at a soon to be demolished building near the Jin Mao Tower in Shanghai. [via]

Latest & Greatest

Dallas
• Charlie Palmer: Iconic American chef opened a namesake restaurant last week at The Joule.

Las Vegas
• CatHouse: Restaurant (courtesy of chef Kerry Simon), lounge, and performance space inspired by a European bordello has its grand opening this weekend.
• The Palazzo: The long-awaited hotel and casino on the Strip opened this past week, unveiling 1,000 rooms in time for New Year's Eve.

Continue reading "Latest & Greatest"

Boutique Hotels Infest Asia

This has to fucking stop:

Boutique hotels are popping up in Asia's more cosmopolitan cities faster than construction cranes. Over the last couple of years, Hong Kong and Singapore have led the trend in the region. Now Shanghai is getting the boutique treatment, meeting the fast-growing demand among design-conscious travelers for a more intimate, personal environment.

And by "intimate, personal" they mean "smaller, pricier." And by "design-conscious travelers" they mean "fucking retards." The article is insipidly subtitled "to the delight of savvy travelers, boutique hotels are finally sprouting up in Asia." This -- even before we got to the part about how "younger people" like to use the Internet, eat gourmet chocolate, and drink organic juice -- was enough to make us club a baby seal with a rolled-up Newsweek. Then we could take a picture, hang it on the wall of an outhouse, and charge people $475 to "immerse themselves for a night in an environmentally sensitive experience." We could probably get away with $500 if we lit the fucker up with florescent bulbs and published a glossy brochure about the newly renovated Boutique De Outhouse's minimal carbon footprint. With pie charts.

Staying in Style [Newsweek]

-- Omri Ceren

[Photo: Terrorkitten]

Shanghai Wifi Cafes

Free wifi access is a hot topic in Shanghai right now, as more and more large chains have started charging for their wifi or shutting it down entirely. Shanghaiist reported last month that local favorite Whisk as well as Element Fresh at both the Shanghai Center and K Wah Centre locations have axed their wifi. To counter the trend, here's our list of Shanghai cafes that still keep the free wifi faith.

Continue reading "Shanghai Wifi Cafes"

Hooters in China

Reuters actually dares to use the headline "Hooters growing in China, sources say." Haw! Though the news gets misreported in a few places as the first appearance of Chinese Hooters, the wings & cleavage chain actually opened its first Shanghai restaurant three years ago (and they've since opened yet another in Shanghai and another in Hangzhou). Two new locations are planned for Beijing (pre-Olympics) and Suzhou (for history buffs?). Why not, given that this summer will see the first Israeli branch of Hooters appear in Tel Aviv.

Hooters growing in China, sources say [Reuters]

-- Chris Mohney

[Photo: winnedouble]

Superfuture Superguides

Most international shopping experts will be quite familiar with the Superfuture site ("urban cartography for global shopping experts"). Now, things have gotten even better with the intro of their Superfuture Superguides. These PDF guides include 30 pages of intensive retail dissection, updated monthly, all for a decent $20. The idea came from the reports the site has long been producing for private clients. Only two cities are currently covered -- Tokyo and New York -- but plenty more are planned, with Shanghai and Beijing next.

Superfuture Superguides [Official site]

-- Jean Snow

The Telltale Beating of the Chinese Heart

Shanghaiist recently featured this video of a Chinese beat box virtuoso and apparently, there's a Chinese city called Yanji filled with ?uestlove wannabes who carry on the proud tradition of emulating western culture and then far exceeding us in terms of quality. From Shanghaiist

What he found is hinted at in the trailer above. Yanji, a city of just over 400,000 people located near the border to North Korea, is a virtual breeding ground for fledgling Chinese beat-boxers. Taking elements from popular Korean, Chinese and American culture, Yanji's b-boys and b-girls are carving out a style all their own.

Our favorite part is the dude in the background who clearly doesn't care and just wants to read in peace.

Beat-Box is Alive in China
Yanji [Wikipedia]

Previously: How It's Made: Chinese Babies, Shanghai's Boutique Hotels and Couture Alleys, A Few Rules of Huunh?, Get the Past and Future and Present in Shanghai

How It's Made: Chinese Babies

The Chinese aren't exactly known for their sexual openness, but 9000 documented years of all things copulatory at the China Sex Culture Museum in Shanghai would lead you to believe otherwise. The museum boasts thousands of artifacts, ranging from 1st century dildos to porcelain prostitutes, all described in stunningly awkward Engrish and viewed as the smooth jazz version of "Colors of the Wind" plays on repeat. Favorites among visitors include a life-size statue of an angry, chained man bearing the caption "the part of the body that couldn't be locked," the collection of naughty dishware and the display of humping animal relics. The donkey saddle that was used to punish cheating widows and the "international" display are must-sees and if you're chronologically endowed, you might kick 91-year-old Wang Yayung off the Wall of Fame as the oldest visitor.

The Sex Museum branch in Shanghai is literally underground on the Pudong side of the Huangpu River, near the pseudo-phallic Oriental Pearl TV Tower. However, the central branch of the Sex museum 50 kilometers from Shanghai in Tongli might be worth the schlep for more hardcore fans.

China Sex Museum

[Text+Photo: Mary Pilon]

Previously: Shanghai's Boutique Hotels and Couture Alleys, A Few Rules of Huunh?, Get the Past, Present and Future in Shanghai, Give the Hotel Peace A Chance

Shanghai's Boutique Hotels And Couture Alleys

Andrew Yang for the NYT is tooling around Shanghai of late, shopping and sleeping, living and loving. Last Sunday carried an overlooked (by us, anyway) article on Lane 248, a sort of West Village of Shanghai complete with character and pricey boutiques. This Sunday, Yang checks in and checks out a number of Shanghai boutique hotels. How do we know this? We're the suckers who subscribe to Times Select. Among the ones Yang visits are the Jia Shanghai, the Mansion boutique hotel and the M Suites at Pier one complex. The Jia is in the middle of its soft opening with it's Philippe Starck design opening to the proletariat around April, while the M Suites is reminiscent of the W hotels aesthetic. By far, our favorite pick is the Mansion:

If both Jia and M Suites were meant to reflect Shanghai's desire for modern amenities, the Mansion Hotel, at 82 Xinle Road, (86-21) 5403-9888, in the heart of the city's French Concession district, is a complete throwback to the swinging Shanghai of the 1920s. Situated in a French manor-style house that was once the home of a notorious Chinese mob boss, the Mansion Hotel has been rehabilitated from a largely abandoned shell that as recently as last spring had badly sagging wood floors. With its gut renovation completed last month, this charming five-story limestone structure has been painstakingly restored into a 30-room property that feels more like a member's club for the Fortune 500 set.

Sadly, as Yang notes, trying to draw the monied set, hotel charges $550 a night for a basic room. Not very egalitarian that but then again, neither are boutique hotels.

Boutique Hotels in Shanghai
A High-Fashion Lane in Shanghai

[Photo: M Suites Lobby]

Previously: A Few Rules of Hunh?, Get the Past Present and Future of Shanghai, Give the Peace Hotel a Chance

A Few Rules of Hunh?

Laugh all you want but if you random through the streets of Shanghai, you may end up like Vince Vaughn in Return to Paradise.

7 Commandments [Mad About Shanghai via Shanghaist]

Previously: Free Degree Over 25th Story, Get the Past and Future and Present in Shanghai, Give the Peace Hotel a Chance

Pic of the Day: Freedegree over 25th story

Laurel Ptak, sometimes Gawker photographer, often Pic of the Day sourcer and always friend, points us to the work of Li Wei whose work has reflects the "reality in the unreal or fantastic." Needless to say, this philosophy, as Theme magazine notes, has caused the Chinese artist to run afoul of the authorities who, it might be said, would like to claim a monopoly over the reality in the unreal and fantastic.

Li Wei

Previous Pics of the Day: Paper Dolls, Paper Dolls, Magician We Think, Heads of State, Jeff Wall, Armory Show, Elevate Me Later, Final Resting Place, Don't Steal in Oaxaca, The Watchtower, On the Sixth Day , Liberal Library Slant, Paris is the New Pluto, Fat Kid

Get the Past and Future and Present in Shanghai

Shanghai is having a moment. A moment in time. Matt Gross the Times Frugal Traveler is somewhere in Eastern Europe now but his recent Mark Rowe also recently went to Shanghai to focus on the past and future. Using the two articles in conjunction, one might even be able to construct an arc through time though the only thing they agree on is Shanghai at some point in the past had a future, now it only has that future past. The future, meanwhile, continues to move forward, every time one gets there.

Surprises in Old Shanghai [Telegraph]
In Shanghai, Balancing the Past, the Future, and the Present [NYT]
Scrooge Does Shanghai [Shanghaiist]

Previously: Give the Peace Hotel a Chance, Member's Only Club Coming to Shanghai, Shanghai's Aleksey Vayner, A Whole Lala Love, The Thames Gets Shanghaied, Pic of the Day: Old Shanghai

The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

Since our Sunday mornings basically consist of biscuits and gravy at Alias and a four-hour long vivisection of the New York Times, we've decided to inaugurate The Good, The Bad, The Ugly, a quickie guide to what's worthwhile in the NYT Travel section and what is, basically, crap.

The Good:
Matt Gross on Shanghai: The Frugal Traveler waxes temporal in a city with a past and future but little present.
Joanna Kakikiss on Athens: Well-researched though over-written, the article examines the upcoming Athenian neighborhoods of Metaxourgeio, Kerameikos and Rouf.
Gisella Williams at the Movenpick Hotel in Amsterdam: She checks in, hears "African accents" and checks out.

The Bad
Healy in Cancun Despite the promising byline "Patrick O'Gilfoil Healy]" these 36 hours spent in Cancun consist of alternately drinking, getting sunburnt and then trying to justify one's essential fratiness with visits to black magic stores.
Bonnie Tsui on Jackson, Wyoming's Art Scene: Bonnie goes on vacation and wants to get paid. Pitches.

The Ugly
Jennifer Conlin on Beatrix Potter: A stupid movie gets an even inaner article about the admittedly beautiful Lake District. Conlin gets free movie tix for life!

Previously: Live Sex in Hotels? A Hard Sell, BLD is So Simmer Right Now, In Paris, the Poor Get Poorer And the Rich Get Politer, Reservation for Prometheus Please

Give the Peace Hotel a Chance

Shanghai's Peace Hotel is an art deco old guard hotel that existed long before either China or the trend of boutique hotels were ascendant. The hotel for instance was planned to be 34-stories but due to a British mandate and at the request of drug-and-weapons dealer Victor Sassoon, whom the website calls "the Jew," was lowered to 12. Opened as the Cathay in 1929, the hotel was the ultimate Shanghai luxury hotel. Charlie Chaplin, Noel Coward (who completed Private Lives here) and George Bernard Shaw were guests. In 1949 when the Commies took over, the name was closed and eventually reopened as the Peace Hotel. Always pragmatic if nothing else, the Reds kept the Italian marble, the stained glass and the chandeliers. These days the hotel is surrounded by the clubs and hotspots of the Bund but somehow manages to retain its pre-Revolution feel. That is to say, it's full of gaijin living it up in the penthouse bar and well-appointed though rundown rooms that start at
$72
Shanghai Peace Hotel [Official site]
Peace Hotel [TripAdvisor]

Previously: Member's Only Club Coming to Shanghai, Shanghai's Aleksey Vayner, A Whole Lala Love, The Thames Gets Shanghaied, Pic of the Day: Old Shanghai

Pic of the Day: Cock

Ex-Gridskipper and current Gawker guru Chris Mohney's favorite Getty image has a lot to do with cock. Two cocks to be exact.

Previous Pics of the Day: Waterfront Docks, LAX, I Didn't Know Your Mom Was in Town, Yarndog, Commutes, Broken Crow in Minneapolis, Malignant Balloon, Abandoned in Detroit, New Haven in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Project Runway, I See Dead Architecture, Is Someone Trying to Say Something?, Borough Market

Pic of the Day: Cock

Ex-Gridskipper and current Gawker guru Chris Mohney's favorite Getty image has a lot to do with cock. Two cocks to be exact.

Previous Pics of the Day: Waterfront Docks, LAX, I Didn't Know Your Mom Was in Town, Yarndog, Commutes, Broken Crow in Minneapolis, Malignant Balloon, Abandoned in Detroit, New Haven in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Project Runway, I See Dead Architecture, Is Someone Trying to Say Something?, Borough Market

Member's Only Club Comes to Shanghai

For the vast majority of the world, the only Member's Only type bar we'll ever know about are the kind that aren't really that exclusive. Bars like Milk and Honey, or Buenos Aires' Club 647 either let anyone in if you know the number or allow in braggarts who can't wait to blab about where they've been. With Shanghai's Members Only bar, the trend shows itself capable of transplant to the Eastern Hemisphere. As Shanghaiist discovers, the only thing you need to become a member at the hidden club is US$2 and the location. The latter you can get at Shanghaiist, the former from saving up for two days. So what awaits a new member? A small room with a blue bar, BB King playing on the flat screen tv and "two young Chinese guys wearing tuxedo tops, khakis and sneakers." Worth it to me!

A Members Only Bar in Shanghai [Shanghaiist]
Southern Cross, 1276 Huaihai Zhong Lu, Tel: 54047211

Previously: Shanghai's Aleksey Vayner, A Whole Lala Love, The Thames Gets Shanghaied, Pic of the Day: Old Shanghai

Shanghai's Aleksey Vayner

Shandon Erge is a 29 year old gym teacher from Shandong and China's answer to Aleksey Vayner (who I always thought was a rhetorical question). Shandong posted these images of himself on his blog in his ongoing, and thus far fruitless search for a wife. Though he may be no Yalie, his hyperbolic skills rival Vayner's. Shandon calls himself "China's Sexiest Man" and demonstrates a knack for self delusion, for if he is so sexy, why is he posing with a high-waisted paper skirt? Erge is just the latest Chinese internet celebrity to bring shame on himself and his family. Shanghaiist has an ever-expanding gallery of Chinese net douchebaggery.

Shandon Gerge
Chinese Internet Idol of the Day: Shandon Erge [Shanghaiist]

Previously: A Whole Lala Love, The Thames Gets Shanghaied, Old Shanghai, Shanghai Gets Metro Mapped, Glamour Bar

A Whole Lala Love

Shanghaiist recently dove into Shanghai's lesbian scene and we're, quite frankly, suprised they didn't fracture their spine as the pool is quite shallow. Basically, Chinese lezzies have few options compared to their gay brethren.

In Shanghai, the only lesbian hangout is Max Club near Hengshan Lu and, technically, it's not really a lala [lesbian] bar ... it's actually a pub that hosts a lesbian night every Saturday. Previously, the party moved around to different locations each week, but it's primarily been at Max for a while now. Guests can expect to pay a 30 RMB cover for ladies and 60 RMB for men, which includes a tepid beer.

. Other options include joining the local lesbian group Butterfly (seek them out at Max), Tuesday nights at Frangipani's and Mint on Thursdays. Additionally, for foreign lesbians, there's a Yahoo group called LesinShanghai, though you'll have to prove you're a queer woman to get in.

Max Club [SmartShanghai]
Eye on Lesbian Shanghai

Previously: The Thames Gets Shanghaied, Pic of the Day: Old Shanghai, Olivo Barbieri's Shanghai, Shanghai Metro Mapped, Glamour Bar in Shanghai, Jinmao Hyatt, Whips and Sips at Shanghai's Feeling Bar

The Thames Gets Shanghaied

No doubt, London's Chinatown is like a warp to the mainland, but it has nothing on Shanghai's Thames Town. Thames Town is a 1 square kilometer development on the outskirts of Shanghai that recreates, down to the Regency terraces and steeple roofs, the feel of an English town. Reviews have ranged from bemused to scornful but who can resist the chance to see an "Authentic British-style town." Recently the town got in hot water when an English pub owner angrily if impotently complained that the developers had copied her pub (they had). Though the town isn't yet finished, it is expected to house 500,000 residents. According to one blogger's account, a WalMart is in the works. Apparently, Thames Town is part of a community of sixth other towns that recreate the "feel" of European cities. A short drive away, you'll find replicas of towns from Italy, Spain, Canada, Sweden, Holland and Germany.

Thames Town
Thames Town [Guardian]
Pub Owner Complains [Shanghaiist]
England in Shanghai [Marc.cn]

Previously: Pic of the Day: Old Shanghai, Olivo Barbieri's Shanghai, Shanghai Metro Mapped, Glamour Bar in Shanghai, Jinmao Hyatt, Whips and Sips at Shanghai's Feeling Bar

Pic of the Day: Old Shanghai

According to Dan Eckstein, the purpose of the Picture China is to "use the photoblog format to show and discuss contemporary China." This is a shot from Shanghai's Old City, a "four square kilometer section in the south of the metropolis that has yet to succumb to the gentrification and rebuilding which has taken place throughout the rest of the city. This area was the site of the original walled city of the 11th Century and was set-aside as the "Chinese City" when the rest of Shanghai became the base of French and British imperialism in China from the late 19th to mid 20th Centuries." Now, clearly, developments are encroaching on the historic warren of shacks and lean-tos.

Picture China

Previous Pics of the Day: Paris Metro, Budapest Bridge, Midtown Has Never Looked So Good, Special Video Edition: Rap Cat, Saddest Amusement Park Ever

Roundup Roundup #38

Each week we deploy our elite cadre of headline sniffing apparatchiks who report back to us on what the other media is doing. We then compile a dossier, the dossier you're (be)holding right now. It has all you need to know about the others. And, unlike their fleshly papers, it will exist forevermore upon this delightful internet ether.

Bangkok
Food Markets [NYT]

Bergen
Instant Weekend [The Times]

Brooklyn
Isaac Misrahi's Faves [T+L]

College Station
36 Hours In East Bumblefuck [NYT]

Dallas
Texas State Fair Guide [Houston Chronicle]

Denver
Invasion on the Starchitects [NYT]

Dijon
More Than Just Mustard (Yes, Now There Are Bad Puns Too] [Wash Po]

London
Top 5 Restos [Guardian]

Omaha
Apparently, Not the Middle of Nowhere [Chicago Tribune]

Shanghai
Vivienne Tam's Picks [T+L]

Soweto
Things To Do [Virtual Tourist]

Quebec City
A NGT Guide to The Quebecian Galaxy [NatGeo Traveler]

Previously on Roundup Roundup: #37, #36, #35, #34, #33, #32

Pic of the Day: Shanghai

The largest cities of the world become miniature in the lens of Italian photographer Olivo Barbieri, Perched in a helicopter, Barbieri uses the Tilt Shift Lens to make Shanghai, and other metropoli, seem like doll houses. His exhibit _site_specific_ will be on exhibit at Shanghai's Bund 18 through September 24th.

Model World [Metropolis Magazine]
Olivo Barbieri at Bund 18 [Shanghaiist]

Previous Pics of the Day: Dream Workplace, Berlin's Gummy Wall, Teddy Bear, Sexy Shibuya, Ethical Society of St. Louis

Shanghai Metro Mapped

Not up on your pictograms but want to get from 地� to 轻轨? Shanghai's Metro just got the good round of Google mapping courtesy of 17can. Sadly since Shanghai has yet to become acquainted with the glories of Google road map, you'll have to triangulate subway stations with nearby monuments as seen on the satellite view. Not too easy-on-the-eyes and hard to understand (kinda like Nell, I guess) the map is, nevertheless, a welcome addition to the growing number of Chinese Google Maps. For more, check out Google Map Mania's China roundup.

Shanghai Metro Google Map [17can]
Roundup of China Google Maps [Google Maps Mania]

Previously: The Glamour Bar in Shanghai, Whips and Sips at Shaghai's Feeling Bar, Shanghai Glasses Museum, Shanghai Street Art, Banterist in Xiangyang Market

Glamour Bar in Shanghai

Though generally weary of bars that promise the world in their title (Beauty Bar, Cool Lounge, The Spot), Shanghai's Glamour Bar delivers its promise. As a sister bar to tho hip M on the Bund (on the club-filled Bund), the Glamour Bar is a magnetic tip of cool, atttracting clusters of rail-thin Chinese hipsters like so many iron filings. The newly renovated spot is known for its prodigiously accomodating and polite staff, its potent but perfectly proportioned martinis and waitresses and a solid DJ lineup. Drinks don't come cheap (around 68RMB per cocktail) but are well-worth the dough but the ambiance, a 21st century take on 1930's Hollywood is so rich , you'll feel like a million bucks, or approximately 7,983,000RMB.

Glamour Bar [Official site]
Glamour Bar: Snooty People and Foreign Waiters? [Shanghaiist]
Shanghai's Romantic Bara [China Daily]

[Photo: M Restaurant Group]

Previously: Jinmao Hyatt, Whips and Sips at Shanghai's Feeling Bar,Shanghai Glasses Museum, Shanghai Street Art, Banterist in Xianyang Market, To Be Stuck in A Chinese Train Station