InsideGFW

Walk into Southern Belle on a Wednesday night and you’ll probably see 28-year-old Tom Pang sitting alone on the terrace smoking. He doesn’t have a band, there’s no upright bass or banjo in his set, but Pang strums Shanghai’s best bluegrass. (more…)

One man’s barbershop trimmings are another man’s industrial protein. And it’s 31-year-old Jiangsu native Wang Wei’s job to get the hair off the floor and to the factory. (more…)

Just a small clip of how to be Ai weiwei’s creditor. (more…)

The friend who invited me to Huaxi’s 50th anniversary first advertised the weekend as some kind of helicopter festival: “Hey free helicopter rides, wanna go?” First instinct: No thanks, don’t want to die in China. But then he told me it was Huaxi, now internationally renowned as “China’s Richest Village” and home to one of the tallest buildings in the country, a state-of-the-art medical hospital, a fake Great Wall, and 2,000 super wealthy villagers all living in huge houses with luxury cars. (more…)

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Chengdu, March, 2011. When I first meet Gan I was resting in front of a bank outside the Wuhouci with a friend as I chain smoked in the fresh Chengdu air. (more…)

Preface: This post is one of the three articles [I hope it can all be done] that talk about Shanghai’s homeless cats. The topic was inspired by my lovely cat, and by a documentary made by Ai weiwei called San Hua, which is about the cat business chain in China. It talks about the homeless cats of Shanghai and the cat trappers who try to catch and ship them to Guangzhou, where a massive cat meat industry sells them to restaurants. (more…)

Will that hurt because of clapping the whole night? I kinda felt bad for their palms…

It really is! I hope one day the rabbits can be the one in the video. They really learned the spirit of South Park. The domestic video sites deleted all the copies of this video.
PS: How many sequences can you recognize? (more…)

If you look at Zhao from a western angle, he is just another street drawer. But he doesn’t think so. According to his Buddhist beliefs, he is a Buddha in the last life that has been sent here to save people out of the endless cycle of Samsara. (more…)

In October I went to the Zhenjiang Midi Music Festival during the national holiday. Because everything fun was happening at night and the rainy weather had covered everything in mud, there wasn’t much to do during the afternoon. So I decided to do some research and conducted 12 brief interviews with the underground rock crowd at the festival. The interviews focus on the Internet and censorship in China, people’s opinions toward the Chinese government, and the on-going sexual revolution in china. Some of the questions are more “scandalous” than others, and it was up to interview subjects whether they wanted to answer all of them.

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This is a dinning review. (more…)

Published in the Nov issue of That’s Shanghai. Click on the link for a much better layout and some pictures.

Pushbike handymen are a dying breed in downtown Shanghai

In downtown Shanghai it’s getting tougher to spot street-side bike repairmen. The switch to electric bikes and scooters, coupled with the pretty price of city living, makes it tough for guys that only work on bicycles.

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Published in the Nov issue of That’s Shanghai. Click on the link to see a much better layout and pictures of this article.

Welcome to the White Collar Hotel

Where Shanghai’s newest job hunters check-in

“A new feature illustrating how people from outside Shanghai make this city their home”

The grimy staircase leading up to the White Collar Hotel is plastered with giant ads for online fantasy games. Busty women wearing tiaras and carrying long-handled axes are the gatekeepers for a world that’s residents have one mission: Find a job. (more…)