All photos from our featured photos of the day. You can see all of them here.
It may be the shortest year of the month, but February was packed full of news - mostly because of... the WINTER OLYMPICS (coincidentally held in a town so full of Chinese people it might as well be called China City, Canada). Also, Chinese archeologists discovered fossils of flying dinosaurs, Chinese censors employed the nation's mothers to find bad stuff on the internet and Chinese farms were found to be more polluting than Chinese factories.
Here in Shanghai, there was both good and bad environmental news. Apparently we had experienced the best air quality ever over the last year. At the same time, ten times more kids were getting cancer. But on the other hand, Shanghainese were recorded for living longer than before. Confusing ain't it?
Also, we said a tearful goodbye to what remained of one of Shanghai's great food streets - Wujiang Lu, discovered an amazing series of audio walks recording Shanghai natives and were miffed then amused by some bumbling thieves at Cantina Agave.
The Big Stories From Around China
Happy Chinese New Year! We compared videos of celebrations in Beijing to those in Shanghai. Luckily, this year's was much less eventful - the only accident in both cities turned out to be work related.
While China didn't dominate quite like it did the Summer games, the country still made quite a showing. It received its first ever Olympic gold in figure skating, a very easy win 500-meter short-track and another record breaker at the 1,500-meter short-track. It also got the highest it's ever been at curling. In the end, it won so many medals, it considered possibly hosting a Winter Games itself.
Also: Turns out we weren't free from melamine after all, Google backed down a little from its ultimatum, and the foreign ministry said the first funny quote of the year related to Liu Xiaobo.
Check THIS out
- We went to one of JUCCCE's many green idea labs. Click in for more information on what they're like and how you can join in on musing about the environment.
- We tried out Aqua Bar, a decent restaurant in a strange location.
- We gushed over Malone's 50RMB for a beer and burger deal. Though it was meant to end after a month, it was so popular that they extended it... and you can still take advantage of the cheapest pint + burger deal in town!
Fun Stuff
- Shanghai Daily's hilarious feature: Too many fat kids eat too much fast food, sit on fat butts
- The first appearance of the now infamous "War of the Internet" machima - a spoof of China's internet censorship regime filmed entirely using World of Warcraft.
- Wanna see what clubbing Shanghai Style is like?
- Yang Fudong became one of the first local artists to make something luxury fashion chain, filming First Spring for Prada. It is now a big trend.
- Remember Super Baozi? He was pretty awesome - watch the video again and wonder where his creator went.
- An entry in the 17th Beijing University Student Film Festival titled "Tina's Life in Shanghai," this video showed what it was like to be a pizza waitress in Shanghai.
Gorgeous Galleries
The Patriot Cheerleaders hit up Malone's to cheer, dance and gyrate themselves into the expat hearts of Shanghai
