Four restaurants to launch your epic night out

Anyone who has spent some time on the Beijing nightlife circuit knows how unlikely it is that the average club denizen, on weekend reconnaissance missions from dance floor to dance floor, would ever pack on the pounds. Even if you factor in ... Read more »

PTE brings HIV education to China's schools

The teacher started from scratch in a recent lesson on AIDS to sixth-graders: “Nobody ever dies of AIDS or HIV; they die of a common illness because their body is too weak to fight anymore.” Twelve-year-old hands shot up to answer questions ... Read more »

Mao Live House celebrates its one-year anniversary

Nestled in the heart of Gulou lies Mao Live House, a cleverly named, no-nonsense, no-frills music venue that boasts one of the best sound systems in the city. Since opening less than a year ago, Mao Live House has become a staple in ... Read more »

Hot Bean Cooperative stuffs your inner child with chicken

“Autobots wage their battle to destroy the evil forces of the Decepticons …”

Liu Peng, one of the founders of the Hot Bean Cooperative, laughs as he comes back from his phone call to find me softly singing the Transformers theme song ... Read more »

Cook sweets and hook up with a sweetie at The Hutong

It’s Friday night at The Hutong, and steam fogs the kitchen windows, sealing off the view of the courtyard. 14 men and women, coupled at random, lean against a long, wooden island, wearing Mao-blue aprons and the paper ... Read more »

“No! No! No! I’ll kill you guys ... Oh my god, this feels fucking incredible!”

These are the words of Miao Wong, manager of Acupuncture Records, who is dressed to the nines in head-to-toe black and wearing her trademark stilettos while luxuriating in the fountain pool of Alfa’s lounge ... Read more »

When Christophe Mao launched Chambers Fine Art gallery in New York seven years ago, few anticipated the market for contemporary Chinese art would develop into the cultural and financial behemoth it has become.

“At the time, my principal aim was to introduce the art that interested me to American collectors ... Read more »

Adam Lee picks up the portable speaker he’s been wheeling around and places it on a ledge of greenery at the west entrance to The Place, an upscale shopping street east of Ritan Park. He plugs in his iPod, spins the dial, and horns pulse out from the tiny ... Read more »

What is the point of bringing Icelandic, Finnish, Norwegian, and Swedish artists to China? (Iceland sounds like a level in Super Mario Brothers, not a hotbed of creative activity.)

NOTCH promoter/DJ Patrick Yu has an answer, “The current culture in countries such as Norway and Sweden pushes art and ... Read more »

Fast-talking L.A. rap rebel Busdriver’s latest album, RoadKillOvercoat, is a kinetic departure from his previous works, venturing outside of underground rap into sounds akin to dance music, indie rock, folk and mainstream rap. A self-described ‘wacky rapper for the metaphysically-challenged’, Busdriver describes his latest songs, “They’re sonically ... Read more »

Mark Rowswell, aka “Dashan”, may be the most famous Canadian on the planet. It’s just as likely, however, that prior to coming to China, your average expat never heard of Rowswell, or his Dashan character.

For those of you still fresh off the plane, “Dashan” is the moniker bestowed ... Read more »

This month, Beijingers have more than just the usual reasons for a trip to the mall as Get It Louder 2007, a multi-media platform for up-and-coming artists, hits Beijing's brand new SOHO Shangdu shopping center on August 16.

Noted breakcore DJ, iLoop, whose Shanshui Records single-handedly created the avant-garde ... Read more »

Beijing bands are famous for attitude. But while mohawks, chains and what Ed Peto, organizer of the popular Red T Gloaming nights at Stone Boat, calls the “angsty, amplified stuff” may hit the right rock note, the music often fails to live up to the hype. More and more venues ... Read more »

Jack Zhu launched Clubzone.cn in 2003 and has seen it grow from a niche forum for die hard clubbers into a full blown community of over 200,000 users. This year marks Clubzone's third annual end-of-summer blow-out bash. Last year's party featured FreQ Nasty and drew 2 ... Read more »

Malaysia’s exports to China include palm oil, electronics and upper-level hotel and restaurant managers. Any look at Beijing’s major international hotels and you’ll see that they are deftly controlled by a low-key Malaysian hospitality force–The Malaysian Mob–and what better time to recognize them than during ... Read more »

There are a lot of questionable exhibits being

held around Beijing as

part of the warm up to

the Olympics. The migrant worker art exhibit and the disabled

person sculpture show being

a few of the more notoriously

dismissable. But the exhibit of

Olympic artifacts culled from the

International Olympics ... Read more »

Though Klute has been making distinctive, soul-stirring drum n bass music for more than a decade, his musical career started in a skate-punk band called The Stupids, releasing five albums before migrating to electronica. Klute attributes this formative musical experience to his desire to make drum n bass more than ... Read more »

The entire world is descending on Beijing to cash in on the Olympic craze, but one group of foreigners is determined to make small fortunes by skipping town, choosing to rent out their apartments to Olympic-hungry tourists.

According to Piet Bos, the founder of Homestay Beijing 2008, this is not ... Read more »

There is a distinct feeling of wonder upon hearing yndi halda’s debut album “Enjoy Eternal Bliss” for the first time. It’s expansive, haunting and achingly expressive. The impressive range of instruments soar and climb along arcs of beautifully hopeful songwriting.

Formed in 2001 in Canterbury, the band took ... Read more »

Twelve-year-old Janice Wu and 8-year-old Anita Lu smile shyly, giggle and fiddle with the dance studio bar before Mambo Jack's Saturday afternoon youth salsa class. But once the music comes on these two salsa ‘tweens turn into salsa queens. "I loved having everyone watch me dance," Wu says of ... Read more »

Tiger Beach (Dalian)

What to do Ocean Park: No white sand, but plenty of pebbles and blue water plus the world’s biggest polar animal zoo. ¥125-200. 9 Binghaizhong Road, Tel: 0411-8239-9398. Where to stay High end: The five star Xinghai Holiday Inn is right on the beach and a ... Read more »

“Cartooning in China had traditionally been seen as an art form instead of an industry, until we found out that our kids were massively consuming manga and Frank Miller,” says Chang Weili, executive producer of the Beijing TV Kaku cartoon channel. “Now we know that animation is a chain of ... Read more »

Audiences are generally confined to a rigid set of rules–sit, watch and clap after the show. But when the show goes mobile, audience becomes participant and the spectacle becomes something uncannily similar to life. Beijing's Borderline Festival (June 22-July 1) has always aimed to transgress artificial "borders," but ... Read more »