Empire of the Sun, French edition, Denoël (1985), with cover art ‘Singapour 1945′ by Ronald Seatle. Thanks to Herve for all cover scans. Interview by Tony Cartano & Maxim Jakubowski. Translation by Dan O’Hara. The following interview, originally titled ‘Le passé compos...

  We give Barbie a lot of shit here at Scanner—for her tramp stamp, for being too skinny, for not acting her age and even for making a skeezy porno—but you know what? Fuck that. Barbie brought us a lot of joy back when we were wearing Kissing Coolers and thought that Sesame Street was our &...

At first I was hung up on the name. Hung Zhou crab and pork steamed dumplings (eight for $8.95), seemed to be none other than Shanghai steamed dumplings (the very next item on the menu), except, perhaps, for the crab. In New York, xiao long bao (sometimes called soup dumplings, steamed juicy buns, o...

Aside from the cold and wet weather my trip to Shanghai was pretty good. The city stands out as being surprisingly un-Chinese with its mixture of stark modern skyscrapers, European colonial remnants and the odd communist monstrosity (see Oriental Pearl Tower above). Having travelled from the warmer ...

"NOT SINCE The Honourable Schoolboy…" has there been a satisfactory spy-fi novel set in Hong Kong, say the Times of Charles Cumming's modern spy-fi thriller Typhoon . They may well be right – but there have not been a lot to choose from. Typhoon – which shares its name with a Joseph Conrad nov...

In a world without US automakers, someone would have to build the next Presidential limousine, right? Chinese automaker Roewe's working hard to complete this luxury barge ahead of the Shanghai show. Why not them? Well, for starters, GM's got the current contract as evidenced by the new Cadillac One,...

Hey ET and Christina … we finally made it to Top Shanghai after all these months and it was exactly like you said it to be … the food was excellent but the service sucks! So this one is dedicated to you guys. When we first met up ET and Christina (of doesnttaztelikechicken.com) for lunch...

Happy New Year!!! I am typing this admist salvos of fireworks all around Shanghai. Even at Jin Hui Road where I am staying, I can hear the many bursts of fireworks even long after midnight countdown has ended. For New Year's eve, I was at Pudong Century Square where I met Christine for dinner before...

A very embarrassing thing happened  to me today. Errr...well...I am not sure if its more embarrassing to me or to the other party involved. Candy and I arranged to meet at Dragon Dream Mall at Zhongshan Park for lunch. As I was there half an hour early, I decided to shop around a bit. Halfway throu...

I was just looking at my traffic stats just the other day and noticed quite a fair number a referrals from Alltop. On closer inspection, I discovered we are featured in their Shanghai section! What exactly is Alltop ? You may ask. In their own words,"Alltop is an “online magazine rack� of popula...