Steven over at Lost Laowai has provided a list of cool China iPhone apps for those who have made the leap to smart phones. Unfortunately I’m still using an antique Nokia, so I haven’t been able to check out the Lost Laowai suggestions, but a couple of them sound particularly useful for Beijingers.

Back in January we reported on the Show of Peace, announced with much fanfare (with the support of rock legend Jimmy Page), and supposedly scheduled for April 17 this year.  Aside from a “clarification” issued by the organizers when theBeijinger.com and China Music Radar reported that one of the “confirmed” acts was actually playing in Japan the night of the concert, the promoters have been suspiciously quiet in recent weeks. So it was no surprise when we received a notice today stating the Show of Peace has been postponed until October.

The German-based site Clean Energy Project recently posted an interview with Yinghui Zhang-Carraro, a “freelance writer and resident of Beijing,” about Beijing’s organic food market.

Last week we set the challenge. The first two users to post reviews of ANY BEIJING RESTAURANT in our directory that had NOT been written about before would score a copy of One Night in Beijing PLUS a bottle of wine each. And the winners are…

Not sure if this is a classic piece of Chinglish signage or a witty piece of wordplay for an establishment offering more than coffee.

Last week we reported Peter Hessler’s last minute withdrawal from the Bookworm Literary Festival for unspecified personal reasons. Since then several other events have been canceled or changed, with one session altered after the author was refused a visa for China.

Here are two cute videos currently doing the rounds in China’s virtual realm. A young women calling herself PixieTea has posted a pop song called “ABCD Said,” supposedly produced using nothing more than an iPhone. According to ChinaSMACK it’s already been viewed more than 1.25 million times. The other video is an amusing clip of a young girl “singing” one of those horribly saccharine songs so beloved by Chinese television - into the wrong end of her microphone.

Late last month we did a post about a story in the Chinese press concerning two “swarthy, ragged Chinese guys” who hitchhiked from Beijing to Berlin in order to see the German girlfriend of one of the travelers. We expressed doubts about the story’s veracity, but now we have to eat humble pie. One of the hitchhikers, Beijing-born American Kyle Johnson, contacted the Beijinger and agreed to an interview. Here’s the rundown on his amazing trek west.

Selling Chinese literature to the English-speaking world is tough – especially when it’s by contemporary authors little known outside China. But Harvey Thomlinson is doing just that, with his new Hong Kong-based venture Make Do Publishing. On the eve of his appearance at the Bookworm Literary Festival, Dan Edwards talks to Harvey about Make Do and China’s online writing revolution.

“This society is like a dirty river,” Chinese novelist Murong Xuecun says, his words tumbling out in a rapid-fire stream. “The river holds all kinds of people and all kinds of behaviour. Some can melt into the river, others can’t.” Murong’s dark world view has informed a string of Chinese bestsellers and made him the enfant terrible of the country’s often staid literary scene. With the publication of an English edition of Leave Me Alone – A Novel of Chengdu in Hong Kong, and Murong’s appearance at the Bookworm Literary Festival, Beijingers now have the chance to experience Murong’s hard-boiled style.