Mistresses, a group considered scandalous in Chinese society, have set up their own official websites, associations to protect their rights, and even an annual festival.

They share their experiences of being financially supported by married men and even exchange their "lovers" on online.

A Shanghai Daily investigation uncovered one online forum - www.xeixe.com - apparently operated by "China's Association for Mistresses."

The forum, which has been online for more than seven months, is only accessible by its 700-plus paid-up female members, all of whom claim to be mistresses of married men.

The mistresses publish links to their posts on the front page of the website and describe their relationships with wealthy men as well as the expensive gifts they receive: 20,000 to 30,000 yuan (US$4,560.8) a month in pocket money, luxury products, cars and even apartments.

Some ask others about how much money they can get from their lovers and what methods could be used to "squeeze more money out of them."

They call themselves "new-age professional mistresses" who are young, bold, shameless, not shackled by Chinese traditional values and who don't have to work a single day because their lovers pay them a higher salary than they could ever earn.

Their work is simple - to maintain secret sexual relationships with married men to satisfy their desires. They describe having sex as "rolling on the bed sheets."

The topics most discussed on the forum include shopping, making friends, sharing experiences and even breast enhancement. Some of the mistresses offer free online courses on training to be the perfect lover - someone who should be sexy and witty and "totally different from a man's ordinary wife."

The forum hosted an online chat, inviting several men to be interviewed on their attitudes to mistresses, and what kinds of women they would look for to have an affair.

In December the world watched (and giggled) as panda researchers donned panda suits for the good of the species, in an effort to reduce human contact and prepare them for the wild. This time they dressed up for the transfer of Cao Cao and her cub Cao Gen to the outer ring of the Wuloong Panda Reserve in Sichuan.

Cao Cao began her training in preparation for release into the wild last year, which is when she gave birth to Cao Gen. The move this week is kind of a big deal, as Cao Gen will be the first cub born in a semi-natural environment to be released into the not-quite-wild.

When they aren't moving the pandas, researches make as little contact as possible, observing them via an extensive video surveillance system instead. Cao Cao and her cub's new environment is 40,000 square meters large at an elevation of 2,200 meters above sea level.

Researchers decided to move the pandas after reports that Cao Gen had been exhibiting wild instincts, snarling at humans during his physical examinations. This is a good thing, as it is an important instinct in the face of predators such as leopards in the wild.

And it's soon to get even better than panda suits, if you can believe it. The reserve's directors recently accepted a suggestion made by 82-year-old leading panda expert Hu Jinchu, who argued that the panda keepers should dress up like leopards and roar in order to encourage survival instinct. We'll be keeping our eyes peeled for photos. (Videos after the jump!)

Horse-racing is one of the three traditional skills of the Mongolian young man where good horses and skillful horse-riders have always enjoyed supreme credits. Therefore, horse-racing has naturally been the favorite sports activity cherished by the herdsmen in Mongolia.

Two types of horse-racing activities were held there, namely, trotting-horse racing and galloping-horse racing. For the former, the horse would be equipped with a full set of saddles and proper-sized horseshoes, and it is required to amble forward (e.g. move along using both legs on one side alternately with both on the other). It is a competition of speed, stamina, steadiness, and posture. The latter competes for speed and stamina, with the winner being the one first to get to the destination. The riders in the competition are mostly agile boys of 12 or 13 years old. To ease the load of the horse and ensure the safety of the riders, the galloping horses are generally not equipped with saddle or with light saddle. The riders would only wear gorgeous colorful costumes with flying red and green straps on their head, fully displaying their vigor and valiancy. The competition generally covers 25 to 35 kilometers. Compared with the trotting-horse race, the galloping-horse racing is more commonly seen and of more riders with several dozen at least or over one hundred sometimes. As soon as the competition begins, the riders would quickly spring onto the horse and start their journey, leaving the audience gamboling and cheering for them.

By the custom of the Mongolian minority, the horses would be commended after the competition if they have place in it. They would stand according to their performance and be commended with a horse-praising poem chanted by some honorable seniors. After that, milk wine or fresh milk would be splashed on the horse winning the first place to congratulate it. Apart from the two traditional horse-racing forms, new ones such as the steeplechase have also emerged, which have greatly enriched and vivified this sports activity.

Lantern Festival, also called Shangyuan Festival, is celebrated on January 15 of Chinese lunar calendar. It is the first full moon night in the Chinese lunar year, symbolizing the coming back of the spring. Lantern Festival may be regarded as the last day of Spring Festival, the new-year festival of China, in other words, the Spring Festival does not end until the Lantern Festival has passed. Lasting to Lantern Festival, the busy atmosphere of Spring Festival on that day shows new visions and amorous feelings. Lantern Festival is regarded as a good day for family gather-together. According to the folk custom of China, people on that night will lighten up fancy lanterns and go out to appreciate the moon, set off fireworks, guess riddles written on lanterns, and eat rice glue balls to celebrate the festival.

The tradition of appreciating lanterns on the Lantern Festival originates from the Eastern Han Dynasty, which has a bearing on the introduction of Buddhism into China at that time. It is a Buddhist convention that the monks would visit sarira and lighten up lanterns to show respect to Buddha on Jan 15. Therefore, Emperors of that dynasty, who were determined to promote Buddhism, ordered people to lighten up lanterns in both palaces and temples on that night to show respect to Buddha. Additionally, civilians were all requested to hang up lanterns on that night, which is why the festival is called "Lantern Festival". In the Song Dynasty, the custom of guessing riddles written on lanterns on Lantern Festival came into being and people at that time wrote riddles on paper strips and then pasted them on the colorful lanterns for others to appreciate and guess. In the Qing Dynasty, fireworks were set off to add fun, and the Lantern Festival by then witnessed a record-breaking grand occasion.

The traditional dim sum eaten on Lantern Festival is called "yuanxiao" (rice glue ball) or commonly called "tangyuan". A meaning of family reunion and happiness may be felt even only from such name. Yuanxiao has its exterior made into a ball shape and white sugar, sweetened bean paste, and sesame as the stuffing. Besides, walnut meat, nuts, and even meat can be used as the stuffing as well. Apart from the boiling manner, yuanxiao may also be prepared through deep frying and steaming manners.

As time goes by, the Lantern Festival has enjoyed more and more celebrating activities. Some places even add traditional folk-custom performances such as playing dragon lantern, Lion Dancing, stilting, striking land boat, doing the Yangko, and striking Peace Drum. The Lantern Festival, a traditional Chinese festival which has undergone a history of over 2,000 years, is still very popular both at home and abroad, and any place where Chinese people live will witness a busy occasion on that day.

Belgian tennis star Kim Clijsters, triple U.S. Open champion, claimed her first-ever Australian Open singles title here on Saturday, beating China's Li Na 3-6, 6-3, 6-3 in the final.

Third-seeded Clijsters, 27, rallied to upset ninth-seeded Li Na, who made history for China and Asia to enter a Grand Slam final, in two hours and 15 minutes.

Throughout the match, Li hit four double faults and 40 unforced errors, while Clijsters had three double faults and 26 unforced errors.

Clijsters burst into tears right after she sealed the victory for her fourth Grand Slam title.

Two weeks ago, Li defeated Clijsters in straight sets 7-6 (7-3), 6-3 in the final of Sydney International.

In Thursday's semifinal, Li showed her courage by beating world No. 1 Caroline Wozniacki of Denmark 3-6, 7-5, 6-3.

Clijsters, who boasts 40 career titles, played her first Grand Slam final a decade ago, and has won the U.S. Open three times on a surface similar to the new center court at Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne of Australia.

Clijsters is projected to return to No. 2 in WTA singles rankings next week.

Despite Saturday's loss, Li is supposed to return to Top 10 when the new WTA rankings are published on Monday.

Spring Festival is the most important holiday in China. Every year, millions of migrant labors travel across the country in order to arrive home on time for the family reunion dinner on Chinese New Year Eve. Instead of the home cooked meal the majority of rural area families eat, most families in big cities opt for a care-free food binge in restaurants and hotels. An ordinary Nian Ye Fan (CNY Eve dinner) costs anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand Reminbi depending on the venue. Recently, a special Nian Ye Fan menu offered by a restaurant in Suzhou attracted the attention of Chinese media and millions of Chinese netizen’s.

This uber-luxurious Nian Ye Fan menu offers 10 hot dishes including endangered spices and rare ingredients like “braised supreme abalone in oyster sauce,” “braised white truffle with shark’s fin,” “boiled honeycomb with bird’s nest,” and “super grade black caviar with Toro.” On top of that, the restaurant also provides stretch-Hummer pick-up service, Suzhou embroidery and Pingtan (a form of storytelling and ballad singing performed in the Suzhou dialect) performances as well as a one night stay at the presidential suite in the Suzhou Crowne Plaza. The total price has been marked up to a whopping RMB595,160 and even the final discounted price to the public is as high as RMB388,888. 

A surge in passenger is testing China's railway capacity as millions head home ahead of the Spring Festival on Thursday.

China began its 40-day Spring Festival travel rush on Jan. 19. Some 2.85 billion passenger trips are expected to be made.

The Spring Festival, or Chinese Lunar New Year, is the most important Chinese holiday. It is a time for family reunions.

An average 2,265 train are transporting 6.2 million passengers daily, up 12.5 percent from last year.

Authorities have also stepped up the crackdown on tickets scalping, with police arresting 1,800 scalpers and confiscating over 14,000 train tickets.

"China's railway capacity has improved much over the years but it is still far from meeting the surge in passenger trips," Wang Yongping, a railways ministry spokesman said.

Trains tickets are hard to buy, Wang said.

Xu, a middle-aged man, bought a ticket at Beijing West Railway Station for his trip home to the southwest China province of Sichuan after queuing an entire day and a night.

"You'd better call it a fight rather than ticket-buying," he said.

Despite the hard "fight," Xu felt lucky because he did, in the end, get a ticket.

"Now I have to buy something to eat," he said while carefully tucking the ticket into his jacket's inner pocket.

Unable to get train tickets, over 100,000 migrant workers in southern Guangdong Province, a major manufacturing base, are going home by motorcycle.

Italian supercar-maker Ferrari is celebrating its 999th car sold in China, with a special show in Shanghai. Ferrari just couldn't wait till 1000.

15 of Ferrari's luxury sports cars are on display, no doubt attracting attention from the growing ranks of affluent Chinese.

Models ranged from classics like the Spider and Modena, to limited editions like the Enzo. With a top speed of 350 kmh, just 400 of the Enzos were built. Other top performance cars include the 430 Scuderia and the GTB599 Fiorano. All aimed squarely at China's growing ranks of affluent Chinese, in particular the younger generation like Johnson Zhang who spent about $590,000 on his 458 Italian. Zhang owns the 999th Ferrari sold in China.

Johnson Zhang, The 999th Ferrari car owner said "Thank you Ferrari for allowing me to realise my dream as a man -- to own a 458 Italian. The figure nine has very good meaning in Chinese. It means long-lasting, perfection and sustainability".

Ferrari CEO Amedeo Felisa is aiming to sell 600 cars in the next two or three years.

Amedeo Felisa, Ferrari CEO said "That means to position China as the second market in the world just behind U.S."

Ferrari set up its China branch in 2004 and has witnessed the growth of the world's most populous nation into the world's biggest car market. Ferrari is one of the country's best known luxury car brands, with many like Li Wei aspiring to own one someday.

Li Wei, 29-year-old tourist said "It's too expensive but I still like it very much. For example, the limited edition art model, the 599GTB Fiorano, which costs around 11 million yuan (1.6 million USD) was bought by a Shanghai buyer. I hope one day I would be able to own a car like that."

China is set to become the world's biggest luxury market in five to seven years, according to a Boston Consulting survey conducted last year.

The 27th Harbin Ice and Snow Festival — which opened on January 5, 2011 and will last to February 28 — has teamed up with Disney to develop its ice and snow brand.

This year's festival was jointly hosted by the National Tourism Administration, Heilongjiang provincial government, and Harbin municipal government.

Themed "Happy Snow, Passionate City", the 27th Harbin Ice and Snow Festival consists of five parts and more than 100 activities, such as ice and snow themed tours, art, trade, and culture. The event is aimed to becoming an international grand festival.

The event has five main exhibition areas, namely Harbin Ice and Snow World, Ice Lantern Garden Party, Sun Island Scenic Area, Yabuli International Ski Resort, and Zhaolin Park, covering 40 ski fields and three grand ice and snow scenic areas.

This year, the Harbin Ice and Snow World will team up with Disney to jointly develop the world's top ice and snow tour brand.

The Harbin International Ice and Snow Festival is held annually from January 5 and lasts for more than one month. It has become one of the world's four major ice and snow festivals, together with Japan's Sapporo Snow Festival, Cananda's Quebec City Winter Carnival, and Norway's Ski Festival.

Shanghai's very first capsule hotel has opened up somewhere on the north side of the Shanghai Railway Station. While it is not fully operational yet, curious budget travellers have already been knocking on its doors. The 300 square metre hotel consists of 68 "capsules", each 1.1m high and 2.2m long, equipped with its own lighting, pillows, bedding, alarm clock, power sockets, flatscreen television and wifi. Shower facilities are communal, but alas, for those of you that don't like letting it all hang out, there are no cubicles as you can see in the pictures.

The daily rate for each capsule is 88RMB but if you choose to stay less than 24 hours, you pay a basic rate of 28RMB, plus an additional 4RMB per hour. So if you rent a capsule for 10 hours, for instance, that would work out to 68RMB for the stay. We suspect they may have to lower the pricing once the novelty factor wears off -- beds at youth hostels in Shanghai go at about 60RMB per 24 hours. This is of course still a huge bargain if you compare this with capsule hotel rates in Tokyo, which are about 4,000 yen (319RMB or $48) per night. The management has also decided to serve only male customers for now, because capsule hotels in Japan serve mostly men anyway (or so they say). If there is sufficient demand in the future, they will open up to female clientele.

This capsule hotel is understood to be China's very first built according to international standards. A shanzhai capsule hotel was opened by an elderly gentleman last year in Beijing (click here to see what it looks like), but it looks like it won't be attracting any international travellers anytime soon. It will be interesting to see how things go for this capsule hotel, and if this will open up a whole new category of budget travel. We think this could work, if the pricing is right.

All the same, even when Western parents think they're being strict, they usually don't come close to being Chinese mothers. For example, my Western friends who consider themselves strict make their children practice their instruments 30 minutes every day. An hour at most. For a Chinese mother, the first hour is the easy part. It's hours two and three that get tough.

Despite our squeamishness about cultural stereotypes, there are tons of studies out there showing marked and quantifiable differences between Chinese and Westerners when it comes to parenting. In one study of 50 Western American mothers and 48 Chinese immigrant mothers, almost 70% of the Western mothers said either that "stressing academic success is not good for children" or that "parents need to foster the idea that learning is fun." By contrast, roughly 0% of the Chinese mothers felt the same way. Instead, the vast majority of the Chinese mothers said that they believe their children can be "the best" students, that "academic achievement reflects successful parenting," and that if children did not excel at school then there was "a problem" and parents "were not doing their job." Other studies indicate that compared to Western parents, Chinese parents spend approximately 10 times as long every day drilling academic activities with their children. By contrast, Western kids are more likely to participate in sports teams.

What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you're good at it. To get good at anything you have to work, and children on their own never want to work, which is why it is crucial to override their preferences. This often requires fortitude on the part of the parents because the child will resist; things are always hardest at the beginning, which is where Western parents tend to give up. But if done properly, the Chinese strategy produces a virtuous circle. Tenacious practice, practice, practice is crucial for excellence; rote repetition is underrated in America. Once a child starts to excel at something—whether it's math, piano, pitching or ballet—he or she gets praise, admiration and satisfaction. This builds confidence and makes the once not-fun activity fun. This in turn makes it easier for the parent to get the child to work even more.

Chinese parents can get away with things that Western parents can't. Once when I was young—maybe more than once—when I was extremely disrespectful to my mother, my father angrily called me "garbage" in our native Hokkien dialect. It worked really well. I felt terrible and deeply ashamed of what I had done. But it didn't damage my self-esteem or anything like that. I knew exactly how highly he thought of me. I didn't actually think I was worthless or feel like a piece of garbage.

Over 215,000 people applied for car licences in Beijing this month, but only 20,000 will be issued as the capital seeks to curb its massive traffic jams, state press said Sunday.

Under a new system aimed at controlling the number of cars on Beijing streets that began this year, applicants must apply in the first eight days of the month for the 20,000 available plates issued monthly.

According to Xinhua news agency, 215,425 people applied for the January allotment. A lottery on January 26 will decide who gets the licences and the right to buy a new car.

Under the new rules, only 240,000 new cars will be registered in Beijing this year, compared to the record 800,000 automobiles that took to the streets of the capital last year, the report said.

Authorities have admitted that the registration cap along with other measures such as higher parking fees in the city centre and stricter enforcement of traffic rules will not automatically ease the chronic gridlock.

Expectations that the government was going to restrict the number of new number plates sparked a surge in sales last month, with more than 20,000 cars sold in the first week of December, state media said.

That was more than double the 9,000 cars sold in the same period in 2009.

Beijing's air is among the most polluted in the world and the problem is getting worse amid high demand for private vehicles from increasingly affluent residents.

The number of registered cars in Beijing stood at 4.8 million in late December as an average of over 2,000 new cars hit the capital's streets every day last year, officials said.

But the current congestion is already so severe that parts of the the city often resemble parking lots.

On a single evening in September, a record 140 traffic jams were observed as the number of vehicles on Beijing's streets exceeded 4.5 million.

China's auto sales are likely to reach 18 million units in 2010, up 32 percent from the previous year, when the nation took the title of the world's top auto market from the United States.

Just because China has embraced Christmas does not mean the country is becoming Western. Looks can be deceiving.

Christmas tunes play on radio stations. Every Grade A and Grade B office building in Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou is decked out with holiday displays. Christmas music is piped into elevators far and wide, even in Communist Party buildings. Santa, Frosty the Snowman and Rudolf, are ubiquitous. Department stores never used to have Christmas sales. Now they all do.

What's going on? One thing for is sure: the Chinese have not discovered Jesus. The meaning behind Christmas - the birth of God's son who died for our sins - can be articulated by a small percentage of the population. True, evangelical Christianity is spreading, particularly in the countryside where adherents can be quite passionate -- and brave -- as they proselytize the word of Christ. But, as a rule, mainland Chinese know very little about the deeper meaning of his teachings. In the eyes of most, China's Jesus is, more often than not, interchangeable with China's Buddha. He is someone to pray to, someone to turn to particularly in periods of uncertainty or fear. The idea of having a relationship with Jesus through acceptance of his "golden rule" in exchange for salvation is a nuanced abstraction. It is not a powerful offer for today's pragmatic, ambitious, worldly new generation of Chinese. In the PRC, morality is relative; standards shift based on ever-morphing external circumstances. But Christian morality is absolute. Jesus' word - charity to others, including the weak, particularly strangers - is non-negotiable. The tenets of Occidental Christianity are poorly understood and, frankly, unattractive as a consumer proposition. (By the way, most Chinese do not know the difference between Jews and Christians, let alone the difference between Catholics who acknowledge the Pope and Protestants who do not.)

More than 40 million foreigners around the world are learning Chinese, a senior official with the Confucius Institute Headquarters said at the organization's fifth annual conference in Beijing, which ended on Saturday.

This year, 40 new Confucius Institutes and 97 Confucius Classrooms opened worldwide, while eight countries also joined the program, Xu Lin, the headquarters' chief executive and director-general of the Office of Chinese Language Council International, or Hanban, told China Daily.

And more expansion is on next year's docket, she added.

"We expect to dispatch 2,000 teachers and 3,000 volunteers from China, train 10,000 Chinese teachers and 10,000 local teachers, and release revised Standards for Teachers of Chinese to Speakers of Other Languages (TCSOL) next year," she said.

"A better benefits package will be offered to teachers from China. Tentative efforts will be made to establish a team of full-time directors and teachers for Confucius Institutes."

Confucius Institutes are affiliated with the Ministry of Education and are committed to educating people worldwide about Chinese language and culture