Hello and welcome to our new column on the happenings of health and fitness in our fair city. We’re calling it "Active Shanghai." It's your one-stop shop for fitness events, new gyms, deals, events, and hot goss. Sweaty goss. This week we’ve got a few sporty events including The Peninsula's Mega Yoga and a 15k with Runnershai. In terms of real estate rumblings: Z&B Fitness expands, Afit's grand opening, a yoga studio is born, and a freshly opened rock climbing gym. Grab your fitbit and Nikes, it's time to get physical. Read on

This one right here goes out to all the baby's mamas, mamas mamas mamas, baby mamas mamas...Redleaf Women's Hospital one of most sought after hospitals for Maternity and Children’s PD closed yesterday. Yes, the uber nice maternity clinic shuttered its doors, apparently the army is taking back the space, like the rest of Huaihai lu. It'll be reopening in a new location in Hongqiao in a just a few days. Read on

...and that's the first time we've ever typed that! Free Brazilians, Shanghai! Free Brazilians! (We mean the style of waxing not the actual people. Free Brazilian waxing, is what we mean.) This Sunday, the aptly named Strip salon on Xinle Lu is dishing out free bush prunings to the first 30 women (And men? We'll say men too. UPDATE: No, not men. Sad.) who turn up to their shop. Breaks down like this: "First 10 customers get: 1. Free Brazilian Wax; 2. 1000rmb Waxing PKG 3; 35% off on ice cream / Mineral Body Polish; 4. Friend Referral Voucher. The next 11 to 30 customers get: 1. Free Brazilian Wax; 2. ¥ 100 Waxing PKG; 3. 35% off on ice cream / Mineral Body Polish; 4. Friend Referral Voucher. The next 30 to 100 customers get 1. ¥ 150 Brazilian Voucher; 2. 100rmb Waxing PKG; 3. Friend Referral Voucher." Starts at noon. Sounds amazing. Think we'll send out a party photographer. They want your hair! Huzzah!

F&B is down, but gyms and coworking spaces are exploding in the city right now. So why not combine those together into one mega multiplex? That was Fitspace's idea -- or actually, the coworking space is just an addon for the Golden Gloves boxing gym which moved here from Xinqiao Lu. They took over the whole space and figured they'd fill the rest of it a shared office area to improve foot traffic. So far it's working out well. Details inside. Read on

The latest offensive in Shanghai's long and drawn out war with secondhand smoke is scheduled for March of next year. City officials have announced that from March 1, there will be an official ban on smoking in public places. The ban follows the same one enacted in Beijing a few years back. Remember that "Reality Check" we did indoor smoking ban in Jing'an? This time, the new smoking ban will cover ALL the indoor public places and indoor working places -- hotels, restaurants, bars, KTVs, cabs and public transportation. Smoking rooms in Shanghai airports and railway stations have already been shut down. Read on

The Healing Arts Festival is a grassroots gathering celebrating wellbeing, meditation, and mindfulness happening on Sunday. Over 25 vendors, catering to your wellness and spiritual needs will feature their wares and services -- from tarot card reading, to Qi arts, to mind-body instruction, to bending spoons like The Matrix kid. Maybe not that last one. There's also vendors selling crystals that they claim have healing energy, and hey if you're into that, more power (energy) to you. But even if you aren't about the magic crystals and future reading, you can still enjoy yoga, live performances including jazz, poetry readings, and improv comedy, and F&B vendors such as Cambio Coffee, Sproutworks, Dutch Pies, Happy Buddha and others. Read on

This year's China Adult-Care Expo gloriously started yesterday, April 14 at the sexily titled Shanghai Convention & Exhibition Center of International Sourcing. It's a four-day event and completely open to public. (Adults only, of course). Want to hear about it? Of course you do. You're only human, don't fight it. Read on

In Reality Check, we strive to bring you the facts about urban legends. Smoking indoors is banned in Zhong Plaza, home to Logan's Punch, el Ocho, Tomatito, Starling, and more. We talked to the venues and are some are saying the ban is specific to Jing'an, but other bars and restaurants in the district still allow cigarette smoking. What's the deal with that? Meanwhile, there's also been rumors of a big crackdown on public smoking. So what's really going on here? Is smoking in bars and restaurants coming to an end in Shanghai? In Reality Check, we find out. Well... at least we can tell you what the situation is and what it might become. Read on

In Reality Check, we strive to bring you the facts about rumors, hearsay, and urban legends. As you very well know, temperatures in Shanghai dropped to -7 degrees Celsius this past Sunday. Before the weekend, local and international media warned of the biggest cold wave in 30+ years, and people have been acting like the end times are here. The pipes did freeze, but was it really Shanghai's coldest weather since the '80s?? Read on

Although our culture-watching counterparts in the West have already detected a second coming for the '70s New Age hippie practice of "sensory deprivation", here in Shanghai, floating in a tank of water and shutting out all sensory input from the world in order to realign… whatever it is you need realigning… is a novel concept to city residents. We just don’t have that many places to go for a float in Shanghai, despite being subjected to arguably the highest life pressures in the country. That’s changing, however. This is becoming a thing. Read on

The Great Mold of 2014 killed 12 pairs of my shoes. When living on the first floor of a lane house, a two week vacation means coming back to a day of boiling rags, wearing masks, moving furniture, bleaching the fuck out of everything, then eventually throwing out what's shoved in the back of the closet. It's not just material items to grieve over. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), indoor mold can increase the risk of respiratory disease by 50%. A Parkway Health ENT also told us that expats commonly develop new allergies after three or four years of living in China due to mold and dust mites. Read on

This new juice shop called "Fly Juice" (unassociated with the Fly skateboard shop a few doors down) recently opened on Changle Lu. It's shiny and hip and "branded," but can all that branding justify costing 25–40% more than the curiously named "Fruit's Party" juice shop around the corner on Huaihai Lu? First up, the small store looks like a streetwear boutique, with neon lights, a surf board, and bottles of juice that look like a mad scientist's potion. One of the young Shanghainese guys who owns the place designed it himself. Nice guy. And it's clean. The juices have cute names like "The Hulk" (celery, apple, wheat grass, chia seed – 22rmb) and "Fly Power" (avocado, banana, and milk – 38rmb). Read on

You know those massage chairs that cost like 20rmb/twenty minutes at Chinese airports? Massage chair manufacturer Oto Oto has a bunch of those available for free, extended tests at malls around town right now through Sunday August 31. Last night I got a 25 minute robot massage outside of the main entrance to Metro City in Xujiahui, right by the KFC and the Reese's store. They have about ten chairs plus some other massage devices like vibrating balance boards. The top of the line space age chairs cost 30,000rmb -- but let's face it, if you buy one you probably won't ever use it. For now just enjoy the humanless "3D" massage, which is actually pretty good. Damn those bots are strong. Just pray that no glitch causes the machine to clinch up and crush your bones like M&Ms. Read on

Shanghai just got its 90234874th nail salon at Julu Lu near Maoming Nan Lu, but hey, it's got a clever name: Get Nailed. tee. hee. The shop's offering some unusually good deals in honor of its store opening. From now until May 18, manicures, pedicures and eyelash extension services will be priced at 88rmb each. We went down to check it out this past weekend to make sure they weren't cutting costs by using fake OPI, mangy lashes or diluted creams and gels. They weren't. Get Nailed sticks to two brands: Essie for regular polish, CND for gel nails. It's the real stuff. We were told that the polishes are organic, too. Maybe good for nail biters? Shrug. Anyway, the 88rmb promo price is the same for manicures and pedicures that use Read on

Ever tried to buy a gym membership and some sales bro named "Lovely" or "Sunshine" tried charging you three times the normal price? Ever had another dude try to grab your d in the locker room? With warm weather approaching, we know a lot of you want to join the gym, but it's confusing in Shanghai. Gyms don't advertise prices much here, so figuring out how much to pay can feel like haggling at the fake market. And what's up with the towels? Is that mold on the ceiling? That's where you come in. We need info about gyms in all the districts, from Jing An to Baoshan, written informatively, colorfully, and concisely. Stories, real prices, all that. A picture or two would help a lot too. Of course, we'll hook you up too. Anyone who helps us with a 200 word writeup gets a 200rmb voucher for Nosh Delivery, and the top three contributors each win a pair of tickets to the Bruno Mars concert on April 3rd. Not bad, not bad. Read on

Bikram Yoga Shanghai is hosting an open week next week, which means their 7pm classes are free every day from December 23 until December 27. Bikram is a specialized form of hot yoga. Each class is 90-minutes and takes you through a set series of 26 poses and two breathing exercises. The room is usually kept at a temperature around 40 degrees to allow for greater flexibility and, of course, to make you sweat. The purpose is to flush out toxins, promote relaxation and speed up cardiovascular action. This studio is the only authorized Bikram-style hot yoga Read on

Yoga Garden is doing a new event thing over the holidays: 100 Days to Handstand. Free to sign up as long as you have a Yoga Garden pass, with the ultimate goal of helping you to do a freestanding handstand with control, power and grace. Yoga Garden is a boutique yoga studio that offers daily classes including Ashtanga, Hatha, Yin, Hatha Vinyasa, Prenatal, Basics and Restorative. Class sizes are small, and every month a new four-week workshop begins to help students deepen their understanding of a certain style or practice. They’re saying that the 100 Days to Handstand program is “kind of like a bootcamp for going upside down”. Yoga Garden teachers will Read on