Responding to growing concern about traffic, pollution, and sanitation in Shanghai during the Chinese New Year holiday, city officials have announced a plan to ban half of the city's residents from leaving their homes every other day.

The plan calls for all residents with surnames Wang, Li, Zhang, Liu, Chen, Yang, Huang, Zhao, Zhou, and Wu to stay inside their homes on even days of the month and all other residents to stay inside on odd days during the new year holiday.

“Many visitors will come to Shanghai for the first time during the New Year holiday," explained Wu Jianghua, official spokesperson of the Shanghai Human Circulation Harmony Planning Department. "We don't want them to have the impression that Shanghai is a dirty, overcrowded, exhausting place. We want them to be able to enjoy the city in a more natural state and leave with a positive impression."

In preparation, he continued, "residents are encouraged to stock up on essentials such as rice, water, cooking oil, and DVD box sets."

Doctors at Huashan hospital reported a large number of additional patients with stress-related ailments during Saturday's Buy Nothing Day. The stress of not going shopping for a entire day caused mental anguish for many Shanghai residents.

City Diner is to hold a regular "Fight Night" after the chair-throwing success of the first, unofficial, event. Tickets will be on sale from Tuesday, price 120RMB.

Finally, news that three of Shanghai's top nightspots: Barbarossa, Bar Rouge and BonBon are to merge to form a new superclub, with the working title Barbarougeabonbon.

Exclusive! American resident Archie Tuype pulled a whitey in Shanghai earlier today. This puts "pulling a whitey" incidents 16% up on last month alone, according to official statistics compiled by the Bureau of Laowai Relations.

The incident occurred when Tuype needed to cross the road quickly as he was late for meeting a girl named Lily at the Starbucks on Nanjing Lu.

Eyewitnesses report seeing Archie begin running across the road, when a policeman whistled harshly for him to stop, flailed his arms above his head, beat his chest and began swinging on nearby lamp-post.

Archie "pulled a whitey" by giving the international double-thumbs-up sign and giving a huge cheesy smile - the policeman giggled shyly and waved him past.

Ha ha ha did you see that crazy guy? He had 200 polystyrene boxes balanced on the back of his bike! And the really miserable guy holding all the inflatable pigs.

And that old woman sitting on the bench next to Ronald McDonald. That's like totally showing the contrast between the old and the new China, man. I wish I had had my camera with me.

International superhero Spider-man climbed one of Asia's tallest buildings earlier, the 420.6m tall Jinmao tower.

A bite from an irradiated spider had previously given Spidey superpowers including the ability to cling to walls, superhuman strength, a sixth sense ("spider-sense").

However for the attempt the wallcrawling webslinger decided to dress up as a Frenchman, with a blue beret, striped jumper and string of onions around his neck, to the delight of onlookers. "I have always loved Superman" commented Wang, a local taxi driver.

Australian tourist Shane Edgewood, 27, bought all the crap he was offered while walking down premier shopping street Nanjing Dong Lu on Monday.

Edgewood is now the proud owner of some 27 designer bags, 15 Rolex watches (8 of which run clockwise and 7 anti-clockwise) and 2 Ropex watches. He also has sufficient postcards to send to every one of his fellow countrymen, a selection of poorly-executed paintings, a stash of Hungarian art-house DVDs and six potential wives.