American indie pop-punk trio at Yuyintang Thursday.

Hailing from Portland, Oregon (that's the upper-left part of the United States, for you geography nubes) and about to release their fifth album, The Thermals have four China tour dates: Beijing, China, Chengdu, Wuhan. And guess which one they're most excited about!

The Thermals are best known for their third album, The Body, The Blood, The Machine, which weaves a dark tale of an America manipulated by Christian facism. Kinda over the top, but soooo catchy.

Tickets are 100 RMB. Show starts at 9 pm at Yuyintang. 

Singer and guitarist Hutch Harris answered a few questions for us:

Thoughts on coming to Shanghai?

    Personally, Shanghai is the city in China that is making me the

most excited.  It just looks so incredibly futuristic.  I wish we

were going to have more time there!

What can we expect at the show Thursday?

    Lots of old songs, "the hits", as we say.  Lots of new stuff

too, all unreleased!  We are in the process of making a new record,

titled Personal Life.  We'll be playing more than half of it. 

How did you guys decide to play mainland China? What do you know

about your fans here?

    We booked an Australian tour and were offered this Chinese tour,

how could we say no?  Honestly, I never expected to come to China,

much less do a tour here, but it looks to be amazing and very fun!  I

know nothing of our fans here.  Frankly I'll be surprised if we have

any at all!

What can we expect from your new album Personal Life?

    A lot of our new songs are more introspective and make good use

of space.  Kathy wrote a lot of the songs on bass so there's a lot

less guitar and singing than when I write the songs.  Personal Life

will explore love and lies between humans.  It's as dark a subject as

politics and death, which we've already explored ad nauseam. 

In 1946, George Orwell wrote an essay entitled Why I Write detailing the forces which compelled him to put pen to paper. In this, our continuing Web series, we talk to China authors about their literary habits and reading preferences, and examine Orwell's question which lies at the heart of being an author – why they write

Thomas S. Mullaney received his Ph.D. in History in 2006 from Columbia University, and in the same year joined the faculty of Stanford University as Assistant Professor of Modern Chinese History. He is the author of Coming to Terms with the Nation: Ethnic Classification in Modern China (University of California Press, forthcoming 2010, foreword by Benedict Anderson). This book charts the history of China’s 1954 Ethnic Classification project (minzu shibie), a joint social scientific-Communist state expedition wherein a group of ethnologists, linguists, and Party cadres traveled to the most ethnically diverse province in the People’s Republic to determine which minority communities would and would not be officially recognized by the state. He is also principal editor of Critical Han Studies: Understanding the Largest Ethnic Group on Earth, a pathbreaking volume that examines China’s majority ethnonational group. He is currently writing the first-ever global history of the Chinese typewriter, one of the most significant and misunderstood technological innovations of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Our ongoing series looks at the people who run Shanghai's art market - the curators.

Patricia Portillo was until recently the curator of EV Gallery (Patricia Portillo Contemporary Artists) on 210 Taikang Lu. She knows works as a freelance art dealer and curator organizing exhibitions when possible. The 35-year-old Spaniard opened EV Gallery in July 2007.

Why did you open your gallery?
Because I felt there was too little foreign art being exhibited in Shanghai, and that my gallery could serve as a platform to enhance an exchange for both sides, local and foreign.

And why did you choose its location?
Ever since I arrived in Shanghai I always liked Taikang Lu or Tian Zi Fang. I find it warm, cosy and bohemian, very well located and accessible. I did not want a large space, for I felt it would be too much work and did not have the resources to manage it, so I went for a smaller type of gallery in the city center.

What sort of art do you normally show?
Contemporary, but the spectrum of medias and styles is very open. I like works from many different trends and movements, so I never wanted to narrow down the type of art I would exhibit. I have exhibited drawings, fine art prints, large paintings, sculpture and photography so far.

Our ongoing series looks at the people who run Shanghai's art market - the curators.

Magda Danysz is the curator of 18Gallery (at Bund 18) which she opened in June 2009. She also runs Galerie Magda Danysz in Paris, which has been open for over a decade now. Magda, 35, is French-Polish.

Why did you open your gallery?
I started work in an art gallery in 1991 in Paris when I was 17 because from an early age on it seemed like the right thing to do, to help artists get attention. Then I opened my own gallery in 1999 in Paris. I always saw our role as gallery owners as making the link between the artist's beautiful creativity and the public, the art lovers. It is at the same time about getting the artists to go further, supporting them and making contemporary art more accessible for everybody.

Opening a gallery in Shanghai followed the same wishes. In addition I love the idea of sharing art between Asia and Europe. Art has no boundaries so it’s great to have it travel. On the one hand it is about having the artists discover Shanghai’s amazing energy and let them be inspired by this city. And on the other hand it is about giving beautiful shows to the art lovers here, I always try to have something different, amazing, that will bring people to react, think and open up to art.