According to Xinhua: Beginning next month, international passengers will no longer need to fill out a quarantine form upon entering China. If you’ve been an international arrival at any of China’s airports over the last four years, you know the routine: it’s the little white photocopied sheet (in Shanghai, at least) requiring that you disclose…
All posts in Olympics
No Peking Duck for Olympic Athletes?
[UPDATED at the end of the post] I’m a fan of the Beijing Olympic Committee’s regular press releases, if only because – amongst the hail of platitudes – you occasionally get a gem like the one issued on November 9. Entitled “Chinese cuisine to highlight Olympic menu,” it then spent two paragraphs explaining why it…
Marathon Air Quality
Over at WorldChanging, Mara Hvistendahl asks: “As an amateur runner in Shanghai’s half-marathon on Sunday, I wasn’t overly concerned with my time. But what was I doing to my lungs?” Her answer is an interesting essay that touches on Beijing’s efforts to improve its air quality in advance of the Olympics, what it feels like…
Olympic Air Quality: Special Tianjin and Qinhuangdao Edition
A couple of weeks ago Jim Fallows mentioned that he is snapping a daily photo of the Beijing sky(line) from his apartment window for “later chronicling purposes to see how and when the campaign to clean up the air [in advance of the Olympics] finally kicked in.” That’s a fine idea. Fallows isn’t posting the…
The Sordid Origins of the Olympic Bible “Ban”
This morning I received an email from my colleague Kenneth Tan, editor of Shanghaiist, asking whether I had heard about the reports that Beijing had added the Bible to a list of items that Olympic athletes were prohibited from bringing to China in 2008. Indeed, I had: I looked into it on Friday – for…
Beijing’s Psychotics to be Watched During the Olympics. And Only During the Olympics.
On Wednesday, South China Morning Post ran one of the oddest stories that I’ve read in quite some time. Entitled, “Closer watch on mental patients during Games,” it quotes Li Wenyong, deputy superintendent of the Chaoyang Mental Health Centre and a professor of psychiatry, as saying: There have been incidents in previous sporting events when…
Satire/Self-immolation at China Daily?
I’ve begun to think that someone at China Daily has a rather wry sense of humor. Case in point: a very brief photo essay that ran in Friday’s online edition. Located at the top of the China section (still on the home page) was a link that connected to this headline, photo, and caption: I…
Well this should generate some comments.
Calendar spotted in the gift kiosk at a Shanghai Catholic church. The Chinese reads: “Pray for the Olympiad.”
Blue Sky Olympics
I’m on deadline today and tomorrow, so – barring a self-destructive blogging indulgence – I won’t be posting again until the weekend. For now, allow me to recommend Caijing‘s superb feature on the ongoing effort to clean-up Beijing’s air in advance of 8-8-8, “Beijing Battles for a Blue-Sky Olympics.” This is the best accumulation of…
Tons Better? Beijng’s Olympic Air Quality Revisited
Yesterday, with little notice, the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau released its final report on the city’s August 17 – 20 test of traffic and air pollution control measures in advance of the Olympics (mostly accomplished by pulling cars from Beijing’s busy roads). No actual air quality statistics were provided in the Xinhua report published by…