Pandering by McCain

Needless to say, John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential candidate should be seen as more of what it is, a continuation of his relentless effort to pander to any constituency that he think might get him elected (in this case, evangelical Christians) and less of what it is not (reinforcement of his so-called "maverick" status).

A blog entry written by Bruce Reed for Slate Aug. 22 (one week before Palin's selection) offers some telling background. [One can only imagine what kind of behind-the-scenes maneuvers may have been going on within the Republican Party while McCain considered his close friend, the pro-choice Sen. Joe Lieberman, for the vice-presidential slot on his ticket...]

"Spoiler Alert: When the McCain campaign floated the idea of a pro-choice running mate, social conservatives reacted with the same outrage they've been rehearsing for 40 years: Some threatened to bolt at the convention; others said they'd rather lose the election than expand the Republican tent. 'If he picks a pro-choice running mate, it's not going to be pretty,' Rush Limbaugh warned.

But the most explosive threat comes from former right-hand-of-God Ralph Reed, in his new novel, Dark Horse, a "political thriller" that imagines this very scenario. Spoiler alert! Just hours after forcing his party to swallow a pro-choice VP, the Republican presidential nominee in Reed's pot-boiler is brutally murdered by radical Islamic terrorists at the GOP Convention. Reed's implicit threat to Republican candidates: The Christian right has so much power, they can even get someone else's God to strike you down.

Reed doesn't just kill off the character who named a pro-choice running mate—he has the running mate go on to destroy the Republican Party... With the pro-choice figure—an African-American war hero named David Petty—now at the top of the Republican ticket, evangelical leaders throw their support behind Calif. Gov. Bob Long, who just lost the Democratic nomination at a brokered convention and decided to run as an independent after going through a religious conversion in the chapel of the hospital where his daughter nearly lost her baby."

Speaking of Ralph Reed, when did the Christian right's homophobe-lite pretty boy get absolved from his involvement in the Jack Abramoff scandal as a no-ethics lobbyist "humping in corporate accounts"?

For all the amnesiacs out there, I recommend consulting Mother Jones 2004 summary of Ralph Reed's better business practices and ask yourself if this is the sort of low-grade scum you want dictating America about its ethics or politics.

Mother Jones wrote, among other info, "Reed's value to corporate America has been enhanced by his close ties to the Bush administration and especially to Karl Rove, the president's chief political guru. Not long after Century Strategies started, Rove reportedly helped Reed land an Enron contract worth at least $300,000 to help build support for energy deregulation... Among Reed's clients is Channel One, a company that provides television equipment to schools in exchange for airing 10 minutes of news and 2 minutes of commercials daily. Prominent conservatives have blasted the company for exposing children to junk-food ads and explicit movie promos. In response, Channel One turned to Reed, who in 2002 helped the company deflect a proposed Texas Board of Education resolution that would have urged schools to jettison Channel One."

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McCain's last minute running mate selection

John McCain did not interview Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin for his No. 2 spot until a day before her selection was leaked to the press–and only several days before the Republican National Convention–according to a story in today's Washington Post. This timing strongly suggests that she was not a front-runner all along as Republican operatives would like the public to believe.

The Post reports of the encounter:

"On Wednesday Palin flew to Flagstaff. That night she conferred with Schmidt and Salter. The next morning around 7, the three of them, along with a Palin aide, climbed into an SUV with tinted windows to begin the 45-minute drive to McCain's retreat in Sedona.

When they arrived, McCain offered Palin some coffee before taking her to a bend in a creek on the property where there are places to sit and a hawk's nest looming above. It is one of McCain's favorite places, and the two talked alone there until they were joined by McCain's wife, Cindy, who is described as having played a key role throughout the selection process.

After about an hour, Palin joined her aide on the deck of McCain's cabin, while the candidate and his wife went for a walk along the creek. When they returned, McCain held one last session with aides Schmidt and Salter. Then he offered Palin the job. The deal was sealed 'with a handshake, a pat on the back,' one adviser said."

The Times of London reports: "The Republican presidential candidate, John McCain, was facing a backlash from his party last night over the appointment of Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska, as his running mate after it emerged that he had met her only once before offering her the job."

The New York Times: "For weeks, advisers close to the campaign said, Mr. McCain had wanted to name as his running mate his good friend Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, the Democrat turned independent. But by the end of last weekend, the outrage from Christian conservatives over the possibility that Mr. McCain would fill out the Republican ticket with Mr. Lieberman, a supporter of abortion rights, had become too intense to be ignored.

With time running out, and after a long meeting with his inner circle in Phoenix, Mr. McCain finally picked up the phone last Sunday and reached Ms. Palin at the Alaska State Fair. Although the campaign’s polling on Mr. McCain’s potential running mates was inconclusive on the selection of Ms. Palin — virtually no one had heard of her, a McCain adviser said — the governor, who opposes abortion, had glowing reviews from influential social conservatives."

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McCain and Palin rush to hurricane zone for photo op

With Hurricane Gustav approaching, John McCain and newly-minted Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin rushed down to Mississippi today for a campaign photo-op. Perhaps McCain is seeking to erase memories of what he was doing on the day Hurricane Katrina submerged New Orleans.


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Vice-Presidential Leadership: More than the sum of one's parts

Gail Collins' take:
"The idea that women are going to race off to vote for any candidate with the same internal plumbing is both offensive and historically wrong. When the sexes have parted company in modern elections, it’s generally been because women are more likely to be Democrats, and more concerned about protecting the social safety net."


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Who in the world is Sarah Palin...

Evidently, John McCain scrolled down this list until he found a young Christian woman. If America were fighting a crusade, this might be an apt choice. But we are living in a world in which moderation, decency and intellect are more important than self-righteousness, smarminess and overt ideology, and I have to say, I don't see offhand anything in Palin's resume to indicate she has any particular vision for how to help pull America out of the many messes it has become embroiled in under the Bush administration (from foreign wars to a faltering economy) .


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McCain chooses little-known Alaskan Governor as VP Candidate

Well, this blog (and quite a few others) was wrong in its hunches. John McCain has thrown a surprise into this year's election, choosing little-known Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin as his vice presidential candidate. Offhand, her only known credentials are that she is Republican and a woman--clearly something McCain was desiring in his efforts to reach out to the Hillary Clinton crowd. Palin has little experience, having served as governor for only two years and previously serving as mayor of a very small town in Alaska. It will be interesting to watch and see how this all plays out.

One issue will interest me in particular: How Palin's selection will effect Republicans' claim that Barack Obama is not experienced enough to be president.


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McCain announcement leads to speculation about Tim Pawlenty

John McCain is ready to announce his running mate. The Associated Press reports: "Republican presidential candidate John McCain decided on a running mate early Thursday, and one top prospect, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, abruptly canceled numerous public appearances."

The reaction of most people when I mention Pawlenty's name as the leading prospect for the vice-presidential sweepstakes seat is, "Who?" But political analysts have had him at the top of McCain's list for weeks and it would not surprise me if Tim "Aw shucks, I'm a nice guy" Pawlenty were selected. His relatively young age, working class roots, clean image and Midwestern location are all desirable traits for a McCain No. 2. Pawlenty is popular in his home state. Minnesota is a swing state where McCain is trailing in the polls.

The Minnesota governor describes himself as "a common sense, main-stream conservative in the tradition of Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln" (insert cough here).

Meanwhile, Robert Novak, the conservative columnist who set off the CIA leak scandal five years ago, has called Pawlenty, 'the most conservative Minnesota governor since Theodore 'Tightwad Ted' Christianson in the 1920s." In Minnesota, Pawlenty is famous for his efforts to freeze education, transportation and social service funding in order to balance the budget without raising taxes. Pawlenty's budget priorities early on led to continued double-digit tuition increases at the University of Minnesota; in effect, taxes were raised–for college students.

In 2006, Pawlenty supported increasing the Hennepin County sales tax in order to pay for a new baseball stadium for the Minnesota Twins.

Up until just hours ago, Pawlenty was in Denver (locale of the Democratic National Convention), acting as the stalwart soldier, launching televised attacks on Barack Obama–presumably in an effort to demonstrate his vice-presidential candidate attack dog bite. Now remember, he's a nice guy.


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Rock the Vote

TIME humorist Joel Stein has a piece in this week comparing the live music offerings at the Democratic National Convention to those planned for the upcoming Republican counterpart. His conclusion? "The iTunes primary no contest."

In Denver, you will find Public Enemy, Death Cab for Cutie, Randy Newman, Kanye West, Jakob Dylan, Rage Against the Machine, Rufus Wainwright, Black Eyed Peas, etc. For Republicans in St. Paul? You're looking at Charlie Daniels, Sammy Hagar, Styx, the Beach Boys... basically anything that washed in off the beach.

As Stein notes about Democrat plans for Minnesota, "Even in St. Paul the Democrats have a better slate, with anti-Bush protest shows planned from Steve Earle, Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine, Billy Bragg and Lupe Fiasco."


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The Olympics: contest for the biggest boobs?

As noted by Global Voices, one lad has come up with an interestingly proportioned graph of the Olympic medal breakdown in the top-winning countries. Follow the link if you wish to have a closer look.


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McCain Sucks

I don't know which fuckup in the Google algorithm department has it set up so that I keep getting John McCain ads in my blog, but I thought I should type up a quick post to clarify my opinion on the matter. I don't think McCain is an icon of integrity. I think he's a typical example of the war-mongering, money-pandering, religion-stuffing, hypocritical, George Dubya-sycophant wing of the Republican Party. Basically, I think if you want another four years of the policies of George W. Bush, then vote for McCain. That is to say, if you want another four years of saber-rattling, soldier-wasting, deficit-raising, education-ignoring, straightfaced-lying, diplomacy-quashing, archaic policy-making, hope-defeating, race-baiting, pocket-stuffing, self-serving big money bullshit, then vote for McCain. That is to say... Don't vote for McCain!


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Chinese copy editors polish the Gray Lady (i.e., New York Times)

An interesting comparison of a Beijing Evening News translation (i.e., redaction) of a New York Times article, vis-a-vis the original piece as published by the Times, has been posted online by China blogger Black and White Cat. Quirkily enough, the Beijing Evening News is the same publication that gained lingering notoriety a few years ago for lifting a story straight out of The Onion–and publishing it as actual news.

In this new family-friendly Olympic NY Times-derived summary, "one-child policy" becomes "family planning rules" and volunteers "staffing the security stations, driving golf cars answering questions or just standing around and greeting people— 'communicating smile and building harmony,' in the words of a Beijing organizing committee news release" is morphed into volunteers "staffing the stadiums, gymnasiums and security stations, all of them wearing a smile" (emphasis added).

More notable than these linguistic shifts are wholesale deletions of anything that might be deemed critical of the Olympic enterprise or Beijing itself. The Olympics were certainly a point of pride for Chinese everywhere and a fantastic sporting event to behold, but they also came with a $44 billion price tag and wide-ranging impact, both positive and negative, for local residents. The New York Times did not hesitate to mention these details in its summary:

New York Times article: "The beggars and the homeless have been rounded up and banished from the streets. People have been urged to quit smoking and spitting, and to adopt the Western custom of standing in line for a bus, instead of jostling. Entire neighborhoods, especially some of the mazelike alleys known as hutong, have been razed to make way for newer, less-unsightly apartment blocks. And some 40 million plants have been placed along the road to the airport and in baskets along the downtown medians. It is as if the city has been hermetically sealed in a way that would eliminate anything unpleasant."

But in the hands of the Chinese censors, that paragraph became entirely different. Here is how that same paragraph appears in the Beijing Evening News piece: "There are big, modern apartment blocks. And some 40 million plants have been placed along the road to the airport and in baskets along the downtown medians. It is as if cheerfulness permeates the entire city."

Kudos to Black and White Cat for taking the time to translate and present this comparison.

Of course, the real master of redaction is Xinhua, China's official state mouthpiece news agency.

When not posting x-ray scans of Homer Simpson's brain, government photo-ops, defensive reactions against the 'biased' Western media, and/or skin-baring photo displays of well-proportioned women (a.k.a., "Skinhua")... Xinhua often publishes quite a few uniquely inspired edits of its own (usually with "agencies" as its only attribution of an original source).

Translation is truly an art.


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Red Light, Green Light: Shanghai pedestrians must yield, but cars can plow ahead

Pedestrians should stay standing at the corner. Chinese motorists, meanwhile, can continue to feel free to mow down pedestrians at top speeds.

That is the message that I discern from the Shanghai police department's recent announcement that it will be posting photos and videos of jaywalkers online in an effort to "shame" them into compliance with traffic laws. Meanwhile, there continue to be no "yield to pedestrian" rules enforced anywhere in China, even at green light pedestrian walkways.

City police in Shanghai apparently take jaywalking quite seriously. Shanghai Daily reports that police recorded close to 8 million jaywalking violations in the first eight months of 2008. Now compare that to the misdeed that isn't recorded: The continuing failure of Chinese drivers, especially right-turning drivers, to yield to pedestrians using crosswalks or green walk signs. This is true not only of Shanghai, but also any Chinese city that I have visited.

Shouldn't it occur to the police that a few of these jaywalkers just might be crossing against the light because they had no ability to cross when the light was green? And what is the point of having a green pedestrian light if all cars ignore it? Why is that I have never seen or heard of any enforcement in this regard?

I'm not sure what the applicable law is on crosswalks (if any), but I can tell you this with dead certainty: I have never been at a traffic intersection in China where cars voluntarily yielded to pedestrians. When pedestrians are already in the roadway, they do sometimes swerve so as not to hit them, but I wouldn't call this yielding. Oncoming traffic should learn that when a pedestrian is in the road, crossing with the walk sign, hitting the horn isn't the right response, nor is stepping on the gas pedal. The right response would be to put a foot down hard on the brakes. People should be able to cross the road on a green light without fearing for their lives.

(For a more humorous look at the subject, take a look at this ironic manifesto posted by one wise-ass/expat.)


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While China builds buildings, America has been digging itself into a hole

Today's quote of the day comes from Tom Friedman at the New York Times:

"As I sat in my seat at the Bird’s Nest, watching thousands of Chinese dancers, drummers, singers and acrobats on stilts perform their magic at the closing ceremony, I couldn’t help but reflect on how China and America have spent the last seven years: China has been preparing for the Olympics; we’ve been preparing for Al Qaeda. They’ve been building better stadiums, subways, airports, roads and parks. And we’ve been building better metal detectors, armored Humvees and pilotless drones.

The difference is starting to show. Just compare arriving at La Guardia’s dumpy terminal in New York City and driving through the crumbling infrastructure into Manhattan with arriving at Shanghai’s sleek airport and taking the 220-mile-per-hour magnetic levitation train, which uses electromagnetic propulsion instead of steel wheels and tracks, to get to town in a blink.

Then ask yourself: Who is living in the third world country?"

Friedman goes onto acknowledge one crucial difference: America was attacked on September 11. But he says the time has come to pull out of Iraq as quickly as possible and focus on nation-building back home. Full story is here.


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Eight great spots in deeper China: a travel guide

Visiting China and tired of big cities like Beijing and Shanghai? For the traveler looking to get out of the mass metropolis and explore other cities and/or remote destinations in the Middle Kingdom, here are eight recommendations:

Songpan
Songpan (located in the mountainous Aba Tibetan Qiang region of Sichuan) offers a wild west vision of China starkly different from what you will find in smoggy eastern cities. Songpan is a small, quaint ancient city surrounded by mountains where guided horseback and camping trips are available for $15 a day. Souvenir shops offer items ranging from cowboy hats and rugs to saddles and shawls… and for the traveler tired of Chinese stir fry, there are small cafes that offer international cuisine such as pizza and Israeli salad. Songpan is also conveniently close to the Jiuzhaigou and Yellow Dragon nature reserves­--the formers' clear mountain waters were featured prominently in the film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon).

Suzhou and Tongli
Only 30 minutes west of Shanghai by bullet train, Suzhou has some resemblance to other massive Chinese cities. But unlike, say, the ultra-commercial Shanghai, Suzhou has still managed to maintain some of its old world charm. Famous for its gardens, Suzhou is also a good location to take in intimate performances of Kun opera or explore some hutong-style alleyways. Outside Suzhou, you will find a number of ancient villages including Tongli, a village that matches old canals and cormorant fishermen with China's most famous sex museum—an odd pairing if there ever was one.

Shangrila and Deqin County
Several locations in northwest Yunnan province have laid claim to being the namesake for the "Shangri-La" mentioned in James Hilton's 1933 novel Lost Horizons. The authorities in one city—formerly Zhongdian—went so far as renaming their district Shangrila in 2001. This "Shangrila" is pleasant town with numerous coffeeshops and youth hostels. But the real sights to be seen in the area are six hours farther up the road in Deqin County, just outside Tibet. Here, hardy trekkers can enter mountainous areas beyond the reach of cars--beneath the canopy of the awe-inspiring Kawagebo mountain range. Kawagebo, a 22,110-ft. peak, has never been climbed.

Yuanyang
Deep inside of Yunnan province and far beyond the range of train transit, Yuanyang is home to the Hani minority and some of the largest rice terraces in Asia. A spectator can view terraces going on seemingly forever from high in the hills. Accessing them can be difficult, though, without help from a local. Upon arrival at this "middle of nowhere," don't be surprised to see photographers from around the world toting camera gear that costs more than a new car.

Xijiang
Xijiang is a Miao village full of wooden cabins on the hillsides. Here, the tired traveler is sure to find local families happy to host you and feed you in exchange for a modest fee. This is a traditional town--and with the right amount of luck you can see long-standing holiday or wedding rituals there, such as street wedding banquets or the dragon parade. At times, electric power can be in short supply and the town does not have many modern amenities, but there are ample nearby hiking opportunities.

Yangshuo
Yangshuo, Guangxi (near Guilin) is one of the most frequently touristed small towns in China and often cited as one of the most beautiful regions in the world. Yangshuo is a good spot for renting a bike, viewing karst peaks in the countryside, or catching a river cruise down the Li River. Walking down the streets of the town itself--with its rock-climbing stores and many bars--a visitor could be forgiven for momentarily forgetting they were in China. At night, many tourists take in "Impressions of the Third Sister Liu," a grand production Zhang Yimou-directed production with a cast of 600, set on the banks of the Li River.

Yellow Mountains
These peaks are some of the most widely published images in China and deservedly so… the mountains can be magnificent in the mist. Hiking up the mountains is a chance to climb Chinese-style—through an arduous series of never-ending steps, with porters passing by you carrying loads of bottled water, food, and other necessities to the top. Or you can take the easy route by riding the cable car to the top. At the top of the mountains, lodging is available at Shanghai-style prices. Many of the best views are in winter, when the steps then can also be precariously icy.

Lugu Lake
Lugu Lake is a quiet and peaceful area with bargain lodges, located in a Mosuo minority area on the border between Sichuan and Yunnan provinces. There is not much to do there other than rent a dugout boat (and accompanying rowers) to go on the lake, but it is a fantastic place to relax. And sometimes, all the traveler needs is a good book, a place to rest, and a clear lakeside view.


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Empty Seats at the Olympics, Vol. MMVIII

Atlantic correspondent James Fallows has posted a picture of the Argentina-Nigeria football (soccer) final. Keep in mind that this is the final of the Olympics in China, a country where (like most of the world) soccer is enormously popular. More thoughts and pics are on his blog. Personally, I wish a few more seats had been reserved for people and a few less for guanxi.

A telling statistic from that last link: "A recent report in the Hong Kong-based Sing Tao Daily said research from China's State Council, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the research office of the Central Party School showed that 90 percent of China's RMB billionaires (people with more than $128.2 million) are the children of senior officials."


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Your Guide to Buying an iPhone in Shanghai

Sinosplice blogger and Chinese Pod host "John" has posted a handy guide to buying an iPhone in Shanghai. Apple still has not reached an official deal with China Mobile, but it seems like getting an unlocked phone is not too difficult here... Basically, they are available in Xujiahui (among other locations) for prices beginning at 3900 RMB (roughly $560).



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Canon 50D release made official

Canon has announced that it will release its new 50D camera next month at an estimated retail cost of $1,399 (variable depending on market, and like most electronics, likely to decrease within a few months). From my point of view, the most significant difference in the specs is an enhanced ISO of 12800 at compressed resolution (as opposed to the 3200 maximum ISO on the 40D). The new model also comes with a DIGIC 4 processor and a 50 percent bump in megapixels to 15. Early assessments are that the processor is only a moderate upgrade, but we won't know for sure until reviewers get their hands on the camera and test it out. It looks like a great camera, but at my budget, I'll probably be looking to buy a 40D, which should drop below $900 over the next several months.


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Live from Shanghai, it's Saturday Night!

On Saturday, L. and I decided to take in some of Shanghai's culture. Our first stop was the Zendai Museum of Modern Art to catch some short films from the Shanghai International Film Festival. The Shanghai Zendai Museum of Modern Art refers to itself as the "MoMA" but I will here refer to as "Zendai" to avoid confusion with that other MoMA. It is located deep inside of Pudong, the new half of Shanghai built on the east side of the Huangpu River beginning in the early 1990's. My exposure to Pudong was limited to a couple of trips near the waterfront and the Oriental Pearl Tower and a a couple of flights into or out of Pudong International Airport. So this was a chance to see a new part of the city. We ventured there by subway, ending up at the Shanghai Museum of Science and Technology stop, as directed by the Zendai website. From there, the direction to go was not entirely clear. Zendai's website suggested taking a bus to Thumb Plaza, but the subway dumped us smack in the middle of century park and there were not any bus stops within visibility (we did take the bus back later that evening). Fortunately, a motorcycle driver was there hanging around and offered to take us to Fangdian Road for a total fare of 6 yuan... quite a bargain considering taxi fares in Shanghai start at 11 yuan. He dropped us off there and I recognized Thumb Plaza by the street address. It was an odd place to find an art museum... a basic suburban mall, with a Carrefour, Starbucks, Subway, etc. In the middle of the plaza a juggler in a clown outfit was doing a promotion for Mercedes. L. Asked me if this is what America looked like. I looked around and aside for a heavy pallor of smog over the sky, the area did indeed look like it could have been dropped out of California. I think L. liked the mall but I've always felt as if suburbia was one of the latter stages of hell. We strolled into the plaza and found the Zendai without much difficulty.

We arrived a bit late and the first film, a Slovakian bit about a boy with an imaginary dog, was almost over, finishing with an image of a kid watching a robot lovemaking scene from a Bjork music video. From the minute we saw, "Abel's Black Dog," looked promising, but we didn't see much of it. The next movie, a Chinese bit from Donghua University, was terrible. "Sister" was about a purse-snatcher who stole money in order to buy street drugs to tranquilize his crazy sister who had been abused by her boyfriend. When he runs out of money, he resorts to stealing the drugs themselves, and in doing so kills his sister by shooting her up with undiluted medication. Along the way, he has the crap beaten out of him by the drug dealers for his trouble. The movie's tempo seemed to follow somewhat along the lines of the artfully done Chinese independent movie Suzhou River, but without any of the art, complexity, acting skill or fine cinematography that makes Suzhou River one of the true masterpieces of Chinese film. In this case, my advice is head for the DVD market, pick up the real thing, and skip the student short filmed on the cheap handycam.

The last film, "Reality Show" from Mexico, was a bit better. A bored man watches television and sees himself getting killed by the pizza delivery guy. Assuming this is predictive of the future, when the actual delivery guy arrives, he beats him with a baseball bat, only to discover that the pizza guy is not armed. Then the movie skips and back and we see the pizza delivery guy watching himself on TV being beaten with a bat. He reaches for a knife to bring in the pizza box. The movie has a simple Kafkaesque subtext, leaving the viewer with a bit of a twisted puzzle to mull over.

After the film, we made the mistake of stopping buy Cafe du Monde, a New Orleans theme restaurant, for dinner. I say mistake because despite the cheery ambience and varied menu, I'd have to say the place was a rip-off. 60 yuan for jambalaya is hardly a bargain... I'd recommend stopping buy a local joint and getting some sausage fried rice for 5 yuan instead. And the waitress annoyed me quite a bit when she refused to bring L. a complementary coffee with her 45 RMB omelette, even though it said clearly on the menu that free coffee was included. After our order had already been placed and the food was being cooked, the waitress said that she spoke to her boss and free coffee was only on offer before 11 a.m. It took three conversations and a request to speak to her boss before the coffee was finally boiled–and I have to say, the stuff tasted rancid. Wasn't Cafe Du Monde founded as a coffeeshop? It tasted like battery acid.

From there, we ended up at Starbucks. I was coffeed out but I wanted a place to sit down so I bought a cup of English breakfast tea–for the equivalent of $2.50. Someone is making money in this world, but it probably wasn't the lady behind the counter.

Our final destination for the evening was the Live Bar, a venue I had never been to before and one of a dwindling number of live rock joints in Shanghai. 4Life closed in January and Windows Undeground seems boggled in some sort of management dispute and the Ark Live House in Xintiandi went belly up and the Shelter is closed for the 'Olympic holiday'... which pretty much leaves Yuyintang and Live Bar as the last boys standing (the morbid among my readership may wish to check out a full list of Shanghai nightlife closures here).

Canon 50D release imminent?

Several Canon rumor sites (here and here) are reporting that Canon will soon be releasing the 50D, the follow-up to the 40D and other cameras in its xxD series.

Olympic record in men's marathon

Samuel Wanjiru of Kenya just set a new Olympic record in the men's marathon with a finishing time of 2:06:32.

Obama picks Biden as VP Candidate, according to the Associated Press

The AP is reporting that it is official: Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware will be Barack Obama's vice-presidential candidate. The long-awaited announcement should take place later today.

This McCain's for you

The New York Times today has a lengthy assessment of the business background of Cindy McCain, wife of the presidential candidate.

On her upbringing:
"At her father’s funeral, Cindy McCain told of his gentle reaction when she wrecked the car he had bought her after she graduated from the University of Southern California, according to people who were there. She did not mention, as a former employee recalled, that it was a Porsche and that he replaced it with a Mercedes-Benz. When the young Cindy Hensley began teaching high school and was criticized for driving a fancy car, the ex-employee said, her father bought her a Volkswagen to drive to school."

On her charitable career:
"In the late 1980s, she set up a charitable organization out of Hensley headquarters, distributing medical supplies in developing countries. But she disbanded the group in the early 1990s after she became addicted to painkillers and was caught stealing from its supply of drugs."

The Times article does not bother to estimate Mrs. McCain's total net worth, but elsewhere estimates have frequently been proffered at $100 million or more.

Lame advertisement of the day

This one pulled off of Craig's List and quoted verbatim (spelling errors and all):

Cute and well spoken assitant WANTED (Shanghai)

Working as a Executive companion, your duties will be to translate from Chinese to Englis, or French or Spanish. show and guide our executive producer trough his four days in Shanghai.

there are not really hours for the job but a mimimum of 8 hours per day are required.

Part of her duties will be, promote an event , passing flyers and collecting business cards from exhibitors.

We are currently looking for a very outgoing and good looking female assistant to who could speak and translate from Chinese to English or Spanish or French.

if you are interested please send you CV and 1 good picture.

dates to work will be September 10,11 and 12.

We are looking forward to hear from you.

Elderly Women Sentenced To Labor Camp For Seeking Protest Permit

China's announcement just prior to the Olympic Opening Ceremony that it would create three 'protest zones' in Beijing parks is appearing more and more to simply have been a contemporary update of the Hundred Flowers ploy. In 1956 and 1957, using the mantra of "Let one hundred flowers bloom," the Communist Party under Chairman Mao encouraged dissidents to speak out and criticize the status quo. Critics, fearing a trap, were naturally slow to respond, but by 1957 the number of "flowers blooming" in the form of posters, rallies, articles, and letters by the million, often advocating democracy, had grown to such a degree that Mao launched the subsequent Anti-Rightist Movement, during which those intellectuals who had listened to his solicitations and spoken out–around a half million of them–were "arrested, tortured, sent to prison camps for decades or just killed." This era of political repression paved the way for "the Great Leap Forward, a disastrous attempt at rapid industrialization that would leave some 20-30 million Chinese dead from starvation." Either Mao had planned a trap all along or he was under the naive belief that those speaking out would offer praise for his heavy-handed policies. Jeremiah Jenne, one of my favorite bloggers, has written a narrative about the Hundred Flowers era that is worth reading.

Fast forward to 2008. We have now entered an era of economic liberalization and substantially more openness in China. But the Party is providing every indication that it will not relent in its stranglehold on Chinese political discussions. Out of 77 applicants who have applied for a permit to protest in the authorized protest zones, not a single one has been approved. Xinhua News service has reported–in a quite obvious falsehood– that this is because in almost all cases the protesting parties withdrew their application after reaching an amicable settlement with authorities.

The most telling story about what has actually been occurring is the galling news that two women in the late 70's, Wu Dianyuan and Wang Xiuying, both of whom had sought a permit to protest inadequate compensation for the demolition of their home by authorities in 2001, have been sentenced to a year in administrative detention, a.k.a. "re-education through labor." This story, and similar ones that have been surfacing, indicate that the protest zone was simply a trap and that authorities never had any intention of allowing any sort of protest against official policies, even at parks located far away from the Olympic venues themselves.

Meanwhile, sporadic groups of foreigners protesting China's occupation of Tibet continue to be arrested. Initially, foreigners who had been arrested were simply being briefly detained and then deported, but the latest group of protesters will be held in jail for up to ten days, according to authorities.

Dayron Robles takes gold

Cuba's Dayron Robles just handily took the Liu Xiang-less 110-m hurdle race, with two Americans coming in a safe pace behind him.

China's underage gymnasts

Evidence continues to grow that at least one and possibly more of China's female gymnasts were underage. The evidence is coming in strongest against He Kexin. First, a blogger tracked down online birth records listing her birthdate as January 1, 1994. Actually, those records had been erased, but he was able to obtain them through pulling up online caches. Furthermore, multiple news articles in the Communist Party press listed her age last year as 13 (which would match the online birth records). He won two gold medals in the current Olympics, one as a member of the Chinese team and another in the uneven bars, beating out Nastia Liukin in a tiebreaker after both finished evenly in points.

UPDATE Aug. 22, 2008: The International Olympic Committee has now belatedly announced they will be launching an official probe into He Kexin's age.

Dropping the pass

Just watched consecutive U.S. 4x100 relay teams (both men's and women's) drop the baton in the last hand-off, failing to make it past the initial trial round. In both cases, they seemed to be leading coming into the last 100.

Tell-Tale Signs by Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan will be releasing Bootleg Series Vol. 8 on Oct. 7. The 27-song, two-CD set will contain previously unreleased studio recordings, demos, alternate takes, live tracks and rarities spanning 1989 to 2006, according to the press release. Included will be alternate takes of "Dignity," "Series of Dreams," and a Robert Johnson cover ("32-20 Blues").

Peeking in the Bird's Nest

On Tuesday, I had my first opportunity to enter the sanctified territory known as the Bird's Nest, i.e. National Stadium. I had a ticket to Sunday's marathon finish but passed it up to catch the women's marathoners run outside through the south gates of the Temple of Heaven. I wouldn't say security into the Bird's Nest was particularly tight, but it was very long. To get from the line 10 subway stop into the stadium, a distance of several blocks, took over an hour. First, I switched from line 10 to line 8, a new subway line that only covers the Olympic area. Although on the map these two lines interchange, in reality you have to walk up outside of line 10, past rows and rows of scalpers, take a circuitous route all the way around a fence surrounding the plaza for the line 8 stop, then get into a long security line. Ticketholders patiently waited in the hot sun, the games beginning in the stadium as they stood there waiting their turn. Ten days into th sporting events, you would have thought this process would have been streamlined a bit. At the gate, bags were sent through an x-ray machine and spectators were given a cursory body check to look for weapons or other banned articles. Then we got into the crowded subway line. The subway inexplicably skipped the Olympic Sports Center (the stop right in front of the Bird's Nest) and continued on to the next stop–apparently, this crucial subway stop was never opened up for public use. This meant that we had get out of the subway stop, then walk the equivalent of several blocks back the way we'd come in order to get to the stadium. The events on tab for the day were the women's 200-m heats, women's long jump trials, and the javelin trials–with no gold medals on the line, there wasn't much excitement, but it was nice to see these events live after watching many on TV. My seat was in the last row of the lower deck–not an ideal vantage point. So I moved to the sand pit for the long jumpers, where I was barely able to get photos by pushing the long end of my cheap 55-250mm Canon kit lens. Really, you need a lens with a reach of at least 600mm to handle this sort of job. Viewed on the playing field in a stadium built for 91,000 spectators, the event participants were but little dots. Despite the hefty going prices for Bird's Nest tickets in the scalpers market, there were large swaths of seats still empty in the lower deck. The food on hand was the same as it has been for all Olympic events--Snickers bars, potato chips, biscuits, hot dogs on a stick. Nothing filling, and nothing representing China. The only good thing about the snack vendors were the prices, high for China, but only about one-fifth of what the equivalent would cost at U.S. sporting events. A can of beer went for about 70 cents, a hot dog cost about 40 cents. The best jumpers and throwers qualified early on, so we were left watching the others make vigorous efforts to grab one of the remaining spots in the finals. One of those disqualified was Leryn Franco, a glamorous Paraguayan model/athlete that Yahoo gossip writers have been jabbering on about. She finished second-to-last. Jade Johnson, a British jumper, was one of the better athletes still on the field–she qualified on her third and final attempt. Outside of the stadium, I got to see the most exciting event of the day. The Olympic Green (a misnomer, the color green is barely visible on this long Tiananmen Square-esque concrete sidewalk plaza) had long rows of fountains set to classical music. On this boiling hot day, many people, especially children, dashed through the water. This breath of spontaneity in a relatively stale Olympic environment made for many of the best photos I've been able to obtain.

I had a brief look at the Kodak exhibit (mostly, a bunch of card-reading photo printing kiosks), but mostly skipped the corporate displays, some of which I've heard were impressive to look at. Heading from there, I caught a gathering of people watching the China vs. China women's beach volleyball semi-finals, and sat down to watch it there with them on a super-size Samsung screen laid out before an artificial lawn. This was quite a game. Xue Chen and Zhang Xi won the first set in extra time, then were one point away from winning the second set but couldn't quite put the match away. They got several match points, then each time Tian Jia and Wang Jie would come back, dogging them. Finally, Tian and Wang took the set 29-27. Having broken Xue and Zhang down, Tian and Wang moved swiftly through a 15-8 tiebreaker and celebrating their victory in the sand, before going onto a loss against the unbeatable American duo of Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh in the gold medal match.

Having heard there would be a 'performance' at 3:30, I decided to stay in the Olympic area and headed to look for some food. The only restaurant in the Olympic village was a McDonald's. All the seats in the standard-size McDonald's restaurant were easily taken, so people bought their food to go and took it outside, looking for an awning to catch some shade. After grabbing a couple hamburgers, I went upstairs to walk around. Inquiring at an information booth, I discovered that the daily performances at the Olympic Green were merely performances by the "Fuwa" Olympic animal mascots--the same mascots who have been performing at football matches, beach volleyball, baseball, etc. I got the hell out of there and headed home.

Just Don't Tell The Children

Out here, they have a saying "everything is fake but your mother." Well, it's a good thing that they didn't have a mothers presentation during the Olympic Opening Ceremony. Following up on news that fireworks were faked for TV and that the cute girl 'singing' was really lip-syncing, now comes the news that China's presentation of its 56 children from 56 ethnic groups was also faked. Those were not minority children. Almost all were from the Han majority.

From field hockey to the camera mall

Playing a bit of catchup...

On August 11, I had my first opportunity to enter the Olympic Green area. My friend James knew someone with men's field hockey tickets to unload and we picked them up at face value. Much has been made of the new subway lines in Beijing. Actually, the process for getting to the major Olympics venues is fairly convoluted. We took the 10 subway line and then transferred to a very crowded standing-room-only bus that took us northward to the field hockey stadium (next door to archery). Along the way, we passed Olympic village, new apartment buildings with many national flags hanging from the windows, many of which I did not recognize. The facilities were secured with high chain-linked fences and heavily armed guards. We saw two games, Germany vs. China and Britain vs. Pakistan. When the national anthem was played for the Germany vs. China game, the stands were almost empty. Later in the day, they filled out a bit, but there were still thousands of unused seats. It was fun to be there although field hockey is not my favorite sport. The ball makes an annoying clink every time someone hits it and goal line action is frequently halted for penalties (apparently, players often instigate penalties on purpose by hitting the ball against their opponents' feet). We sat next to a couple of grandfather and grandson from India who said they'd made a spur of the moment decision a few days earlier to go see the Olympics. Historically, India has had a strong field hockey team, but this year they had failed to qualify. India, a nation of more than a billion people, has had only limited Olympic success. Our new friends for the day spoke of the reasons for this, including political corruption–explanations that were echoed later that day in a New York Times article covering Abhinav Bindra's gold medal in the 10-meter air rifle competition. During the halftime for each day, cheerleaders came out to perform. During the British game, James stood up and roused the crowd leading cheers of "Yingguo Jiayou!" and various taunts against the Pakistani team. He got some help from the Chinese around him, but might have gotten more echoes from around the arena if he'd shouted some of the chants in English.

After the field hockey game, I headed to the Wukesong area, where baseball and basketball are being played. Actually, I was going there to look for a photo mall I had visited five years earlier. I remembered it was in the middle of nowhere... upon finding it, my first thought was it was in an area that makes the middle of nowhere look like mid-town Manhattan. I got out of the subway station and headed north along a highway, passing the sports stadiums, some new developments, getting a bit discouraged, asking for directions, being pointed onward ahead, then... I ended up at a building that looked exactly like a run-down strip mall in America–a rare sight in China, where most people use public transportation and low-storey buildings with parking lot fronts are rare. Inside the building was a camera collector's dream... numerous used camera shops, along with new camera retailers and wedding and costume shops. The new camera stores focused on equipment a bit expensive for my taste... many featured Leicas and Hasselblads, clearly some of their shoppers had a bigger budget than I did. I wanted to see if I could get any long-range zoom equipment in the $100-$200 range, even if it was a cheap mirror reflex lens. I didn't have any luck on that end but the mall was a fascinating place to stroll around in.

Liu Xiang pulls up short

Just saw Liu Xiang pull out of his heat in the 110-m hurdles. Sorry not to see him compete in the finals, that would have been quite a matchup against Dayron Robles (Cuba). They were given his first heat in the preliminaries full press here... following him throughout his stretches, showing scenes from a chopper over the stadium, etc. There were four CCTV commentators on splits screens talking as he lined up and set up his starting blocks. He seemed fine until he ran out for a practice hurdle from the blocks, then he started grimacing and grabbing his leg. I'm not sure what the nature of his injury is (serious? not serious?), but Liu Xiang was under enormous pressure. One man representing the aspirations of 1.3 billion people in a short sprint in front of 91,000 spectators is a lot of heat to handle. Fans dressed in face paint and waving flags were cheering loudly in the stadium. He lined up to race but it was clear he didn't feel alright. After a false start was called in the race, he turned away and pulled his stickers off, then walked inside and sat down alone. CCTV1 cut to commercial.

Net Nanny Report: Olympic Edition

Net Nanny report: With the Olympics in town, Internet use is a little easier than it has been in the past. I have not had any trouble accessing English Wikipedia, for example. But by and large, roadblocks are still significant. Here are things that cannot be done without proxy: access RSS feeds, read most URLs with "blog" in the title (e.g., the L.A. Times sports blog... sensitive information, I know), type new postings into Blogspot, or get into Facebook (access rate without a proxy is running at about 35 percent; with proxy, access is 100 percent, hmmmm... what could be the problem here?). The Internet works better here than Zhejiang province. I was there two weeks ago and efforts to access Yahoo! Mail or Facebook were constantly redirected to Baidu, a Chinese search engine and Google competitor, popular here for its hands-off policy toward online exchanges of copyrighted material.

Google Images is consistently filtered throughout China; generally, if you do an image search you can pull up a page of results but if you look any further to page two or beyond you begin to pull up "page not found" messages. Google's cache folders are also always blocked. In recent years, newspapers are almost never blocked. An exception can be found at sensitive times, such as the day last spring when protests broke out in the Chinese province that begins with a T (in English). The BBC is usually blocked and CNN is sometimes blocked. Web pages with a .org in the URL are at high risk of being blocked, regardless of the content within them.

That's my firsthand experience report. Over and out.

China's win over Germany

Just watched China's impressive basketball win over Germany on TV... a very tight game in the end, China had an eight-point lead at the end, then almost blew it, letting Germany come within a point before Yi Jianlian put the game away with a crucial shot. News reports of the game are not online yet but I presume they will be momentarily.

Spent this morning shooting photos outside the Bird's Nest (National Stadium) and then strolling through some of the neighborhoods around the Drum Tower.

Looking for the crowd

We have already entered Day Eight of the Olympics... hard to believe things pass so quickly. China is leading in the Gold count, Michael Phelps is breaking records left and right, and the proceedings (aside from one murder and occasional protests) have gone relatively smoothly for the event organizers here in China. One exception... seats at many Olympic venues have been empty and IOC officials have asked the Chinese government to do whatever they need to fill those seats.

This was something I noticed right away when attending soccer on Aug 7th, one day before the opening ceremony. While most seats in the lower section were filled, the upper section had significant gaps. There was also a large wing in the lower section of VIP seats that were almost entirely empty--this has been a recurring feature at other events as well. In the boxing gymnasium, one entire side of the arena is basically reserved for VIPs (press, Olympic officials, government officials, etc.). These seats are almost entirely empty. Even in sections where tickets were sold for fans, attendance has been sparse at all of the events I've attended... field hockey, boxing, beach volleyball. Meanwhile, outside scalpers are demanding prices of 2,000 yuan or higher for seats (these prices can often be negotiated down to a few hundred yuan. Not quite the people's games. In an effort to make things easier for tickets to get passed to fans, IOC officials have asked to ease up on some of their prisoner-of-war camp style barriers, which have sub-divided the Olympic village into a series of separate zones for each block of stadiums.

Lets try to catch up recent activities, starting with the night of the 10th, where I left you in my last post at the Tun Bar (not really a location you want to rest in for several days). As I drank my shooters, I was approached by a very effeminate waiter who asked me a series of quiz questions... How do you say silver and bronze medal in English? Who do you think will win more medals, China or America?

Fifteen minutes after arrival, with no signs of life appearing at the Tun, I decided to head out, where I discovered a pouring rain storm. I decided to make a dash through it to the main Sanlitun bar street. Arriving there soaked, I was invited into the first bar on the block... I stopped in for a beer. A pop-rock band that I assume was Filipino (speaking only of my personal experience, about 80 percent of the house rock bands in China are Filipino... Chinese ensembles tend to feature more karaoke-esque pop ballads) came onto the stage. There were three players alternating on vocals... a woman singer whose mid-riff was a bit too large for the attire she was wearing, an off-key keyboardist, and a guitar player who was the only one in the group who could actually sing. Swigging down the beer and escaping from that joint, I was on the street again, losing hope that I would find a place to watch the basketball game. I started up the street but could only get most of the way down the block because of incredible rain. I stopped under an awning for awhile, chatting with the doormen, then headed to the awning by the last bar, where the doorman convinced me to go in by an offer of a $2 beer ($2 is a standard price in China, but on Sanlitun most bars charge around $6 for a beer). Inside, I ran into a woman from Australia and a man from Fiji. They were trying to get to a bar called the Pavilion but the wait staff refused to tell them where it was, saying that could not help out a competitor. The Chinese soccer team was losing to Belgium on a TV screen. Meanwhile, the small bar provided it's own entertainment... first a belly dancer, than a go-go dancer (common in Chinese discos), then a Chinese pop trio doing vocals with keyboard backing. After nursing my beer, I gave up on finding a busy bar to catch a picture of people watching the basketball game (just starting as I left), and decided to catch it at home. The Chinese team did well in the first few minutes that I watched, Yao Ming leading with a nice three-point shot right off the bat and the Chinese team taking a lead, but by the time I got home the tide had changed... America had a 9-point lead but it was clear they were on their way to blowout.

Good morning world! Just kidding. I have been up for several hours. On the way to catch boxing at Worker's Gymnasium... an interesting title. If a new stadium was built today, you can guarantee that it would not be named in honor of workers. It might be called... Bird's Nest? (Actually, the formal title of the Bird's Nest is Beijing National Stadium.) The workers who built Olympic Village in Beijing have been in short supply. I have been here for four days now and haven't seen any. A recent story in the New York Times explains why: factory furloughs and an unofficial policy encouraging migrants (and I suspect, poor people generally) to leave Beijing during the Olympics.

Aside from heavy rush hour congestion on Line 1 and on some of the lines headed toward Olympic venues, the subways have been far emptier than I remember them... the last time I came to Beijing, I couldn't even fit on the morning subway! This week, I have been to find a seat on more than half of my rides--believe me, an unusual circumstance. On the subways, they have TVs showing the Olympic games, which makes the rides pass by a lot more quickly, at least when the TVs are not frozen (yesterday, they were frozen throughout the afternoon). I wish Chinese telecasters learned something about editing... showing swimmers wave and spit on the diving board, then cutting to commercial just as they were diving into the water in the 400-meter medley is not good programming! It's damn annoying.

It reminds me of watching HBO last week in Zhejiang province, where I was teaching this summer... they always cut to commercial in mid-sentence. Often, the localized version of HBO would show an hour of a movie (say, "Flight Plan,"), then just as the suspense was building, cut to another movie that you'd already seen a couple days before ("Tenacious D. and whatever about the guitar pick"). Also, they coupled the HBO logo in the upper right corner with a much larger Chinese logo in the upper left corner... often blocking off actors faces. It makes the quality of the dodgy DVD-9's sold on street corners (but not during the Olympics) look good by comparison.

Lets try and catch up a bit... Sunday afternoon, my plans were curtailed a bit because of rain. In the evening, I headed out to the Sanlitun Bar district hoping to catch a crowd seen of watching the U.S.-China men's basketball matchup, which had been advertised in the media as a super-huge must-watch event. First I headed to the Tun Bar, described as a sports bar with large screen TVs and 5 kuai (70-cent) shooters on Sunday nights--a good deal in a city where drink prices start at $4 and go ever upward from there. Finding the bar was tricky... it is buried way back in a back alley behind a hotel and some commercial offices. I stumbled through the rain and got there, only to discover that the place was empty. It had a small theater size TV screen with poor resolution showing weightlifting (Chinese TV, like most countries, tends to focus on sports that its nationals excel in... so we've been getting to see a lot of sharpshooting, weightlifting, ping-pong, badminton and diving)... the basketball game was still an hour or two away. There was only one other customer in the place and more than a dozen employees, so needless to say I felt over-served. I ordered four drinks: a Cowboy, a Raging Bull, a Crazy Dave, and a Red, White and Blue.

*** Boxing time. Will be back later today.

I took a look at the beach volleyball lineup for Wednesday. Turns out one of the matches will be Russia vs. Georgia. This could be interesting. Things are beginning to look like hell out there--and I by there, I don't mean Beijing.

Day 2 of the Olympics (August 9) began early for me. Told that there would be performances on Tiananmen Square from 7:30 to 9 each morning, we headed down early in a cab. Upon arrival, I found there was a performance–a very large tai chi demonstration–but the entire square was still shut off, as it had been throughout the day August 8, presumably in an effort to thwart protests. I asked a police officer if the square would be opening up and he said, "It's possible in the afternoon. Or maybe tomorrow evening." So I bailed and headed to wander through some hutong alleys nearby... a friend later reported that Tiananmen Square finally opened to the public sometime that morning. A small protest was also held on the square by a pro-Tibetan group around noon; plain-clothed officers soon carted the protesters away. By then, I was far away on another side of the city.

Walking through the hutongs south of Tiananmen Square, I had an opportunity to see some of Beijing's dwindling street life–much of the city is composed of places like the building where I am lodging for the week, a complex of faceless high-storey buildings guarded by security officers at staged checkpoints. The hutongs, while quite primitive (and a little smelly) have an active street culture, with many relatives lounging on their doorsteps, cheap eats, and interesting-looking little buildings.

From there, I went to Chaoyang Park, where the beach volleyball events will be held. I walked around a lake just south of the Olympic venue–a few middle-aged men were having an intense discussion on the finer points of shadow boxing.

In the afteroon, I was exhausted from the soaring heat (news agencies have reported temperatures in the high-90's in the first few days of the Olympics, and a U.S. boxer trying to drop weight collapsed from heat and dehydration, ruining his medal hopes). I took a nap and then settled into a coffeeshop where I could surf the Internet. I found a scalper selling tickets to beach volleyball events and arranged to meet him to purchase a ticket... the price was very high, but far below the highest prices... tickets for events like gymnastics and basketball are being advertised on the Internet for hundreds of dollars.

I also came across the sad news that an American relative of a U.S. volleyball coach had been killed, and several other people (his wife and a tour guide) attacked by a knife-wielding man from Hangzhou. I traveled to the murder scene, a 13th century Drum Tower in the center of the city. The building was closed, but otherwise it did not look like anything was amiss... As I departed, more and more TV cameras were arriving. As the Associated Press noted in its coverage, attacks on foreigners are relatively rare in China. It cast a rather somber mood onto the city for the evening.

Later that evening, I found myself near the Drum Tower again, this time to see the Re-TROS, a raging punk band (real punk, ala Iggy Pop and Patti Smith) whose guitarist (Hua Dong) and bass player (Liu Min) originally came out of the punk scene in Nanjing. They were preceded at the MAO Live House by an alternative rock band and a dj electronica duo, Zig Zag. I didn't find Zig Zag's performance very inspiring (they seemed to be mostly altering the speed on well-known tracks), and spent most of their set escaping the sweaty heat of the music room by sitting in the hallway and drinking some whiskey and coke. The Re-TROS set, though, was very inspired–music as it should be, confident and unpredictable, spinning through a wild set with disregard for comfort and safety. Liu is a stellar bass player and she gave the band a strong line to carry. The drummer was also rocking. Hua spent most of the show turning his back to half or all of the audience–but he could be forgiven, because his roaring vocals left no doubt that this was live show.

The next morning, I went to meet my ticket re-seller... there was a bit of a mix-up and he wasn't at the meeting point, so he agreed to come see me close to where I'm staying, and even gave me a discount on the price (he still made a hefty profit on the sale). I won't foreshadow what I'll be doing this evening, but I will write about it later on. After two days, I'm starting to get settled in Beijing–a hot city (did I mention that enough) where even getting from one building to the one next door seemingly requires the use of a horse or a trolley car.

Watching the Opening Ceremony on TV right now. Quite a spectacle. Why on TV? Well, I was planning on going to a party to shoot the overlook of Olympic Village, but the whole northern part of the city was split in two by police barricades and after trying four taxis and walking several miles I gave up and came home... Enjoying the many costumes from various countries. Can't say that I'm surprised that the Opening Ceremony is a fine show--the Chinese are professionals when it comes to putting on this kind of performance.

Flew to Beijing on Shanghai Airlines this morning. After recent flights out of Chengdu and Lijiang, where lines were slower than BWI right after 9-11, this flight was relatively smooth. It was helped, no doubt, by there being a row full of counters dedicated solely to Beijing flights.

This being China, the company colors for Shanghai Airlines were of course red and yellow (there are only two colors in China). Red and yellow flowers were installed by the windows and the stewardesses wore rather garish-looking red patterned qipaos. The airline did feed us, however--something that American airlines stopped doing long ago (small bags of pretzels do not qualify).

Arriving in Beijing, I was pleased to discover that they now have an express train straight from the airport to the city. Waiting for the train in the steamy heat, I looked out and saw the smoggy haze that has been getting so much attention lately. Standing at a transfer station, I watched CCTV's continuing coverage of the torch relay. On a day when visitors from all over the world in town and international athletes were preparing to begin competition tomorrow, showing people running down a street with a torch for the umpteenth day was a surprisingly boring choice. It was followed, by a few profiles of Chinese athletes, then an international story!... a brief series of clips of Marion Jones confessing to taking performance-enhancing drugs. Getting off the subway, I met up with my friend James, who has been most generous to offer me lodging for the current journey. James seemed in good spirits, full of wry humor. He has tickets to the opening ceremony, lucky bastard.

After some chit-chat and a lunch of lunch meat and crackers, I went off to Tiananmen Square, which was actually closed; maybe to prepare for tonight's Opening Ceremony? Don't know. In any case, I walked around gathering two kinds of pictures... Chinese fans wearing stickers and bandanas and police officers and soldiers. I saw virtually no emblems represented other than Chinese. I thought back to the World Cup in Paris in 1998... the opening parade then had been CRAZY, all sorts of jumping painted fans from all over the world.

...That is why it is refreshing now to see the Opening Ceremony, and all the people gathered from many countries, in their national attire... it reminds you that the Olympics are an international event... They are bringing out the Olympic flag now. I wonder who will light the torch... A Chinese weightlifter is running with it... Now a gymnast is flying through the air.

Actually, I missed seeing who lit the torch. The running of the torch through the Bird's Nest took so long that I walked into the kitchen to get another beer and when I came back a giant torch had been lit. One world, one dream! Welcome to Beijing.

After all the buildup to the Olympics, the soccer games tonight in Shanghai were a pleasant and subdued affair. There was a significant police presence outside the stadium (spectators purposefully had to walk past a row of officers several hundred meters long before entering an airport-style security check), but in the venue itself security was kept in the backdrop, with many officers dressed in casual-looking Scout-style uniforms. There were a few fans dressed in wigs and face paint, mostly supporting Argentina and Australia (two of the four teams competing in the evening's matches). There were also a couple flags hung down, but no banners–presumably, these are not allowed, although I forgot the exact phraseology on the rule sheet. I did get my SLR in! As did many other people. So the Popular Photography guide to photographing at the Olympics appears to have been wrong, at least in this instance. Food and beverages at the stadium were interesting... sodas and beer cost the equivalent of about 75 cents, well below stadium pricing in the West. The food was kind of a lackluster affair... bags of cheese sticks, awful beef jerky, sausage... the kind of food you find at small stands next to remote bus stops in China. The games were fun to watch... I even found myself interested in soccer for a bit.

China Daily is leading today's news with a story on whether the Olympic theme song will be sung in English or Chinese... meanwhile, elsewhere on the Web blogs are reporting that Japanese reporters were beat up in Xinjiang and newspapers are leading with the announcement that Lopez Lomong, a former 'Lost Boy of Sudan,' will be the U.S. flagbearer at the opening ceremony... this comes a day after Olympic speedskating and Darfur activist Joey Cheeks had his visa revoked 24 hours before departure.