olympics

I arrived in class one August Friday morning, my teacher immediately launched into an hour-long criticism session of my Regular Zhou column and the Tianjin Lǎobǎixìng Olympic interviews video. Turns out she’s not a big fan. I won’t try to rewrite the whole conversation, but I’ll try to summarize her complaints because I [...]
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Below is the un-censored version of a story that I wrote for the Sept. issue of a local expat magazine about our Opening Ceremony experience. It was originally rejected by the Chinese editor, who deemed it “too negative and too sensitive.” The red text is what I deleted or completely reworked to make [...]
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Imagethief, being an arrogant son of a bitch and a bona-fide member of the Ivory Tower Elite, is seldom interested in what the common man has to say. Nothing gets me to change the channel faster than an "iReport" segment on CNN, or the BBC equivalent. Of course, most professional pundits are equally useless, so in a sense, my contempt is equal-opportunity. There is a limited amount of good, thoughtful analysis out there. And then there is a sea of crap (arguably including this blog).
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Somehow, I missed this earlier but now bring you the news that Liuzhou Government has handed over ¥1,000,000 of the locals' money to the city's Olympic gold medal winners.

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We needed closure. We returned to Tianjin’s “Milky Way Plaza” (银河广场 / yínhé guǎngchǎng) for the Closing Ceremonies. The Olympics was fun but finally over; maybe now China would started getting back to “normal.”

The crowd was larger than it was for the Olympic matches shown nightly on the big screen, but smaller and [...]
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Like a giant kid who's been holding a fart in during a three week elevator ride, Beijing has apparently relaxed its many industrial sphincters and let a big one rip. That's the only way I can explain the lighting-fast deterioration in air quality. In the space of about 36 hours the skies have transformed from the Olympic blue we all got perhaps just a bit too used to into standard northeastern industrial fug. Checking the SEPA website I was depressed to see that Beijing's air is actually worse than notorious air-pollution disaster areas Xian and Shijiazhuang. Payback's a bitch.

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Black and White Cat compares an August 10th New York Times article on Beijing's preparation for the Olympics with a heavily "improved" version run in translation in the Beijing Evening News (with attribution).
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Over the past three days, a cool has descended on the Chinese capital. In the span of just over two weeks, the Beijing Olympics have transformed from the most hotly anticipated event in the history of the People’s Republic of China, to the annals of modern Chinese history. Around Beijing, the hangover from [...]
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From The Independent’s slideshow of Olympic photographs.
Now that the Olympics are over, the foreign media and China observers are all quick to speculate about what will happen in the post-Olympic era.
Here’s a brief sampling of what’s being addressed:
-  The economy:  While many foreign companies are concerned about a possible downturn, Chinese officials point out that [...]

During the entire Olympics period, the NY Times has many more "objective" articles regarding China. Recently however, they've taken it to another level - basically suggesting that the US should learn from China. Previously it was the interesting pros of having an authoritarian government and the benefits of being a communal society. Now its the inward focus and own-nation building.
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