Take a chance on me

Having never seen Mamma Mia! during the last eight years in the West End, it seemed fitting that we should go and see it in Beijing.

A British based touring company put on a great production during a sell-out two week run at the impressive Poly theatre, complete with all words and music translated into Mandarin and displayed on the side of the stage.

The audience loved it and, although traditionally reserved, were up singing and dancing to Waterloo and other Bjorn & Benny classics.

Washed out in Qingdao

To Qingdao for a relaxing weekend to escape the blistering heat and grey skies of Beijing. Qingdao is a seaside resort about 1000km south east of Beijing. With the Laoshan mountains as a backdrop and a temperate climate, Qingdao is reputedly one of China's prettiest cities.

The city was a German concession in the late 19th century and the old town still bears witness to their influence. Red brick buildings and European tiled roofs create a Sino-Bavarian feel to the place. But the most noticeable, and lasting, symbol of the German presence is the Tsingtao brewery whose beer graces tables at Chinese restaurants across the world and is one of China's most visible and successful brands. In fact, for the next two weeks Qingdao celebrates its annual Beer Festival - an Oktoberfest style drinking and eating extravaganza with breweries from across the world putting their wares on show.

Unfortunately, we have chosen our weekend break during Qingdao's worst weather for a long time. 24 hours of non-stop thunderstorms and torrential rain have flooded streets throughout the town and we are virtually trapped in our hotel until Sunday.

Unable to walk around we head for indoors entertainment - the Tsingtao brewery museum (flashbacks to a wet few days in the Algarve some years ago when cabin fever took me to the Sagres cork museum). Everything you need to know - and more - about the history and brewing process of Tsingtao beer is can be found here, including a bizarre 'Tipsy Room' which allows you to experience being drunk without touching a drop.

Qingdao is also the host city for the Olympic sailing events next summer and a warm up regatta is running there in August, so the city's hotels are full of iron-pumping international sailors as well as beer festival drinkers.

A trip to the Beer Festival was a must and we wandered around the various brewery sponsored beer tents each of which was selling food, beer and providing entertainment. We had a beer and a snack at the Weihenstephaner beer tent - reputedly the oldest working brewery in the world - to find a very lively singer entertaining the crowd.

Qingdao attracts coach loads of Chinese tourists to it's beaches and waterfronts - many of whom have never seen the sea before and had a wonderful time splashing about and trying to avoid the breaking waves over the sea wall.

Several kilometres of sea front have been paved and planted to offer a beautiful walking path along the sea. We walked along here Sunday afternoon, as the sun came out, and enjoyed a beer overlooking the water before heading back to the airport.

One year to go - Beijing, we are ready..

Major activities this month in Beijing marking 'one year to go' to the start of the 2008 Olympics on 08/08/08.

Festivities include celebrations in Tienanmen Square; a month-long series of pre-Olympic international sporting activities to test out the new facilities and the launch of a catchy theme song - 'Beijing, we are ready' - sung by pop stars from the mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Apparently, all the venues apart from the national stadium (nicknamed Bird's Nest), are completed - on time - and the Bird' Nest will be done early next year. But it's not all blue skies for the Olympic preparations..actually, the skies are the main problem. The pollution levels in Beijing are not coming down fast enough despite moving major factories out of the city over the last few years and planting lots of trees. The 3M cars in Beijing are, apparently, a major cause of the problem as car ownership has risen much faster than expected. So, for four days this coming week more than 1.5M cars will be taken off the road to test the impact on pollution levels. Even licence plate numbers Friday and Sunday and odd numbers Saturday and Monday. It turns out our car is included in the test and finding a taxi to get to work next Friday will be a challenge, but less so than being off the road for 10 days next August.

We should be hearing soon how we did in the first round Olympic ticket lottery which closed end of June. This first lottery was only open to China residents who have an account with Bank of China or a Visa card (some positive re-enforcement for the official sponsors). We navigated our way through the complex on-line booking system along with another 700,000 hopeful applicants. You could apply for up to 10 events and there was a maximum placed on tickets for each event depending on perceived popularity (only 1 ticket per applicant for the opening and closing ceremonies, for example). A system of cascading entries into the lottery at different prices levels as well as optional entry into alternate events if your main entry failed meant that, after an hour, I gave up that trying to optimise our combined applications and just stuck in applications for a bunch of different events. We went for the opening ceremony, some diving, swimming, synchronised swimming and a few of the athletics finals. Let's see what happens.

However, we are getting into the Olympic spirit early by attending, this weekend, the finals of the women's beach volleyball Olympic warm-up event. Twenty four international teams are playing, all week, at the newly built beach volley ball court/field(?) at Chaoyang Park in the east of the city. 17,000 tons of sand have been shipped in from China's tropical beaches in Hainan province to create, apparently, the perfect playing surface.

View from my window 4

Came back from London to find the advertising hoarding outside my office window gone.

I suspected something was amiss when, for a long time, the ad on display was offering discounts on advertising space.
How will I now keep abreast of the latest Chinese advertising trends?

All I am left with is an ugly view of the Anzhen building air conditioning plant.