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.

See the hot spots in Beijing

Just discovered Google Maps and their satellite pictures of Beijing.

Now you can follow our adventures by checking out the exact locations of where we were...

Start with our apartment in Embassy House. Make sure you select 'satellite' mode since street maps are not available.

Back to London

Back to London for Claire's graduation from Warwick University. Nice ceremony - just an hour - with a few good speeches. Especially the reminders to the students to remember and appreciate the sacrifices made by their parents. Exactly. On to lunch in Leamington with Claire's friend Bryony and her parents.

Great to see Rebecca and the rest of the family and catch up with friends. Weather is horrendous - major rains and flooding across the country.

Still, nice to see the sky for the first time in many weeks and to get out of the oppressive Beijing heat for a few days.

Only six months in China but already we are in price shock everywhere we go in London. And forgotten how to tip..though it's coming back fast.

Really fancied Chinese food tonight so we got a take away from Four Regions round the corner. Great lemon chicken - in Beijing they make it with a thick lemon curd sauce and it's much too sweet. Overall, though, the food lacked bite..where are those giant red chillies I'm used to?

Claire unwinds in Beijing

After months of hard revision and a gruelling set of finals at Warwick university, Claire is jetted to Beijing for some well deserved pampering from her parents.

Drinks, good food, tea ceremonies, preening and, of course, shopping were all part of a week long chill-out before returning for the farewell, end of year, ball.


Drinks at No Name Bar, Houhai Lake


Get those hands and feet in top shape

Fruit and veg shopping at the local market

Olympic hopefuls photo shoot

Tac and Lucy (our Mandarin teacher) pose with the five Fuwa's - Beijing's 2008 Olympic mascots.

Blue sky day at last

After nearly three weeks of dark, grey-black, polluted skies and steamy 35C+ temperatures we awoke on Sunday to a beautiful, blue sky, day. Determined to make the most of it, we went to Jingshan Park - a lovely park just north of the Forbidden City. In the centre of the park is a hill built with the earth that was excavated when the Forbidden City moat was dug.

The walk up the hill is well worth it and on a clear day the views across Beijing from the top are spectacular.
View south over the rooftops of the Forbidden City with the eerie bubble of the new National Concert Hall in the distance

Behai Park & lake to the west

Beijingers love their parks and open spaces and everyone was making the most of the weather. They picnic, exercise, play mah-jong and practise their ballroom dancing. But on weekends Jingshan attracts hundreds of people who gather in small groups to sing traditional Chinese ballads to the accompaniment of varied instruments. I have no idea what era the songs come from or what they represent but the pleasure the singers clearly get is contagious and we left with smiles on our faces.