Golden beaches and 'World Cup weary' cabbies

A couple items of interest from the ever-unlinkable South China Morning Post's online Mainland news rundown. These are quick hits that often leave many facts open to interpretation:

Shanghai Evening News: Sand from Hainan provides ‘golden beach’ for Shanghai
The metropolis’ first “golden beach” will open at the end of this month, to be filled with refined sand shipped from Hainan province. Construction of the 1.3 square kilometre artificial beach, which began in October last year, also used a chemical process to ensure its ocean was blue.

Hmmm. "Chemical process." Shanghaiist suggests you pack your goggles. We don't exactly know what a "golden beach" is but we guess it's something Shanghai's Dino Beach Park doesn't have. Besides, it's usually the water that is golden at amusement parks like that anyway, right?

According to Dino's website, Wednesdays are "Hot Babes Day" and Friday is "Cool Hunks Day." Here is what Frommer's says about the place:

The best water park in Shànghai boasts Asia's largest wave pool (.8 hectares/2 acres). As well, there are eight water slides, the longest measuring almost 150m (500 ft.), three swimming pools for kids, a mile-long river with rapids, and organized beach volleyball and water polo games. Factor in a slew of fast-food outlets, and you come up with the closest thing to an American-style water park in China.

And if that doesn't sell you on it, it's 95 degrees outside (that's 35 degrees to everyone else).

Here's another SCMP blurb we enjoyed:

Rest stops installed for World-Cup weary drivers
The traffic authority of Lanzhou has set up “sleep facilitation zones” in some areas of the city for drivers fatigued from watching late-night World Cup games to take a rest. The zones were set up after traffic police noticed a trend towards increased traffic accidents as taxi drivers confessed they were tired from watching soccer games.

That gives us an excuse to ask the following selfish question: Where is the best place in Shanghai to be Thursday night if you want to simultaneously watch the U.S.-Ghana match and the Italy-Czech Republic match?

By the way, American author and journalist Tom Vanderbilt is now in sole possession of first place in the Shanghaiist World Cup Challenge. Will we be shipping a Shanghaiist T-shirt to Brooklyn?