And their kid will have a US birth certificate.
Bwaaaaaaahahahahahahahhhahahaaaaa!

nanheyangrouchuan

Was elephant also on the menu?

It doesn't surprise me really. Back home in the UK we have a very famous Aquarium that houses lots of different type of sharks and they started a campaign to get local chinese restaurants to stop selling sharks fin and become 'Friends of Sharks' (corny i know).

Several restaurants signed up and advertised the fact that they were 'Shark Friendly', but for some reason every sun we would go for Yum-Cha, if you were chinese and spoke chinese shark's fin soup would find it's way onto your table.

from nanheyangrouchuan

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118642645285089491.html?mod=hpp_us_whats_news

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OLYMPICS WATCH
A Year Out, Beijing Games
Test China's Rising Power
As Sponsors Line Up,
Problems Like Pollution
Prove Tough to Control
By MEI FONG, GEOFFREY A. FOWLER and SHAI OSTER
August 7, 2007; Page A1

BEIJING -- The opening ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games may be a year away, but authorities are already fretting about what to do if it rains on their roofless stadium.

So Zhang Qiang, head of Beijing's Office of Weather Manipulation, has been firing chemical-laced rockets at rain clouds. He hopes to figure out a way to keep the ceremonies dry by triggering cloudbursts away from the city.

"We've already made some progress preventing small rain," says Mr. Zhang. "But it's hard for us to prevent strong storms."
[Promises slideshow]
Associated Press
Workers spray green coloring onto grass beside Beijing's Avenue of Eternal Peace in February 2001 in preparation for a visit by the International Olympic Committee's assessment team.

Beijing's efforts to control Mother Nature show just how hard government planners are struggling to deliver a flawless Olympic spectacle -- widely viewed as a metaphor for China's rising power. But they also illustrate the many tricky variables -- like cleaner air, open media access and human rights -- that are dogging city and Olympic officials a year in advance of the Games. Increasingly, Beijing is finding that China's economic rise is making it difficult to deliver on some of the ambitious Olympic promises it made.

In several ways, the city has made great strides. Beijing is well ahead, logistically, in preparing for the influx of more than two million Olympics spectators from China and abroad. All but one of the 37 new or refurbished hosting structures are on track to be completed by year end. (See related article on page D1.) Even places with no direct role in the Games are being spruced up. Hohhot, a city in Inner Mongolia that isn't hosting any sporting events, is getting a new $70 million airport and highway linking it with Beijing -- just in case rain stalls Beijing's airport traffic. Roads in faraway Sichuan, Guizhou and Shenzhen are being paved in the name of the Olympics.

And thanks to booming corporate interest in China's domestic consumer market, there are enough sponsorships, worth roughly $1.5 billion thus far, to ensure that 2008 will be the most commercially successful Games ever. Volkswagen AG, Johnson & Johnson and a clutch of other sponsors are shelling out unprecedented sums, in some cases well over $100 million, to promote themselves.

Not since the 1996 Atlanta Games has there been a venue with such a high-profile advertising potential. Martin Sorrell, chief executive of advertising giant WPP Group PLC, declared, it's "difficult to think of any sporting or cultural event in the world that could be bigger."

Big Promises

But other key factors are looking far less certain, despite Beijing's outsize promises to the International Olympic Committee when it bid for the 2008 Games seven years ago.

In Beijing's pitch, Liu Jingmin, then-deputy mayor, said that the Games would help boost the capital city's prospects from an economic and foreign-relations standpoint. "By applying for the Olympics, we want to promote not just the city's development, but the development of society, including democracy and human rights," Mr. Liu said at the time.
[Promises text box]

Chinese officials also made bold pledges to improve the city's environmental conditions. They promised to reduce Beijing's notoriously high levels of particulate matter -- particles and liquid droplets laden with poisons from smokestacks and auto exhaust. They also targeted a 60% reduction in emissions from new cars in the years leading up to the Games, according to bid documents.

So far, there's been little progress on either front. Levels of nitrogen dioxide currently exceed the World Health Organization's clean-air guidelines by 78%. This June, the city recorded its worst air-quality levels in seven years, with three times the particulate matter of New York City. Auto emissions haven't budged much due to rapidly rising car ownership in the city. More than 1,000 autos are now added to the roads daily, helping to fill the skies with a stinging haze so dense that on some days it is difficult to see tall buildings.

Worried officials are currently considering a plan to ban many cars for two weeks this month as a test run to clear the air. Traffic restrictions are also being planned during the Games, although exact guidelines have yet to be set.

Pollution has become a big concern for athletes hoping to shatter records. In 2008, U.S. athletes will be equipped with activated charcoal masks, ibuprofen and asthma medication to combat Beijing's pollution, says Randy Wilber at the U.S. Organizing Committee, an expert on helping athletes adapt to difficult conditions. Beijing's high levels of carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide could cause breathing problems for runners, while high levels of sulfur dioxide irritates eyes and could pose a problem for shooters and archers, he says.

IOC officials nevertheless say they're pleased with Beijing's progress. "Overall, the environmental effort is second to none," says Simon Balderstone, who advises the IOC on environmental issues.

Some issues are of Beijing's own making. China has spent far more time and money on development than on the environment. City planning has placed a premium on growth, leading to an unmanageable sprawl that encourages car ownership. At the same time, development of public transportation has stalled. Beijing has about 70 miles of subway lines for 13 million people, less than a third of London, which has only about half Beijing's population.
[Office of Weather Manipulation]
Staff members from Beijing's Office of Weather Manipulation stand next to a two-pipe cannon used for rain reduction and cloud dispersion. China hopes to ensure perfect weather for next year's Games.

Throughout this massive nation, the Games have swollen into a civic project of historic scale, designed to showcase the emergence of Beijing and much of China from a developing country into a first-world power. At last count, China is spending $38 billion on its Games, according to Zhong Hongwu, an economics professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Other infrastructure projects designed to get Beijing camera-ready for the Games could push the total to $67 billion, more than four time the record amount spent by Athens for the 2004 Olympics.

The Games are slated to commence on Aug. 8, 2008, a date carefully chosen by the Chinese for its significance in numerology. August has become the deadline for China's roll-out of third-generation, or 3G, mobile-phone networks -- technology already used in parts of Europe and Asia that enables high-speed Internet surfing and wireless video downloads. Beijing organizers have also said they aim to teach conversational English to some 4.2 million residents by that date.

'Too Grandiose'

"Beijing's promises are almost too grandiose," says Greg Groggel, who is currently researching the Olympics' effect on six cities including Mexico City, Munich and Seoul under a grant from the Thomas J. Watson Foundation.

Another new headache: Beijing also promised hygienic and congenial conditions to house world-class athletes. Yet China is now fending off plenty of queries related to food safety and other exports.

Senior IOC officials declined interview requests for this story. In a statement issued last week, IOC President Jacques Rogge said, "Sport is part of civil society and as such, is and must be connected to the environment in which it exists. With Beijing, one of the great challenges will be to manage expectations that the Olympic Games can influence China's evolution to the extent many observers desire." The IOC believes Beijing's preparations have had a positive impact in areas like education, media regulations and environmental standards. "Whilst not denying that more remains to be done, we are encouraged by the progress in these areas," the statement said.

In making its bid, Beijing drew historical parallels to the 1988 Games in Seoul, which crowned South Korea's economic miracle. Korea was a military dictatorship when it won the Games in 1981, but in 1987 held its first direct and fair presidential elections.

"Having the Games there and having the media attention was a tremendous influence on the move towards a genuine democracy," says Dick Pound, an IOC member from Canada and outgoing head of WADA, the world antidoping agency. "I think they would never have made that kind of direct progress without having something like the Games," says Mr. Pound, who wrote a book on the 1988 Olympics.
[National Stadium]
Laborers work at the construction site of Beijing's National Olympic Stadium in June. All but one of the 37 new or refurbished hosting structures are on track to be completed by year end.

But beyond infrastructure and sponsorship contracts, Beijing faces difficulty in meeting other expectations, such as those related to human-rights issues. Groups like Amnesty International cite China's high execution and torture rates, as well as issues such as religious persecution and crackdowns on journalists and Internet users. In recent months, scandals involving slave labor have made international headlines.

During the bidding process, IOC members asked few tough questions about Beijing's human-rights and environmental record, at least in public. Some of Beijing's promises on human rights were vaguely worded, helping create "more expectations about these Games and what it will do to China, than any other," says John Bitove, a Canadian businessman who helped spearhead Toronto's failed bid for the 2008 Games.

To date, the IOC hasn't publicly criticized China over environmental and human-rights concerns. "Any expectations that the IOC should apply pressure on the Chinese government beyond Games preparations are misplaced, especially when they concern sovereign matters where it is not for the IOC to get involved," Mr. Rogge, the IOC president, said in his recent statement. "That was not part of the bid agreement with Beijing when it was awarded the Games, nor will it ever be the case for other host cities."

Beijing has promised that its Games would be "open" for reporters, and has eased many curbs on foreign journalists beginning this year. But it is resisting pressure to extend greater press freedom to local journalists, and other limitations on free speech continue.

In April, China police arrested a group of students protesting on Mount Everest against a proposal to have the Olympic torch pass through Tibet. Yesterday, members of the journalists group Reporters Without Borders were roughed up by Beijing police during a protest at which they called for the release of political prisoners and the opening of Web access, among other measures.
[The Olympic Sports Center in Beijing]
The Olympic Sports Center in Beijing

Envoys to Sudan

Now, activists also want the Olympics to fix widely acknowledged human-rights abuses far away in Sudan -- a major oil supplier to China. To date, China has sent envoys to Sudan and promised to help facilitate a peaceful solution to the Darfur crisis.

Amnesty International, which is planning demonstrations tomorrow at some Chinese embassies, said in a report issued yesterday that it "remains deeply concerned" about the IOC's "apparent reluctance" to take a more proactive stance on human-rights issues. Sharon Hom, the director of Human Rights in China, says that human-rights organizations originally welcomed the Beijing Olympics because it forced the government to agree, at least on paper, with Olympian ideals of openness and free press. "Now, here is a moment that will serve as a litmus test," she says.

Recognizing that it might fall short of some pledges, the Beijing Organizing Committee, known as Bocog, has lately been working to damp expectations.

"We can't please everybody," says Sun Weide, Bocog spokesman. "We have to remember that the Olympics are a sports event, not a political corrective."

Wang Guoqing, vice minister at the State Council Information Office under China's Cabinet, says people who try to politicize or boycott the Games are "hurting" China's 1.3 billion people. "If we always connect human-rights issues with the Olympics, then I don't think any country could successfully host the Olympics," Mr. Wang says.

Beijing officials, meanwhile, are busy mobilizing people on a scale that perhaps only China could. And IOC officials are already pointing out how the Beijing Games have apparently inspired more volunteerism, still relatively rare in modern Chinese society. Last week, Liu Qi, president of Bocog and the city's top Communist official, told the throngs at a pep rally "it's the responsibility of all Beijing citizens to hold a successful Olympics in 2008."

Before he spoke, the 1,600-strong crowd of nurses, trade-union workers, soldiers and officials sang songs with lyrics such as "Advance! Advance! The momentum of revolution cannot be stopped...Onward, toward Victory!"

Official polls indicate that over 90% of city residents support the Games. More than half a million have applied as volunteers across the country. Many Chinese say the Olympics represents a pinnacle of achievement after a century largely marked by incidences of poverty and turmoil.

Volunteering for the Olympics "makes me feel that I am totally another person, full of energy and happiness," says retiree Zhu Hongmei. The energetic 67-year-old not only sings in several troupes to raise the Games spirit, but will also bring her own bucket, mop and gloves to clean the stage after performances. "Whatever we do for the Olympics, we have no regrets and no complaints."

--Sue Feng contributed to this article.