Results tagged “asiangames”

With the Asian Games coming up in November 2010 in Guangzhou, host China is of course looking to make the best showing that it can in every sport. To that end, China's senior national cricket team entered its first competition last week in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Playing at the Asian Cricket Council Trophy Challenge, an event that does not include such powerhouses as India and Pakistan, China showed it has a ways to go to become a competitive team. The team lost by wide margins to Iran, Thailand and Maldives before finally beating Myanmar in the seventh-place game by 118 runs (complete tournament results here).

In a repeat of the utter ridiculousness of the Chinese gymnastics team being made to promise to be injury- and drug-free, the latest news is that the Chinese soccer team has been offered a million dollars as a reward and made to recite the following vow:

“I pledge to advance to the World Cup, which is the professional goal that we strive for… We swear by death to kill along the bloody road of defending the honour of the motherland and realise our youthful dreams.”

Pretty chilling stuff. For the qualifying rounds, China has been placed in a "group of death" that includes Australia, Asian champions Iraq and Asian Games winner Qatar.

A mountain in Fumin prefecture, Yunnan province, has been painted green in order to "greenify" (绿化）what was considered by many to be an eyesore. According to news reports, the painting project began in July of last year. Now that this project has gotten widespread media attention, local authorities are scrambling to figure out who allowed this to happen. Actually, everyone knows that the man behind the project was a Sichuan businessman surnamed Du, who married a local woman and lives in sight of this mountain. In fact, his relationship with the mountain extends further back; the mountain had been contracted out to him by the local government. For awhile (we don't know when he assumed control of it), he had made some money quarrying the mountain for (what we assume is) granite, but after about twenty years of quarrying, the mountain and surrounding environment had become depleted, and the local government closed it down in 2000.

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