The portion size came back to bite us when the waitress arrived bearing our high-end swift-spit, upon which we were about inform the waitress that we already had plenty of tea, before realizing that the “cup” she was holding was actually our bowl of soup. We peered inside the cup/bowl to witness a tangle of measly translucent shreds submerged in viscous yam stock - barely a meal for the bird’s nest’s tiny tittering creator let alone us. more ›

The mega-clubs of European football are once again getting on their Asian summer tour horse! Reuters reports that Arsenal and current league leaders Manchester City will play a match at the Bird's Nest in Beijing on Friday July 27th, the same day the London Olympics kick off. more ›

In what's being called “an important project of China-US cultural exchanges,” (and probably an attempt to make use of the empty Bird’s Nest), an eight-day rodeo event featuring everything from professional bull riders to imported “athletic animals” will be held in Beijing this October. However, 68 Chinese animal rights groups refuse to keep their feelings on the issue silent (even though Deng Xiaoping loved himself a good rodeo back in the day). more ›

• Readings on 1999's "May 8th Tragedy" [The China Beat] The China Beat compiles readings on 1999's "May 8th Tragedy," when NATO missiles were fired into the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, killing three PRC nationals and sparking protests all around the world from angry Chinese citizens. Included are two news accounts from the time - one by the BBC and one by CNN, a Salon.com piece by a Beida foreign student and two later analysis of the situation.
• China eyes regular Olympic show [Financial Times] "Less than a year after China hosted the Olympics, Beijing is planning to put its stunningly choreographed opening ceremony back on as a regular evening show at the “Bird’s Nest”, the main stadium built for the games... Zhang Hengli, vice-president of the National Stadium Company that now runs the Bird’s Nest, said: “We want to put on a regular evening show like the opening ceremony. But that will take longer to realise [than other performances in the works for the stadium] because it requires a huge amount of money. We need to find an investor and deal with potential issues of intellectual property of the International Olympic Committee.”"
• Communists Can’t Outspend Capitalists as China Jobless Increase [Bloomberg] "Demand for work is so high that 5,000 students jostled at a Shanghai employment fair in March for 400 jobs available in the funeral industry. One woman with a management degree applied for a position as a mortician’s assistant to “make up the faces of the dead,” state media reported. The attraction: It paid 4,000 yuan ($585) a month, equal to what she might have earned in an office job two years ago."

Los Angeles Sol signs Chinese player more ›

Photo from arndalarm more ›

The local Xinming Evening News 《新民晚报》points us to this uber-harmonious picture of foreign prisoners housed in the Qingpu District Jail standing by their paper model of the Bird's Nest, made with lots of love over the course of 28 days with 18,000 pieces of paper. Awwwwww.... more ›

What do you think? more ›

Could today's Beijing be what New York City was at the turn of the 20th Century? According to this article in Vanity Fair, there are certainly many similarities to draw upon. Kurt Andersen starts off noting the correspondences between population growth and development of city infrastructure. In 1904 New York's first subway line opened. Likewise, Beijing's new subway system is spreading out at a breathtaking pace (a point which subway fanatic and Beijingologist, David Feng, is unlikely to let us forget). more ›