Famous

Although the purpose of the journalist's trip was to accompany one of our sponsoring companies on a visit to the villages they are funding a water project in, the journalist was more interested in the story of how the taxi driver screwed me and a colleague. Thus the website for Yulin City, in Shaanxi province has covers the story (in Chinese), but there is a photo.

Well, maybe famous is not quite the right word. Nonetheless yulin is an interesting city; in a poor area of China, half of it is desert and the city could not be much further from the sea. However Yulin is blessed with natural resources and going there is like going to California during the gold rush.

Although the average person in the countryside 5 miles away earns less than 1 USD a day, Yulin is getting a new airport, has 6 line highways stretching through the desert, has a brand new 15 story government building and countless other 30 story hotels and apartment complexes. Fortunately there is some knock-on effect for the poor (it seems), how much of the tax money goes to help them though is another question... Then there is the number of small companies that (almost literally) hire a digger and start digging up coal, bribing a local official to print the required certificate the next day if they find something. It is a city whereby coal and gas are cheaper than water.

Actually one of the highlights of the trip was visiting one family whose grandparents were in their 90s as the grandmother had bound feet. When she was a child (and this practice continued for hundreds of years, only ending about 50+ years ago) it was believed that a woman was more beautiful if she had small feet, so girls wrapped their feet in bandages to make the toes grow towards the heel in a 'n' shape. In some cases the toes would reach the heel, of course totally destroying the bone structure of the women who would walk around in agony for the rest of their lives. This lady (right) is already wearing a child's shoe and still her foot does not fill most of it (she walks on her tiptoes).

winter and the olympics

Winter is well and truly here which means the big coats are out; it also means the babies are all wrapped up in 6 layers of clothes and look more like telly tubbies than people. Every time i see the little bundles i struggle not to laugh, not because the babies are wrapped up warm, which is sensible, but that the parents still make their kids wear the trousers (that all Chinese babies wear) with a slit under the crotch, so babies can easily do their thing anywhere, anytime (and they do, even at bus stops or on trains, as i have witnessed -beware!). Thus the little babies' bums are still freezing to death, and i wonder what the impact is on their future abilities to reproduce!

The 5-a-side sunday football league finishes the autumn term next sunday, though i will miss it as i'll be working in the countryside. Today was not a good end to the season, personally. I did manage to score 1 out of my 10 or more chances and we lost both games, including to the Iranian Embassy team who are top of the group with some skillful players and elegant passing.
No comments about our team's abilities, except most weeks we struggle to get 5 people out of bed from the night before!

This week i had a thought, what will China be like after the Olympics? Yes, there are other big events (the World Expo in Shanghai) and possibly the World Cup and other activities, but is there much bigger than the Olympics? I am sure many people will prefer to take their own lives rather than continue to live after the Olympics. It has gone beyond mere government sponsored patriotism to some kind of a cult. At first it is just used by every single organisation to market something somehow, then it becomes mentioned in almost every single press release about anthing at all, because next summer is 'the' date that matters... will the charity law change by then? will the media law be revoked afterwards? will the subway lines be finished in time? will kids ever play sport ever again?

Yesterday morning was a small environmental awareness event in a park near the Forbidden City, led by a group who campaign for a 'green olympics' -what will they do in 10 months? Next we went to a famous lake next door, which is well and truly on the tourist map, and found, to our shock, a newly installed disabled chair lift in one of the old stone structures. Now, the fact that we were so surprised should make readers aware that i have never seen any such chair lift in Beijing ever before. Even subway stations fail to have any elevators and though most have escalators sometimes, 95% of the Beijing stations still have stairs at some point from the train to the exit. The poor Paralympians who come next summer will not see too much of Beijing it seems!

After 3 weeks in Beijing including a trip to the capital club (on the top of a skycraper) where, for a change, i could actually see the view, I am off travelling from wednesday for a couple of weeks. By the time i am back it will almost be time for some more birthday ice skating and christmas/new year in the Philippines. 4 months of winter to go...

Success at work

On Friday was the launch of our 9 million USD partnership with Nokia China; so it was sort of a big deal, with media etc. The highlight was the ice mountain of ice being smashed in order to release the 'love' inside (i.e. let the potential of rural children be released) and the lowlight was when one of the pretty ladies on stage feinted :(. Still I can claim some responsibility for the partnership (on my CV!) and we are happy with the money contribution (And are hoping to develop other elements of the partnership in the next couple of months) and hope to leverage the partnership to raise our profile. Plan is the most unknown of all organisations unfortunately!

On Saturday i went to watch a Chinese band playing in a bar. The warm-up band was excellent (soft-rock) and the main band were pretty good too, though different. They mix rock with a traditional old people's singing style; they also like wearing their underwear on stage and the singer's does a sort of Marilyn Manson by using make-up on his face.

Today is wonderful blue sky: Beijing is definitely getting better, even if there were a couple of bad days last week. The previous week I was in Shanghai, again blown away by its pomp, skyscrapers and trendy drinking options. Read 'trendy', think 'expensive' but that is Shanghai for you!

I was also in Suzhou where a few months ago their (famous) lake was a big cess pit due to industrial waste discharge leading to an algae explosion and all sorts. It was so bad the PM of China said something had to be done. Eventually it seems something was done (though probably only through the cheapest, temporary solution) and thus the government put on a conference about Corporate Responsibility including a trip on the lake. I could not make the boat trip unfortunately, but at least there was no subtlety about the motivations for the conference! Apparently, it will cost 14 billion USD to solve the problem long-term. Now that is a lot of money to pay for a mess caused by irresponsible companies polluting the lake... who will presumably not be putting in towards that cost!

And, i have no travel plans for at least 2 more weeks; which must be a first in 2007!