Last year, my cousin & I went all out on Paddy’s day. One of my favorite pictures below of me in Tiananmen, in my green suit, standing next to a guard. Notice the cop in the background with that curious look on his face. The guard was more than happy to pose for the picture with me … in fact, he told me I looked “beautiful” … in English. I didn’t laugh, because I knew he was just trying to say it was cool, or something like that.

I’ve got a year’s worth of pics … some funny, some just look good…will begin to put up the best of the best.

Paddy’s Day ‘08 … I’ll be in Beijing …so will my parents and my little sister. Will I wear the green suit? I’d bet on it.

Last week, China announced that it will “ban” plastic bags throughout the country. What does this mean? Well, the thin, flimsy plastic bags are banned completely (these are typically the plastic bags you get your illegal DVDs in). Any other plastic bags will have to be purchased from the store. OR, you can bring you own bag or whatever else you would like to attempt to carry your purchases in.

When I first heard of this, I was like … WTF! But, it’s a good idea. Plastic bags are all over this country. I have hundreds in a drawer in the kitchen, they get re-used as garbage bags. As long as you can continue to get plastic bags (via purchasing, for likely a couple pennies), this will not cause any problems for anyone.

Hopefully someone will capitalize on this and start selling clothe bags on the streets around China … just as they, daily, try to sell me socks, watches, fake Olympics stuff, etc… just add clothe bags to the inventory!
Shoppers: It’s BYO Bag in China

Give this a look … it doesn’t get anymore eye-opening than this. I’ve said since I’ve moved here, the hardest working people in Beijing are the construction workers and those that have nothing (for the most part, that is). Unbelievable to see how some of them live.

The Hotel Between Heaven and Hell

Thanks for sending this Alberto.

That if you buy a house in China, you do not own the land that house is on? Similarly with apartments, but obviously you wouldn’t own that land. Not only do you not own the land, but after 70 years, you no longer have the rights to even live there. I’m not sure exactly what this means, but it definitely opened my eyes something new.

While houses are not popular in China (”hutongs” are also phasing out), this is still a problem, in my eyes. Parts of China will likely begin building up more & more “neighborhoods” … but, don’t think that house you buy can or will stay in your family for generations … you’ve only got 70 years to enjoy it. Is this good or bad? I don’t know … if  this was the case in the US, I think it would be bad.

I started a weekly “English Corner” with some people on my team here in Beijing. This is to supplement the weekly English classes they are taking. Today was the first day, and it was great. In fact, that’s how this “did you know” came about.

Many efforts have been made, but there is still a lot of funny English around the city.

Yesterday afternoon, as I left the Silk Market where I was looking for cool knock-offs (didn’t buy anything…but did see a guy get quite angry with one of the girls who works there), I saw a huge cloud of black smoke rising very close to my apartment. Getting a little closer, I could tell it was coming from behind my apartment…was the big TV on fire (The Place)? Wasn’t that either. It was coming from a construction site behind The Place. After about 20 minutes of seeing the smoke, I finally heard and saw fire trucks. As I made my way closer, the activity was picking up. They blocked off the entire block around the construction site, chasing away Chinese, but not foreigners (which is typical).

Something interesting that I saw was that in addition to the police and fire departments on the scene, there were also military guys keeping an eye on things. Even more interesting, there was a policeman whose job seemed to be taking pictures of the scene near the fire and of the fire itself. Is this how media in China gets their pictures and stories? Maybe. I did see one foreign guy who seemed to be a professional photographer (the 3 high-end SLRs with mega lenses gave him away)…he was finally chased off the scene after about 30 minutes.

Last night marked the grand opening of a new fine establishment in Beijing…Hooters. We’ve seen the signs up over near the Worker’s Stadium for months, now it’s a reality.

I went to check it out for an early dinner last night with some friends. When I walked in, I didn’t feel like I was in China. Obviously, it looked exactly like any other Hooters would in the US. On top of that, there was a real live Hooter’s girl from the US at the door greeting everyone as they walked in.

Once in, it just felt weird. Not sure why. Maybe the start of it was when our waitress came over and said the following…

“Hello, welcome to Hooters. My name is Willa and I will be your Hooter’s girl today.”

Yes, that’s what she said…word for word (I will leave the English quality up to your imagination). And yes, Willa is her name. You could tell all of the girls working there were nervous, very nervous. There were a few Hooter’s girls from the US helping out (have likely been there training for quite some time). They also had some girls from other Hooter’s locations in China helping out (one in Shanghai/Pudong and one in Hangzhou).

We tried some wings. They were decent. Sauce was good…wing size not so good. We didn’t try anything else (well, beer, of course).

There were mostly foreigners there…I noticed only a handful of Chinese. It will be interesting to see if the crowd changes, but it will likely remain overly populated with foreigners for some time.

What they need to work on … English. Seems to be a theme around here. They have to assume that a Hooter’s in China is going to attract tourists, who can’t speak any Chinese. The English quality there was below average. It took some work to get what you want.

By the way, do Chinese have any idea why the place is called Hooters? Or, what it’s known for? I’m thinking not. Chinese for Hooters is … who-or-ters (that’s how you say it). And when we asked the waitresses what Hooters refers to … no idea.