Three days to go, the country is primed, factories temporarily closed, cars off the roads, the algea invasion temporarily stymied, battalions of garbage collectors pulled back from the urban front-line, peddlers of counterfeit goods pushed further underground, city streets beautified, foreign media covering China like they just found out it’s there, the delegations of diplomats and leaders on their way to pay tribute to the new Chinese empire of bling and what does it all mean?

A coming out party for a nation that boasts 5000 years of history and more skeletons in its closet than there are teeth-marked discarded wooden skewers outside the barbecue place at 3 AM？Who’s coming out, the minority groups, the political prisoners, the AIDS activists, …

It was announced recently that three Beijing parks, miles away from the Olympic events, will be reserved as areas where people can “protest” during the Olympics.

Of course, to protest, you’ll have to apply five days in advance and hope your cause isn’t considered, the rather ubiquitous, “against national interests” (anyone wishing to raise a sign against the domestic policies of Azerbaijan are welcome).

The decision to allow the Disney-flavoured protests comes from the on going pressure the global community has put on China because the Games aren’t as open as they were promised to be.

Liu Shaowu, security chief for the BOC, explained, “Assembling to march and protest is …

Well, everyone and their grandma is calling the 2008 Beijing Olympics China’s coming out party, and they’ve just been given the biggest reason yet, as it doesn’t get any gayer than this.

Sorry, I don’t mean to offend or misrepresent the gay community, <em>Queer Eye</em> teaches us you all have far more fashion sense than this.

This fashion faux pas of the century (and we’re still early into it) is China’s official Olympic opening ceremony uniform.

I’m slowly developing a phobia for mid-afternoon taxi drivers. I’m not sure if they’re all absolute twats, or if its just me.  Can’t possibly be me. I hope not anyhow…
Taking a cab between 3:30 and 4pm is easily the biggest pain in my relocated ass right now. My current schedule requires me to commute at this time of the day, and it very rarely goes smoothly. Taxis usually change from the day driver to the night driver around 4pm.  And to do that they need to go pick up the second driver in a certain part of town. If your destination is not reasonably near that part of town then your shit outta good fortune, as I all too often …

When I read about the bus explosions in Kunming on this past Monday I was a little surprised that the local police weren’t calling it terrorism. I don’t believe that it was done by anyone with a political agenda. This was probably done, as the police are saying, by someone with a local grievance. But isn’t that terrorism?

According to Dictionary.com the first definition for terrorism is “the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, esp. for political purposes.”

Even if the person had a local grievance didn’t he terrorize people? He used violence to intimidate people — two people died. But since the local Kunming and most likely the central governments disagree with me, that makes me wonder …

Everyone’s favourite China user and abuser, Chinabounder, has returned - flicking the lights back on at his blog: Sex and Shanghai/欲望上海.

As with his last return, he seems much more focused on sticking it to the Chinese government than he does sticking it to random Chinese girls - that was after all what originally gained him so much infamy.

The main reason he seems to have logged back into his Blogspot account after a six month absence is to tout a new book, Fault Lines on the Face of China: 50 Reasons Why China Will Never Be Great, …

I’m not a big fan of China Daily, China’s national language newspaper but I do read its website occasionally when there’s nothing better available for work. I recently noticed one thing at the bottom of the each news story, a massage ad.

Now I thought that was something only The Shanghai Daily did — and even then the ads appeared in the back of its classified section not on the news stories of its website. Maybe I’ve still got my sense of idealism from journalism school but it seems to tarnish the work of the journalists that write for the paper to have the ads placed there.

But forget about me for a …

© d. FukaLiving, as I do, just outside of Shanghai tends to see me visit The City on “official business” quite frequently. Not only is it the ultra-modern, socio-cultural mecca of Mainland China - it’s also the closest place to Suzhou a Canadian guy can get consular stuff done.

Despite having been to “The Paris of the East” numerous times, there is one thing that continues to baffle me, and perhaps some of you Shanghai laowai can enlighten me: Why is it Shanghai is the only city I’ve been to in China where the taxi drivers assume 16 RMB = 20 RMB?

It doesn’t happen all the time, but a good 60-70% of …

Recently a friend forwarded my name to a freelance reporter for the China Daily Hong Kong edition. Yes, like many of you, I didn’t know China Daily had a Hong Kong edition …more on that later.

The Canadian born Chinese China Daily reporter emailed me a list of questions regarding English teaching and English use here in Hong Kong and I was more than happy to help her out. I even invited her out to join some friends of mine for dinner later and she commented that she’s “always searching around for freelance gigs and it helps to talk to journalists and people looking for English-language writers.”

In my email I casually asked the reporter what the readership numbers of the China …

I just got finished reading that Time Out Beijing, one of the city’s preeminent English-language entertainment guides, has been suspended indefinitely.

Not, as one might guess, because it had been publishing subvert-the-youth articles or anything of the sort - but simply because it wasn’t properly licensed.

Fair enough.

I mean, in pretty much any country you’d need proper business licenses and if you didn’t have them, you could be shut down for any number of legalities. That’s not too bizarre.

But the part that I think is… amusing (?)… is that the magazine was operating just fine for more than three years without complaint, or proper forms filled in.

This is strikingly in line with the …