Apparently she faked the song she sang, “Ode to the Motherland”:

Personally, I think they made the right decision (note:tongue somewhat in cheek) - the goal was to present a flawless version of China to the world, and they did an outstanding knock-up job.

Political correctness be damned.  Besides, this could make a good movie.

What do you think?

(Thanks to Imagethief and Weird Asia News, full story here)

Update:  Here’s another take on it, which I also agree with.  Guess what I mean is that while this isn’t wrong per se, it does suck that the real singer missed her shot at fifteen seconds of fame (or did she?):

This was repeated for months on end, long after the Olympics had ended.

But did China really take second?

Yes, but only if you measure ‘winning’ by gold medals only.   China placed just three gold medals behind the US, but 29 and 40 total medals behind Russia and the US.

You can be sure, however, that if China grabs the most gold that it will be seen and presented as an absolute victory by everyone within China.

2008 Olympic Medals Count - Still Way Too Early To Tell

As I’m writing this, China is ahead in the gold medals standing, with four in comparison to the two won by the US, South Korea, and the Czech Republic.

It’s still extremely early, but it is entirely possible that China racks up the most gold medals in the coming weeks.

That’s a pretty exciting feeling.

What do you think - who will bring home the most gold in 2008?

And if China wins the gold medal count, do you think that means they ‘win’ the Olympics?

But something will turn up the heat even more.

While China has managed to screw up the air, the mascots, and the PR swirling around the Olympics, they did seem to get one thing right: The cheerleaders.

Here they are, the cheerleaders for the Beijing Olympics, thanks to Chinesetools and Lost Laowai.

Chinese girls of the 2008 China Olympics

So what do you think?

The US has built a massive new embassy in China.  According to the MSNBC article this picture is from, President Bush will cut the ribbon to open this $434 million, 500,000 square foot compound on the opening day of the Olympics.

Similarly, China is opening a 250,000 square foot compound in DC, the largest foreign embassy in the US capitol.  See the full article here.

This is mostly tongue-in-cheek, but isn’t anyone scared of what might go on behind closed doors of the embassies of the most powerful countries in the world?

American criticizers of the US government in China, beware.

What do you think?

For the past month and a half, I’ve been staying with my new parents-in-law in what amounts to small town China.

After getting legally married and applying for a visiting relatives visa, we decided to hang around for a little while.

Pretty easy to justify when you’re in between jobs and trying to figure out what to do next.

High Pitched Cabin Fever

It’s not so bad here-apart from the staring, delicious delicacies, and small quarters.

The air’s cleaner than most places, the tap water is drinkable after boiling (Home to 农夫 for Southern China), and there’s a single KFC a short walk away.

Plus, I’ve gotten to know my wife’s family better, gone to church a few times, and have overall had less stress than at any other time in recent memory.

But it’s sometimes painfully boring.

And when you start writing stories about rabbits storming the Great Wall of China, turtles and plastic bags, and chicken feet, you know something is wrong.

At some point, the fever reaches a boiling point and you know it’s time to move on.

But with the Olympics coming up and my new parents having a widescreen TV, we might have to just wait a couple more weeks.

Well… it seems that Chinese women are expected to win more medals than Chinese men in the upcoming Olympics.  And every time someone from China wins a gold medal, the national anthem will be played.

This is really just an excuse to share two interesting videos with you.  The first shows the origins of China’s national anthem.  The second shows how strong women from China might be the xx-factor that helps China ‘win’ the Olympics.  Enjoy!

(original photo by Goa Entranced per this license)

My father-in-law loves turtles.  He has four of them in a bucket outside next to several birds.

He loves the turtles, saying like ‘they are the best thing since sliced bread’.  Sometimes he spends dozens of minutes transfixed by their mutant ninja cool factor and awesome dexeterity.

But even the best of turtles can get caught in the grip of a fatal plastic bag.

Thankfully China’s new bagging policy (Ben’s post inspired me to write this) that went into effect nationwide on June 1st will help avoid tragedies like the one above.

No More Plastic Tragedies

Supermarkets all across China are now required to charge for plastic bags - the bigger the bag, the higher the charge - anywhere from 0.1 to 0.3 mao for the plastic variety.  It’s a pretty significant step forward for China to put forth a policy that is being so widely followed.  At least that’s the way it seems from here.

The past month or so I’ve been living in my wife’s hometown, a city of 500,000, small by Chinese standards.  Surprisingly, even in small town China this new bag policy has been strictly followed.  And I haven’t even seen anyone actually pay for a bag.

Is it the shame and social pressure?  Is it the desire to help out the environment?  Or is it just that people in small town China are cheap?

What do you think?

I’m just thankful my father-in-law’s turtles won’t meet a similar fate to the one above.

Even if you don’t like them now, you’ll love them with this easy tip.

Personally, I kinda like chicken feet.  When they come in the form of delicious dim sum, I’ll usually eat one or two.  I even have some interesting memories that are tangled together with chicken feet.  But you don’t want to hear about them - you want to hear the secret to making even the plainest of chicken feet tastier.

So what is it?

Chicken Feet… Better

Before you cook them, don’t declaw!  Mmm… tasty clawed chicken feet… so delicious.

Despite thousands of years of scholarship about the history of the Great Wall of China, no one seems to be getting its story history right, so hopefully this article will help clarify things for you.

You see, the Great Wall of China wasn’t constructed to keep Northern barbarian invaders (from the Xiongnu to the Mongols and Manchus) out.  No, it was built to keep out far more terrifying invaders out.

The Giant Threat

During the reign of Emperor Nasi Goreng of the Mung Dynasty, a giant rabbit invasion threatened all of China.  The rabbits, originally a gift from Marco Polo to the nomadic tribes of present day Mongolia, had mutated into a vicious, violent strain, and bred across all of Northern China.

Initially the giant rabbits were scared off by Nasi Goreng’s army of Terrocata warriors placed in strategic farm plots in Northern China, but eventually they grew bold, ignored the fake soldiers, and spread further south.

Everywhere they went they ate up the crops of local peasant farmers, biting off the arms and fingers of those farmers that tried to fend off the marauding rabbits.

And The Rabbits Spread…

Casualities were sustained when using the Emperor’s real army to attack the rabbits, and they bred too quickly to kill them off with direct warfare.  In fact, the rabbits continued to spread further South until a crucial victory at Shanghai Guan, when it was discovered that carrots could distract the evil rabbits long enough to quickly kill them off.

Unfortunately, the rabbits still bred too fast to completely keep them out of China, so finally, in the year 1285, Emperor Nasi Goreng consripted a labor force of three billion workers to construct the Great Wall of China and prevent further waves of giant rabbit invasions.

Since most people will not believe such a fantastic story without proper references, please take the video below as absolute evidence of this revision of history:

Check out some of the other absolutely true facts about the Great Wall of China.

There is something different in the air in China, and I’m not talking about particulate matter.

It’s something else.

Something that ignites a fire under the ass of your inner entrepreneur.  And it doesn’t blow out.

China Manufacturers Entrepreneurs*

Virtually ever person that I know who has spent a significant amount of time in China and who didn’t have a high paying job upon landing here has turned into an entrepreneur.  Have you noticed the same?

Exporters and … ?

The number one and most lucrative choice seems to be exporting of all shapes and sizes, but I also have friends who:

• Started an advertising company
• Took photography from a hobby to a part time income
• Established e-commerce stores
• Manufactured their own branded goods
• Developed online courses

There are also some well known examples from the China expat blogosphere:

• John at Sinosplice has been working for Praxis since the early days of Chinesepod.com
• Ryan at Thehumanaught.com started Daobydesign.com

So What Is It?

What do you think causes China to give birth to so many entrepreneurs?

I think it’s something in the air - something that infects Chinese people and foreigners.  Something called freedom, at least in the cash money sense.  Capitalism at its messiest and finest, except for some very serious political freedom & lack of basic legal protection issues, is driving China’s growth.

————————————————————————–

* Let’s broaden the definition of entrepreneur to include people working in startups and doing significant amounts of freelance work