Destination: Asia
In Beijing: The Inescapable Games
by Eva Holland | 08.08.08 | 8:17 AM ET
I know, I know. Every Olympic host city gets really worked up just before the Games. Still, a day after my arrival I can’t help but suspect that Beijing has taken things a little further than most. Why? I expected to be bombarded with billboards and logos from the moment I landed here—what I didn’t expect, though, was the Olympics-themed China Airlines flight from San Francisco, complete with “Beijing 2008!” headrest covers, and an “Olympics Special” in-flight radio station. (Think Chariots of Fire, plenty of John Williams, and the theme from Ben-Hur.) The first movie to air was Blades of Glory. Coincidence? I think not.
Related on World Hum:
* In Beijing: Not So ‘Sanitized’ After All?
* In Beijing: Red Tape and Roadblocks
* In Beijing: A Rainbow of Nations
Photo by Eva Holland
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Yahoo! BuzzMao Mao Mao Mao Mao. Enough With the Mao Already.
by Jim Benning | 08.07.08 | 12:16 PM ET
He’s glaring back at me from my newspaper. He’s staring through my computer screen. He’s beaming at me through the TV. Memo to news media covering the Olympics: Enough with the Mao shots.
Bridging the Divide: Hong Kong to Macau
by Valerie Conners | 08.07.08 | 10:47 AM ET
The long-awaited Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge may soon become reality, thanks to additional funding for the project from the central Chinese government in Beijing. Financing details were announced yesterday. Construction is expected to begin by 2010.
Want to Book a $650,000 Suite in Beijing for the Olympics? Here’s Your Connection.
by Michael Yessis | 08.06.08 | 11:43 AM ET
His name is Sead Dizdarevic, and he’s the “official corporate concierge to the Olympics.” He’s also one colorful dude.
Disaster on K2: ‘Now I Really Realize That Everyone Here Has Died’
by Jim Benning | 08.05.08 | 11:04 AM ET
The AP reports on the last man to reach base camp at K2—grateful to be alive, his toes frostbitten—after falling ice resulted in the deaths of 11 climbers. Among the creepy details emerging from the scene: at least one climber apparently froze to death while hanging upside down from a rope, the Telegraph reports. And this, from a Dutch survivor: “Everybody was fighting for himself and I still do not understand why everybody was leaving each other.” The mountain is known among climbers for posing a greater challenge than Everest. Climber Ed Viesturs called it “the holy grail of mountains.”
Onion Video: Are the Olympics an Elaborate Trap?
by Eva Holland | 08.04.08 | 11:59 AM ET
Since I’ll be heading to Beijing this week, my fingers are crossed that the Onion’s pundits got this one wrong:
Trekking on the Afghanistan-Pakistan Border
by Eva Holland | 07.31.08 | 2:24 PM ET
This week, the Observer’s Howard Marks is the latest travel writer to brave a trip to Afghanistan, for a trek along the Afghan-Pakistan frontier. The most striking thing about his return to the country, 20 years after his last visit? The nonchalance of locals. “There have been great changes since your last visit,” one old acquaintance told him. “So, would you like to buy a gun?”
In Japan, Asian Tourists Spending Like Drunken Sailors
by Michael Yessis | 07.30.08 | 12:07 PM ET
The number of travelers from South Korea, Taiwan, China and Hong Kong to Japan has apparently doubled in five years, reflecting a new reality: “[A]s Japan’s economy stalled for the last dozen or so years, rapid development in countries like China and South Korea raised living standards there,” writes Martin Fackler. So they’re using their spending power in Japan to, among other things, “splurge at the nation’s department stores.” Sounds kinda familiar.
Are Americans Intoxicated by ‘Our’ China?
by Michael Yessis | 07.30.08 | 11:31 AM ET
Interesting piece in the Washington Post by novelist Nicole Mones, who argues that the U.S.‘s enchantment with the country’s historical sites and the “mystery of China” has blinded us to the realities of the rising power. “Americans are infatuated with ‘our’ China,” she writes. “We prefer a nostalgic, exotic, vanished land that has little to do with China today.”
Wanted in Beijing: Tourists?
by Eva Holland | 07.29.08 | 10:35 AM ET
Not so long ago, as many as 2 million visitors were expected to descend on Beijing for the Olympic Games. But according to the Telegraph, those hordes have yet to appear—thanks in part to tightened visa restrictions, turmoil in Tibet and the state of the U.S. economy—and the capital’s hotels are now cutting prices by as much as 50 percent in an effort to fill up those empty rooms.
Beijing: Eight Olympic ‘Don’t Asks’ of Travelers
by Eva Holland | 07.24.08 | 3:19 PM ET
The latest target in China’s pre-Olympic tidying? Small talk. Concerned that inquiries about income, religion or age—routine in China, but taboo in much of the West—might offend visitors, a district Propaganda Department in Beijing has put up posters advising locals about what not to ask.
Beijing: ‘The Sanitized City’?
by Eva Holland | 07.22.08 | 11:35 AM ET
As we’ve noted, China has been tidying up its restaurant menus—both in terms of ingredients and language—in the lead-up to the Olympics next month. But, says the Globe and Mail’s Geoffrey York, the clean-up is about more than food, and it’s going too far. “China’s capital city is being sanitized and sterilized to within an inch of its life,” he writes in a recent blog post. “It’s being cleaned and tidied and swept up to the point where it feels like an artificial replica of itself.”
In Kabul, Watching ‘the Drama of Ordinary Lives’
by Michael Yessis | 07.22.08 | 10:31 AM ET
Don’t let all the buzz about David Carr’s heartbreaking book excerpt in the latest New York Times Magazine distract you from another terrific story in the same issue, Kristin Ohlson’s Lives piece Watching TV in Kabul. Ohlson, co-author of “Kabul Beauty School,” reveals a slice of life in a Kabul kebab shop, a scene that reveals “the drama of ordinary lives that rocks households but doesn’t blow buildings or buses apart.”
Lack of Tourists Hurting China’s Panda Center
by Joanna Kakissis | 07.21.08 | 11:17 AM ET
The Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding didn’t suffer physical damage from the deadly earthquake that left 90,000 people dead or missing earlier this year. But spooked tourists cancelled trips to the region, leaving only about 300 people visiting daily—about one-tenth of the normal volume, NPR reports.
Hope for Pyongyang’s ‘Hotel of Doom’?
by Joanna Kakissis | 07.18.08 | 1:27 PM ET
The pyramid-shaped, 105-story Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang, North Korea, has been languishing—unfinished—for 16 years. But now Egyptian developers have begun refurbishing what was once dubbed “the worst building in the history of mankind,” Reuters reports. It’s estimated to cost $2 billion—about 10 percent of North Korea’s annual economic output—to finish the skyline-dominating eyesore.