Beijing: Boy do I need Mandarin lessons!

Lovely weather here in Beijing this morning - today and yesterday has been the best weather I've ever experienced in this City. 25 degrees, no humidity and blue skies. Obvious left-over from the Olympics - wonder how long it'll last?

Contrast this with the weather in HK. I left my apartment @ 05:30 yesterday morning and at that time the temp was already in the high twenties and the humidity was approaching 100%. Hearing that a typhoon was about to hit HK last night, I went to the HK weather observatory site and discovered that, at 01:00 in the morning, the local temperature was still 34 degrees! Sure enough, a big typhoon is rolling thru and it might impact my flight home tomorrow.

Anyway Mandarin lessons. I had an hilarious lunch yesterday with the team here in Beijing - hilarious because they were ordering me Chinese vegetarian food ... weird and exotic mushrooms with chilli and garlic .... chinese cabbage leaves drenched in vinegar chilli and garlic ... stir fried cucumber complete with chilli and garlic and, of course, all of these dishes were liberally sprinkled with cubes of pork and fried pork fat.

The team were trying to teach me Mandarin. I used to have (I think!) a great ear for languages, but for me, Mandarin goes in one side and comes out the other totally garbled.

I thought I'd mastered the art of asking for something (e.g. a beer please). But my order of fried eggs this morning magicked into aloe vera yoghurt and a large poster in (one of the many Beijing-based) Starbucks pronouncing 'no dairy products here today' provoked my order of a 'Venti Espresso' - so naturally I got a Large Soya Milk Frappucino. Too exasperated to argue.

M

China: Human breast milk on your coco-pops anyone?

An article in today's South China Morning Post took my eye.

Following on from the (awful) on-going melamine-in-the-milk scandal, several lactating mothers in China are reportedly selling their surplus breast milk for RMB300 a bottle (about twenty quid - quite a lot of money).

I thought it was quite a) altruistic and b) enterprising of them - but much derision in the local press.

The melamine-tainted milk has now been found in Hong Kong ... for instance in the cold-coffee drinks (e.g. "Mr. Browns") - popularly sold from street-corner vendor machines. I buy one or two cans of these a week - no more, I can assure you ... and bet same goes for most other HK residents. Wonder how long it'll take to bring this brand back up to popularity. I recall glass-in-farley's rusk (can you still get these rusks?) and poison gas in Perrier scandals (I think the latter was a French ruse to get the-then English owners to hand it all back to the locals).

M

Sick Sick Sick China babies die from contaminated milk powder

It makes my blood boil what some people will do to make money. After the contaminated cough mixture and 'bungs for licenses' scandals last year (the offending Govt Minister faced the firing squad), China is now reeling from a new revelation.

Manufacturers of baby milk powder have been cutting it with melamine. Rich in nitrogen, the melamine scores highly in tests for protein - milk powder cut with this chemical scores highly in protein tests therefore .... and thus it arrives on shop shelves.

Disgusting.

The problem's been bubbling away for months, but it took the deaths of 3 babies and the protracted illness of thousands of others before someone acted.

Today China arrested a dozen people involved in this sickening business. Hope they're shot slowly. And here's an example of more profiteering: mainland Chinese are flocking over to Hong Kong to buy powder produced in the West. They then return to the mainland and sell the stuff off making a massive profit. And the latest is that the powder's been exported to other developing countries. It's a crap world.

M

Summary of BBC news article:

China arrests 12 in milk scandal

Police in China have arrested 12 more people in the scandal over contaminated milk powder, which has killed three babies and sickened thousands. The new arrests bring the total number of people detained to 18, police in the north-eastern province of Hebei said.

Nationwide checks on milk powder are continuing, and police have confiscated more than 200kg (440lb) of melamine. The additive is blamed for causing severe renal problems and kidney stones in babies across the country.

Premier Wen Jiabao held a special cabinet meeting on Wednesday to address the baby milk crisis. The State Council, or cabinet, admitted that regulations had failed to improve food standards. "The Sanlu infant milk powder incident reflects chaos in the dairy products market and loopholes in supervision and administration which has not been vigorous," it said.

Parents are expressing anger at why Sanlu, the company first found to have sold contaminated milk, took so long to make the problem public. Tests have shown that 69 batches of formula from 22 companies contained the banned substance. Two of the companies involved have exported their products to Bangladesh, Yemen, Gabon, Burundi, and Burma, although it is not clear if contaminated batches are involved.

Beijing: Observations in the midst of the 2008 Paralympics

I successfully managed to avoid coming to Beijing during the ‘main’ Olympics. I would have liked to pay a visit – I was offered tickets to the opening ceremony – but the logistics and vastly increased hotel and transfer costs made it an entirely unfeasible trip.

However today, I am in Beijing where they are currently hosting the Paralympics – so at least I can say I was actually in Beijing during the Olympics.

The first thing to notice is how absolutely and resolutely IMMACULATE Beijing is looking. For instance on the 45 minute car journey into the City, I spotted just 3 items of rubbish (a discarded cigarette packet; a small plastic bag willow-the-wisping on the hard shoulder; and a sad-looking child’s hat sleeping in the fast lane (which to be fair could have been blown off rather than discarded). There are flowerboxes on the crash barriers every 100 yards on the motorway (God, how many plants??? Surely they should have been diverting their energy and limited water supply to growing food?). The armies of street cleaners are out everywhere – there is even a lady @ the airport whose SOLE job it is to clean/polish the up/down button on the elevator! Can you imagine that in the UK? Another YTS scheme perhaps? One way for labour to get the unemployment rates down - assuming they're still in power (which they won't be).

None of the trade mark arc-welding sparks shooting from forty storeys up in the sky were to be seen. In fact, I only saw one construction crane (a marked contrast to the state 2 months ago when the skyline was punctured by them all over Beijing). All of the half-finished buildings I saw early in the summer were ‘completed’. Actually, I remarked on that to a colleague – he said these buildings are known as ‘Ghost buildings’. They look finished on the outside – whereas they are just empty shells …. The windows have been put in but they’re not fitted out inside. It means post-Olympics they'll need to retrospectively remove the windows and start again from where they stopped!

And another mind-boggling and remarkable thing I noticed was that there are near to NO commercial messages on the tens of thousands of billboard spaces here. The only one I can see is a Coke ad … EVERY other poster site features an official Government sponsored Olympics message.

An AMAZING feat of organization to pull all of this off.

I really can’t see it happening in London 2012.

Hope I’m wrong.

M

Tokyo: Ninja-themed restaurant

Went to this MAD restaurant in Tokyo last night. "Ninja Akasaka"

Mad because, as the name suggests, it has a Ninja theme. It's hard to find - hardly signed from the street at all. You wait in a small, dark reception area and then SUDDENLY a Ninja jumps out amongst your party and directs you to your table.

Directs you, that is, via various small dark walkways, bridges, trap doors, underground rivers and over treasure -- arriving finally @ your table which is, in fact, in a Ninja cell.

Insane like only the Japanese can do!

Food was good too!

M