Bootstrappin’

…it pours. I love the ponchos that everyone in China has, especially these special bike ponchos. The moment it starts raining, the streets become a sea of plastic reds, blues, pinks and purples. The pedestrians, of course, whip out their umbrellas (which appear instantaneously, out of nowhere). There are even bicyclists that ride bikes with […]

I just got back from the Giant Panda Research Center in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China…and holy crap, pandas are cute! The video above shows a few of them munching on bamboo early this morning. But having spent the morning learning about the panda bear, I’ve come to the conclusion that pandas are an anomaly of […]

The Chinese sure love order and discipline. I was walking down the street in Xi’an this afternoon, when I heard the distinct call-and-reply of a drill sergeant and his troops, only it was all in Chinese, and the voices were a whole lot daintier than anything you’d hear coming out of the Army. A few […]

Subway. When I arrived in Xi’an, my stomach was a-rumblin’ — and when I spotted the city’s Subway restaurant, I made a b-line for it. I’ve been craving a sub ever since I left the States, and this was the first Subway I’d seen in all of Asia. Upon entering the store, I felt instantly […]

I just got my first haircut in China, for the outrageous price of 10 RMB ($1.47 US)! It was at the sketchiest back alley barber shop in Beijing, a two-seater about the size of a walk-in closet — and I was pleasantly surprised by the service. The woman working there spoke no English, but I […]

China’s got the most diverse array of food in the world, and the Donghuamen Night Market in the heart of Beijing is the largest street food market I’ve ever seen. It took me 12 minutes to walk from one end to the other! Here you can find treats here like fried scorpions, snakes, ostrich heads […]

Beijing’s got a soundtrack right now, and boy is it catchy! The Olympics may have the most upbeat, cheesy and sickeningly happy collection of songs ever recorded. And everywhere you go in Beijing right now, you’ll hear them, played ad-infinitum. Every store, every train station, every TV station, and every cell phone ring tone…it’s inescapable. […]

The other day, I read an interesting article on TechDirt — Covering Up Any Brand In Beijing That Hasn’t Paid To Sponsor The Olympics. Turns out that the “Olympic logo police workers are tasked with vigilantly going around all facilities and putting masking tape over the logos for any product where the company is not […]

The official line from the Olympic organizers is that all Olympic tickets are SOLD OUT, but that certainly doesn’t mean every seat is filled. Here is the row of seats behind me at the BMX Cycling event I attended today: The number of empty seats is painful, especially when the demand is so strong. I […]

I arrived in Beijing at the Olympics on Sunday, exactly one week before the end of the games, with no tickets, and not much of a clue on how to get them. But it didn’t take more than a few minutes on the streets to figure out where to buy tickets — albeit at ridiculously […]