The Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (BOCOG) promises a very safe Beijing Olympics next month. And probably room for peaceful protests.
Beijing has deployed nearly 110,000 personnel, including policemen, army troops and volunteers, and mobilized the whole society to ensure the security of the Games.
Beijing did designate several parks for protests.
Via Xinhua
Get an animated 5-ring Olympic flag with your desired text on your mobile phone. Can act as wallpaper or screensaver.
You can generate your wallpaper in following resolutions: 240×320, 176×220, 176×144, 128×160, 128×128.
Via Red Dodo’s Blog
This year Beijing Olympic Games has a “Green Olympics, High-tech Olympics, People’s Olympics” mission and Haier (海尔), the world’s fourth largest white goods (major household appliances) manufacturer, has provided more than 60 000 tree-hugging and energy-saving electronic products to BOCOG (Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games).
Haier has designed a complete line of green products for the Beijing Games. 31 categories of Haier products have been installed in all Olympic venues in Beijing and the co-host cities. The Olympic products are also on sale throughout China to meet the consumers’ need.
Haier has supplied all venues with 13,236 refrigerators, all CFC-free, with 5,353 using carbon dioxide as a natural refrigerant.
1,500 green washing machines have been installed in 18 laundries established by Haier in the Olympic Village and the Media Village to provide quick and efficient laundry services for all athletes, officials and journalists.
Mind-numbing numbers, eh.
Via IT news
Short Danwei video showing some of the awesome construction projects in Beijing. Not just the Olympics stadiums (although those are really amazing), but the new CCTV “pants” are included.
What cute kids!
Japanese tourists are not very enthusiastic in Beijing Olympics tour packages. 3 reasons are cited - Dumplings (Gyoza), Tibet and the Sichuan quake.
“Sales have been adversely affected by bad news — such as when frozen gyoza dumplings (imported from China) caused food poisoning, the Tibet problem and Sichuan quake,” says an official of Nippon Travel Agency Co., a major travel agency.
China’s national men’s basketball team is powered up to get a better standing in the Beijing Olympics than previous Olympic Games. Yao Ming is aiming for a sixth position while the general public hopes the basketball team can create miracles in the Games.
Tickets of Olympic basketball matches are the most wanted on the Internet besides tickets of the opening and closing ceremonies and finals of the men’s 110 meters hurdles, which is expected to feature defending gold medallist and local favorite Liu Xiang.
Price of the tickets of the men’s basketball final match has vaulted to over 10 times of the original price.
Basketball has arguably become the most popular sport in China as soccer was haunted by corruptions, match-fixings and misbehaviors of footballers on and off the pitch.
Via Xinhua
A premiere of Beijing Olympics concert was held at Thailand Culture Center in Bangkok, Thailand, last night to a 2000-strong audience.
This is a cultural exchange, right?
Via Beijing 2008
A Japanese student in China, Yoshikazu Kato, is making waves in the country by his outspoken truthfulness. He decided to study in China because he wanted to see the changes that the Beijing Olympics has impacted on China with his very own eyes.
The tall, good-looking Kato is proving popular with the Chinese media and has appeared on TV more than 50 times.
He is also known among other Japanese living in China as a charismatic figure.
No earthquake is expected to hit Beijing during the Olympic Games next month. No sign of a strong quake has been detected yet, so it should be a safe Beijing 2008.
The 107 quake-monitoring stations of the network cover a 150,000-sq-km area around the capital (Beijing) and are said to be the most extensive such network in the country. It can detect a temblor as light as magnitude 1.0 and report it within five to 10 minutes.
Via China Daily