The Unofficial 2008 Beijing Olympics Blog

Photo: Reuters

More than 1,000 Chinese couples stood in line for hours to get a marriage license that will allow them to be married on August 8th, the opening date for this year’s highly publicized China Olympics. The reason? Well behind the fact that all Chinese citizens feel very honored of hosting the event, the number eight (the competition starts on 08.08.2008) has a very auspicious meaning for people there.

The number is pronounced rd “fa”, which is part of the expression meaning “to get wealthy”. So by marring on that date, many people believe they’ll have a more long and wealthy marriage.

“Chinese people are keen to tie the knot on an auspicious date,” Xinhua news agency added. “The opening date of the Olympics adds new meaning.

“Marriage registration offices in Beijing predict more than 9,000 couples will get married on August 8 this year,” it said.

Add this to the Beijing Olympics baby names and you’ve got yourself one wacky family.

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Here’s a local Chinese acupuncturist showing off both his creative and olympic spirit.

Wei, a 60 year-old Chinese acupuncturist from Guangxi province, showed his patriotism for the upcoming Olympics by piercing his head, face, chest, and arms with 2008 decorative needles in five different colors.

The event broke his previous Guinness Record of 1790 needles set in 2004. Wei also hopes to share more about the history of acupuncture to the world.

Initially inspired after reading about a Canadian who had set a record for inserting 420 needles in his arm, Wei felt that it was “not much compared to our centuries-old acupuncture,” and began experimenting with piercing his own body with needles.

On January 13, 2007, Wei had also paraded through town with 800 needles in his forehead and even put on skates and skated around the streets to show he was not in pain and alright.

Who here thinks he and the Olympics tattoo guy would fit well together?

Via Weird Asia News.

According to state media, more than 4,000 Chinese babies have been named “Aoyun” or “Olympic Games”. Apparently, Chinese citizens are very excited about the upcoming 2008 Beijing Olympics. This is of course a very light assumption. I mean how many of you would name your children after a sporting event? I can understand naming a child after a global personality, like Elvis or Ronaldo or even Superman, but “Olympic Games”? That’s totally worth a lol…

Westerners should pay greater attention to what they speak and how they act, during their stay at in Beijing. Here’s an excerpt from Reuters:

The organizers of this summer’s Beijing Olympics Monday reminded foreigners coming to China for the Games to behave, warning them that everything from protesting without permission to sleeping outdoors was banned.

The extensive list, written only in Chinese and put on the organizers’ official website (www.beijing2008.cn), also said that purchase of Olympics’ tickets did not guarantee the holder would automatically get a Chinese visa.

Entry would be banned to anyone who was intent on “subversion” upon arriving in China, those with mental illnesses and sexually transmitted diseases and people who wished to engage in prostitution, the rules read.

“Foreigners must respect Chinese laws while in China and must not harm China’s national security or damage social order,” the rules say.

The stability-obsessed government, determined to ensure the Olympics go off without a hitch, has in the last several months tightened controls on visas, residence permits for foreigners, and places of entertainment.

The handbook warns the estimated 500,000 overseas visitors who are expected to come to Beijing this August that China is still a country with many off-limits areas and beholden to bureaucracy and public security organs.

Add that to the fact that all tourists should carry the necessary documents and paper with them at all times and you’ll have the perfect “stress free” vacation. This will surely damage China’s reputation and tourist influx, I mean who wants to be bossed around and live in totalitarian state? I know that China’s not at all like it’s on the surface, but their government will lose a lot if they keep it up like this.

If you think you know a thing or two about the Chinese city of Beijing, then you might find it fun to take the National Geographic quiz on Beijing. The test features general questions about the city, that’s sure to both entertain and sharpen your skills. Definitely to come in handy for the summer.

After a few years of extreme hard work and a lot of money invested, the now world’s largest airport in the world is now ready for The Olympics and the influx of millions of visitors. The airport is shapes like a dragon and the whole investment cost reached something like 3.5 billion dollars. It’s 501-square-mile in surface and is capable of servicing 50 million passengers per year. For photos of this majestic feat of engineering please visit Gizmodo.

Click for a larger view.

Yup, it takes some extreme dedication and love for the Olympics (and well a loose canon for a brain) to tattoo the event all over your face and limbs. I mean the dude’s got the Fuwa tattooed on his neck, how badass is that? His face expression doesn’t show too much enthusiasm though. Here’s a man who knows when to stop drinking now.

A three minute silence was observed yesterday at 2.28pm Beijing Time (6.28 GMT), one week after the terrible earthquake in Sichuan. The unanimous silence was the followed by a growling three minute long of noise by car drivers ships, trains and anything that had a horn or something.

According to the Associated Press:

China stood still and sirens wailed Monday to mourn the country’s tens of thousands of earthquake victims, as the search for survivors increasingly became a search for bodies. Construction workers, shopkeepers and bureaucrats across the bustling nation of 1.3 billion people paused for three minutes at 2:28 p.m. - exactly one week after the magnitude 7.9 quake hit central China. Air-raid sirens and the horns of cars and buses sounded in memory of the estimated 50,000 dead.

Bellow you can watch a CCTV report which includes coverage of the three minutes from across China:

China’s central television stations, CCTV1 through CCTV9, ran earthquake coverage all day. Beijing’s television stations followed suit. For the most part, programming consisted of: live updates from the relief effort in Sichuan, compassionate messages from viewers, graphic rescue montages set to music, interviews with survivors and heroes, and scenes from today’s three-minute observance.

Three Minutes to Remember (CCTV News)

An emotional Tiananmen Square (CCTV News)

In other news, the Chinese has reserved a lot of presure lately from various communities, mostly online, from within the country, to scale down the Olympics torch relay for three days. Their voice has been heard and a decision has been reached to pause the Olympic torch relay for three days. The torch is currently in Hangzhou, where it will wait until Wednesday for its next stop: Shanghai.

Photo credit: NY Times.

It would be a bit trivial and respectful to mention, then again talk, about an issue like the Beijing Olympics torch relay, after China’s been left devastated by a terrible 7.8 earthquake in Sichuan. The current death toll is at around 12.000, with hundreads of thousands left homeless; the statistics are sure to increase daily over the course of the following weeks.

Recently, the New York Times (via CDT) describes how many people in China have been incensed by jubilant celebrations of the Olympics Torch relay in Fujian Province. This post has subsequently been updated with news that “Chinese officials announced that the relay will be scaled back while remaining on schedule, a nod to the thousands of victims of the earthquake,” also mentioning that donation boxes will also be set up at future stops of the torch.

“For those who are looking to contribute to current aid efforts underway, you can now donate money to the Red Cross Society of China which has formed a disaster relief working group to be dispatched to the earthquake-stricken Wenchuan County in Sichuan.”

For those of you who’d wish to help out the poor people of Sichuan, you can find the necessary information for doing so bellow.

Account name: Red Cross Society of China
开户单位：中国红十字会总会

For those who want to donate in RMB: you can send money to the RMB account at the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China branch below:
人民币开户行: 中国工商银行 北京分行东四南支行
人民币账号: 0200001009014413252

For those who want to donate in foreign currency, you can send money to the foreign currency account at the CITIC Bank branch below:
外币开户行：中信银行酒仙桥支行
外币账号: 7112111482600000209

Hotline: (8610) 65139999
Online donations: Red Cross Society of China website: www.redcross.org.cn
Click the tab for online donations “