http://chinfamous.com/blog Notes and Onanistic Scraps from the Smog-strangled Mind of an American Journalist in China Wed, 27 Aug 2008 06:02:08 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en As this video suggests, my tenure as a hired gun on the Wall Street Journal's Olympics video team is essentially over. Three weeks lugging a camera around Beijing by day, staring dry-eyed and drooling at a computer by night...If only I were a full employee, I'd have the health insurance ... http://chinfamous.com/blog/2008/08/26/video-olympics-over/ Another video done in cahoots with Loretta from the Wall Street Journal. This one covers a book, Civilized Etiquette (文明礼仪), supposedly distributed to all Beijing residents four years ago as part of an effort to keep the city from embarassing itself in front of foreign guests during the Olympics. The ... http://chinfamous.com/blog/2008/08/20/the-book-on-chinas-fashion-police/ I helped Loretta Chao from the Wall Street Journal produce this video on a kid from Henan she saw filming a protest on Tian'anmen Square yesterday. A fantastic, fascinating character. High on China like he'd injected some sort of narcotized liquid patriotism. Wish I could have used more of him, ... http://chinfamous.com/blog/2008/08/12/video-chinas-angry-youth/ With the Olympics about to dawn over Beijing's polluted skyline, the free time I usually devote to writing this blog is about to evaporate. In lieu of fresh blog posts, I've secured permission to instead republish the semi-regular Olympics column I'm writing for my hometown newspaper, the Park Record, in ... http://chinfamous.com/blog/2008/08/05/park-record-beijing-bureau-why-utahns-should-care-about-the-beijing-olympics/ If there is one thing this world doesn't need right now, it's more stories about Beijing's air pollution. The Google news search says it all: Over 4,000 articles under the first three headings alone, more by a few hundred than a news search for Britney Spears (and this in the ... http://chinfamous.com/blog/2008/08/01/yes-really-a-unique-take-on-the-beijing-pollution-story/ It appears the graphic Olympics-themed Amnesty International ads I mentioned in my previous post have started to attract attention outside the Anti-CNN circle. The controversy turns out not to be the one I identified, i.e., whether the firm that produced the ads could be slammed for gross hypocrisy for ... http://chinfamous.com/blog/2008/07/14/more-on-the-amnesty-international-olympics-ads/ Surveying the statistics for this blog earlier today, I noticed a strange surge of visits to a post I'd done way back in January, on the crippling expectations being placed on China's athletes in the run-up to the Games. The focus of the post had been Adidas' 2008 Games "Impossible ... http://chinfamous.com/blog/2008/07/06/2008-anti-cnn-vs-advertising-greed/ On forced hiatus in Hong Kong this week while I wait for approval of my Beijing Olympics journalist visa.  This morning, on my way to the visa office, I ran across an announcement for an upcoming vehicle registration mark (license plate) auction in the South China Morning Post.  The announcement ... http://chinfamous.com/blog/2008/07/04/psalm-121-going-once/ According to one source with UC Berkeley's Group in Asian Studies, the university has at last decided to restore funding to its East Asian languages department. In other words, one of the United States' foremost Asia-focused research institutions has decided not to let itself become irrelevant at a time when ... http://chinfamous.com/blog/2008/06/25/uc-berkeley-back-on-track/ From the Ch-infamous shameless self-promotion department, my review of Michael Meyer's new book, The Last Days of Old Beijing, published recently on China Digital Times: Western observers have been lamenting the demise of “Old Beijing” since at least the 1920s, when the Chinese capital started itself stumbling in the direction of ... http://chinfamous.com/blog/2008/06/17/living-with-the-hand/