We first saw this video over at Shanghaiist. It's part of a nice little series of videos that Reuters have put together called Postcard to U.S President from various cities around the world, including what must be an interesting clip from Baghdad. The video above features four Beijing residents talking about what they would like to see from an Obama presidency. The video was filmed just out the front of the Village at Sanlitun on the corner of Gongti Beili and Sanlitun . The video was uploaded on Nov 5 and we're guessing the journalists conducted the interviews while waiting for the election results to come in over at the Rickshaw. Three of the people being interviewed say their piece in English. The fourth, a businessman, uses Chinese to express his hope that Obama can "sort out the American economy and bring the world economy back up." You can view the full translation of what he said in the more info section.

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The jury is still out on this year’s Modern Sky Festival, while some have complained about the indoor stages, lack of food options and drinks running out on the first day, others have raved about great performances from Carsick Cars and Top Floor Circus. The Shanghai outfit lived up to their name by bringing along a circus of sorts, complete with clowns and dancing girls, for their final act-performance on the last day of the festival. However, the real highlight of their show was their performance of Shanghai Huanying Ni, their spoof on one of the Beijing Olympic anthems that we’ve all been hearing on a loop for the past 12 months.

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If you're not so obsessed with the Games that you have to see everything on a live feed or if the various online options are proving difficult to access, you can always keep track of the various highlights of the days events on Youtube's Summer Games Channel. The collection of videos includes news, recaps of the days highlights, athlete profiles and a series of clips on the "color and culture of Beijing" from various mainstream European and American media sources that include: Associated Press, The New York Times, Getty Images, Reuters, Euronews, France 24 and others. Naturally the roundups tend to focus on the medals won by athletes from the country of the broadcaster and the "color and culture" videos are a little cheesy. If you turn down the volume on the above video, you can enjoy some nice shots of Beijing's Underground City which is reported to be closed during the Olympic period. For more information on Beijing's hidden underground world, see Eric Abrahamsen's description of his trip to the tunnels below Nanluogu Xiang over at Beijing by Foot blog or if you can wait till Friday, go and buy Beijing by Foot itself.

I took a brief glance at two of the Chinese Youtube equivalents, Youku and Tudou, but they don't appear to be offering a similar channel, however, Tudou does have a special channel devoted to all thingsBeijing called 北京这个城市 Beijing zhege Chengshi.

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Furong Jiejie Live
RMB 180, RMB 120 (advance), RMB 280 (VIP), RMB 100 (students)
2pm. The Star Live (6425 5677)

We're still a little peeved that she didn't send us any info before hand so that we could included it in our 7 Days e-mail newsletter, but internet celebrity and the woman that Chinese netizens have made a fetish out of reviling, Furong Jiejie, performed in Beijing last Saturday afternoon.

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by Paul Pennay



In the wake of some big-name global brands releasing their Olympic advertising campaigns in the past couple of weeks, including official sponsors like UPS and Coca-Cola, Beijing authorities have been busy making sure that all the sponsors will be getting their money's worth. BOCOG has announced a crackdown on unofficial use of the Olympic logo and the beginning of a final sweep to make sure only the ads of official Olympic sponsors appear in areas close to the competition sites and along major avenues such as the airport expressway. Coca-cola products will be the only beverages available at all the Olympic venues. It's also been reported that ads starring Olympic athletes such as Liu Xiang （Anli and Cadillac), Yi Lianjian (Nike) and Yao Ming (Pepsi), but advertising brands that are not Olympic sponsors, will not be permitted to be broadcast between Aug 1 and Aug 27. Read more...

Beijing bachelors strut their stuff for a good cause this Saturday, June 28th, at the Gongti Kro's Nest, located just inside the North Gate of the Workers' Stadium next to Vics.

More info about the event can be found at the speedatingbeijing.spaces.live.com website.

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Links and Sources
Youku: 默哀 全国人民默哀三分钟！13亿人的共鸣！
Sohu: 视频：19日14时28分全国默哀三分钟 鸣笛声声撼人心

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It seems that the ping pong diplomacy is alive and well but that its present form involves Chinese leaders frightening other world leaders with their shock and awe table tennis skills. Earlier this year, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown wisely declined to take on the earnest, baseball loving Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao in a match. Last night, after witnessing Hu Jintao's prowess with the ping pong racquet (see video above), Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda also, as Japan Today puts it, "chickened out in the face of a good player."

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Jonathan Kott (Jiang Nan) is an American who has been living in Chengdu for over 10 years. In that time he seems to have mastered the ins and outs of Sichuanhua and is now fluent in the local dialect. In the time he's been there, Jiang Nan has developed quite a reputation in Sichuan, he's been profiled multiple times in the mainstream Chinese press and, as a presenter on Chengdu Television's Daoting Tushuo program, is now become something of a household name in Chengdu – a Sichuan Dashan if you will. In other accomplishments he was awarded the title of the Chili Eating King (辣椒王子) at a Chili eating competition and last June opened his own bar in Chengdu. He also happens to be quite a good photographer.

Since mid-March Jiang Nan has been posting short films starring himself on to video sharing sites such as Tudou and Youku. In the videos, he can be seen narrating in fluent local dialect as he wanders the streets of Chengdu in search of a good bowl of noodles. The videos have attracted quite a bit of attention for their novelty value of a laowai speaking in a local Chinese dialect. However, the appeal of a foreigner speaking fangyan is nowhere near as high as that of meinü at the ongoing Beijing Auto Show. This video was uploaded to Youku 2 days ago and has already been viewed over 800,000 times.

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