ISpyShanghai

After a heavy Friday night (for which I blame Baijiu, B52s and The Beaver), and a more restrained Saturday (Comedy night@Racks, The Spot, The Shelter, home early) I had a good day of wandering around on Sunday.

If you ever feel like you’re insignificant in this world, that life passes you by and nobody pays attention to you, try setting up a tripod and camera on Nanjing Dong Lu. There’ll be a crowd of people watching you within a few minutes.

(If you’re white you can achieve the same trick by just sitting down next to an empty seat on Nanjing Dong Lu. A steady stream of Chinese bumpkins who want to have their photo taken with a genuine laowei will be along shortly.)

Here’s another timelapse video:

Sorry- I wrote this when horribly drunk and don’t want to keep the original thing posted.

Is this a menu item or a frigging cryptic crossword clue?

Good food in this place though.

I forget the exact address but it’s a Chinese restaurant in Beijing, shouldn’t be hard to track down.

Last night I watched Germany edge past Turkey in the Euro2008 semi-finals .

There must have been 1,000+ people packed into O’Malley’s to watch the game. With about 75 minutes gone and the score tied at 1-1, the TV cut out. No-one was pleased.

The live footage was out for maybe 10-15 minutes, during which time both teams scored. People all around were getting phone calls and text messages from home telling them the score, so random pockets of people were celebrating whilst others didn’t know why.

To make things worse the TV station, with no live footage to show, was repeating earlier goals and near misses- and half the crowd thought it was live.

Anyway the whole thing left me utterly exhausted and I slept in until 5:30pm today. So here, late, is some timelapse stuff I shot in Tiananmen square when I was in Beijing last weekend.

If that doesn’t work, here’s the same thing on Youtube.

After spending just two nights I’m Beijing, I’m certainly no expert on the place. However I was given some good tips on where to go by experts, and had a stellar time in the city.

Many, many, many thanks to WoAiZhongGuo, CP/Chas and Craig McMahon.

Since there is a minor sporting event coming up, I thought I would use my time in Beijing to try and score some google hits. Shameless, I know, but what can you do?

So I’ve written an Official* Whoop-whoop Guide To The 2008 Summer Olympics in Ye Old Beijing

*Not strictly official.

<cue Shoe Tuesday music>

In 2006, Mengna beat rival Langsha Knitting Co to become the sole socks supplier to the 2008 Summer Olympic Games. Mengna paid $5 Million for the privilege and with other promotional costs the overall total will be more than 100 million RMB.

Source: China Daily 23/6/08

Crank up the machine boys, we’re making Olympic socks now!

Mengna and Langsha are both made in a town called Yiwu- in fact 40% of the socks on the world market are made in this town.

Can you imagine living there? Every day must be like Christmas.

three bald men

Me, my Chinese double, and Mr Mao at 天安门.

Lovely weather here in Beijing, those smog rumours are anti-Chinese propaganda.

Mao + Ryan’s daughter

A photo for the weekend