What's changing in Beijing?

Quite a few things have changed in Beijing lately.  Gone are the foreigners, so many of the ex-pats who lived there have left over the past number of months due to new regulations with visas.  No longer can one person claim to be a tourist for 6 consecutive years within the Middle Kingdom, you know who you are.  Visa's are now incredibly difficult to come by, no longer can you call someone up, hand over your passport and a wad of cash, wait a day or so, get the visa back and then repeat year after year.  I never engaged in such activities...

DHL recently issued a memo on many other changes, which I picked up via the China Law Blog.  I found the following quite interesting:

• 20 enterprises around Beijing notorious for heavy pollution are requested for a 30 percent reduction in emissions.
• Enterprises which can not meet emission standards are requested to shut down temporarily.
• Work at all construction sites around Beijing, including cement and concrete mixing will have to stop on or before July 20.

I can see a huge amount of work being shifted inland temporarily as a result of this.  I'm going to be very interested if many of these regulations will be still in place when the Paralympics commence from 6th - 17th September 2008.  By the way, for those not in the know, the above picture is one of the FUWA's. Trust me, come the Olympics in two months we shall be brainwashed by the little fellahs...

Open source advocate gets “re-educated” in China!

God dammit. I always seem to miss the best parties. Thanks to a friend of mine I was on the list to attend the Microsoft conference in Peking University. The guest of honor was Microsoft’s founder and all round philanthropist, Bill Gates. Supposedly he was going to discuss “Innovation in China’s future”. I wonder if that includes spyware, malware etc., all of which is synomonous with the Microsoft brand name.

Anyone who knows me for 5 minutes knows that I am a complete advocate of Open Source software. Anyhow I bailed out of not going to Bill’s speech for a few reasons.

Anyhow, a friend of mine warned me that if I was going to go that obviously my rotten eggs would be confiscated at the door, so that would obviously lead to a piss poor party. What is a party of Microsoft without a little egg throwing anyhow?

I’m really kinda regretting not going right now. It appears that someone else was undeterred and crashed the party.

Bill is looking thoroughly amused n’est pas? Is this the best way to represent the Open Source movement? Off course not, it’s not even sensational, it’s idiocy at it’s height. If you want to support open source then run Debian or Ubuntu or one of the other plethora of free operating systems out there. Both organisations have released fantastic systems this past month that blast Vista out of the water.

Now this man appears to be an middle aged gentleman. Back in Ireland this kind of stunt would have been purpotrated by a teenager with perhaps a slight slap on the wrist. However remember that this is China, is this unknown gentleman’s whereabouts currently known? Does he still have organs? Has he been or is currently being “re-educated”?

It appears that the culprit reportedly darted across the stage, “loudly shouted against Microsoft’s monopoly,” proudly displayed a sign of “Free software, open source,” and was promptly “tackled by security and removed for questioning.”

Anyhow, all jokes aside, anything that is done to bring awareness to the open source movement is only a good thing. I’m just sorry I wasn’t there to throw some eggs and evade capture. Viva la revolution!

Beijing and public urination...

Saturdays and work should never be involved in the same sentence. Unfortunately it is common to work either the weekend before or after a national holiday so that you get the entire week as a vacation. So this basically means that I have to work constantly for the next 7 continuous days.

Fortunately I have had an amazing vacation in Beijing where I've had one strange coincidence after another after another happen to me. Could anyone reading this who was not in Beijing that I know please raise your hand, you are possibly the only person that wasn’t let me assure you. 15 million people in one city and I bump into a heap of people that either know me or I know them from all over the world. It kind of freaked me out. But fortunately that didn’t stop me from enjoying myself immensely.

So after arriving in Beijing last week I ended up in a fantastic hostel that I will recommend to every single person going there. Its the Red Lantern House, Beijing,No.5 Zhengjue Hutong, Xinjie Kou, Xicheng District. What a place to meet people and have the craic; it’s pretty cheap and great grub, great location and a really nice environment. Anyhow, I'm expecting my next stay to be free so that’s the reason I'm plugging it so much. :)

Walking around Tienanmen square humming "Let's go fly a kite" while drunk is a hell of an experience. I almost expected to see Ms. Poppins jump out and lead the 10,000 or so Chinese in a verse whilst flying their marvellous gliding contraptions. Having had enough of the people coming up to annoy me while trying to get photographed with foreigners I decided to head into the Forbidden City. I know I'm famous and all (I don't have a big head at all) but that was a bit much even for me. So of I traipsed to the forbidden city and encountered kid after kid engaging in public urination. They really must think a hell of a lot about the place to treat it with such respect. The FC was pretty wedged, actually it was like being unable to breathe at times, so after having endured the throng for a few hours I tried to get away from the tourist trail of tour groups, colourful baseball caps and flag loving psychopaths. I'll try and get back to Beijing sometime during the year and do a tour of the city when it's not so busy.

So after seeing a hell of a lot of Beijing I came back to Dalian last Thursday night with a full suitcase. After spending about 1000 RMB I felt like I could open up my own shop. After getting to the airport it was a nice surprise when the airliner told me that I was to be upgraded to 1st class (China Southern). First class was always packaged as a different way of life however it really left much to be desired. The only added comfort that I experienced was a larger seat, no single movie screen, no pre flight beverage, no hot stewardesses. Get your act together China Southern.

I'd like to take this opportunity to wish my Dad, his brother and my sister a happy birthday. Hope the heads aren't too sore from last weekends festivities.