Here is a good video from NBC about how Nastia’s life was instantly changed by winning the all around competition:

So, what can be done about Beijing’s smog issues at this point? Not a whole lot. I do believe they’re taking every possible measure to clear the air in time for the Olympics. But it seems to be a day late and a dollar short. It’s unfortunate that world class athletes have to compete under such conditions, especially as this should have been a foreseeable problem.

In case of an unexpected quake, the Olympic venues have been made to withstand an earthquake up to magnitude 8. Additionally, 31 earthquake refuge areas have been set up which can hold up to 3 million people.

The earthquake monitoring system is not perfect, as it can only predict certain kinds of earthquakes. The major earthquake which occurred in May was not predicted by the system.

Obviously, everyone hopes that the system is correct and that there will be no major disasters of ANY KIND during the Olympics.

While babies aren’t completely banned, parents are encouraged to leave them at home.

Beijing Olympics Airport: World’s Biggest Airport Opens in Beijing
This post has very cool pictures of the new Beijing airport.

Many hotel rooms still vacant for Beijing Olympics
This is good news for people planning on traveling to the Olympics this year.

Olympic Sponsors Cheer the Home Team
This is very interesting article about the way sponsors are advertising in this Olympics.

GYMNASTICS: Paul Hamm has surgery on hand
Story about Olympic gold medalist Paul Hamm’s hand surgery and how it affects his changes to compete in the upcoming Olympics.

I wonder if the rising gas prices will be good or bad for the Olympics. I guess it could be good, because more people will stay home this summer rather than take long vacations. Which means they will be home to watch the Olympics on tv. On the other hand, less people will be traveling which might mean a lower turn-out for the Summer Olympics.

How do you think gas prices will affect the Olympics?

So, if you were planning on going to the Olympics this year I hope you already bought your tickets. The tickets sold out a month earlier than expected, which is pretty amazing considering all the controversy surrounding this years Olympic games.

Pretty cool news for those of you who are heading out to see the Olympics live this year.

“All hotel rooms and offices are considered to be subject to on-site or remote technical monitoring at all times.. Hotel rooms, residences and offices may be accessed at any time without the occupant’s consent or knowledge.”

You can read more about the warning here.

I guess Big Brother is even more prevalent in China than in the US, or is it?

This bustling several-storey-restaurant is really atmospheric, each floor with different seating arrangements. The Golden Tripod is famous for its Cantonese cuisine, but also offers Shandong, Sichuan, and Huaiyang dishes. The menu is available in English, although the translations are sometimes perhaps a bit too unspecific. I ordered “Sautéed vegetables with cashews”. “It’s sweet,” the waiter warned me. I got crisp seaweed and cashews with sugar.

It tasted really good, just not what I had expected. There’s a menu with “dim sum” – the famous Cantonese snacks. It’s not translated into English, but it’s got pictures, so you can see what you order. If you’re having seafood, you can also avoid surprises by picking your food right from the aquarium. In any case, the Golden Tripod Attic is a great place for trying new dishes and experiencing the Cantonese cuisine in Beijing. I can really recommend it.

Steamed buns filled with vanilla custard

I’ve seen foreigners adopt a variety of strategies in order to avoid being ripped off. Some tourists just walk away when the first price they are told is not the one they are willing to pay. This might actually be very effective in the long run if more people started doing the same thing, but for now, you are more likely to leave empty-handed and disappointed.

Especially at places like the Silk Market, Hongqiao Pearl Market or Xidan – basically any place where there are lots of Western tourists – bargaining can be tough. There are a few markets in Beijing were vendors will start out at a price that is very close to what they are willing to sell for. You will eventually get some idea of how much money things are worth. The more you bargain, the better you will get at it.

Since I have found no satisfactory guide to bargaining in China in any of the travel guides I have consulted, I’ve put together a little “tutorial” myself. I have found this strategy to be very effective, although a little time consuming at times. There’s absolutely no need to feel bad. No vendor will sell to you if he doesn’t think he’s getting a fair price. Just be polite. Having a Chinese friend with you will save you a lot of time and money. But beware of having your tourist guide do the bargaining for you.

Step 1: Ask for the price.

Step 2: Tell the vendor it’s too much. If you have no idea of what you want to buy is worth, divide the price you were told by five(or so) in your head, and you will probably have a fairly realistic estimation of what it is worth.

Step 3: You will be asked how much you are willing to pay. Ignore that question (very important!) and ask the vendor to go down with the price some more.

Step 4: Walk away when the “negotiations” begin to stagnate. This will bring you much closer to the actual price.

Step 5: Once the price sounds fairly reasonable, you can tell the vendor what you are willing to pay. Always start out a bit lower than what you‘re planning to spend.

Step 7: If necessary, walk away again. If nobody shouts after you to come back, you know that your price was too low, and you will have to start over again at the next booth.

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Step X: Once you got what you wanted, feel smug and, most importantly, never ever ask a Chinese how much the stuff you just bought is really worth.

As I got there on foot, finding the entrance was the first challenge. I walked around the whole hotel past construction workers who all stared at me wondering what the strange “laowai” (foreigner) with the bag in her hand was doing wandering all the way around the hotel. Once I got to the entrance, I found out that I could have gotten there so much easier had I taken the entrance from Xizhimen Road. In any case, this is something that won’t happen to you if you take a taxi.

The hotel looked okay from the outside, though of course not as nice as on the pictures I’d seen. The lobby was really plush, although it was almost a bit too much with all the gold ornaments, little lights on the ceiling, and the palm trees next to the counter selling mooncakes for the mid-autumn festival, which was two days ago.

Checking in in English was no problem. The fuwuyuan (universal term in the north of China referring to all service staff whether in a hotel, a restaurant, a shop or anywhere else) spoke English well enough to explain everything that was necessary and answer my questions. I had to carry my luggage upstairs myself, but I only had one bag, so I don’t know whether it would have been any different had I had more luggage.
As the elevator sped up to the 18th floor where my room was, I was getting more excited.

The more disappointed I was when I got to the room. Officially I had booked a deluxe room. I don’t know what exactly I had expected, but it had definitely been something else different from the smallish room with the gray carpet I was standing in. For a moment, I was thinking about setting up a tent and sleeping in the lobby. That is not to say that the room was horrible. There was absolutely nothing wrong with it. There was just nothing special about it, either. Later, I found out that Deluxe room was just a nicer name for standard room, i.e. all rooms that were not business rooms or executive suites were simply called “deluxe”. The room was very similar to other standard rooms I had stayed in and paid considerably less money for, that is except for the mini bar and the chocolate bar on my pillow. Not to forget the comb in the bathroom that was made out of real wood… Anyway, I was disappointed.

The service was not overwhelming, either. Again, there was nothing wrong with it, nobody was unfriendly to me, and the staff was able to help me when I had questions about where this and that restaurant was or on how to check out later, but nobody was overly enthusiastic, either.
There are a couple of things to say in favour of the hotel: There’s a Carrefour right across the street, which is very convenient if you need or want to do some grocery shopping or need anything else. The selection of restaurants nearby, on the other hand, is less impressive, but there is a variety of restaurants, cafes and bars in the hotel.
The hotel is located fairly close to Xizhimen subway station. You can take a taxi there or take a bus from Baishiqiao bus stop very close to the hotel. Xizhimen is two stops away. If you don’t cross the road, this is one of the very few places were you’ve got an extremely high chance that you’ll get on the right bus.
The view on Xizhimen Avenue at night was nice, too. But it didn’t make up for the small size of my room.

If I could do my own hotel rating, I would say that I stayed in a three star room in a four to five star hotel. You can tell it’s not the newest hotel, either. The room was only $100, and I know that there are more “discount five star hotels” like this in Beijing that are okay, but not what you would expect from an upper range hotel. Unless you want the services offered by a five star hotel, there’s no need to stay there. You can get similar or better rooms in cheaper hotels. It’s probably better either to spend the $200 or $300 and stay in a hotel like the St. Regis and get a real five star hotel (of which there are quite a few in Beijing, too) or to save the money and stay at a place that might have a less fancy lobby, but equally good rooms.

It’s always considerably cheaper to reserve a room online than to book at the hotel directly, so here are some websites that have got good offers.
http://english.ctrip.com : the Chinese classic in English; you can reserve all types of hotels except real budget places and dorm beds. You can also book discount flights here if you have to travel within China.
http://www.sinohotel.com : everything from no stars to five stars; you can also book dorm beds here
http://hotelguidechina.com : 3-5 star hotels, you can search hotels by area.

This time, things went differently. I had dinner at a fast food place near Beijing railway station. I’d been looking for a different place to go to, but there were not a lot of other restaurants around. I had no one to have dinner with that night and just wanted to grab a bite. It was a very typical fast food place with cafeteria tables and plastic bowls. A look into the menu told me it was pretty expensive, too. My experience in China so far has been that if an ordinary small restaurant has nothing special to offer and charges more than other places, the food is usually not very good, so I briefly though about getting up and leaving. But I didn’t feel like having to look for another place, so I stayed. I got Zha Jiang Mian, a famous Beijing dish which is usually very good and had always come as a vegetarian dish when I had ordered it so far. Apparently, it also exists with meat, and that was what I got: a pot of noodles with lots of ground meat on top. I ate them up quickly and left.

In the subway station, my stomach was beginning to feel funny. I ignored it. “You’ll be fine.” I told myself. Nothing serious had ever happened to me because of eating Chinese food – and I’d eaten lots of things I would never put into my mouth in Germany. If anything, I thought, this is la duzi – diarrhea. La duzi is something you will probably get sooner or later if you are in China. It usually goes away after a day or two; it’s annoying, but nothing to worry about. On the bus, which was cramming full as usual, it finally began to dawn on me that this time I would not be fine. I got off two stations early, just about in time before my stomach decided to revolt. I rushed into the nearest restaurant and right into the gents’ room, as the ladies’ room was occupied. There’s something comical about squatting in the less than hygienic restroom of a really plush restaurant, having stomach problems and la duzi at the same time while crowds of angry men are banging on the door demanding to be let in.

I did feel a bit better afterwards and took a taxi home. “You’ll be fine.” I told myself. I was wrong again. I spent the next four hours at home in the bathroom. When my roommate got back very late at night, I told her what had happened. “Off to the hospital,” she said. I was not happy about going, but by that time, I was feeling so miserable that I didn’t really care any longer. Plus I was beginning to be really dehydrated as my stomach refused to take anything in, and I didn‘t know for how much longer this would continue. Unfortunately for me, the taxi driver who took us knew a lot about meat poisoning and how very dangerous it was, and was more than willing to share that information. I just remember hunching over my plastic bag in the back of the car and saying “Let’s talk about something else now, shall we,” every once in a while, but he just ignored me.

The hospital we went to was crowded and not the cleanest place I’d ever been to, but after all the horror stories I’d heard about Chinese hospitals, I had expected something worse. The syringes were new, although the nurse doing the blood test was very reluctant to tell me at first. “Does it make a difference?” She just snapped. I decided there was no point in telling her that yes, it made a big difference. The other people at the hospital were nicer, though not much more specific. “You’ve got bacteria in your blood,” I was told once the results came back. “We need to take one more blood sample amd do more testing now, and you’ll get an infusion in the meantime.” I tried to extract some more concrete information from them, but they just told me I‘d probably have to be re-examined again in a couple of days. I can’t say I cared much at that point in time.

After they took my blood sample, I spent the next three hours getting my infusion lying on a bed designed for patients having their ECG done. It was the only bed not occupied, and I did feel bad since there were quite a few patients much sicker than I was who did not have a bed. Every now and then I had to get up to make room for people who got their ECG done. Finally, at four o’clock in the morning, I got the results of my blood test: the form of meat poisoning I had was harmless, and I would be okay soon. Still not very specific, but much better news than what I’d been told before. I had to go back to the hospital for the next three days to get more medicine, which I did at a smaller and much nicer hospital closer to my home. I am still eating meat, but I’ve been more careful and have been staying away from ground meat altogether, as spoilt ground meat apparently is one of the major sources of food poisoning.

There is still a very high chance that the worst problem you will ever encounter in China is diarrhea. You should be sure to bring some medicine for that. In case you do have to go to the hospital while in Beijing, you have several options. You can either go to one of the regular Chinese hospital, which vary in quality of their service, or to one of the hospitals for foreigners, which are less crowded, cleaner, (and considerably more expensive), but might take you a lot longer to get there. I remember having to ride in the ambulance for 45 minutes when I accompanied a friend to one of those places. Make sure to have enough cash on you or to bring someone who can pay, as otherwise you will probably not be treated.

I also found the section on medical information of the website of the US embassy quite useful. You can get the names and addresses of a couple of major hospitals in Beijing here, as well as the number of an emergency

On my last day in Beijing, National Day was noticeably drawing closer. I had trouble getting into the cram-full subway train, and only managed to squeeze myself inside thanks to the crowds of people behind me who kept pushing.

The decorations on the square had been finished the day before. On one side of the square was a miniature Potala Palace, a miniature Three Gorges Damn, and a train representing the railway from Qinghai to Tibet, which has just been newly opened on July 1 this year.

Right in front of the Monument to the People’s Heroes hung the portrait of Sun Yat-sen, inofficial father of the nation and first president of the Republic of China, established in 1912 and not to be confused with the People’s Republic whose anniversary is celebrated… Nonetheless, Sun Yat-sen’s gets his place on Tiananmen Square every year.

On the other side were the Olympics mascots sitting in the middle of the flower arrangements – probably the biggest attraction judging by the number of people taking photos – as well as a rather smallish and much less impressive replica of the “Bird’s Nest”, one of the major Olympic venues. Since last year nobody knew yet what the Olympics mascots would look like, this the first year they were displayed for National Day.

Tian’anmen Square was filled with people, mostly from the countryside, taking pictures in front of the giant Olympic mascots and the other decorations. For most people coming to Beiing is something that they don’t do every year. It might even be a once in a lifetime experience for some, so everyone is really excited.

I was in for another photo session. There were only a few foreigners around that day, and as soon as people noticed I was willing to have my picture taken, more and more came up to ask. I’ve gotten into the habit of asking everyone who wants to take a picture with me whether I could also have a picture taken with them with my camera in return. Most people are very surprised that a foreigner wants to take their picture, but nobody minds, so by the end of the day, I had a nice photo collection on my camera as well as lots of new cell phone numbers, i.e. lots of new friends. I’m still in touch with some of them.

I had to go back to the place where I stayed fairly early though, since my flight was going that night. So I got back onto the subway, which was slightly less crowded by then, and went home to get ready to pack.