Chinese Olympic officials have been forced to rebuild the toilets in their state-of-the-art stadiums after the original designs failed to take into account western bathroom habits.

Venues such as the main Olympic stadium, the ‘Bird’s Nest Stadium’, the ‘Water Cube — where aquatic events will be staged — and the National Indoor Stadium were built with Chinese-style ’squat’ toilets.

However, organisers have now realised most westerners like something to sit on while relieving themselves, and have begun to make the necessary adjustments.

Yao Hui, a senior official for the management of the venues said, ‘Toilet alteration projects at the Bird’s Nest, the Water Cube and National Indoor Stadium are ongoing and if technical conditions permit, all the toilets in these stadiums will be changed.

‘We will change the toilets in as many (venues) as we can, especially those for the key clients, athletes, Olympic family members and the media.’

It could be arguent that the media should be on the very bottom of the list. And you can look on the positive side. Yao Hui, is confident the Olympics could provide the spark for a Chinese toilet revolution. He said, ‘The Olympics is an opportunity to speed up the transition.’ He must be dreaming.
Source: Tiscali

A female chimpanzee in a Chinese zoo has managed to kick the habit after smoking for 16 years. Ai Ai, 27, first took up smoking after her mate died in 1989.

After a second spouse died in 1997 and her daughter was moved to another zoo, the broken-hearted chimp’s health reportedly started deteriorating.

So she has been forced to kick the habit cold turkey.

One zookepper said, ‘In the first few days, she squealed for cigarettes every now and then. But as her life became more colourful, she gradually forgot about them altogether.’

Her new, busy lifestyle includes walking after breakfast, exercising in the evening and being served ‘fried dishes and dumplings at every meal’ on top of bananas, rice and milk.

It is not clear how Ai Ai developed her addiction, and whether she was first given cigarettes from the same guardians who have helped her quit.
Source: BBC News

Shanghai Pearl Hydrogen Power Source Technology unveiled its environmentally clean hydrogen fuel cell bike at an international fair in Shanghai recently. The bike is comprised of a battery tank and a pair of hydrogen gas bottles making it look different than other electric bikes.

It only takes 30 minutes to refill the gas bottles where is can take over 3 hours to recharge an electric battery and a battery can weight twice as much as the hydrogen system.

The new bike can complete a trip of about 100 kilometers at about 25 km/h and costs about $2,632 dollars, although it is expected to drop to about $550 after they enter mass production.

Of course you will have to find a refueling station to provide hydrogen for the bike. And do you want to ride around sitting on a tank of hydrogen? Just a thought.
Source: Weird News China

If you are going to do it, don’t hang back. Go big.

Calligrapher He Wenjun dips his 3.8 meter and 54 kilogram ink brush before writes a giant Chinese character at Beihu square in Nanchong of southwest China’s Sichuan Province to deliver his good wishes for Beijing Olympic Games.

Better than sending an SMS or a postcard.

This is something people can see and relate to.

Mark you, writing with a 54 kilogram paint brush is not something you would want to do every day of the week.
Source: China View

This I find difficult to believe. But, by an large, Chinese spectators are not into cheerleaders.

The smiling young women have come to expect a crowd response as chilly as the winter wind outside. They shimmy to Shakira as spectators stare sullenly, then prance off the court to anemic applause.

China’s 1.3 billion people are crazy about sports, but not cheerleaders. Those women who have taken to the all-American phenomenon hope that plans for cheerleaders at the Olympics will bring some glamour to their work.

Having seen them perform in Hong Kong — the Dallas Cowboys no less — I can say it is one of the great spectacles of all time.

The Olympics are a huge celebration of national pride, and organizers are encouraging ordinary Chinese to play a role. Along with more than a million volunteer applicants and retirees learning English to communicate with foreign visitors, cheerleaders also are eager to leave a mark.

Dancing is simply foreign to many Chinese fans, who would rather puff a cigarette or stretch their legs when play stops.

A Beijing resident who watched Li and her teammates from the Soojin Dance troupe perform at a recent handball tournament said he hoped there would be no Western dance routines at the games in August.

The man must be stark raving mad.
Source: Yahoo

This is very embarassing. I want to go inland to Mudgee in New South Wales to visit with a friend who is, roughly, in the same line of business. I am told my train has been cancelled. Someone has stolen the power cables.

And the reason these power cables are being stolen is the coming August Olympics in Beijing. Difficult to believe but true.

Organised gangs are being blamed by authorities for stealing copper cabling worth millions of dollars, selling it (melted down) to China to help construction of buildings.

Victoria Police detective sergeant Barry Hills said, ‘The theft of this stuff has caused the train system to shut down for between five and seven hours. They are not just taking small lengths. They are taking up to 500 metres at a time.’

In recent weeks police have seized more than 15 tonnes of stolen copper cabling stashed in shipping containers and warehouses.

China is the world’s biggest copper user, with consumption expected to reach 5 million tonnes in 2008, up from 4.8 million tonnes last year.

Tens of thousands of Australian commuters — mainly in the state of Victoria — have been left stranded by several copper robberies, with thieves risking death by electric shock to steal the precious metal from rail networks for the energy-hungry Chinese market.

In New South Wales, which contains Mudgee, the state government has urged people to help prevent the theft after robbers ran off with communication cables and copper from electricity depots.

Apparently Australia is not alone in this. Surging demand in India and China is also driving a wave of copper thefts in the United States and the United Kingdom.

NSW Energy Minister Ian Macdonald this year said thieves had even stolen copper vases from a Sydney cemetery to melt down for black-market export.

Macdonald blamed copper theft for havoc on the state’s main north rail line, with hundreds of metres of copper wire stolen from signal poles.

He said, ‘The global increase in copper prices is fuelled by the Chinese construction boom, with prices increasing five fold since 2001.’

So I am driving to Mudgee. Be quicker that waiting for the Olympics and for someone to return the copper.

PS And let no one write in to tell me Mudgee station is permanently closed. It originally opened in 1884 and was closed for a while but reopened in 2000 when the first train pulled in from Sydney after the reopening of the Mudgee-Gulgong line. So there.
Source: Yahoo

Normally we never write about Singapore. It is not in our remit. But because of the BuddhaBus controversy this story is noteworthy.

In Singapore a cosmetics line that extolled the virtues of ‘Lookin’ Good for Jesus’ has been pulled from stores.

The Straits Times said promising to ‘Redeem your reputation and more,’ the product line included a ‘virtuous vanilla’ flavored lip balm and a ‘Get Tight with Christ’ hand and body cream.

Wing Tai RetailTopshop removed the line after receiving complaints.

Nick Chui, 27, one of the complainants, said, ‘These products trivialize Jesus Christ and Christianity. There are also sexual innuendoes in the messages and the way Jesus is portrayed in these products.’

The report quoted 24-year-old accountant Grace Ong as saying, ‘Why would anyone use religious figures to promote vanity products? It’s very disrespectful and distasteful.’
Source: AOL News

China’s biggest matchmaking website, the century love, launched a ‘love-finding’ fair, attracting more than 4,000 singles in Beijing.

The huge dating event was arranged just like a recruitment fair for job hunters, where there were ‘employers’ and potential ‘employees’, who bring with their ‘resumes’ just like job hunters. Both ‘employers’ and ‘employees’ were charged RMB100 for attending the fair.

A Beijing girl at the fair, said, ‘I have never expected to join in such a creative dating, and it is so interesting…I expect to find my future husband through face-to-face interview.’

It was the first time that the century love website had held such an event.
The century love (shijijiayuan in Chinese) website was established by a university student in 2003. It quickly developed into a famous date arranging website nationwide, targeting people with a higher education background. It has 12 million registered members and has helped two million singles find their spouses.

A survey conducted by China Computer world magazine in 2006 shows that people with high education background and good salary tend to depend more on website services to find their partners.

Young singles make up 46% of China’s total population, according to China Youth and Child Research Center and the population and development research center of the Renmin University of China. Add to this the fact that 2008 is thought by many singles as a very lucky year to find their partners.
Source: China View

Biologist Yin Zhi felt like a proud new father when bright green, genetically-engineered piglets were born at his university.

This might sound like some complex prank but it is real science for a real reason. Yin Zhi, second-in-command of a research team at the Northeast Agricultural University had spent three days in a freezing stable waiting for the sow to deliver, so excited he could hardly sleep.

He said, ‘I don’t have kids, but it must be like becoming a dad for the first time. It was the fruit of two years of work.’ He was describing his feelings when the piglets turned out to be fluorescent green like their mother.

Yin’s university is located in China’s far northeastern city of Harbin and makes news in genetic engineering.

Fame first came a year ago when the sow was born fluorescent green all over, even her tongue.

Her offspring, the newly-born piglets, only show patches of green when held up against ultraviolet light, but to the scientists they are more interesting because this is a trait passed on from one generation to the next.

Yin Zhui said, ‘We plan to match them with florescent piglets from another batch of piglets we expect soon. That way, the third generation may be more fluorescent.’
I has been done before but replicating previous experiments is an important step on the road to real innovation.

The researchers manipulated just one gene to make the pigs fluorescent, and there are 20,000 others genes to move on to.

Liu Zhonghua, said, ‘Research into pigs is important because they are vessels for the generation of organs. For the foreseeable future, it will not be possible to breed organs outside living bodies, and we need to use pigs’ bodies for this purpose.’

China is rapidly increasing its spending on research and development, with funding growing by an annual average annual of 18% over the past five years, according to Science, a US journal.

By contrast, the United States, Japan and the European Union have seen annual average growth of 2.9% in the same period, the journal said. Note that Yan Shi’s pigs are real. Our illustration is fake.
Source: IOL

The world’s highest swing has been set up on a 1,100ft TV tower in Harbin city. The swing is on a 700ft-high viewing platform on the tower in Harbin city, Heilongjiang province.

Participants sit on the steel seat and swing out over the city, beyond the edge of the platform.

The Harbin Daily reports the swing is called ‘Game for brave people’.

The tower is the world’s second-highest steel tower, after the Kiev tower in Ukraine. To see how frightening this could be there is a YouTube clip showing what it is like riding the swings in the Tivoli Gardens, Copenhagen.

Probably nearly as frightening.
Source: Anova