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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A bemused Liu was the model of stoicism in the initial ceremony as organizers inadvertently played Chile’s national anthem instead of the Chinese national anthem. Someone probably distributed the wrong music.

He explained to fellow medalists Allen Johnson and Evgeniy Borisov and organizers what had happened.

An altogether happier Liu took to the podium for a second time ten minutes later to pick up his gold once again, on this occasion accompanied by the correct anthem.

The picture shows Liu Xiang posing with his gold medal after winning the men’s 60 metres hurdles.
Source: Reuters

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

One was any story about the Loch Ness Monster was fake. Always.

It is a pity he is no longer around to deal with the current story at Kanas Lake, an area inhabited mainly by Tuvans, who are famous among world-music fans for their throat-singing prowess and who, according to legend, are the descendents of Genghis Khan.

(There is some possibility of truth in this. A Y-chromosomal lineage is present in about 8% of the men in a large region of Asia which is about 0.5% of the men in the world. It has been suggested that the pattern of variation within the lineage is consistent with a hypothesis that it originated in Mongolia about 1,000 years ago. Such a spread would be too rapid to have occurred by genetic drift, and must therefore be the result of natural selection. It has been postulated the lineage is carried by likely male-line descendants of Genghis Khan, and that it has spread through social selection. Check in the mirror and see if there are any resemblances. You could be a descendant.)

That is enough of a legend to start with.

Now we come to the Kanas Lake Monster. Its habitat, within sight of the Soviet Union, was a sensitive border zone until the 1980s, and only with the opening up of Xinjiang has the monster been known to the outside world.

Depending on whom you talk to, it might be a giant fish, or it might be a mammal, or the lake might have both monstrous fish and monstrous mammals. There may be only one monster or there could be eight or more. It could be 30 feet long, and it could be longer than a football field.

State-run media reported that tourists from Beijing had seen it and even caught it on video. (The clip has now been viewed more than 900,000 times on YouTube and sort of could be something much as all photos of Nessie looked sort of possible.)

According to Xinjiang TV, the tourists were sitting in a boat on the lake when ‘two huge black aquatic animals with the length of more than 10 meters sprang out from the surface in succession.’

A retired border policeman, Tolugen Zikeli said, ‘The monster is fake, it’s a lie. It’s just to attract tourists.’

The monster, real of not, is called Hobzhk, which means something like ‘always changing’ or ’strange’ in Tuvan.

The park’s director, Tan Wei Ping,  swears he HAS seen the monster. Indeed, he claims to have seen four of them at once, each 45 feet long. He said, ‘The monster has been here for a long time, as long as the Tuvan people have been here. But monster is just the word that the Tuvans use — it’s just an animal with no name.’
Source: Slate