Clamp down on spitting

This is one local habit I just haven't been able to get used to....
(photo from bigwhiteguy.com- check it out)

Beijing clamps down on spitting
By Rupert Wingfield-Hayes BBC News, Beijing

With the Beijing Olympics now only two years away, the authorities have launched a campaign against one of the city's least pleasant habits: spitting.
The local government says it is part of a campaign to raise the ethical and cultural standards of the city ahead of the 2008 Games.
Foreign visitors to Beijing are often astonished by its citizens' capacity for expelling mucus.
Spitting is not just confined to the open air.
The floors of shops and restaurants are often peppered with phlegm.
But Beijingers are now being told they must abandon this cherished tradition.
The Beijing Capital Ethics Development Office has declared spitting the city's number one bad habit.

Special bags
Police have been ordered out on to the streets to track down offenders. Closed circuit television cameras will be used to catch them in the act.
"This year we will intensify our law enforcement efforts in this field," Zhang Huiguang, director of Beijing's Capital Ethics Development Office, told a news conference.
"We will require law enforcement officials to step up the frequency of fines."
For those who simply cannot kick the habit, there is an alternative. Hundreds of uniformed "mucus monitors" will patrol the streets handing out free spitting bags.
"You have to spit into a tissue or a bag, then place it in a dustbin to complete the process," Ms Zhang said.
She said that there would also be a renewed crackdown against the city's second biggest headache - littering.

Story from BBC NEWS:http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/asia-pacific/4762436.stmPublished: 2006/03/01 11:54:31 GMT

I note that HK had a big anti-spitting campaign back during SARS, with big penalties.

The spitting would be kind of OK if it was a good, consolidated spit, like the first image above. Unfortunately, its more like the image below, it tends to dribble out quite slowly, and sometimes stubbornly refuses to disconnect from the mouth for quite a while. That's when its really quite gross.

(this photo sourced from http://www.fh-zwickau.de/fb-sprachen/homepage/china/impressions.htm

Skiing in South Korea???

Yep, you CAN go skiing in South Korea. I went with friends Libby, Ken and Robert over the Chinese New Year (said no to the craziness of Chinese holiday periods once again) for a couple of days at Yong Pyong resort ('Enjoy your life? Say "YongPyong"'). We do, and we did.

According to the website, YongPyong was born in 1975 and is "innovating a new leisure culture known as "Korea's Ski Mecca" with a growing reputation as an internationally-renowned resort. " It is "located at a very inhabitable range of 700 meters above sea level." It's true, I have never know 700 metres above sea level to be so inhabitable. It offers excellent accomodation - "Adding to the usual anticipation and excitement that make up the joy of going on a trip, YongPyong offers the mystic wonder of falling asleep with this joy."

It was host to the 1999 Winter Asian Games and is trying to get the 2010 Winter Olympics, so the skiing is OK, although we had basically skied all the runs by the end of day two. It was challenging enough for me but a big boring for Ken, who grew up on skis (in Texas).

As well as being the host of the Winter Asian Games, YongPyong was also host to the famous Korean soap opera 'Winter Sonata', and if you need a break from skiing, you can take a tour of the filming location and "be moved by the passion once again". The movement of skiing was enough movement for us so we gave it a pass.

Anyway, I rediscovered skiing on this trip. The last time I went I tried snowboarding and spent a miserable day on my backside, after which I refused to go again. I think the time I went skiing before that it was freezing so I mainly had bad memories of skiing. However, this time the snow was fantastic, the temperature was perfect and I was with a great crowd, so had a fabulous time.

It was also my 29th birthday on the 2nd night of our trip and the gang took me out for dinner (including a cake that the waiter carried in!!) with a big drinking session afterwards (including tequila slammers). We had some heated drunken discussions and generally yelled loudly. The drinking session was especially effective in helping us sleep - our accomodation was in an 'ondol' which is basically a square room with a heated floor and a few blankets.

The other highlight was Libby and my trip to the "sauna" after a hard day's skiing. It turned out to be more of a communal bath than a sauna. They don't really do this in Australia but basically you walk around nude with all the ladies (if you're a lady) and go in different spas and saunas for as long as you can stand it. They had spas with various ingredients too. There was a slightly browny coloured spa we went it that was apparently some kind of tea. In China you can also go in spas with milk and beer (although not together).

Rat in Chinese restaurant

I thought this chicken head in the hot pot would be the most exciting thing I'd see tonight but oh how wrong I was. I'm down in Lijiang, Yunnan Province, again but this time on our annual firm outing. Tonight we went to a hot pot restaurant in the Old Town, the same place we went to last night because the food was so good. Yvette, one of my colleagues, saw a rat running across the floor - we were a bit disturbed by this but kept on with the meal. What drew the line was a rat running across my lap. I am not kidding. We were sitting on these benches and I don't know how it got up there but I felt something on my lap as I was eating and I looked down and there was a rat there!!!! It was awful. Sorry I was not quick enough to get a photo.... I screamed and pushed it off and we left fairly quickly after that. The other patrons didn't seem too perturbed, they just kept on with the excellent hot pot. Perhaps we should have not been so sensitive but just thrown it in and ate it too!!!

Just some fun

Mum took this one while she was visiting.

New Years - Alice in Wonderland

The big day arrived for our performances as Alice and the Queen of Hearts. Unfortunately I had to work on New Years' Eve (yes a Saturday, they had this weird Chinese arrangement for the holiday where we worked on Saturday and we get Tuesday off instead) but we were given an early mark at 4 since we all had a big night ahead of us. We took a taxi to the venue at about 6.30 as we had to get our hair and make up done. The taxi started taking us to a completely different part of town since we had agreed to whatever his response was to our initial instruction (since we didn't understand him). We turned around the other way and then all yelled at each other in our native tongues (always best in an argument, the other side gets the general drift). We eventually arrived.

The function we were characters at was for a Chinese property company. There ended up being people from lots of different place there so I guess it was a bit of a networking event. It was held at Bund 18, right on the river and with a great view of Pudong and all it's space age /Jetsons lights. On level 4 there they have a Creative Centre, and they had put up a whole set in there with different rooms and activities, all in Wonderland style. Besides Jane and I they also had a guy dressed up as the White Rabbit, and some soldiers with big cardboard cards for costumes. They had done an awesome job with the set, they had an area for croquet, which was where I was stationed, and a mad hatters tea party room (which was marked 'reserved' all night and which for some reason no one went into, a pity). The party itself was OK but they were being a bit tight with the alcohol so people weren't really all that drunk. It was quite cool counting down to midnight in Chinese, never done that before. I was thinking we might have to be in character, which is a bit out there with the Queen of Hearts who is fairly crazy, but we didn't really play our characters too much, I think it would have freaked everyone out a bit. At about 1 we left and when we were going down in the lift a lady in the lift gave us her card and said they were going to a party at her place. We jumped in a car with them and it turned out she was the curator of the Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art, so that was random, but cool. Jane was stoked since that's right up her alley, and it turned out this lady is also really into animation, which Jane absolutely loves. The party was at the Museum, I hadn't been there yet and have to go back to get a better look because it looked fantastic, the archietcture was great and they had some interesting animations playing on the walls. So we stayed there for a while and then left to move onto the next place, which for me turned out to be home, since we went outside and couldn't get a taxi to save ourselves. So we walked home. Then Jane went out again, and I went to sleep.