Do not Fear Earthquakes in Beijing 2008!

(edited and translated from 2008.sohu.com)

8th Nov 2006

The Beijing municipality announced the 11th 5-Years Development Plan for Natural Disaster management. The Plan highlighted that the city will build a Natural Disaster Prevention and Management Center. By the end of the 5 year period, the city center area will have the ability to withstand earthquakes of a magnitude of 6 on the Richter scale.

This means that buildings should suffer minimal serious structural damage in the event of a magnitude 6 earthquake and should not result in major casualties. At the same time the life support process and system will not be crippled for large areas.

They will also strive to detect signs of impending earthquakes above magnitude 4 and make meaningful predictions to help minimize the impact of major earthquakes (5 and above).

To ensure the safety of the Beijing 2008 Olympics, the city will draft a professional pre-disaster prediction and report process, as well as emergency response procedure in accordance to the earth movements below the venues during the Games. This will facilitate in making sure that in the event of an earthquake, the life support system can function in the face of an adversity.

---------------

Remember the super dogs video? They are trained for this purpose too!

Chinese Sports Star - 刘翔 (Liu Xiang)

He's probably the biggest sporting star right now in China, along with Yao Ming of Houston Rockets, NBA.

He is the very first male track and field athlete in China to win the Olympic Gold and is the current world record holder of the 110m hurdles at 12.88s. Many expect him to replicate that in Beijing 2008.

As you can see from the picture, he's not really goodlooking! I think his marketability lies not in his achievement. This guy really knows how to market himself. He communicate well and is unabashed about his achievements and ambitions. I think this makes him unique among conforming one-liner Chinese sports stars and creates excitement.

He earns 3 million dollars from endorsement already.

Beijing 2008 Gets “Green” Certification

"Posted 11:54 am ET (GamesBids.com)

The Beijing Organizing Committee for the 2008 Summer Olympic Games has passed its environmental management system (EMS) and is accredited with a re-certified ISO14001 by China’s Environmental Certification Center.

The certification covers twelve areas including BOCOG Green Office, event route planning, communications, accommodation, catering and Games-time transportation service, marketing, Olympic procurement, organization of large scale activities, torch relay route planning, venue planning and construction, and environmental management. "

The only question I have is whether the Chinese National certification is comparable to an International one.
Read More

The Qingdao Sailing Regatta First Trial

I got this from 搜狐. These are some pictures of the first ever Sailing event to be held at the Qingdao Sailing Regatta. It's the Qingdao Internationl Sailing Competition that involves all the competitive sailing events.

UK emerges as the overall champion of this event.

Read More

The First Venue to be Tested

This is the Feng Tai Softball Stadium. It's the first venue to tested for international competition.

The event was held in Sep for the International Women's Softball Invitation Competition. The Americans won!

*I made an original mistake of using the term baseball. Actually, I am not even sure the difference between softball and baseball!!!*

CCTV Building Construction Photos

The CCTV Building is finally showing its shape.

On a side note, yesterday I registered 390 page views which blew me away. It shocked me because it grew by nearly 4 times in a day. There wasn't much post on my blog, so it came as a surprise.

I hope it's not a google technical glitch ;). If you have visited, I appreciate if you can give some comments. :)

Air from the Beijing Games Anyone?

A Chinese textbook "Little Fox Sells Air" is a primary school book about a cunning fox that opens an air-selling business in a dirty air-polluted city.

Capitalizing on that idea, Li Jie, decided to bag "World Cup Air" for 50 yuan ($6.30) and sell it.

He also wants to bag Beijing 2008 Olympic Air, Tian'anmen Square Air, Mount Everest Air and and....well, the sky is the limit, literally.

Li asked the court, "A textbook could not possibly advocate breaking the law, could it?"

The Chaoyang Industry and Commerce Bureau rejected his application.

I don't know why. Let the guy sell the air. The only thing more foolish might be the people who buy it.

My dad used to say that people will buy anything. "If you left a bucket of manure on the front porch of a house sooner or later someone would buy it, either because they want the bucket or the manure."

Hmm... I wonder how it smells like (ewww!)

Anyway imho, it's better than chipping off a slab of the concrete from the stadium! It's like tourists who bring a piece of coral back home destroying the ecosystem. Taking away the air, won't destroy the beauty of the stadiums.

Speaking of which, the baseball stadium at Wukesong is a temporary one. So they may indeed sell away parts of this stadium as memorandum!
Read More

Silver Plates

There's no doubt that the Chinese love memorandums. Besides the commemorative coins, silver plates with fuwa figures depicting 38 different sports are right now being sold in Beijing. They come in sizes of 40, 50, 100, 500 and 1000 grams. The sports figures are made of 99.9% silver.

Qingdao Sailing Regatta

This venue has just completed some test sailing event. Looks like a nice place :).

The exterior of the Water Cube is completed!

According to 搜狐, the exterior of the Water Cube has been fully installed on 4th Nov 2006. The whole exterior is made up of 634 ETFE panels. These panels are self-clean, and can automatically adjust light and heat in the stadium by reflecting excess light and heat!

The roof of the building will be completed by end of 2006 followed by the installation of the internal ETFE wall! This is exciting!!! :)