Tag Archive: Inside the Dragon

  1. Gastronomic Globalization

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    By Austin Shiner

    BEIJING, China, 3:16 p.m. — Culinary variety indicates globalization. It makes sense: restauranteurship is a good option for immigrants adjusting to a new culture yet striving to maintain their own. American cuisine is both bolstered and battered by our melting-pot society (although melting-pot is hardly an appropriate metaphor — it suggests homogeneity, which is misleading. We’re more of a casserole, stratified into distinct layers which, working together, create something better than any single layer can offer. If this seems like an idealized culinary simplification, it is: food always irons out the creases).

    China: is it globalized? The Olympics say yes, as Beijing hosts one of humanity’s greatest showings of international cooperation, starting tomorrow. Business says yes, as gleaming office buildings grow like weeds from China’s fertile entrepreneurial ground. Language says yes, as school children learn English and the expatriate population grows every day. Yet food says no.

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  2. 8.8.8.8.8.8.8.8.

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    By Ruth Kim

    HONG KONG, China, 10:10 a.m. — In a country where a moustache or a howling dog is considered bad luck, it’s no surprise that the Chinese picked such an opportune date for the opening ceremonies — August 8, 2008 — at 8:08:08 pm. Eight, the luckiest number in China, sounds very close to the word “prosperity” in Chinese. In the same way, I was warned not to mispronounce four, which can sound like “death” with a twist in the tone.

    Even in Hong Kong, where locals see themselves as more westernized than mainlanders, Chinese superstitions apply everywhere. Walking along sweaty, narrow sidewalks, you have to dodge mini shrines with incense, jutting out of local shops to fend off evil. In the business district of Central, Corporate moguls and CEOs practice feng shui — or Chinese geomancy according to wind and water forces. (more…)

  3. A shifting storm

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    By Austin Shiner

    BEIJING, China, 4:00 — I woke up this morning to a blue sky. Again. It’s the second day in a row.

  4. A Touch of Class

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    By Austin Shiner

    BEIJING, China, 3:47 p.m. — Charm. I’ve been missing it since I arrived in Beijing. This city has much to offer: first-class hotels, wondrous food, and cultural relics galore. Yet it’s no Paris, no Chicago or San Fran for that matter. It is, in nearly all respects, an industrial wonder, a labyrinth of concrete filled with cars and bicycles. But last night I saw a new Beijing: Houhai.

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  5. Turning the tide on a sushi lover

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    By Austin Shiner

    Beijing, China, 1:11 PM — Tropical fish nibbled at my feet.

    Thousands of them.

    The “fish cleansing pool” at the East Hawaii International Club is nearly beyond belief, and totally amazing. Complete with four über-gaudy golden pineapples on the roof, the club is, and is not, like American sports clubs. Sam and I first marched into the locker room accompanied by legions of golden-robed male attendants. My two “helpers” handed me my own robe. I stripped in front of their starring gaze, as is the awkward custom, and donned my club-wear. We then headed to the pool. We took a quick stint in the Chinese traditional medicine pool (filled with green tea so that, as Sam pointed out, one can’t tell if there’s been an “accident” recently. The water’s warm too, which doesn’t help). Toweling off, I looked across to an oriental gazebo with a small pool underneath: the fishpond. “It feels amazing,” Sam said. “After a soccer tournament they eat your blisters right off.” My feet are baby-butt smooth so I didn’t know how interested they’d be in me.

    Strange but True

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  6. Prison in Beijing?

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    By Jae Hyung Ryu

    BEIJING, China, 11:12 p.m. — I’ve been in Beijing for six weeks now, studying Chinese through the Princeton in Beijing program, perhaps better known as Prison in Beijing, a nickname bestowed upon the program because of its notorious intensity. I’m staying at Beijing Normal University, which, this particular summer at least, actually does seem like a prison. Security is tight both on and off campus, and fences have been erected all over the university. The reason: BNU is full of American athletes (rumor has it, basketball players and swimmers mostly). I’ve been trying to get their autographs, but prospects looks pretty bleak (especially after I was apprehended by a security guard for watching the bus dropping off athletes from afar).

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  7. Beijing gets floral stamp; Mao’s favorite restaurant

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    By Austin ShinerBEIJING, China, 12:30 a.m. — Olympic preparations and paranoia, which consume so much of Beijing in this final week before the Games, restrict fun but still fail to drain life out of this city. Many bars and clubs are shut, all parcels are x-rayed upon entrance to the subway, taxi routes are diverted and turn a 10-minute ride into a half-marathon and the internet café that used to accept my driver’s license as adequate personal identification now requires my passport. Yet I still frequent my favorite lamb kabob restaurant, where Ge Ge, Sam and I continue to devour as much fatty connective tissue as we can muster. The city, in most respects, is functioning as usual. Purely Delicious  (more…)

  8. What a corny blog title …

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    By Austin Shiner

    BEIJING, China, 9:11 p.m. — My flight thrilled upon descent. The turbulence was fun enough, but entering the cloud layer was captivating: Beijing, and Olympic fever, lay below. A bird’s-eye view of the city’s gleaming towers and brand-spanking-new airport would make a wonderful finale to a long globe-spanning journey. We plunged into the clouds, wings rattling, and burst through the cover to see … nothing. The polluted haze completely obscured the ground.

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