Items Tagged With Beijing Olympics

Came across this recent article in the Washington Post by Chinese-American actress and director Joan Chen that was published on the day the Olympic Torch went through San Francisco.

I forget how far she's come since her childhood in Shanghai during the Cultural Revolution.

 

I was born in Shanghai in 1961 and grew up during the Cultural Revolution. During my childhood, I saw my family lose our house. My grandfather, who studied medicine in England, committed suicide after he was wrongly accused of being a counterrevolutionary and a foreign spy.

Those were the worst of times.

Since the Cultural Revolution ended in the late 1970s, however, I have witnessed unimaginable progress in China. Changes that few ever thought possible have occurred in a single generation. A communist government that had no ties to the West has evolved into a more open government eager to join the international community.

 

I wasn't born in China. I was your typical Americanized kid growing up. I had no clue what the Cultural Revolution was until I picked out a random book shortly after my freshman year in college. I was at the airport bookstore in Boston on my first flight ever to China in 1995. That book was called "Wild Swans" and it's the catalyst to what sparked my interest in learning about mainland China and modern Chinese history.

I wasn't born in China so I will never fully understand...but I can definitely appreciate the emotions of what it must be like for someone to have grown up during the Cultural Revolution, find success in America and return to her hometown to witness the "unimaginable progress" Joan speaks of when she describes China today.

Here's a line that really got to me:

For one thing, the Chinese are a proud people. They want freedom and greater rights, but they know they must fight for them from within.

I couldn't agree more. Tackling torches, Jack Cafferty and boycott bandwagon is not going to do a damn thing but accelarate a downward spiral on both sides. You already see it happening and to be honest with you, we've got months left to go and I'm experiencing a really bad case of anti-everything fatigue. From both sides. Plenty of negative energy to go around, you won't see it here.

It's been 13 years since my first trip to China. I was a 19 year old Chinese-American girl with no clue. Born in Taiwan to a family with 300 years of history there. Raised in the U.S. since age 2. Didn't learn how to speak Mandarin until college (still not good at it) and just assumed that China was a scary Communisty country where people were opressed and clueless about the outside world. That was me in 1995. This is me today. What you read on this blog, what you hear in my podcasts, what you see evolving with The China Business Network. It's all an effort on my part to take what I've learned and build a bridge for both sides. It's a culmination of 13 years of my own journey learning about China for myself. It started with a plane ride. So for those who don't get it. What's your excuse? Just sayin'.

Joan Chen is harmonious. She rocks.

I spent a good part of an hour today just taking a sneak peak at all the insane architecture for the Beijing Olympics. Those of you on the ground in Beijing have literally seen the city change in front of your eyes over the past several years and I only got tiny glimpses of it during the few days I spent there some months back for a conference.

Here's one I'd like to share with you because if it looks anything like the way it's been conceptualized, THAT is totally on my list of must-see places either before or after the madness of the games.

For more information on the WaterCube, check out this article. And you can also find out more about the Australian company behind its design here.

As we countdown to the Beijing Olympics, it looks like the folks over at Engrish.com are going to be getting fewer submissions from China if the Beijing Municipal Tourism Bureau has their way.

As part of their determination to internationalize Beijing ahead of the Olympics, it appears they're on their final draft of English translations for Chinese menus.

Misleading, and often hilarious, translations such as "chicken without sexual life", "husband and wife's lung slice" or even "bean curd made by a pock-marked woman" have been replaced with "Spring chicken", "pork lungs in chili sauce" and "stir-fried tofu in hot sauce".

I bet that Chicken Without Sexual Life gets ordered a lot by tourists out of sheer curiosity. Darn. I have to admit, those menus in China have been the source of some harmless laughs during the years I was living there. I'm going to miss them.

In the meantime, you have to give them credit for trying right?

Now...I wonder if someone should go around helping all the Chinese restaurants in the U.S. with their menus. Somehow placing an order for Strange Flavored Chicken and Pu Pu Platter always made me think twice. And while we're on the topic, I think someone needs to finally tell the American public that "chop suey" was invented in America.

...and ever wonder who General Tso was and how come he got a chicken dish named after him? Yea, me too.