Transplanting football to China has never been as easy as the transplanters hoped. Mao was a basketball buff, which is one reason why you’ll find a hoop in just about every village from Tibet to the Yellow Sea. In football, by contrast, the pads and balls and rhythms are idiosyncratic, and, for a while, the league put its hopes on trying to cultivate a Yao Ming for football, a Chinese national who might be able to cut it in the N.F.L., and bear on his (presumably ample) shoulders the hopes and merchandising money of the motherland. At one point, the league even helped train some big-boned Chinese soccer players to make the switch to field-goal kickers. But none of them reached the N.F.L. (I encountered one of the aspiring kickers a few years ago, after he’d played his first minutes of actual football, and he told me that he’d rapidly discovered that the “opponent will try to disturb you when you try to kick a goal.”)

The N.F.L. is no longer looking to groom its Yao Ming. Richard Young, the managing director of N.F.L. China, told me that he now compares his sport’s future to that of coffee. “Years ago, I took a Chinese friend to try a cup of coffee, and he choked down this black liquid and said, at the end of it, ‘Richard, Chinese people will never love coffee.’ And you know what? To this day, they still don’t have the big barista machines at home. But they’ll gladly go to Starbucks, and Starbucks is all over China. So coffee is not going to replace tea, and we’re not going to overtake soccer, but it doesn’t mean we can’t build a good business.”

The Wall Street Journal reported in November on the NFL’s latest attempt to bring American football to China through an interactive marketing event in Shanghai.

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Post tags: Beijing, football, foreign sports, NFL, sports, Super Bowl
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The initial measurements were low on a day where you could see blue sky. After a week of smothering smog, the skies over the city were being cleared by a north wind.

The readings of PM2.5 particulate matter less than 2.5 micrometers in size or about 1/30th the average width of a human hair were being posted on Beijing’s environmental monitoring center’s website. Such small particulates can penetrate deep into the lungs, so measuring them is considered a more accurate reflection of air quality than other methods.

It is the first time Beijing has publicly revealed PM2.5 data and follows a clamour of calls by citizens on social networking sites tired of breathing in grey and yellow air. The US Embassy measures PM2.5 from a device on its rooftop and releases the results, and some residents have even tested the air around their neighbourhoods and posted the results online.

The reading at noon Saturday was 0.015 milligrams per cubic meter, which would be classed as “good” for a 24-hour exposure at that level, according to US Environmental Protection Agency standards. The US Embassy reading taken from its site on the eastern edge of downtown Beijing said its noon reading was “moderate.” Its readings are posted on Twitter.

Despite the low readings, many are still suspicious of the numbers reported by authorities. The Guardian adds:

Steven Andrews, an environmental consultant who has studied Beijing’s pollution data since 2006, said he was “already a bit suspicious” of Beijing’s PM2.5 data. In the 24 hours to noon Saturday seven of the Beijing monitoring centre’s hourly figures were “at the very low level” of 0.003 milligrams per cubic metre.

“In all of 2010 and 2011 the US embassy reported values at or below that level only 18 times out of over 15,000 hourly values or about 0.1% of the time,” Andrews said. “PM2.5 concentrations vary by area so a direct comparison between sites isn’t possible, but the numbers being reported during some hours seem surpisingly low.”

The Beijing centre says it has six sites that can test for PM2.5 and 27 that can test for the larger, coarser PM10 particles that are considered less hazardous. The center is expected to buy equipment and build more monitoring sites to test for PM2.5.

Beijing is not expected to include PM2.5 in its daily roundups of the air quality any time soon. Those disclosures, for example “light” or “serious”, are based on the amount of PM10, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide in the air.

See also Smog ground more plane in Beijing and City air harmful for another 20-30 years via CDT.

© melissa chan for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: air pollution, air quality, Beijing, smog
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On Jan. 23, Beijing will begin releasing hourly readings of air particulate measuring 2.5 micrometers in diameter or less, in an attempt to come clean about the level of pollution that regularly blankets the capital. Pollution is a sensitive subject in China, with state-run media often explaining away the smell of glue and haze so thick it obscures even nearby buildings with the term “fog,” and claiming, unbelievably, that Beijing enjoyed 274 “blue sky days” in 2011. The U.S. Embassy in Beijing has shied away from releasing its annual pollution statistics, but it runs a popular Twitter feed measuring the air on an hourly basis.

Environmental photographer Sean Gallagher took all of these photos today, a day the U.S. Embassy’s feed called “hazardous,” which means, among other things, that they recommend children and older adults remain indoors. While the color blue does occasionally feature in the skies above the capital, days like this recur with depressing frequency.

See also Gallagher’s website, the US Embassy’s @BeijingAir twitter feed and Greenpeace’s list of resources for tracking air quality in cities around China and beyond.

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Post tags: air pollution, air quality, Beijing, photography, photos
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Apple said in a statement that it decided not to open its store at Sanlitun “due to the large crowd, and to ensure the safety of our customers and employees”.

It also said that it was halting the sale of iPhones at all retail stores in Beijing and Shanghai “for the time being”.

However, Apple said Chinese customers can still purchase the phones either through the Apple online store or at China Unicom and other authorized sellers.

The decision came despite the fact that other stores in Beijing and Shanghai opened without incident and reported rapid sales.

In a phone interview with Bloomberg, Shaun Rein of China Market Research Group called the incident “a debacle” and said it “shows very poor retail management ability” from Apple. Hopeful shoppers began lining up outside the Apple store in Beijing’s Sanlitun district yesterday evening, before tensions flared this morning, according to Reuters:

Scuffles broke out before daybreak between security staff and shoppers, many of whom had waited in line overnight in sub-freezing weather, after an announcer with a bullhorn told the restless crowd around 7 a.m. that the phones would not go on sale as planned and that they should go home.

Police dragged some people away and photos appeared on the Chinese blogosphere of a man who had brought raw eggs in a plastic bag handing them out before people heaved them at the store’s tall glass windows.

“We’re suffering from cold and hunger,” a man in his 20s shouted to Reuters Television. “They said they’re not going to sell to us. Why? Why?”

“I got in line around 11 p.m., and beyond the line the plaza was chock full with people,” said Huang Xiantong, 26, outside the store. “Around 5 a.m. the crowds in the plaza broke through and the line disappeared entirely. Everyone was fighting, several people were hurt,” said Huang, who wanted to buy a new iPhone for his girlfriend. “The police just started hitting people. They were just brawling.”

Xinhua news reported that the crowd outside the store included organized scalpers, who have been the source of Apple store unrest in the past. One man told The Los Angeles Times that “Ninety percent of the people” waiting to buy an iPhone were scalpers, recruited to stand in line and buy the maximum of two phones allowed per person. Penn Olson posted several photos last night as the lines had already swelled, and today Charles Custer lamented the behavior of the frenzied mob:

It is unclear whether the Apple Store in Sanlitun will resume selling the phones tomorrow or not, but a guard at the store told Sina Tech reporters that sale of the phones would not resume today.

Regardless of that, I’ve got to say I’m starting to wonder about the state of humanity when the launch of a shiny phone (or tablet) continues to inspire actual violence in people. This is the second Apple launch in a row that’s seen tempers boil over, and while I’m not sure exactly what happened late at night, the idea that people feel so entitled to buying an iPhone 4S on launch day that they would leave, buy eggs, and come back to egg the Apple store in retribution is, well, pathetic.

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Post tags: Apple, Beijing, iPhone, scalpers
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The national meteorological centre said the Chinese capital had been hit by thick fog that reduced visibility to as little as 200 metres (650 feet) in some parts of the city, while official data judged air quality to be “good”.

But the US embassy, which has its own pollution measuring system, said on its Twitter feed that the concentration of the smallest, most dangerous particles in the air was “beyond index” for most of the morning.

The US system measures particles in the air of 2.5 micrometers or less, known as PM2.5, considered the most dangerous for people’s health.

Tuesday’s reading on its air quality index, which rates anything over 150 as unhealthy, over 200 as very unhealthy and over 300 as hazardous, breached the upper limit of 500, at which it stops giving figures.

Tensions over Beijing’s air quality rose in December following a string of similarly hazardous days, with residents demonstrating a heightened level of impatience over the government’s official explanation that heavy fog caused the poor conditions. Beijing’s Environmental Protection Bureau, whose official pollution readings of the larger PM10 particles have prompted skepticism, declared air quality to have reached a crisis level even as the China Daily reported on Monday that the amount of smaller and more dangerous PM2.5 had actually decreased over the past ten years. Readings from the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, reported hourly via Twitter despite demands from the Chinese government in 2009 to stop doing so, has differed greatly with and challenged the validity of Beijing’s data. 

In response to recent public outcry, Beijing announced plans to publish more detailed air quality data last Friday. From The New York Times: 

Beijing plans to publish hourly air quality reports based on an international standard known as PM 2.5, which measures tiny particles that are 2.5 microns or less in diameter, according to an announcement on the Web site of the Beijing municipal government. Those are the particles that are considered the most serious health hazard.

Big cities in China, including Beijing, generally publish air quality data that measure particles that are up to 10 microns in diameter. Using that standard has allowed Beijing to record more than 250 “blue sky days” during each of the past two years.

China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection also said early Saturday that monitoring pollution levels using the PM 2.5 standard would be included in a newly amended draft of national air quality standards, according to Xinhua, the state news agency.

Beijing’s air monitors have collected PM2.5 readings for the past five years, though the government never officially published any of the data. Now, in addition to Beijing, other Chinese cities such as Shanghai, Tianjin and Chongqing have also indicated intentions to begin publishing PM2.5 statistics this year. And while an expert warned the Guardian that there would be no quick remedy for the air quality in Beijing and elsewhere in China, Hong Kong-based journalist Frank Ching praised the announcement in The Globe and Mail today:

This is a huge victory not just for the U.S. embassy but for the Chinese people – a victory for openness, for transparency, for access to information and, most important, for public accountability over bureaucracy, for putting the health of the people over the face of government officials.

It’s natural for people to want information that affects their well-being. They will want that from any source, foreign or local. Of course, it would best if the Chinese government should supply this information rather than try to suppress it.

In principle, the more information that can be made available, the better. And a government that allows a free flow of information is a government that demonstrates confidence.

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Post tags: air pollution, air quality, Beijing, Chongqing, Environmental Protection Bureau, flight delays, PM2.5, Shanghai, smog, Tianjin, U.S. embassy
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Outside a cafe in east Beijing, a small bird fluttered to the ground and hopped and pecked at the concrete. Beijing Bird Watching Society member Li Ming cracked a smile and said “Passer montanus.” A humble sparrow, which Li says is the city’s most common bird, with the magpie a close second.

You can find both species in the Illustrated Guide to Wild Birds of Beijing (北京野鸟图鉴) published in 2000. The book contains photos and descriptions of 276 species, but Li says he and his fellow bird watchers reckon there are now 430 species in the city and the surrounding countryside if you include migrants that only come for the summer.

On Twitter, Stuart Morris conspiracy-theorised about the increase: “perhaps some birds have been released for the same reason miners used to take canaries underground.”

But while numbers and diversity may have risen since 2000, there has been a backward slide in the last two years or so, according to a pair of graduate students who have been monitoring bird populations in the Olympic Forest Park. From the Danwei article:

… Over the two years of observation Cheng and Xing Shuang have seen the number of species and their populations decrease; Mandarin ducks wintering at the park, one of the bellwether species mentioned by Xie, have fallen from a peak of around 200, probably thanks to subway construction around the park’s water area ….

… Meanwhile changes in how buildings are designed have put Beijing’s swallows and swifts in a tough spot: the awnings and eaves of older buildings they once relied on for nesting nooks have been replaced by the sleek facades of high rise apartments and office buildings. As Beijing sprawls outward, the marshlands that the birds rely on for nest-building materials are retreating, Cheng said. The city is expanding and restructuring into a landscape that is increasingly inhospitable to its airborne residents.

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Post tags: air quality, Beijing, Bird's nest, bird-watching, danwei, deforestation, dust storms, Olympics venues, sandstorms
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Wang Haichen, the mayor of Miyun County, proposed the whimsical plan at a local congress meeting, which immediately raised controversy. The spokesman absolved him from the blame, saying it wasn’t his idea, Beijing Youth Daily reported today.

A company planned to build a large English-only community to create the illusion of being abroad, but the county government has vetoed it, the spokesman told the newspaper.

According to Wang’s earlier statement, a local village would be turned into a 67-hectare castle with 16 courtyards of English-style houses.

Before this week’s vote, the concept of an English-only tourist town generated a mix of opinion from netizens and academics, with some claiming it demonstrates a worship for foreigners and others viewing it from a pure business perspective. From XInhua News:

“‘English-language town?’ It sounds like the foreign concessions in old Shanghai that forbid Chinese people from entering,” wrote Chua Kai, a user of Sina Weibo, China’s biggest Twitter-like microblogging site.

Zhou Xiaozheng, a sociologist at Renmin University of China, however, criticized such discontent as “narrow nationalism.”

“As a business matter, the project should not be accused (of discrimination) if it obeys business laws and ethics,” said Zhou, noting that some people on the Internet often voice opinions irresponsibly.

“It is not a case of discrimination,” he said.

Foreigner Tim Gingrich writes in The Global Times that the proposal not only exposes a sensitive historical issue for China, but it also signals a lack of understanding of the role of immersion in language learning:

The fact is that simply being in a foreign language environment is not enough. There are some Chinese people who never studied overseas yet speak English better than their counterparts who studied overseas. Watching foreign films and TV shows, reading foreign books and websites – this is the best way to immerse oneself in English.

Miyun should be commended for its willingness to bring the world to Chinese people’s doorstep, even if it’s already been done online. Through the power of the Internet, Chinese Web users already have the opportunity to experience foreign cultures or spread Chinese culture, converse with their peers in English or any other language they wish to learn.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Beijing, English-speaking, foreign language, sina weibo
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Three years ago, I bought a property in Flower City World Garden using royalties from my books and borrowed money. In July this year, 39 families in the compound, including mine, were formally given eviction notices because of the road-widening project on Wanshou Road in Beijing. A few days after receiving the eviction notices, the wall of our compound was demolished at dawn.

Having been told the eviction was for the development of Beijing, the residents initially were cooperative. However, the Demolition and Relocation Office told the residents that regardless of the size or value of their properties, the compensation per household was set at 500,000 yuan, approximately US$ 78,000, and that whoever cooperated would be further awarded 700,000 yuan. Since then, there has been growing discontent among the residents with the local government and the demolition crew. You can imagine how the conflict and confusion surrounding the forced eviction was intensified by quarrels, fighting, theft and bloodshed.

[...] On 24 November, things took an even more bizarre turn. The government of Huaxiang in Fengtai District issued a document to all owners who had received eviction notices. The document stated that on 23 September, law enforcement officials discovered houses with no registered occupants as well as houses without their addresses registered with local authorities. Therefore, these houses were deemed illegal structures and would be forcibly demolished at 8 am on the 30th of November. (In fact, Flower City World Garden has existed for six years.)

I went to the compound this morning where I saw crowds of people and groups of uniformed men and many vehicles blocking access. I saw banners hanging in front of all the houses facing demolition proclaiming, “We pledge to sacrifice our blood and lives to defend our homes!” I saw emotional residents who were indeed ready to sacrifice their lives.

No one knew what would happen during a forced demolition. No local government official was there to mediate with the residents. It appeared that blood could be shed at any moment in this game of cat-and-mouse—if not today, then surely tomorrow. Many residents are determined to live and die with their homes.

Read more about other recent forced evictions and the responses from residents. See also more by and about Yan Lianke via CDT.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Beijing, forced evictions, property rights, yan lianke
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As housing prices and rents soar, hutongs get ripped down and “crazy bad” air becomes the new normal, will Beijing maintain its heart as a cultural capital, or is the city losing itself and our affections?

Filled with stories of pig excrement, SARS babies, and enough Chinese cursing to satiate even the Beijing Profanity Alliance, this show was a pleasure to put on and we were really glad to see everyone who came out. Joining Kaiser Kuo on stage were two Sinica stalwarts: Chinese media export Jeremy Goldkorn and David Moser, jazz pianist and head of the CET Beijing program. We were also thrilled to be joined by Zha Jianying, author of China Pop and Tide Players, and a now-expat Beijinger from New York who admits to being torn between her two homes.

Listen to the podcast here.

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Post tags: Beijing, Beijing architecture, Hutong, hutongs, redevelopment
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As of 2 p.m. (0600 GMT), 126 flights had been delayed by an hour or longer and 207 were cancelled at Beijing, the world’s second-busiest airport, Xinhua news agency said.

The Beijing sky was so dark that many drivers kept their headlights on throughout the day, giving the city an eery, netherworld feeling.

“Such super foggy weather looks like the end of the world,” commented one microblogger using the name David Jiaoxiaomao.

The Financial Times’ beyondbrics blog posted a series of photos detailing yesterday’s conditions in Beijing, conditions which the China Daily attributed to a “heavy fog” that has lingered since the city’s first snow this weekend. The Global Times interviewed an engineer with the Beijing Meteorological Bureau who denied that the poor visibility was pollution-related:

Zhang Mingying, a meteorological engineer at the Beijing Meteorological Bureau, told the Global Times on Monday that the recent fog is normal in terms of frequency during this time of year according to their monitoring.

“Heavy fog has occurred 6 times a year on average over the past 30 years and December’s fog was the seventh occurrence this year. Therefore, it is a normal climate condition in Beijing,” said Zhang.

…

The Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau said on its official microblog on Sunday that the air quality pollution index would reach up to 280 by Monday, which is a “medium pollution degree” according to the official air quality pollution scale system.

Zhang refuted the idea that the fog is a result of air pollution saying, “It is the massive amount of water vapor near the ground and the drop in temperature which creates the fog.”

On the question of fog or smog, the sale of pollution masks have surged and The Wall Street Journal noted a fundamental shift in the willingness of Chinese people to believe the government’s official explanation:

While state media have described the cloud as a “heavy fog,” millions of posts on popular Chinese microblogging service Sina Weibo and other Internet sites are treating it as something else. “How many thousands died because of London’s fog back in the day?” Weibo user Zheng Wuxie wrote on Monday. “Beijing is dangerous.”

“Friends in Beijing, are you OK?” wrote another Weibo user, CAPF Green, attaching a screenshot of a mobile app powered by the U.S. Embassy’s @BeijingAir Twitter feed showing dangerous pollution levels.

The U.S. Embassy in Beijing, which broadcasts readings from its own pollution monitoring equipment on an hourly basis through Twitter, has been instrumental in piercing the veil around air quality in China’s capital — particularly in the month or so since celebrity real estate mogul Pan Shiyi cited its readings in calling for tougher air monitoring standards.

Yesterday, China Dialogue’s Steven Q. Andrews published a comprehensive analysis of the U.S. embassy’s hourly Twitter data on Beijing’s air quality and called on the Chinese government to face the problem honestly and transparently:

According to Du Shaozhong, vice-president at the BJEPB, it is an “indisputable fact” that air pollution in Beijing has improved in recent years. In China, days that meet air quality standards are termed “blue sky days” and described as having “good” or “excellent” air quality. Officially, the number of blue sky days increased to 286 days (78%) in 2010, up from 100 days (27%) in 1998.

But, these so-called improvements are due to irregularities in the monitoring and reporting of air quality – and not to less polluted air. Most importantly, the government changed monitoring station locations twice. In 2006, it shut down the two most polluted stations and then, in 2008, began monitoring outside the city, beyond the sixth ring road, which is 15 to 20 kilometres from Beijing’s centre.

…

Most people don’t really care about governmental constructs like blue sky days and pollution indices. People worry about what really matters – the impacts of pollution on their health. As the China Daily recently wrote: “All of the residents in the city are aware of the poor air quality, so it does not make sense to conceal it for fear of criticism.” Even with the proposed revisions, the severity of air pollution in China will continue to be understated.

…

There is no reason for the Beijing government to continue to wait before publicly reporting and accurately describing the hazardous air. As a first step, the government should stop describing dangerous levels of air pollution as excellent air quality. Because fine particulate and ozone levels are already measured, they should be reported to the public. With every additional polluted blue sky day the government reports, it continues its misinformation campaign that has misled the public and helped prevent real improvements in the city’s air.

See also previous CDT coverage of air pollution in China.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: air pollution, air traffic, Beijing, environmental data, Global Times, transparency, United States
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