From the San Francisco Chronicle:
From Beijing’s official Web site for the 2008 Summer Olympic Games comes this dandy item:
“The city Ethics office also proposed that swearing at sporting events, whether in Mandarin or local dialect, be added to the list of social ills to be stamped out.”
The list includes smoking, spitting jumping ahead in line. Seeing that the Chinese smoke two trillion cigarettes a year, the latter two appear easier to stamp out than lighting up.
It’s going to be a fascinating experience, the Beijing Olympics, now little more than 500 days away.
What plays out in Beijing just might be the most compelling cultural event of the young 21st century, for reasons that go well beyond sports. In a sense, China is opening itself up for inspection. This figures to be an Olympics where much of the outside world cares more about what goes on in the country as a whole than with the quotidian march of sporting events. [Full Text]
Read also Spiegel Online’s : China’s Spitting Image
