Bingfeng Teahouse

i tried it last night but found it extremely boring, and most importantly, 99% of the readers of this site are male, so i decide not go for a boy blogging, even one of them has accused me of "sex discrimination".

had a bbq dinner near TS and realized that Mao passed away today 29 years ago. a friend of mine, who run a tibetan travel agency, says that many tibetans still put the Mao portrait on the wall and even carved his photo on their jewelries to protect them.

when walking out from the jianwai soho, an office complex, i noticed a group of migrant workers sitting in front of a gate of construction site and watching people from different locations, office, buses and shops come to the metro stations, their eyes are full of excitements, desires and hopes, unblievablely they are the only shining sight in the mist of friday beijing night.

mao speech

via: ny i norge

a chinese lady posted a photo to show us what a laowai (mostly a northern european) eat at lunch, and she was wondering why such simple food could breed strong physiques:

i want to tell her that she was duped by the photo or by their lunch. i had laowai friends or colleagues who drink iced water or eat vitamin pills or one apple as their lunch, after maybe one or two hours they start to swallow a "snack" of a roasted chicken, then only 1 hour later, they have 3 packs of chocolate cracker as an "afternoon tea", certainly these don't prevent they from eatting another HUGE steak at dinner. come on, where do you think all these fat boys in the west come from?

here is a mail i received from an american reader. i have forwarded the email to the embassy of china in the US. really appreciate his good will and generosity:

My family and I are from **** (USA).  As my wife is Chinese, from **** Province, I have been attempting to get an email to the Chinese Consulate General's office in Houston, Texas in an effort to let the authorities know that we, and a few other families in our area are willing to open our homes to displaced Chinese families, for as long as it takes for them to re-establish themselves in the area, or to return home: however, none of the email addresses that are available on the net are operational.  I receive a message that the addresses are "not recognized".  Somebody should contact the
consulate and request their tech gurus to repair the links, and/or provide operational email addresses.

For the record, and I think you will see this play out as the investigations into the poor reactions to the hurricane are performed, it is the responsibility of the individual states to initiate "first response" actions in a disaster, and they must request assistance from the federal government (i.e. FEMA) before the federal government can step in and go to work.  Two of my associates had been working 20-hour days, from Sunday through Wednesday night, setting up the logistics contracts needed to put the relief forces into the affected areas; however, they could do absolutely nothing until they received the request from the states, through FEMA, and then received orders to deploy the required forces.  Yes, this will turn out to be the greatest natural disaster in U.S. history.  Yes, the people who could not, or refused to, evacuate the city have suffered greatly, for no reason.  Yes, there was a definite communications failure within the bureaucracy.  And, YES, you can well believe that those responsible will be held acountable for their lack of judgement/action.  People like to blame the president for a lot of things; after all, he is the most prominent target...Yes?  However, the blame, when it is ready to be applied, should be and will be, placed upon the bureaucrats and staffers who failed in their respective duties in their respective positions. 

Blame, however, will not bring the dead back to life; will not relieve the suffering of the people; will not replace the loss of property, and will not correct the untenable situation as it played out. 

Very Respectfully,
**** ****

and according to a sina news report, six beijing residents donated 50 k RMB to katrina victims through the china red cross yesterday, the first case of individual donations of mainland china.