Snow Job

On the heels of its successful rainmaking venture earlier in the week, the Beijing Weather Modification Command Center has shot an additional “500 cigarette-size sticks of silver iodide” from “28 weather rocket-launch bases” into the clouds over the past few days to help create this week’s snowfall, the most the city has seen in a number of years. The artificially induced precipitation is intended to quell the region’s ongoing drought, but also led to the closure of 12 highways around the capital.

Road Warriors

65,970 new motor vehicles have been registered in the first 45 days of this year – a daily increase of 1,466 – according to a Xinhua report. The total number of cars in Beijing has now exceeded 3.56 million.

Here Comes the Sun

Construction is set to begin on Asia’s first 1.5-megawatt solar thermal power station in the outskirts of Beijing next month. When it starts operating in 2010, the experimental RMB 100 million station designed by the China Academy of Sciences should “power at least 30,000 homes” by producing “2.7 million kWh of electricity per year” – thus “eliminating 2,300 tons of CO2 emissions from conventional power plants,” says project officials. If the station is successful, China hopes to implement more such plants on a commercial level.

Too Yellow, Too Violent?

Jackie Chan’s latest role in the soon-to-be-released Shinjiku Incident has the affable aging action star branching out into a more dramatic direction, but the “USD 25 million Chinese-language film,” which “reportedly contains scenes of graphic violence, including stabbings and dismemberment” may be too much for Chinese censors and could potentially miss out on a Mainland release after director Derek Yee decided not to cut anything from the film. The film debuts in Hong Kong on April 2.

Take that, You @#$% Mouse!
The newest round in the Beijing vs. Shanghai rivalry pits Universal Studios, which is awaiting regulatory approval to build a joint venture USD 1.5 billion theme park in Beijing’s Tongzhou District, against Disney as it negotiates with Shanghai authorities to build a USD 3 billion Magic Kingdom theme park down south. Both proposals will need to be approved by the State Council, but the prospects look good as the government continues looking for ways to bolster the economy.

Mr. Roboto

Reuters blogs features a brief profile of Wu Yulu, a farmer living in the outskirts of Beijing who has “dedicated his life to building robots mostly from scrap” risking his own health, marriage and financial well-being in the process. Among Wu’s 32 creations (whom he refers to as his “children”) is a “walking, talking rickshaw robot,” a mechanical dog and a “twelve-inch humanoid finger made of plywood.”
 

Digital Delay


The Capital Airport handled 5.1 million passengers in January, which was the fourth largest monthly total on record and a partial indicator of the city’s general financial state, but how it’s done since the Spring Festival remains to be seen. In the meantime, a reader writes to us complaining how the flight info on the Beijing International Airport Website’s English page has not been updated since last October (though it’s possible to check on the Chinese site), which he finds highly dismaying considering Beijing is “such a big city.” Subsequent phone calls made to the complaint hotline were responded to with a curt “the upgrades to the English site are still in progress and we will relay your complaint to the relevant party” from the apparently clueless operators. For now, it seems, the best advice is to stick to flightstats.com for updates.

Links and Sources
Janek Zdzarski's Photoblog: Beijing Snow