Sep 1-Sep 4

The Beijing International Book Fair 2008

Tianjin International Exhibition Center
(022 2801 2976)

Tianjin is one of those small-scale towns that feel like a quainter version of Beijing. While the city has it's own Central Business District, it's located in what my taxi driver called the bailou qu (the white buildings district) - it is dwarfed by even the shortest of Beijing's CBD office buildings. The quaintness of the city and its contrast with Beijing is further sharpened by the experience of taking the new super duper high-speed train which transports you from the capital to Tianjin in only 30 minutes - at one point when I checked on the overhead electronic board it announced we'd reached a speed of 327km/hr. The train was very clean and neatly kept and amazingly the train stewardness, given that they're only on duty for half an hour, are impeccably dressed and even don an air-hostess hat.

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French rider Anne-Caroline Chausson made history this morning when she became the first person to ever win Olympic gold in the BMX. Going into the last turn Chausson was neck and neck with race favorite Shanaze Read of Great Britain, but when Read tried to pass on the inside, she clipped the back wheel of the French rider and crashed out of the race. Chausson's team mate Laetitia le Corguille avoided Read to nab the silver and American Jill Kintner finished third.

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The following profile of Cai Guoqiang, the creative director behind the opening ceremony's fireworks display first appeared as the art feature in the August issue of the Beijinger magazine. The National Art Museum of China (NAMOC) is currently hosting Cai’s retrospective, it will be on display until Sep 2.

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First the bad news, after Julian Marley’s show last Saturday at Star Live a lot of people have been looking forward to the Sean Paul show that we listed in the August issue of the Beijinger as taking place at Star Live on Aug 23. Star Live have since informed us that the show has been cancelled. Fortunately, the post Olympic live music scene is starting to shape up and a lot of big-name international acts are going to be passing through town in the coming months.

Sep 4
George Benson & Al Jarreau
With 18 Grammy awards and over eight decades of performance between them, George Benson & Al Jarreau are touring together in support of their highly acclaimed album Givin’ It Up. RMB 380-1,280
. 8pm. Beijing Exhibition Theater
(6835 4455)

Update: (Sep 4, 10am): The Kanye West show has been postponed indefinitely - see this post for more details.

Sep 25 Kanye West
It seems that everyone from British marathon runner Paula Radcliffe through to China's most famous piano impresario and star of the Olympic opening ceremony Lang Lang is a fan of rapper/producer Kanye West. He’s coming to Beijing as part of his Glow in the Dark tour. Accompanying him will be an eight-man backing band, DJ Craze and special guest star Will Pan. If you can’t make the Beijing show, he’ll also be performing in Shanghai
. RMB 280-1680 (tentative). Time TBA. Fengtai Stadium (6381 1576)

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Come the Games, come the parties. They dubbed it the "No-fun Olympics,” but after waking up this morning with a couple of snow leopards, a mariachi band and a Cadillac parked in my front room, I beg to differ. Beijing is awash with parties, events and more beer than I can get my clammy little hands on – no wonder there are so many empty seats at the Olympic venues. But before my liver quits and I’m lost to an August of indignity and iniquity, I’ll give you an update of the goings on and ongoings at some of Beijing’s hottest Olympic party spots. Well, two of Beijing's hottest party spots – The Heineken House and Club Bud. These two places have two things in common: a hop-based beverage and location. But other than this, they're very different venues.

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photo Daniel Schwartz

booking DANCE FESTIVAL beijing 2008

Beijing Modern Dance Company, as well as artists from the prestigious National Ballet of China, will be performing alongside some of the most innovative dance companies from America including Odyssey Dance Theater (Salt Lake City, UT), Kim Robards Dance Company (Denver, CO), and Silver-Brown Dance Company (New York, NY). Styles will vary from contemporary ballet and modern dance to hip-hop. RMB 120, 180 and 60 for students. For additional details, visit the official site. Tickets available through this site or on 6417 7845.
7.30pm, and a 2pm performance on Sat, Aug 16. Chaoyang Culture Center/TNT Theater (8599 6011)

The festival begins tonight and we thought it timely to reproduce Alice Woodhouse's interview with festival organizer Alison Friedman which first appeared in the latest Aug 14-27 edition of agenda.

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Weren't in town for round one? Thought you skip the rigmarole of round two and just buy direct in round three? Get caught on a page that never finished loading during stage three? Only find out about round four when it was too late? Whatever the cause, you now have to endure countless conversations revolving around who's got what and are forced to listen as friends and colleagues brag about that great game of beach volleyball they watched last night or how they're really looking forward to watching the 110m hurdles live. To add salt to the wound, when you watch the games on TV you see hundreds of empty seats smiling mockingly at you from the screen! No matter how it came about, if you've found yourself in the Olympic city without a ticket and you still want to see some events, keep reading below for some tips of how to get close to the action:

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Standing eerily still and in machine-like formation over square tables, the army of thousands assembled before us portended something big. From one angle, they resembled angry youth, standing at attention before their school desks. Another interpretation might imagine them as factory workers listening attentively to morning loudspeakers before getting down to work. And then there is the obvious comparison with the theatrical image of soldiers lined up in uniform that has become shorthand for the Chinese government.

But this wasn't about that China, at least not overtly. This was about a China of the past and the future, a China transcending a half-century of difficulties to reach backwards and forwards at once. It's a China defined by a sense of tradition and a capacity for innovation in the arts and sciences - a far cry from the reputation China has for, say, mass politics, rote learning, knock-offs and copy-paste manufacturing.

"I've never seen a country spend so much time showing itself off," a Chinese friend mentioned after watching the ceremony. She made a comparison to North Korea's Mass Games. "But I guess we have a lot to show."

Indeed it's a history and culture that remains unknown to most Westerners, and, as many Chinese will remind you, goes back 5,000 years. Of course, because successive dynasties interspersed with drastic upheavals, that number's not completely accurate. But that didn't stop director Zhang Yimou from attempting to pack it all in to a typically epic, spectacular ceremony.

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After Tuesday night's final rehearsal, more details about tomorrow night's grand spectacle are starting to emerge, but we're not talking about another secretly recorded video. According to a recent press conference, British opera singer Sarah Brightman is going to team up with the deep-voiced Chinese singer Liu Huan to belt out the mystery Olympic theme song, fortunately, it won’t be a re-working of the traditional Jasmine Flower (Molihua) song, Tan Dun and Robert Wells have already got dibs on that for the musical accompaniment to the award ceremonies. Details about how they'll light the flame (we're guessing something hi-tech as the flame goes in to hiding at about noon) and who will be carrying the flag for the Chinese athletes as they enter the stadium – Yao Ming, who held the flag aloft in 2004 claims it ain’t him - still remain a mystery. Organizers are not 100% sure about the weather, but they think it might rain in the afternoon and hopefully will be clear when the ceremony begins at 8pm - not the widely reported 8.08pm. For complete details take a look at the full text of yesterday's press conference.

However, it still seems that no one has a good idea of the best place to go to witness the big show – or if they do, they're not sharing. Given that most Beijingers (including us) won't have to go to work tomorrow (although the hard working folks over at the marriage registry offices will be busy helping 16,400 couple tie the knot from 6am onwards), you'll at least have a bit of extra time to work out the details of your opening ceremony plan of attack. The perfect arrangement should allow you to admire all the details of Zhang Yimou's lavish production on the TV, get up close to Cai Guoqiang's awesome fireworks display and also to get out and enjoy the atmosphere on the street before heading on to some decadent after party. We're not sure if it's possible to achieve all of these aims, but here are some tips on the best place to go for each:

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by Oliver Robinson




Last night I navigated my way through the huge Coca-Cola advertisement, formerly known as The Place, to CJW where sports brand Puma were presenting the Jamaican Olympic delegation to Beijing. When I say Beijing, I mean any one who had tickets to the event (those pretty-looking people who seem to only exist at opening parties and functions where there's free booze and photographers) and the smug folk who you see sauntering around town with those silly passes hanging around their necks. Read more...