the Beijinger

Tigers, like all cats and other sensible folk, stay limber by stretching as often as they can. Enjoy the year of the tiger by taking up hatha, bikram, ashtanga or vinyasa yoga at these studios.

With Beijing's air pollution casting a dark gray shroud over our city sky this summer, its hard not to wonder what all that particulate matter, ozone, and other contaminates are doing to your body. We asked Dr. William Chickering, one of four American Board-certified Emergency Physicians at BJU, a few questions about it. Dr. Chickering has lived in Beijing almost four years after time on the faculty of the Medical College of Virginia. He has practiced for prolonged periods in Guatemala, Cameroon, Dominican Republic, and Korea.

Few excuses for avoiding a trip to the dentist sound more convincing than “I’m living abroad; I’ll do it when I go home for Christmas.” Fast forward a few years down the line, and you never quite managed to squeeze that check-up in between catching up with family and friends. Sound familiar? Make up for lost time by making an appointment at one of these dental clinics.

Disturbing news in the Chinese press has bar owners around Gulou (aka the Drum Tower) feeling nervous. Plans have been announced to “restore” the area around the tower to the style of the Ming and Qing Dynasties and build an underground “Beijing Time Cultural City,” comprising restaurants, parking spaces, and a museum about timekeeping technology.

Country Fair organizers Emi Uemura and Caroline Merrifield tell us how we can get acquainted with our local organic farmers.

How does Country Fair work?
Country Fair developed out of a need to connect Beijing’s organic farmers with the city’s consumers. The event – modeled after farmers’ markets like those in Canada or the US – works as a platform for consumers to engage directly with the people who feed them, and for farmers to practice direct marketing. Our hope has been that the Country Fair events will increase consumers’ understanding of our urban food system, supporting the efforts of Beijing’s small-scale organic producers. 

Global Times China Publicly burns 5.2 million pirated DVD's and Books.

China's anti-piracy authorities organized public burnings of 5.2 million pirated books and compact discs Monday in several localities across China. The items were incinerated in Beijing and Tianjin, as well as Shanxi, Jiangsu, Guangdong and Sichuan provinces. As of December 31, 650,000 law enforcement personnel had been dispatched to examine producers and sellers of books, software and video products. Buy up, buy up fast!

Global Times 1 billion-euro 7 star hotel in Burj Dubai style for Beijing

Recycling is a vexed issue in China. On the one hand it’s a obviously good thing that much of the country’s waste is recycled, though Beijing still seems headed for a waste crisis in the near future as landfills rapidly reach capacity – more on that in a moment. The problem with China’s recycling industry is its highly fragmented and unregulated nature, which creates unsafe conditions for recyclers and dangers for consumers. The past week has seen disturbing reports of unsafe plastics making their way into takeaway food containers, and the sleeves wrapped around disposable chopsticks.

One of the most disturbing aspects of living in contemporary China is the seemingly endless stream of food safety bad news stories. The past week has seen some real doozies even by China standards, with a CCTV investigative report claiming many disposable chopsticks are highly toxic, and allegations that the use of oil dredged from drains is rampant in Chinese restaurants.

Japan’s devastating tsunami-quake-nuclear crisis may be old news by now, but the alarming number of super-tremblors that have wreaked havoc around the world in recent years should be enough to make anyone wary of an earth-shattering catastrophe occurring in their own backyard.

China, of course, has seen its share of death and destruction over the centuries – after all, much of the country sits on the “junctions of several tectonic plates, including the Pacific, the Eurasian and the Indian Ocean plates with at least 495 faults crisscrossing its topography.” Scientists recently determined that at least 130 of these fault lines lie beneath major cities, including Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, but also pointed out that 80 of the are “inactive” (though this may not be so reassuring considering the unspecified nature of the other 40 and this NYT report on how scientists have historically underestimated the power of earthquakes).