I saw the headline Volunteers “save” foreign coach and had to check it out. How was the coach saved? Was he pulled from the path of an oncoming train? Dragged away from a violent undertoe while swimming? Did he require an urgent transfusion of a rare blood type after a tragic training accident?

Bulgarian coach Koeva Mariela enjoyed a day to be thankful on Wednesday as volunteers recovered his lost folder at the rhythmic gymnastics Olympic try-out in Beijing.

“Thank you, thank you very much!” Mariela said to Wang Xiaoxiao, one of the volunteers at the Rhythmic Gymnastics International tournament.

At 10:00 am on Wednesday, a black folder was found by a volunteer in the hall of Renmin University, one of the training venues for the Olympic trial.

There were a lot of important files in it, including official documents, agendas, accreditation cards and meal tickets.

Across town, a foreign English teacher was saved as well, when a group of first-grade students found her box of stickers and carried it to her office.

Via People’s Daily Online

The other day, I was talking to a friend back home, and I mentioned China’s plan to shoot pesky rainclouds out of the sky with rockets and silver iodine. My friend thought I was completely nuts, but it’s not science-fiction, it’s a real plan to keep bad weather from interfering with the Olympics.

North China’s Hebei Province said it will help Beijing keep the weather under control for the 2008 Olympics with 84 rocket launchers to blast threatening clouds out of the sky.

During the Games, an arsenal of rockets and cannons will be arranged on “three lines of defense”, between 15 and 120 kilometers from Beijing, to prevent rain from marring the opening and closing ceremonies.

I wonder if they do weddings.

Via China.Org.Cn

What to get the person who has everything? A model-truss paperweight, of course!

The steel licensed product is a 1:100 scale model of the truss structure of the stadium, also known as the “Bird’s Nest,” according to information from a launching ceremony on Monday for the fourth anniversary of groundbreaking for the main stadium of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.

The material of the model piece comes purely from residual steel from the stadium and was cast through precise founding technologies. Licensed by the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG), the article is issued with a limited circulation of 5,000 pieces.

Imagine how intimidating your desk will look with this guy on it!

Via Imagethief, via China.Org.Cn

Fashion students show their costumes (homemade with castoff material) at the Olympic volunteer selection contest. Six winners have become candidates of Olympic Games volunteers in etiquette service.

Via Xinhua

China鈥檚 National Acrobatic Troupe plans to put on 70 shows during July and August in 2008, especially for Olympic visitors interested in Chinese acrobatics.

Watch this great video from Beijing Olympic Games 2008 for a sample!

Via Beijing Olympic Games 2008

In the first round of ticket sales, would-be viewers were allowed to buy up to 50 tickets (this has since been reduced to 8). Obviously, most people who bought fifty tickets weren’t planning on inviting their 49 closest friends.

More than 1.5 million tickets were allocated in the first round of ticket sales, which was only open to people living in mainland China.

Some of those who secured tickets in this round are now advertising their unwanted seats on Chinese websites.

This isn’t exactly illegal, because Bocog allows transfer of unneeded Olympic tickets, but not for profit.

These sales are being carried out despite a ban on speculation. There was a similar ban in Athens in 2004 and Sydney in 2000.

At a recent press conference, Zhu Yan, director of the Beijing Olympic Ticketing Centre, said: “We prohibit the resale of tickets.”

“If people want to transfer a ticket to someone else, that is OK, but you cannot resell it for profit,” he added.

People who flout this rule face 10-15 days detention and a fine of 1,000 yuan, according to state media.

Via BBC

CoSport, the Olympics ticketing website, says they’re all sold out.

Don’t despair, though, there are dozens of scalping companies designed just for this situation!

Liao Peigui was believed to have made around 400,000 yuan from a phony Olympics site, but he was finally convicted of cheating 2 unlucky people, and sentenced to 6 months in jail.

The Haidian District People’s Court of Beijing Municipality passed the jail sentence and a fine of 2,000 yuan (271 U.S. dollars) on Liao Peigui, for making 3,000 yuan (406 U.S. dollars) by goading two netizens into entering fake prize draws on a website he “cloned” from the official one of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the 2008 Olympic Games (BOCOG).

Each netizen he cheated was asked to transfer the “award acceptance fee” of 1,500 yuan (203 U.S. dollars) to an account he opened in March to cash their awards, including 28,000 (3,798 U.S. dollars) and two tickets for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

He only managed to trick two people into making the transfer before he was caught.

Via Xinhua

Looks like the Fuwa are starting to have some competition! This little blue guy is the mascot for the Shanghai World Expo. Xinhua says:

The mascot, named Haibao, literally means “treasure of the world”. The blue smiling cartoon figure has curly hair and is in the shape of Chinese character REN, or human beings. It was presented during a televised ceremony at the Shanghai Grand Stage in front of an audience of more than 9,000.

“Haibao is a jolly, confident and cute kid,” said Shao Longtu, 62, CEO of the Jiumuchuansheng advertising company and head of the mascot design team. “Using a human being as a mascot reflects the spirit of human-orientation, while the color blue stands for water, sea, the Earth, life, dreams, the future and technology.”

Via Xinhua

I just heard on CCTV9 that CCTV has just received the internet rights to the Beijing Olympics. It’s not too surprising that CCTV will have ‘net rights, since they have the TV rights already, but it will be fun to see people watching the Olympics on their cellphones.

I can’t find anything on the CCTV web site that confirms it, but The People’s Daily Online posted this a few hours ago.

The International Olympic Committee(IOC) announced on Tuesday that CCTV.com, a part of Chinese state broadcaster CCTV, has been awarded the internet and mobile platform exhibition rights within China for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.

As a member of the Asian Broadcasting Union, CCTV has already acquired over-the-air TV rights for the Beijing Games.

No details about the deal was released, while the IOC said it selected CCTV.com because it could work closely with its television arm and fully exploit digital broadcast rights on a number of platforms.

“By granting digital rights to CCTV. com, the IOC believes CCTV.com’s digital team will work closely with the broadcast team at CCTV to develop joint executions across media platforms. This will ensure Chinese Olympic fans have access to the best possible Olympic coverage in 2008,” Richard Carrion, a member of the IOC’s TV rights and new media commission, was quoted as saying by an IOC statement.

Via Daily Online (English version)