Zhu Ling (R), Editor-in-Chief of China Daily and Wang Jianzhou, Chairman of China Mobile celebrating the launch of their new joint project, bilingual news via SMS.

Jointly produced by China Daily and China Mobile, China Daily Mobile News sends English-Chinese news to users’ cell phones as multimedia messages through wireless technology.

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China Daily Mobile News will be sent to users twice a day, one in the morning and the other in the evening. Each multimedia package contains 10 to 20 pieces of news, including Top News, Biz Info, Odd News, Celebrity, Health, Language Tips, Cartoon, Laughter, Vocabulary and Word Price. The target users of China Daily Mobile News are foreign officials, embassy representatives, members of chambers of commerce and foreign companies, white collar workers, public servants and college students.

I’m not entirely sure what Word Price is, but instant message new sounds interesting. Only time will tell if it’s a good way to keep up with breaking news, or more phonespam. You can subscribe to this service by sending the message “CD” to 10658000 from your China Mobile phone for 5 RMB/month.

Via China Daily

Worlds collide! Mental Floss, my favorite random-stuff blog, has an article on Beijing’s constuction projects!

Beijing Capital International Airport鈥檚 new Terminal 3 will officially open tomorrow (February 29th). It is the world鈥檚 largest airport building with over ten million square feet of interior space. In fact, it is the second largest building in the world! Designed by Foster+Partners, it went from plans to opening day in less than four years. Ten villages were displaced to make room for the terminal. But don鈥檛 blame the Olympics; the old airport configuration was already straining under the load. Even this dragon-shaped design will be inadequate in another ten years or so.

Check out the whole article for cool pictures and Olympics constuction trivia… but one warning, the new CCTV tower doesn’t really look like that yet.

Via Mental Floss

When friends visit from the US, they want to see the Great Wall, so I’ve been to Badaling a bunch of times. It turns out that Badaling, known as the most tourist-friendly section of the Great Wall, is full of steep steps with no railings, which is fine for fit, active tourists, but not so great for older visitors or those with little kids, and makes visiting impossible for anyone disabled.

Turns out that’ll all be changed in the next few months, with handicapped access to the Great Wall (and other sites) in time for the Olympics.

BEIJING, Feb. 27 (Xinhua) — The disabled access to Beijing’s most famous part of the Great Wall is to be improved in time for the Olympics.

Kong Fanzhi, director of the Beijing Municipal Cultural Relics Bureau, said Tuesday that with the help of lifts, the disabled visitors can find no difficulty in reaching Badaling great wall, 80 km northwest of Beijing city.

Other barrier-free facilities include special pathways built at the Palace Museum, or the forbidden City, and the Ming Tombs, two well-known historic sites in Beijing, and a 400-meter-long wheelchair ramp to the top platform of east Badaling great wall, which will help persons with disabilities take a look of the scenery.

Kong noted that all these facilities will be completed before the Olympics.

Via Xinhua

The girl in the shop told me these bubbly-looking rings are meant to be a stylized version of the Olympic rings. Makes sense, Coke is an Olympic sponsor, but I didn’t really see the resemblance until it was pointed out to me. What do you think? Do you see it?

Do you recognize these two? Edison Chen is at the center of a sex scandal, and Gillian Chung is one of the (many!) girls involved.

I wrote about the Edison Chen photo scandal here:

The short version of the story is that a Hong Kong actor took some risque shots of himself fooling around with starlets. He kept them on his computer, and everything was fine until he took his computer in for repairs. Somehow these pictures leaked to the internet — which is what you’d expect when you show naked photos of hot actresses to the tech support guy, isn’t it? — and Chen and his lady friends are in hot water.

Naked pictures of celebs in the US is underwhelming news. Britney Spears forgets her undergarments pretty regularly and is there anyone in Hollywood who hasn’t filmed naked time with Paris Hilton? Lots of stars have bounced back from an embarrassing video, and some have even turned a “leak” into celeb status.

Unfortunately, here in China the risque photos are causing huge disaster for the stars involved. One of the unlucky girls in the photos, Bobo Chen, had her wedding canceled when her fiance’s family heard about the scandal, and many of the others (seems like a Who’s Who list of Hong Kong starlets hooked up with Edison Chen!) are losing jobs and endorsements based on their innocent images. Gillian Chung, another girl in the photos, was booked to sing at the Opening Ceremonies… but that’s been canceled.

From the Sydney Morning Herald:

A female Hong Kong pop star at the centre of a sex photos scandal has been banned from singing at the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony, a news report said today.

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The ceremony’s artistic director Zhang Yimou decided to take Chung off the bill after the scandal broke and had replaced her and another Hong Kong star not involved in the photos incident with Chinese pop act A-One, the newspaper said.

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More than 2000 people complained when Chung appeared on a charity TV show at the height of the scandal a fortnight ago and she was forced to scrap a public appearance last Saturday when protesters threatened to disrupt her performance.

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The scandal over the pictures has tainted the saccharine-sweet image of Hong Kong’s so-called Canto-pop industry whose cheesy romantic melodies sung in Cantonese sell by their millions in Hong Kong, mainland China and Taiwan.

Man, I sort of wish Spielburg were still artistic director… We Americans completely fine with stars getting naked on camera!

Via 2008 Games Beijing Blog, with additional information from the Sydney Morning Herald.

A new twist in the quest for Olympic tickets… we’ve heard that Olympic tickets are unavailable (without a small fortune and a well-connected scalper, that is!) but it looks like a LOT of tickets have gone unsold.

The Beijing Olympics Organizing Committee (BOCOG) reports that only 450,000 tickets for this summer鈥檚 Olympic Games have been successfully allocated, accounting for about a quarter of the tickets available for sale in the second phase.

More than 700,000 orders for 4.2 million tickets were received by BOCOG, but only 123,000 bookings were confirmed after a computerized random draw.

Though BOCOG didn鈥檛 give a reason why about 75% of the tickets remain unsold it is fairly obvious 鈥� and this is confirmed from the experience of every previous Olymic Games 鈥� that some popular events were extremely over-subscribed while the rest of the events were in lesser demand. For example, the number of people who want to go and watch the equestrian dressage contests is finite

Should be interesting to watch this one unfold, and see if there are some events with available tickets right up until the day.

Via China Economic Review

Just a bit of follow-up on Spielburg’s Olympics protest. Liu Guijin says he couldn’t have resigned because he never worked for the Olympics.

Chinese official said on Thursday he was surprised by Oscar-winning film director Steven Spielberg’s withdrawal as artistic adviser to the 2008 Beijing Olympics because he had never formally taken up the job.

Liu Guijin, China’s special representative on Sudan’s Darfur region, said the Beijing Olympic organising committee had sent Mr. Spielberg a recruitment letter but because he had not signed it by the deadline of May 10 last year “theoretically he was not art[istic] director to the … Beijing Olympic games.”

“It was a great surprise for me that he should have resigned. There is no such question of resignation,” Mr. Liu told reporters during a visit to London.

Sounds a bit like “You can’t fire me, I quit!” to me.

Via National Post

Saw these today in my morning blog-checking. In my neighborhood, the lanterns were more of the traditional round red ones, I wish I’d gotten to see these in person!

Via Richard Spencer’s Telegraph blog

From the China Economic Review:

A set of fixed English translations for Chinese menus is being published by the Beijing Municipal Tourism Bureau.

The final draft, which has been partially revised after soliciting opinions from netizens and language experts, has been sent to the printers and would soon be recommended to restaurants across the country for their bilingual menus.

An official from the bureau said, 鈥楾he proper English translations will not only provide convenience for foreigners coming to Beijing for the Olympics, but it will also improve the English of Chinese people.鈥�

Looks like my Chinglish-to-English skills will soon be unnecessary in upscale restaurants and hotels! But I doubt this will trickle down to dumpling stands and noodle shops, where there’s no English of any sort.

I guess I’m not really impressed by the moves to clean up the Chinglish. Partly, I think zany menus and instructions are so much a part of a visit to Beijing! I expect to see lots pictures of funny Chinglish instructions from Olympic visitors.

Also, I’d like to see pre-Olympic aesthetic reforms directed into other channels… A goofy misspelled sign might make a visitor giggle for a moment, but a Beijinger clearing his throat into the street will leave visitors with a lingering bad image of Beijing.

Via China Economic Review

My country, Singapore, has won the bid to host the first Youth Olympics in Southeast Asia! Singapore has beaten Moscow to host the Youth Olympics 2010 which will see 3500 athletes, 14-18 year-olds, competing in 26 sports such as swimming, beach-wrestling and BMX bike riding.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) awarded the Games to the city-state ahead of Moscow by a vote of 53 to 44. It will be the first time that Singapore is hosting a multi-disciplinary sporting event of such a magnitude.

Singaporeans from all backgrounds have supported the bid and yes, I’m proud to be a Singaporean!

Video Link

Via Channel News Asia