The Beijing Olympic torch was in Shenzhen yesterday and passed within a few hundred meters of my office. I had thought about walking up to the main street to join the masses to see the torch go by but had a lot of work to do since I have been out of the office most of the past 3 weeks and am headed back to the States again on Sunday. And also because I missed out on the chance to carry the torch I had some mixed feelings about seeing it where I should have carried it!
First the Shenzhen relay was postponed because the flame reached the top of Mt. Everest and it can’t be in two places at once. The 208 Shenzhen torchbearers were told they only had 1 minute to cover 200 meters each rather then the originally planned 2 minutes which isn’t that big of a deal. Then apparently based on reports in the South China Morning Post , “The Olympic flame was extinguished briefly during the torch relay in Shenzhen yesterday, and witnesses reported that people tried to grab the torch and had to be wrestled to the ground.” And another story indicated that planned route was abandoned because there were too many people and the organizers wanted to take a safer route which angered the tens of thousands of people who had been waiting at the corner and led to some rioting. Mainland media reports, however, said the flame was extinguished because the crowds were too excited and that “normal precautionary measures” were taken to ensure public safety. And not surprisingly, Chinese television, which was filming the progress of the torch, hurriedly cut away. None of the Chinese media carried the story and the South China Mornng Post, in Hong Kong, concentrated on the triumph of the torch reaching Mount Everest.
Maybe the passage of the Olympic torch on the mainland may not be as smooth as expected…
Some Links with more stories and details:
Jesse Warren’s Flickr Site with Photos
Shenzhen: Local Chinese Extinguish Olympic Torch in Protest?
Shenzhen Olympic Torch Relay, The Corner The Relay Forgot
Unknown protesters in Shenzhen attack Olympic runners and extinguish the flame
While waiting for my US colleague and a client at the mecca of expat life in Shenzhen two foreigners approached me and asked ‘Do you speak English?’ Being the sarcastic guy, and sometimes jerk that I have been known to be, I wanted to reply in Chinese. But my nice side won out and replied yes and inquired on what they needed help with.
They were looking for the bus to the airport. Bus number they had but no clue where to get on. I pointed them in the right direction, even walking a hundred feet or so with them. Mind you my foot is killing my from a murderous weekend mountain trek. After walking back to my perch to wait for my dinner mates I saw th bus approaching and looked back to see if they had made it to the bus station. They hadn’t. They were also crossing the road to the wrong bus stop. Didn’t recall saying anything about crossing the road to the other bus stop. Anyway, ran down to them with my bum foot dragging behind and ensured they got on the bus.
Just hope they had money….
I have been lucky to have a few coworkers around the world who I call friends. Just like any family, there are also those who I would rather not know or deal with but am always cordial, nice and respectful of when I must deal with them.
One of the people who I am grateful to know and blessed to consider a friend works in the accounting department at our corporate office. Since our first meeting almost 6 years ago she is always happy to see me, inquires how I am doing and those in my life I love. She used to send me lots of jokes until I said “too many” and now they are few and far in between!
Two weeks ago while in the States, I stopped by her office to say hello and would have had to be blind to miss the fact she must love purple. Purple dress, purple jewelery, purple shoes, purple flowers and a purple lai! Not usually one to be funny with words, not sure I managed when commenting on how she must have gotten “laid”. Lame, huh? She busted me for not blogging and must admit she is the inspiration on the last few blogs and the updates trying to make to my site, what an rush to know someone actually reads my little piece of the internet!
My purple lady, thanks for your love, friendship and encouragement. You are always a ray of sunshine and a delight to see. Hope you won a few dollars at the casino! I will be back in a few weeks, see you soon!
As with many things in my life, I overindulged a bit yesterday. I really enjoy blogging and learning about coding and creating a website, even if cheating a little by using WordPress. Well yesterday I posted my first blog in a month and decided to add some features at the same time. A basic photo option and working on a more complex one; adding news headlines, changed header photo, updated behind the scenes program that I haven’t done in ages and tried adding the weather. Well one of those changes caused my website to crash and of course I hadn’t backed anything up. After spending a few hours last night trying to figure out what addition caused the crash I gave up and went to bed while transferring some files in an attempt to create a backup. This morning my site was back up and running! While the changes are all there for the most part, I don’t really like some of the fonts and lots of cosmetic changes need to be done - it is here!
Overindulging isn’t always bad, just need to learn patience…
About ten years ago, the Chinese government instituted three one week holidays in an effort to encourage Chinese to travel domestically and return to their hometowns to visit their families. These weeks were the Lunar New Year, May 1 or Labor Day and October 1 which is National Day. These weeks became known as “Golden Weeks”. Golden because of the money that the traveling Chinese spent and the boon to the economy these periods had not only in mainland China but increasingly throughout Asia as Chinese became able to travel easier. This year the government decided to break up the May 1 golden week into many one day holidays that would begin to reestablish traditions that had been frown upon and even outlawed during Mao’s reign.
The first weekend in Aprils was our first long holiday weekend in celebration of Qing Ming, which means clear and bright in Chinese. It is a festival to hold memorial ceremony for the dead and express one’s grief for his lost relatives. People often go to sweep and weed graves with whole family which are often in the countryside. Hence the English name, Tomb Sweeping Festival. Since Pei Lin and I weren’t able to make it back to his hometown for Chinese New Year this year we decided to return for Qing Ming and spend the weekend with his family.
It had been over a year since our last visit but the neighbors were as excited to see me as the first time I visited Pingtan. Or at least that is what I thought, actually they were excited because Pei Lin drove up and parked in front of his parent’s home. We had rented a car in Chongqing and drove home rather then take the bus and taxi route. Let me tell you, much much more comfortable!
The next day we drove further into the countryside and hiked a couple of hours to Pei Lin’s great-grandfather and grandfather’s tombs and while we didn’t do any sweeping we did give some offerings. We carried in fruit, wine, firecrackers and paper money that were ceremoniously left at each of the tombs. The paper money is burned so that the dead have money in the after life, to buy the things they need I suppose. The firecrackers are to scare away evil spirits. The fruit so they aren’t hungry and the wine to quench their thirst and have a good time. Several of the tombs were very similar to crypts found in traditional American cemeteries and several weren’t marked at all.
