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Aruba since 1979
Moderator
Join Date: May 2007
Location: eagle beach
alto vista chapel
arashi beach
Posts: 1,871
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yes i get an email every day
her big complaint is about the airpollution and the food
she just completed touring the great wall and is now on a river cruise
she expects to be in beijing sometime mid next week.
apparently train travel.
as of now she has spent only $170 while in china.
she is staying at cheapo hostels and eating god knows what
her main complaint is the airpollution and currently she is hundreds of miles from beijing.
and yes she has seen DOG on every menu at every place she has eaten. she has chosen to eat chicken head, feet, body instead.
the only events that she has tickets for are men's platform diving, some swim events and gymnastics.
this girl has been to EVERY olympics since i think 1982 winter and summer.
the photos of beijing's air quality = disgusting.
i heard on the news tonight that over 50% of beijing residents are smokers too.
i wonder how far one has to get into the mountains before the air clears?
andrea
Quote:
Originally Posted by Arubalisa
Stuff like this is why I am not excited about the Olympics. 
Beijing pollution may force new crackdown for Olympics
Andrea have you heard from your friend?
Olympic cleanup puts some Beijing residents behind walls
By Jake Hooker http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/28/asia/china.php
Monday, July 28, 2008
"BEIJING: Tourists leaving the west gate of the Temple of Heaven next month probably will not notice Song Wei's home, across the street. Nor will spectators here to watch Olympic cycling see Sun Ruonan's restaurant, two blocks away.
Song and Sun live along the city's central axis in neighborhoods that have been gutted to beautify the city for the Olympics. Both have held onto their property despite pressure to move. They will spend the Olympics behind walls or screens erected to keep them out of public view.
A veil of green plastic netting has covered Sun's restaurant for months. Song's house and several shops that he rents to migrant workers were surrounded by a brick wall three meters, or 10 feet, high last week, as part of last-minute efforts to beautify the city for the Olympics. The authorities deemed his little block of commerce not beautiful.
"We all support the Olympics," said Song, 42, a Beijing native who rents rooms to two migrant families who opened shops. "But why are you building a wall around us?"
A mysterious notice appeared beside the shops July 17, typed on white paper and signed by no one. It read: "In keeping with the government's request to rectify the Olympic environment, a 15-meter wall will need to be built around No. 93 South Tianqiao Road."
The next morning, several bricklayers showed up with a police escort.
Now a wall conceals a little cove of entrepreneurship where several migrant families sell socks, book bags, pants, noodles, and shish kebabs cooked in a spicy soup. One family behind the wall sells ice cream and cold drinks from a refrigerator on wheels.
Zhao Fengxia, a neighbor who owns three shops, said she believed officials and developers were using Olympic beautification as a pretense to strangle their business and exert pressure to make them leave.
"We influence the city's appearance," said Feng Pan, 18, who helps her parents run the noodle shop.
Along the central axis of the city that runs from the Yongdingmen Gate due north to the Drum Tower, the authorities are doing their best to clean up the city's face. Beijing has spent $130 million on restoration projects, many of them temples along the eight-kilometer, or five-mile, axis, according to city's cultural relics bureau.
The Olympic Stadium was built on a northern extension of the traditional axis, a nod to the event's historic importance. On the wide boulevards leading up to the stadium, the police have set up roadblocks and planted flowers, grass and trees.
The southern part of the axis has proved more difficult to beautify. It cuts through densely populated neighborhoods south of Tiananmen Square that are home to many of the city's migrants and working poor. So to hide neighborhoods, the government has put up walls.
Song and his wife and daughter, Bomin, 8, now live behind one.
They have lived here since 1994, Song said, renting out his shops to families from the provinces.
It is bare living. The Songs' room is barely big enough for a double bed on which the couple and daughter sleep. Two pet birds live in metal cages by the door. The birds, brown starlings with dark feathers and orange beaks, can parrot human speech. Song taught one a famous poem. Every few minutes it squawks "Bairiyishanjin" (The white sun falls over the mountains) or "Huangheruhailiu" (The Yellow River flows into the sea).
Behind the room is a moonscape of weeds and rubble that used to be a slum. Song's place survived while the city razed the historically poor Tianqiao neighborhood and transformed it with shopping malls, wider streets, and subdivisions. Song's position is familiar in the churn of this changing city: The developers want him to go. But he is holding out for more cash.
On July 17, several farmers left a pile of red bricks on the sidewalk. The next morning, they returned, wearing sandals and straw hats, accompanied by the police and local officials. The bricklayers set to work at 8:30 a.m.
The wall did not go up easily. After a brief shoving match, a little demonstration unfolded. Song hung three Chinese flags from the trunks of trees and three white flags emblazoned with the 2008 Olympic logo. A migrant worker climbed a ladder and stuck up a poster that said, " Need Human Rights!!!"
To scare away the officials, Song brought out a large poster with a famous photograph of Mao Zedong sitting in a wicker chair.
"He thought Mao might be able to do something for us," said Zhao, the neighbor, who was there that morning.
The bricklayers, migrant workers themselves, worked through a hard rain. As a crowd of sympathetic morning commuters gathered, the police strung up a police tape around the poplar trees. A dozen men in slacks and polo shirts stood around keeping the situation under control.
"One person shouted, 'So you're not going to allow people to feed themselves!"' Zhao recalled. "A lot of families earn their livelihoods from these shops, even though they're small."
Gu Dahua, 47, a farmer from Anhui Province, came here with his wife three years ago. They sell combs, mirrors, socks and other small items, all priced at one yuan, or about 15 cents. The wall has not been good for business.
"It's hard now," Gu said.
Two blocks north, another building along the axis has been shuttered for the Games.
Sun Ruonan's ancestors opened the building as a restaurant on the axis south of Tiananmen Square a long time ago. The city tried to raze it last year to plant grass and ornamental shrubs beside the Olympic cycling route. Sun and her younger sister, Ruoyu, an Australian citizen, refused to vacate.
On Tuesday, Sun, 57, sat alone in the dining room of the restaurant, surrounded by her cats. Festive paper lanterns still hung in the dining room, which was redolent of cat litter and decay. It was 4 p.m. and Sun was still in her pajamas.
"I don't really want to oppose the government," she said, breaking into tears. "For those of us who have lived through the Cultural Revolution, this life is like heaven."
The city has bullied her to leave. One night last year a bulldozer slammed into the building. Neighbors are paid to keep watch over her, and notify the police when she has guests. Sun said officials had pressed her doctor into refusing to give her care.
Her building is falling apart. The government, for the sake of appearances, has put up scaffolding with green netting around it.
As the cyclists race past her home in August, it will be easy for spectators to miss the posters, begging for help, taped to the door.
"I'm hanging here like a nail," she said."
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Aruba, my home away from home !!
JMHO. 
For Andrea's benefit...
Bora Bora
