I like spicy food. In fact, sometimes if soups or other asian foods are not spicy enough, I order “fresh chopped chili”. My friend Anoop introduced me to chopped chili and a little soy sauce years ago, and I’ve never looked back. In Beijing, restaurant staff I came across often couldn’t believe that I was [...]

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Walking along the Olympic Green, Jigar and I were invited to complete a ‘quick survey’ for AC Neilson. We weren’t told who the survey was for or how it would be used, but I was interested in what questions were being asked, so I completed the survey. It’ll only take a minute There were only [...]

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It’s my second week in Beijing and my Mandarin skills are slowly improving… I can now cheer for China or Australia in Mandarin; take a cab home completely in Mandarin (as long as we don’t chat and the driver can handle my accent) and explain on the phone to a cab driver how to get [...]

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The Sydney Morning Herald has posted an article that purports to list 21 rules for covering the Olympics. Presumably these are written for Chinese journalists, but the article doesn’t actually explain the document, it just publishes it… The items (listed below) provide an insight into the international/domestic stories the Propaganda unit have anticipated in the [...]

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China’s leaders might be called the “Communist Party”, but if Beijing is anything to go by, this nation is a celebration of a capitalism. So this is what happens when you mix market-minded capitalism with the heavy handed control of authoritarianism? In the video below, Naomi Klein attempts to answer this question. She suggests that [...]

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