Back in June, we brought your attention to the adventures of Ivan Xu, a Chinese youth who planned to bike alone around Europe for 100 days for Ultimate Frisbee and charity.
He ended up cycling across 14 countries and visiting 11 high-level Ultimate Frisbee clubs* from June 18 to September 25, beginning in Brest, Belarus and ending in Berlin.
His adventures have been profiled by media around the world, including CCTV-4, Estrepublicain.fr, Pärnu Postimees, Belarusian CTV, Russia-Belarus TPO TV and OHT TV, so what follows is hardly an exclusive. But here's an update anyway.
In a recent discussion held as part of the inaugural Lean In Beijing Mentorship Event, a college student in my circle noted, “In China, it’s so difficult to stand out sometimes. We all pursue the same goals, we all do the same things, we all study hard and we all have similar experiences and ideas. In order for us to stand out and be unique, I really think we have to be unafraid to be different.”
It’s true, especially in a country of 1.4 billion people. But it’s not common to see young Chinese doing what's necessary to stand out: pushing themselves to their limits and going beyond their comfort zone. Which is why Ivan Xu's project, the Ultimate Ride, is interesting:
Being from Hong Kong, storms no longer faze me. But hailstones the size of golf balls? That's a different story. An upscale mall in Kowloon Tong recently had its windows smashed by hail, and certain subway stations were flooded; planes were diverted, containers at our ports were blown sideways... what a way to end a weekend of Rugby Sevens! (Which New Zealand won, by the way.)
Around 3:20 pm on Sunday in Tangshan, Hebei province, a woman named Ms. Cheng was exercising in Nanhu Park when she saw some teenagers playing on a frozen lake. She and her exercise partner, Mr. Liu, were about 15 meters from the shore when the ice suddenly cracked, swallowing up the young revelers.
The Wall Street Journal revealed on Friday that China's airports are the world's worst for flight delays. "According to FlightStats, which tracks airport statistics, Beijing’s airport ranks dead last among the world’s top 35, with fully 82% of flights failing to leave on time," WSJ reported. "Second worst was Shanghai, at 71%." Numbers, numbers. We could link to a string of posts from our archives with picture and video evidence, but none of it will feel as real as our memories -- after all, we've all experienced the particular nightmare of flying in China.
We wrote about Ping Fu earlier this year when she was called out for lying in her memoir, Bend, Not Break. It looks like the author is in the news again, giving an interview with SCMP in response to a lawsuit threatened by Soochow University, Fu's alma mater, along with some of her former classmates who remain upset over the "falsehoods" in her book.
We’re all suckers for a good story. In recent years, we’ve seen the authors of too-good-to-be-true memoirs exposed (James Frey, Greg Mortensen, etc.), and now we’re seeing this with a notable businesswoman from China. In Bend, Not Break, Ping Fu details her eventful life. During the Cultural Revolution, she was separated from her parents at age 8,... Read more »
A Hong Kong-born, British- and Harvard-educated woman, Sara Jane Ho, is opening a school of etiquette, the Institute Sarita, in the Park Hyatt Beijing. Price? Only £2,000 to £10,000 (about $3,140 to $15,700). Would you pay this much for, according to Daily Mail, “lectures on how to use a knife and fork properly, how to... Read more »
Manchester United recently announced sponsorship deals with two Chinese companies, Wahaha and China Construction Bank (CCB), the latter of which will produce Man U-branded credit cards. Considering China is one of the largest growth markets for any business, it’s no a surprise that the 134-year-old club is looking to strengthen its presence here. There are... Read more »
