If you're into beauty pageants -- and I say this knowing no one is, really -- there's a big one happening tonight, the finals of Miss World China, at Galaxy SOHO. Our friends at That's Beijing are running a very easy contest to get you in the event -- that includes a special invite-only afterparty that commences at 10 pm -- so if you want to rub elbows with the peachy, the yutzy, the beautiful though probably boxy, the sclerotic and robotic -- p-fucking-s, FREE DRINKS -- answer this question in an email to bjeditor@urbanatomy.com with "Miss World" in the subject line:
Former Los Angeles Lakers basketball player Metta World Peace, the artist formerly known as Ron Artest, apparently had a very impressionable trip to Beijing and Qingdao recently, because now he's thinking about playing basketball in this country, perhaps with Yao Ming's Shanghai Sharks. This would be a win for everyone, especially us. And you. Metta World Peace is awesome.
A Bay Area anchor who works for Fox affiliate KTVU announced on Friday, out loud and on-air, that the names of the four pilots of Asiana 214 were Captain Sum Ting Wong, Wi Tu Lo, Ho Lee Fuk, and Bang Ding Ow.
The show of the weekend is at Yugong Yishan on Sunday at 8 pm, featuring, among others, Queen Sea Big Shark, The Face, Nova Heart, Girl Kill Girl, Rolling Bolling. That's one heck of a lineup. What's bringing these folks together?
Since allegations emerged in February that Li Tianyi participated in a gang rape of a girl in a Beijing hotel, his name has been connected with his father, Li Shuangjiang, a famous PLA tenor. The fact that he's the son of a well regarded celebrity with connections to the Party should have spared Li fils from the worst of media scrutiny, but for whatever reason, that hasn't happened. And his new lawyers -- new because his old ones were fired -- are pissed about that.
Here's the thing about teaching English in China: it's a way in. "The people who come for the experience, I feel, are the most valuable people you can have in a place like Beijing because they're learning about themselves, and you never know what somebody might be able to do until they arrive in a place like this," says Matt Jones, an English teacher who's using his years of experience -- teaching "communication" and "culture" as much as anything else, as he puts it -- to start his own school. "If the ticket is English teaching, why not use that ticket?"
