Manchester United landed in Shanghai’s Pudong International Airport just after midnight today and were greeted by hundreds of enthusiastic fans, according to the team’s website. This marks Man U’s first China trip since 2009, part of a wider effort to reach out to the Asian market. It shouldn’t surprise you to know that the Red Devils are... Read more »
Heavy, heavy rains have again left Beijing’s streets flooded, but that hasn’t stopped tonight’s Chinese Super League match between the hometown Guo’an and Hangzhou Greentown FC. Above, the first goal of the night, putting Hangzhou up 1-0. That remains the score in Workers Stadium as the two teams slog it out in the 77th minute.... Read more »
I remember, earlier this week, looking at Reuters’s David Gray’s photos of old Beijing Olympics venues and not thinking twice about them, because the headline on Atlantic Cities, where the pictures appeared, read “Beijing’s Olympic Ruins.” I could guess the nature of the misinformed captions that awaited, the smarmy condescension, the clueless-about-China editor at his... Read more »
I should mention that the ubiquity of the "shabi" (or "SB" on the Internets) chant in China probably means the real translation should be "asshole," as "cunt" seems to be on a different tier of offensiveness in American English. But I've chosen to go with the literal translation, just because. (In the interest of fairness, we should point out that if a star player arrived in Beijing, Guo'an fans here would chant "Shenhua SB" as well.)
The National Basketball League (NBL) is a semi-pro basketball league managed by the same suits who control the top-tier Chinese Basketball Association (CBA). The NBL's playoffs are currently happening, but they're not happening very well. As Jon Pastuszek of NiuBBall reports, "I invite you to keep an eye on the NBL playoffs, where not one, but two all-out brawls went down inside of three days last Friday and Sunday."
Earlier in the day at Henley-on-Thames, a naked man holding a fake Olympic torch ran ahead of the real Olympic torch route, basically in front of the whole town. A streaker in England? How is that possible?
According to the London Evening Standard, the man had "Free Tibet" written on his back. He was quickly tackled by police, as you see in the above. There's another video after the jump, from a different angle, in high definition. Both are borderline NSFW, but the HD one probably slightly more so.
I want to make clear that it's not the presence of Li Bingbing that makes this video sad; it's everything. Down to the way she coughs at the 3-minute mark, then squeakily apologizes to what appears to be a polite, mild-mannered interviewer, to the way the cameraman gently pushes the microphone held by a Chinese journalist out of its shot, this is real life in the town of Brentwood in the Borough of Brentwood in Essex County, England, full of comportment and decorum and a wisp of old-fashioned gentility retrofitted to our iPhone generation, and it's all sweet and bucolic and if I ever lived there I'm pretty sure I'd rip my fingers from their joints out of boredom.
This is an Olympics Countdown post. Sporadically, we’ll post Olympics- and/or England-related content ahead of this summer’s London Games. The above picture (photoshopped, obviously) is making the rounds on Weibo, and why shouldn’t it be? Sports is an outlet for people here to release their pent-up emotions and express their frustrations (sometimes this is bad). In... Read more »
This is an Olympics Countdown post. Sporadically, we’ll post England-related content ahead of this summer’s London Olympics. If you’re British, we want to hear from you: tips@beijingcream.com. Remember the magic that makes Chinese traffic flow? It exists in England, too, but in circular form. The above image comes from Mike G of Real DuPont. I... Read more »
Fans lined up around the massive Zhongguancun Book Mansion this morning to see their favorite athlete, Stephon Marbury, conduct a book signing for his ghostwritten autobiography, I Am Commissar Marbury (I only assume it’s ghostwritten because it’s in Chinese). Marbury, who had been in the US for foot surgery, returned to Beijing on Thursday with his... Read more »
