First of all, it’s eight minutes. Say what you want about “Survival,” London’s official Olympics song, but at least Muse had the courtesy to stop at a reasonable five minutes and 20 seconds. For what is essentially an overproduced, commercialized ditty, what couldn’t you possibly do in five minutes that you need eight? Actually, we... Read more »
On Saturday at Liushahe Cultivation Base in Nanning, Hunan province, people organized a swim meet with some peculiar competitors. At the sound of a whistle, nine spotted piglets jumped into the water and splashed down their lane toward the shore -- the "finish line." A pig named Hua Hua won and was rewarded with extra delicious pig feed.
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 »
After four years, Leona Lewis returned to Beijing to perform at the Bird’s Nest on Saturday as part of something called the BMW Olympic Joy Festival. The last time this singer-songwriter was in the city, she was sharing the spotlight with Jimmy Page (and David Beckham) at the 2008 Olympics closing ceremony — I think... Read more »
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 »
Continuing our Olympics Countdown series in which we post about anything borderline related to London or the Olympics, here’s an oldie but goodie, from 2010, featuring a 110-meter hurdler who will simply let nothing, including hurdles, get between him and the finish line. This happened at a University Games in China, exact location unknown. No other... 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 »
London Olympics organizers have said they wanted to go a completely different direction than Beijing (and everyone ever), and yesterday's release of this year's Olympic theme song, "Survival" by Muse, confirms they're men and women of their word. But really, organizers are a Steps line dance away from being in full fuck-all-y'all mode: they do not give one rat's greypence about what the Olympics were, are, or will be. This year, it's gonna be British, so contemporarily and creatively British that anyone who doesn't like it can make like a tree and naff all the wankbats up Piccadilly.
