A few days ago, I got a call from BOCOG. Turns out, my boss’s boss’s boss was looking for someone to appear on a CCTV 9 show and wanted to know if I was interested. (What a relief. At first, I thought he was calling to yell at me over something I wrote here!) I agreed to do it, and he told me to be outside the west gate today at 2:15 so we can get to CCTV by 3:45.

So I’m outside the west gate of the Olympic Green at 2:15. And at 2:20. And at 2:30. I start to get nervous, so I flip through caller ID to find the number. I call it. Nothing.

So I call CCTV. They have the number of the guy who first called me. So I call it. Nothing.

At 2:45, I start to panic a little. I mean, I am standing on a highway in the Beijing heat sweating like a pig. I hail a taxi, call CCTV again and have the woman on the other end tell my taxi where to go.

Click (more) below to see if I ever get to the interview. (I mean, I guess it's obvious because of the picture. But still, it's a good story!)
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So two bus bombs went off in southwest China on Monday morning. They killed two in Kunming, 3,230 km from Beijing. Here’s links from the New York Times and the China Daily.

The main reason I’m telling you this is because I’m worried you haven’t heard about it. There’s no word yet on whether the bombings were Olympics related or even who organized them. But while we’re on the subject, I thought I’d tell you a little about the security here.

Beijing is a very safe city. I’ve never felt in danger or at risk, even from pick-pocketers. I see guards in green uniforms and red armbands all over the city, often looking bored like they don’t have much to do. I have to pass at least three of them just to get in my hotel room.

In a few days, venues at the Olympic Green will go through “lock-down,” meaning every corner of every stadium will be searched. After that, security procedures will increase dramatically. Right now, the procedures are tough but low-key: thorough identification checks before a guard walks around us with some kind of radiation-detection gun thingy. I don’t know what it’s for, but they got really fussy the first time I tried to get into the NIS without doing it.

So don’t worry. From what I can see, Beijing is gearing up to protect me and those around me from harm. Plus, I can’t see that a bomb in southwest China is supposed to be a message about the Olympics all the way up in Beijing. But I wanted to open it up. What do you think? Are you nervous about the security situation here? Do you see the Olympics as a target for terrorism?

Put it this way, do you know something I don’t? I’ll definitely be responding to comments left below!
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So I’ve been here for three weeks, and this is the first time I’ve cleaned out my purse. Gross. But I think the stuff I found has a lot more to say about my time in Beijing than I ever could.

Here’s come of the stuff I found inside! Click (more) below for the full list:
•    A map of a hutong
•    Hand sanitizer
•    A copy of my passport
•    3 MU School of Journalism pins
•    $2.10 in American coins
•    30 jiao (Yuan cents)
•    Chinese language phrase book
•    7 Chinese taxi receipts
•    Receipts from the Dallas and Chicago airports, where I bought 2 New Yorkers, a Vouge and a New York Times for the long flight to Beijing
•    7 random receipts with Chinese characters on them

Click (more) for the whole list:

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After my radio interview, I took a walk to work off the rest of my nervous jitters. Just as I decided to walk around, I looked up and saw a little girl peeing on the busy sidewalk next to my hotel. I thought, Hm, I’ll just keep walking till I see something stranger than that.

A few blocks down, I saw a group of men and women sitting on stools near the highway playing with a live duck. That took the cake. I turned around, grabbed a chocolate shake (which was surprisingly good, fyi), and walked home.

It felt good to walk at a nice, easy pace after riding the subway everywhere all day. The metro line near our hotel opened yesterday as part of the “Beginning of the Beginning” of the Olympics. It’s really convenient and surprisingly clean. All the signs are in English, and Olympic volunteers get passes for free, so I think I’m going to be using the metro a lot more now!

(A big thanks to FredV who kept posting advice for taking the metro! Your tips helped a ton, especially before the 10 line opened.)

Click (more) below for more about what the Beijing metro system is like.

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Today, I visited Maliandao Lu, Beijing’s international tea center. Basically, it’s a long street lined with tiny shops that will give you all the free samples you want and then send you on your way with a brick of tea, a ceramic set and a racing heart.

At one shop we visited, Pingyue Tea Industry, we met a Chinese woman named Linda (her English name) who was working here until she returned home to her southern province. She said she’d show us how to turn these dried green ball things into a cup of tea so beautiful that “all our foreign friends love it.” We sat on little stools at a table that looked as though it had been carved from a huge tree trunk. We watched as she filled a goblet with hot water and dunked the little ball in.

Slowly, tiny green leaves began peeling away, revealing and framing a white and red center. “Keep watching,” Linda said. All at once, the ball popped into a beautiful flower and floated to the bottom of the glass! It was beautiful. When Linda poured out the goblet for us, we could taste how the flower gave the slightest flavor to the hot water.

Linda said she couldn’t translate the name of the flower, but it meant something like, “Two hearts coming together.” We all got a couple. I can’t wait to try them out!


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So I’m back after my KRLD interview! Here's the clip.

It went by really fast, but I guess that’s radio time for ya. They had three questions for me: How’s the air, how’d you get this internship and how’s the food.

I wish I could have said the air was better, but today was pretty muggy – more from the rain than the pollution. I do think the smog will get better, though, after yesterday.

I have a much more detailed answer of how I got this internship here and here, and a review of Beijing Mexican food here, in case you’re wondering after my interview this morning.

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If you want to hear more about my adventures in Beijing, I'll be interviewed on KRLD-1080 tomorrow (Monday) morning around 7:40 by Carla Marion and Mike Rogers!

I'm kinda nervous. What should I talk about? Chinglish?

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Last night, we went to a Chinese acrobats show! I can’t believe what the human body is capable of.

We saw the Acrobatics Troupe at the Beijing Chaoyang Theater. They wouldn’t let us take pictures, which sucks because I don’t know HOW to describe the tricks to you! They put 13 girls on one bike. They contorted their bodies so they were holding themselves up by their teeth. They balanced on planks of wood balanced on a wheel balanced on a table balanced on a man’s shoulders!

Click (more) below for my grandparent’s reaction to an acrobatics show in 1979!
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During training today, I met a Chinese guy whose English name was Lucas. I asked him to help me figure out a Chinese name, since Lindsay is tough to pronounce.

We decided on Lin Lin (pronounced leen-leen). The first Lin is just my family name, but the second Lin means “beautiful jade.” He wrote it down for me in Chinese characters, which didn't help me a whole heck of a lot, so then he wrote "Lin Lin" in Pinying (the system of romanization for the Chinese alphabet). I think it's lovely.

After we picked out a name, we talked about our languages and hometowns. I wanted to know where I could see the new Batman movie (he didn’t know), and he wanted to know what ID stood for (I knew, but found it hard to explain). He taught me how to say “no” and “keep going” in Mandarin, and I helped him get his mouth around the word “interpreter” in English. Funny how much we had in common once we got over the language barrier…
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Big day for Beijing! In a last ditch effort to bring about blue skies, a series of anti-pollution regulations went into effect today.

My favorite rule is the Even-Odd rule. Basically, cars with license plates ending in an even number can only drive on even days, like today (July 20). Same with odd plates on odd days. The rule is intended to remove 60% of cars from the road, cut emissions and ease traffic congestion. I took a taxi to work this morning, and between the even-odd rule and easy Sunday morning traffic, we practically flew to the NIS.

Beijing also shut down a number of factories and construction projects to clear the air. Honestly, the last week or so has been sunny blue skies, so I can’t wait to see what “Grayjing” looks like once the leftover pollution has cleared out.

But more than just cutting emissions, today’s changes means the Olympics are actually coming! It’s like how you can’t start playing Christmas carols until after Thanksgiving. After all this waiting and planning, today was proof that soon it’ll all be worth it.


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