| Leaving the Bird's Nest
Beijing View August 18, 2008 |
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So-blue skies
Soon, I will be exiting the Bird's Nest and flying home. It is with regret that I leave. Beijing has been just great without pollution, crowds and traffic jams. See the blue skies and empty roads I am leaving. I took this photo on 8-18-08 from the apartment where I was staying in central Beijing. See Silicon Dragon daily log for a visual day-by-day record of the skies over these monumental games. Many more days and nights than most, the athletes got a chance to see the sun and the moon and even the full moon one Saturday night. Click on Silicon Dragon blog for full coverage of what went on outside the Olympic Village. |
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Web 2.0 Olympics? Not so fast! 
The Beijing Games were billed as the world's first web 2.0 Olympics - the time when social networking over the Internet and video streaming would shine as they reflected China's glory of hosting this grand event. But I found it not so.
Facebook was slow and often not accessible. Email was unreliable and often stopped for up to eight hours, then it would suddenly pour into my Outlook In box all at once, in a virtual avalanche. The Internet was moving at a crawl. Access to Huffington Post was blocked in China, but through an email submission to my edit contacts there in New York City, my post went live. See Huffington Post blog.
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Fine Living in Beijing |
Fine, trendy dining spots are the latest thing in Beijing as expats on lavish expense accounts and newly affluent city residents try out French wines, black truffle risotto and Australian beef. Not only have restaurants besides McDonald's, Starbucks and KFC arrived to tempt taste buds, but the city's developers have discovered that small, expensive boutique hotels draw in the sort of traveler used to Hollywood and Tribeca. Now the Four Seasons, Hyatt and Marriotts really have some Chinese rivals who are setting new standards in hospitality. Consider Hotel G and Opposite House as two examples. See a Beijing weekend of restaurant and hotel reviews at Silicon Dragon blog. |
Empty Olympics 
Want more proof that Beijing didn't fill up with tourists during the Olympics? Check out the empty seats on 8-19-08 at the newly constructed basketball stadium. I had tickets thanks to Morrison & Foerster, international legal counsel to the Beijing Organizing Committee, and snapped this photo at the quarterfinals game between the U.S. and South Korean women's basketball teams. The American team won! Hotels were also empty most times of the days. Even a check of hospitality suites for Nokia, VW and Adidas in several major hotels turned up NO visitors, despite the very welcoming lounges and comfort food. Those new stricter visa policies surely worked! The city of Beijing invested $40 billion to host the games.Wonder what the return on investment is. |
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Author Interviews |
| Fox News host Stuart Varney interviewed me the day before I landed in Beijing. See Fox Business News. For more podcasts and video interviews, see Rebecca Fannin website and click on Interviews in the Author's tab. |
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