Countdown for clean air (they hope)!

You have to think that perhaps they might have left this detail to the last minute and maybe there just won't be enough time or enough wind currents to pull it off.

Beijing which is set to welcome the world's athletes in three weeks time has officially commenced their much discussed plan to cleanse the air of what seems to be one of the worlds more polluted metropolitan areas.

Starting today, a traffic ban is in effect around the Olympic Games host city, with half of Beijing's 3.3 million vehicles to be taken off the roads and large number of their now infamous polluting factories will be shuttered. Those that remain open have been ordered to reduce their toxic mix of emissions by thirty percent.

It's the final stage of the preparations for the 10,500 athletes who will be calling the Chinese capital home over the seventeen days of the games, which get underway on August 8th.

There are any number of critics who suggest that the plan is one that doesn't make particular sense, considering wind currents that may very well blow pollution into the city regardless of the efforts to reduce the local areas carbon and other chemical footprints.

The main concern is for those athletes that will be performing in outdoor venues including the marathons and track and field competitions, where the prospect of a beige haze over Beijing is a very real possibility.

The Globe and Mail features an interesting look at all the preparations thus far posted on its website today.

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We found a few other bits of information on the issue that give us a bit of background on what may be the largest obstacle for the Chinese as they take their step on the world stage next month.

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Guardian-- Emergency Beijing Olympic pollution scheme kicks in

Stuff NZ-- Great pall of Beijing

BBC-- Car restrictions begin in Beijing

Los Angeles Times-- China clean air plan goes into effect

AFP-- Beijing starts car ban in Olympics clean-air drive
Xinhua-- Beijing starts 2-month-long vehicle use control for Olympic Games

Photo above from Globe and Mail website.

Steamed crap taken off of Chinese menus

Just when you felt like being adventurous at the dinner table, the Chinese government goes and cracks down on those colourful names for their menu items.

With an eye to a soon to arrive world next year for the 2008 Olympics, China's government has decided that some refinements are needed on the restaurant menus of Beijing.

Gone are such interesting descriptions for such concoctions as Burn Lions Head, The Temple explodes, Virgin Chicken and Steamed Crap, a dish we suspect just didn't get the kind of support that was truly deserving of it.

It's all part of China's bid to become more tourist friendly fast, in addition to the menu remakes, Chinese residents are being schooled in some proper etiquette, things such as to refrain from spitting, don't budge in line and try to be a little more polite on the roads.

They have less that a year to get the bureaucracy moving on the different menu changes and the need to have everyone on the same page as the world arrives.

No more 'burnt lion's head'; Beijing cleans up menus for Olympics
Published: Friday, August 31, 2007 2:42 AM ET
Canadian Press

BEIJING (AP) - Hungry visitors to next summer's Beijing Olympics won't have to struggle to decipher bizarre English mistranslations on restaurant menus.

Xinhua News Agency says the Beijing Tourism Bureau has released a list with thousands of proposed names for dishes and drinks, designed to replace confusing and sometimes ridiculous translations on menus. Foreigners are often stumped by dish names such as virgin chicken (a young chicken dish) or burnt lion's head (Chinese-style pork meatballs).

Other garbled names include the temple explodes the chicken cube (kung pao chicken) or steamed crap (steamed carp).

Xinhua notes these translations either scare or embarrass foreign customers and may cause misunderstanding about Chinese dietary habits.

It's the latest effort among Beijing Olympics organizers to clean up the city and ensure the best image is presented to the hundreds of thousands of visitors expected next summer.

Etiquette campaigns are afoot to stamp out bad manners like jumping ahead in line, spitting, littering and reckless driving. The revised menu names are part of an effort to ban unintelligible English, known as "Chinglish," that abounds on signs everywhere.

A team set up by the Beijing Municipal Foreign Affairs Office and Beijing Tourism Bureau has been working on the menu names for more than a year, Xinhua said. Translators developed names for dishes based on one of four categories: ingredients, cooking method, taste or the name of a person or place.

For example, a dish with mushrooms and duck feet will be listed as simply "Mushroom-Duck's Foot." Other proposed names include "Fish Filets in Hot Chili Oil" and "Crispy Chicken." "Mapo Tofu," a tofu dish, derives its name from a woman named Mapo.

Once a final decision is made on the list of names, they will be used in restaurants across China, Xinhua said.