Two things will drive me crazy watching the Olympics this year:

1) The worldwide Media is going to paint a picture of an ugly China.  Every injustice and social issue that china has will be spotlighted one by one as if each one was the beginning of the end of the world.  (I am not saying that the problems are real.)  Sensationalistic news reporting will be at it’s best.  I am going to kick the next person I hear call China, “Red” China in the shins, hard.

2) Domestic media will paint a picture of China that is perfect.  Every single injustice and social issue that does exist and plague the Chinese people will be swept under a humongous Olympic-sized rug.  Thousands of Chinese with smiling faces and full stomachs will sing a thousand praises to communism, Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping and the great Motherland.

I don’t blame China for their biased media and I don’t blame the national media (NBC) for wanting to give their audience a good show.  I just know I am going to wrythe and squirm every time I see a blatently exaggerated or half-truth reported to the world as reality.  The world is ignorant and will eat it up.

BEIJING (AP) - In a matter of days, hundreds of thousands of visitors from more than 100 countries will flood into China’s capital, where non-Chinese faces are still a rarity in some neighborhoods.

The Beijing Olympics will be the largest gathering of foreigners in China in recent history - the biggest foreign influx since the Mongol invasion - and a social experiment of sorts for a country that is overwhelmingly monochromatic.

Having been to China a few times and living in Taiwan for a couple years, I can relate to the “white foreigner in China” reaction from many Chinese who have not had the opportunity to get up close-and-personal with foreigners.  Although in big cities like Beijing and Shanghai where there are literally millions of foreigners, there will not be much “surprise” for most Chinese.  Plus, most tourists, even the most daring don’t linger far from the “tourist friendly” areas of any part of China.

This will however be a very interesting social experiment, as the AP aticle linked to below states.  Foreigners, especially Europeans and Americans are used to being able to do whatever they want when they want, and you can’t so that in China.  Traffic is a good example.  In the U.S., when an idiot, or an airhead wanders into the street into oncoming traffic, cars stop.  Red lights, stop signs, these things are followed for the most part.  They hardly mean anything in China.  Stepping out into traffic in China WILL get you to a hospital quickly.  Traffic is only a part of it, an example of the differences between East and West.  There are much more important and serious things that can get an ignorant Westerner in trouble.

Not to be a downer, most of the interaction should be nothing more than a lot of fun.  I wish I could be there to take it all in.

Source: Beijing Readies for Influx of Foreign Visitors, AP

A strange phenomenon is happening in China dealing with travel and foreign visitors.  The Chinese government has literally started denying travel visas.  Business, tourist, student and work visas all alike.  (Although mainly business visitors.)  I do not really know what to think of this, and I think most of the foreign business population does not really seem to know either.  Call me naive, but I thought China was pretty high on rich, westerners coming to their country to invest, spend, invest and spend some more.  Is China really worried about us entering China legally and then not leaving?  Now I realize that the Olympics and China’s 19,887 Olympic fears has them in a tizzy these days, but still seems strange.  China during the Olympics is going to be nuts!

here are some articles I have run by on the subject:

Business Visas Restricted to Shanghai During Olympics

Olympic Paranoia clutches China

Immigration rules restrict business opportunities

I was reading-up on some of my favorite China blogs and came across a post that asks a great big question about China.  Is Bribery necessary in China?  Here is the source: The Rise of The Dragon: Is Bribery Really Necessary?

So back to the question.  I think corruption is a terrible thing, but having dabbled in international business (who am I kidding, US too) I would say that it is very real.  I hate to say necessary, but yeah, In China it is.  Foreign firms can not own land in China, so if you own a factory their you HAVE taken part in China’s exciting world of corruption.  In order to get a permit to build, you need government permission.  To get permission, on some level someone was bribed or “greased” somehow.  It is literally impossible, and incredibly nieve to think other wise.  My info comes from a few friends and other third party sources, so I may be wrong, but I doubt it.  There are so many levels of beuracracy in China, to think that you can avoid the built-in corruption is again, nieve.

But isn’t bribery illegal?  Yes.  And didn’t they execute the health minister a couple years ago for accepting bribes?  Yes.  Good show huh.  China is good at that.  There are a lot of illegal things in China that you would think their GDP depends on.  Prostitution, child labor (at least us American’s ignorant definition of it,) and environmental pollution just to name a couple.  You see these everyday.  In fact, unless you hide in a fort made of blankets in your hotel room with the phone off the hook and the blinds closed, you can hardly avoid the above three.  Bribery is not quite that bad, but you get my point.

The Travel Channel is the coolest.  Bizzare Foods is awesome with Andrew Zimmerman, but this week has been a lot of fun.  Why?  It is China Week!  it is interesting to see just how interested the world is getting towards China.  It is 12:40 a.m. and I have to go to work tomorrow, and I feel terrible, but this show is fascinating.

The Travel Channel is making everything seem so crazy and mystic, but really, the more I think about it, it really IS crazy and mystic.  I mean that in a good way.  I think that is why I am so fascinated in China, it’s history, people and FOOD.  It is so different than what I grew-up knowing as “normal.”  I am from Coos Bay, OR in case you were wondering.  I would give 197 Australian dollars for some xiao long bao (dragon balls?) right now!

Last year, August of 2007 My dad flew out to Chicago, bough a brand new BMW 1200 RT

He then rode it through Utah, where my mom, Ru and I joined him (with our car) and made the rest of the trip back to Coos Bay. That is when I fell in love with touring, and BMW motorcycles. The latter may have to wait until I have a little, or a lot more money. There is so much freedom out on a bike on the open road. the last few weeks I have been thinking about the ultimate vacation, the ultimate trip. I realize that this may not be the ultimate for some people, or even most people, but the trip of my dreams involves me and Ru, a motorcycles and the entire United States, or at least selected pieces.

See Jason’s dream trip MAP

This would involve an intense amount of riding, and so would most likely take a long, long time, but I would absolutely love it! (At least I think I would.) This would involve different people, scenery food and culture. And that would make me happy.

Chicago was nice, NeoCon was exciting, the Solace rocks, but I was too tired. I played an early round of golf on my birthday, which I was hardly awake enough to enjoy, and really don’t remember the rest. (Except a great red Robin hamburger!)

Saturday was much better! Ru and I rode the bike up to SLC and had Tucanos Brazilian BBQ for lunch and then saw the Hulk (I give it a 6.5, not bad, but not great.) We spent an hour or so walking around the Gateway (A big outdoor mall in which Tucanos and the theater are inside,) looking at the chalk art (some kind of festival) and listened to the live music for a while. Around 4:30 p.m. we took the canyon up to park City (beautiful route!) and then finished the day with dinner at Zermatt in Midway and a cruise down the canyon. One of the more relaxing days I have had in a long, long time.

When you don’t care anymore you have lost
When I was in China a month and a half ago I experienced something truly amazing. It was Sunday afternoon and my friend Brent and I were looking for a leisurely activity to pass time and experience a little China. We were at The Peoples Square Park taking in the whole experience when we happened upon a strange sight. We saw a white lady surrounded by 8-10 Chinese people talking. They were literally surrounding her listening to her talk.

As we were discussing how bizarre that scene was we realized that the exact same scenario was being played out a dozen more times all around us. As we were watching the surrounding spectacle, sure enough, within 30 seconds there were at least a dozen or more Chinese folks surrounding Brent and I. Now these were not street beggars, in fact they were all well dressed professionals and students. We quickly discovered that we had happened upon the weekly Sunday afternoon phenomenon called “English Corner.” At first I thought that these people were simply there to learn English, but as our conversations turned to politics, morals, movies and family I realized that these people were hungry for knowledge and life.

These people were brave enough to approach perfect strangers in the park just to get a glimpse of whatever foreign country that person was from. A country they would most likely never see in their life time. (I wish they could!)

These people cared. They thirsted for something more. No matter what their life’s circumstances served-up, I am confident that these people were happy. In my mind, they have won.

So we are here in Chicago (Derek, Chad, Brandon and I) to attend the NeoCon trade show. It is almost impossible to believe that this is our fourth year in attendance. This year is real special because we are launching the Solace. A completely untested product (Well I guess they all always are) in an industry we hardly can even pretend to be insiders in.

I am more tired than I have been in… well, I have been really tired for a long time actually, but right now I feel especially fatigued. Four days ago Derek had just arrived in Utah from Taiwan where he had been pushing the factory to duck tape (kidding… kinda) enough samples together to be FedExed 2 day air to Chicago in time for the show. We all knew that they were not ready, but oh well, we ran out of time and would have to make due. And we are.

It really hit me how big (try not to laugh) of a company we have the other day when I was racing on my motorcycle 15 minutes north up the freeway to meet our printing broker at a gas station convenience store to pick-up some brochures. I was laughing the whole way. Oh yeah, our plane was leaving early the next morning.

The chairs look awesome, and dispite all the obstacles, we will prevail. Sure is fun. (I will post pics later!)

I don’t know what it is about Kaohsiung, but I love it. Maybe its the fact that all I have ever done there is go out to nice restaurants and eat, roam around various night markets and eat, go to roadside seafood joints and eat and buy a memory upgrade for my lap-top. I admittedly have never lived there, but still, I think it is a city on the move. There is a park in down-town Kaohsiung that you would swear was in the middle of Berkely. Live music, espresso bars, beautiful landscaping, this place really impressed me. Then on the other side they have the ship-yards, which also really get me excited. A stack of a thousand 40 ft ocean freight containers is really something to behold. Anyway, they have been digging around Kaohsiung for a while and are ready to introduce their MRT. A big step I believe in the cities evolution.

Source: Taiwan news online

http://www.taiwannews.com.tw/etn/news_content.php?id=615143〈=eng_news&cate_img=186