Mountaineering types and adventure travel advocates are always hyping their accomplishments--until too many people follow in their footsteps. We can officially call Mt. Everest done-ski now that the Olympic Torch has made it to the summit.
When a team of torch runners can just say, "Let's take this thing up there," you know it's gotten too easy to just cruise up the mountain. Well, maybe easy is a bit of a stretch:
The summit attempt had been repeatedly delayed because of bad weather, and the team had been forced to sit for days at various high camps.
The group of ethnic Tibetan climbers and Chinese journalists must've been a lonely on the climb: China barred access to the summit earlier this year to keep any pro-Tibetan protests from marring the mountain-top torch run.
While most of the world is slowing lifting restrictions on cabin baggage, over in China they're just getting started. Last month the Chinese authorities added matches and lighters to a growing list of banned items. And as of May 1, they've also restricted the amount of cabin baggage you can carry on.
With the Olympics around the corner and plenty of tourists getting ready to make domestic flights across China, it doesn't seem like a great time to start changing the rules. But for the record, the rules now say that you can only take one piece of baggage on board, and it has to weigh less than 5kg (11 pounds); first class passengers get two bags.
This applies to international passengers who get a connecting flight within China, too. If you're Olympics-bound, this might be a good time to repack your bag.
We can't imagine that the latest pre-Olympics news from Beijing will make organizers less stressed. Officials in the capital are promising a smoke-free games, and that means stubbing out cigs in parks, bus and train stations and even some restaurants. It's gonna be quite a project: China is the world's top tobacco producer and consumer.
While Olympic venues will have full-on bans, most of Beijing is easing into the restrictions. One restaurateur says an outright switch to non-smoking would never work:
We're planning to gradually expand our non-smoking area, but it would be difficult to entirely ban smoking from the restaurant in one go. After all, everyone knows the old Chinese saying, "A smoke after a meal makes you feel like an immortal."
There are about 350 million smokers in the country, so it doesn't seem likely that they'll all quit by August. In true Chinese fashion, smoking police will be deployed during the games to make sure no one's breaking the rules.
We don't encourage you to, but if you've gotta light up, don't fret. The current fine for smoking where you shouldn't? $1.50.
After passing through San Francisco, the Olympic Torch didn't find much trouble in Buenos Aires, Dar es Salaam or Muscat. Now in Pakistan, the torch is prepping for a tour of the rest of Asia before heading back to China.
Among the upcoming stops are Kuala Lumpur, Canberra and Nagano, and today's relay through Islamabad was incident-free. But beware, torch watchers: Protesters in Australia are already agitating, so we could be in for more drama.
Pro-Tibet protesters took over Paris today, as the Olympic Torch passed through the city. After a world-class hurdler carried the flame from the Eiffel Tower, things got dicey, with police at one point extinguishing the torch and carrying it aboard a bus for protection. Some officials even managed to drape a Tibetan flag over city hall and interrupt a planned press conference.
On earlier stops in London and Athens, demonstrators garnered plenty of attention, too. The relay arrives in San Francisco on Wednesday, which promises to be quite a show, given the city's Chinese heritage--and love of public protests.
Details on the relay route are still sketchy. A proposal to have the torch pass through Chinatown has been scrapped, as has a stop on the Golden Gate Bridge. Next up for the flame? Buenos Aires and Dar es Sallam, Tanzania.
China shut down Chang'an Boulevard and Tiananmen Square for the re-lighting of the Olympic Torch today. The flame, which was originally sparked up in Greece on March 24, will now tour through Asia before continuing on through five more continents.
The relay will be the longest in the history of the games, and may include a trip to the top of Mt. Everest. (Because the mountain certainly needs more people tramping up to the summit!)
While you may want to check out the torch as it wends across the globe, be warned: Pro-Tibetan protesters will be staging events all along the route and things could get dicey in the run-up to the games on August 8.
First the tourists, now the journalists. In the wake of the Tibet riots, China has been revving its propaganda machine, calling Western media coverage biased, preventing reporters from entering Lhasa and blocking access to YouTube. (Luckily, they didn't knock it out worldwide.)
On the other side of the world, several members of Reporters Without Borders broke through security to make a scene at the Olympic torch-lighting ceremony in Athens on Monday. One guy was able to unfurl a protest banner behind a Chinese speaker before being dragged off by police.
Amid all this, it's looking like the Olympic Games have slim chance of going without disruption. The whole debacle is disappointing; for all its facelifts and crazy stadiums, China still doesn't know how to run an open society.
Why anyone would head to Beijing hungry for bangers and mash this summer is beyond us. But either way, China will be prepared to serve it up. Over the next few months the country will send roughly 1,000 chefs to England to take a crash-course in Western-style cooking, learning how to roast potatoes, boil ham and even how to cook a hearty English breakfast.
This comes as part of a larger program to have quality food of all varieties available to tourists and athletes during the Olympic games. Each team of visiting chefs is assigned to master a specific dish over a five-day course so they can pass the knowledge along once they get back to China. The chefs have apparently been extremely diligent students, furiously scribbling notes and video-taping lectures.
It makes sense that athletes should have access to specialized diets while in Beijing, but the prospect of tourists traveling to the other side of the earth only to have a translated taste of home is pretty sorry. The city's stacked with delicious options: noodle shops, teahouses and stands hocking fast delicacies like pork buns and honey-glazed fruit. If you're not training for the decathlon, don't miss out.
