NYTimes on Queueing

The volunteers are part of a much larger script for what may be the most carefully stage-managed spectacle in Olympic history — a grand-scale version of the opening ceremony, intended to demonstrate to the world, and even to the Chinese, that the country has finally arrived as a world-class actor. For one thing, the stage set has been expanded to include not just the various sports venues but the entire city of Beijing. The beggars and the homeless have been rounded up and banished from the streets. People have been urged to quit smoking and spitting, and to adopt the Western custom of standing in line for a bus, instead of jostling.

How the west invented queueing…

Beijing Coma

After all, many benign impulses surely flourish under the frantic and gaudy surface of modernizing China.

on Beijing Coma

There's a lot of world out there

"There’s a lot of world out there."

Dan the high jumper on China, the world, and beyond

The Elephant Building

{The Elephant Building} …a 40 storey building that was being constructed in the mid 90’s. It was almost done when the Asian financial crisis hit and the construction had to be halted and was never finished. The bottom half of the building is in use but the top half is abandoned. To get to the roof you have to walk up 20 flights of stairs as there’s no working elevator past the first 18 floors. On the roof of this building is a overgrown rooftop garden, a pool covered with algae, a helicopter pad, and the most incredible city view that I’ve ever seen. In every direction there you can see to the horizon, and late at night the lights of Bangkok seem to stretch on forever.

Chris in Bangkok