“Cold enough for you?” I know: a trite thing to say, and the worst part is that I used precisely those same first eleven words to begin another blog-post of just four days ago.

Still, I just couldn’t help myself, not when the answer is quite clearly “No!” for Chen Kechai, a Chinese man written about in a brief profile in the Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad (“Snow-grave for a cool Chinese”). Go ahead and click through: there are three photos as well, featuring Mr. Chen rather extremely under-dressed both for the cold Chinese countryside around him (said to be -10ºC = 14ºF) and the activities in which he is engaging – burying himself in the snow, pouring cold water on his head, that kind of thing. It says here that he has been indulging in these antics since 1989.

OK, let’s talk about the Olympics, then. But not the 2008 Beijing Olympics – rather, the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics! Yes, we pride ourselves here at EuroSavant on our solipsism, but the immediate motive for this nostalgic look 80 years backward is the excellent recent article in the Dutch newspaper Trouw by Haro Hielkema, Amsterdam: Example for the Rest, which is itself largely derived from the book Model voor de toekomst – Amsterdam, Olympische Spelen 1928 by Ruud Paauw and Jaap Visser (which was itself only published a few weeks ago, that is, just before the opening of the Beijing Games – which I bet will not surprise you at all). (more…)

As everyone is well aware, the Beijing Olympic Games are coming up this weekend, and so while everyone has to wait a few more days for the athletic spectaculars to begin, the focus of media attention is falling mainly on the host city that is setting the stage. Will the air be clean enough? (The jury is still out; we might not know until the actual dates when the particularly atmosphere-sensitive events – e.g. running, bicycling – are scheduled.) Will the authorities allow free access to information, mainly via the Internet, to enable visiting journalists to do their work? (That one is still touch-and-go as well.)

On-the-scene reports are now popping up in the media to give the outside world a sense of how the Chinese capital city has been improved and “cleaned up” in preparation for the Games, with the accent on the often extreme measures that the authorities have taken to do that. Jen Lin-Liu has a piece in today’s NYT (Beijing Under Wraps) touching on many of these below-the-surface measures, invisible to foreigners just now flying in to take part in some way in the Games’ staging. (Few foreigners, it turns out, will be flying in just to serve as spectators, if Lin-Liu’s description of the newly-stringent visa regulations is any indication.) (more…)

At this point there are a little more than two weeks left to go before the start of the 2008 Peking Olympics. To prep those Germans planning to attend (although it now seems far fewer foreigners are planning to show up than had initially been estimated), the German newsmagazine Focus has put on-line an amusing set of mini-articles about the prejudices held in the West about the Chinese (Chinese Cannot Pronounce R), e.g. that they eat dogmeat, they all look the same, etc. (more…)

Some things in life are entirely predictable. The sun comes up in the morning to the East; bears carry out their excretive functions in the woods; the Pope admits to being a practicing Catholic; and, one after the other, riders in the Tour de France are caught and banned from the race for doping offenses. The latest two-wheeled transgressor, Riccardo Ricco – not to be confused with Cuban band leader and husband-of-redhead Ricky Ricardo – had actually already won two of the Tour’s stages; his ejection from the competition led his entire team, Saunier Duval-Scott, to voluntary withdraw from the Tour as well. (Oh, and I’m reminded of yet another entirely predictable thing by the line in that New York Times article linked to above that reads “On Sunday, after Ricco’s second stage victory, he angrily denied allegations that he had suspect blood levels or that there was any reason for him to be targeted by French antidoping officials.”) (more…)