American Buddhist Net

7 August 2008
BY ALISON KLAYMAN

Gold medalists won’t be the only ones climbing podiums in Beijing once the 2008 Olympic Games are under way. Isaac Shapiro will be stepping up to celebrate his bar mitzvah.

Isaac, of Highland Park, Ill., will be called to the Torah at the Chabad House in Beijing on Aug. 16. and his family are among the hundreds of Jewish tourists, athletes, dignitaries and media expected to converge on the Chinese capital for the 2008 Olympic Games, which begin Aug. 8.

While most visitors probably don’t even realize there is a local Jewish community in Beijing, the resident Jews of China’s capital are getting ready to welcome anyone who seeks them out.

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08/07/2008

A Buddhist tattoo artist from Boulder expelled from China with three others after unfurling pro-Tibet banners from atop light poles near China's showpiece Olympic stadium said authorities questioned them for 10 hours, threatened them with jail and refused calls to the U.S. Embassy.

Rotating teams of interrogators at a makeshift police station on a gated technical college campus quizzed them about Chinese who aided activists on their mission, Phillip Bartell said in an interview today after arriving in San Francisco.

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For me, these are the really great athletes. ABN
______________

Cuban hurdler and US runner among signatories about to take part in games

# Jonathan Watts in Beijing and Peter Walker
# guardian.co.uk,
# Thursday August 07 2008

More than 40 athletes taking part in the Beijing Olympics have today signed an open letter addressed to China's government urging it to respect human rights and freedom of religion, particularly in Tibet.

Coming on the eve of the opening ceremony, it marks fresh embarrassment for the host nation, which also faced criticism from George Bush and renewed protests in Tiananmen Square.

Signatories to the letter include the men's 110m hurdles world record holder, Dayron Robles of Cuba, well known to Chinese fans as the main rival to their most famous track athlete, Liu Xiang, the reigning Olympic champion. Others involved included the US 400m runner DeeDee Trotter and the Croatian women's world high jump champion, Blanka Vlasic.

The letter calls on China's president, Hu Jintao, "to protect freedom of expression, freedom of religion and freedom of opinion in your country, including Tibet".

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BERLIN (AFP) — Critics of China's human rights record made sure they were not forgotten on Thursday, a day before the grand opening of the Beijing Olympics, with protest actions the world over and in China itself.

A day after cheering crowds welcomed the Olympic torch to Beijing's Tiananmen Square -- scene of a 1989 massacre of pro-democracy protesters -- activists from Canada to Kathmandu sought to get their voices heard.

Already detained once for protesting on the square, three US Christians were forcefully dragged from the site as they prayed publicly, a statement on their behalf said.

"We were in Tiananmen Square publicly praying for the people of China when police forcefully dragged us across the street," Reverend Patrick J. Mahoney, one of the three, was quoted as saying while in custody.

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By Robin Laurence

Zhang Huan: Altered States

At the Vancouver Art Gallery until October 5

Through much of Zhang Huan’s impressive career, his body has been his most eloquent and abused medium.

During his early years as a performance artist in Beijing, he subjected himself to extremes of endurance and self-abasement. He bled from self-inflicted wounds while hanging from the ceiling bound in chains; sat all day in a public toilet, his bare body covered with flies (attracted by the fish oil and honey he’d smeared on himself); wrapped himself in the rib cages of newly slaughtered pigs; and lay naked on a concrete floor for an hour while being showered with white-hot sparks from a metal screw cutter.

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By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, August 7, 2008; 11:07 AM

BEIJING, Aug. 7 -- China's intense efforts to block any protest that would mar the Olympic Games were challenged Wednesday by foreign activists equally bent on diverting attention to issues as varied as Tibetan independence, the crisis in Darfur and religious freedom.

Two American and two British protesters slipped through a smothering Olympic security net, climbed a pair of lampposts and unfurled banners demanding freedom for Tibet near the new stadium where the Beijing Games are to open Friday night. In Tiananmen Square, three American Christian activists spoke out against China's rights record and protested its population control policies. The four pro-Tibet protesters have been deported, while a second demonstration by Christian activists on Thursday was disrupted when plainclothes police removed the protesters from Tiananmen Square.

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Thursday, 07 August 2008

Smiling and friendly, Beijing's shop assistants, taxi drivers, doormen, restaurant staff and even the police are falling over themselves to be polite and make a good impression on foreign visitors -- on official orders.

The government issued booklets in the lead-up to the Games, which open on Friday, drilling people on how to improve customer service, smarten their appearance, and learn some English to ensure foreign visitors leave Beijing with a good impression.

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08/07/2008
Ari LeVaux

Chinese authorities may have shut down the dog restaurants in Beijing before the start of the Olympics, but I still scored a great piece of ass in Dunhuang, a city in western China. Stir-fried with carrots and peppers, the donkey flesh tasted like beef, only leaner.

I’m writing from Central Asia, smack in the middle of the world’s largest continent, and as far from the ocean as you can get. I’ve joined a group of Beijing-based astronomers that’s come west to watch the August 1 solar eclipse, the path of which passes near the village of Yiwu in Xinjiang, China’s most remote province.

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08/07/2008

A Buddhist tattoo artist from Boulder climbed a light pole outside China's main Olympic stadium and unfurled a "Tibet Will Be Free" banner Wednesday before Chinese police whisked him and three others away.

Phillip Bartell's whereabouts could not be confirmed Wednesday evening, but Chinese state-run media reported that he and the others were not arrested.

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Thursday, August 7, 2008
By BINAJ GURUBACHARYA

KATMANDU, Nepal - About 2,000 Tibetan exiles demonstrated in Nepal's capital on Thursday, a day before the Olympics open in Beijing, demanding religious rights and an investigation into China's crackdown in their homeland.

Tibetan activists said their protest was aimed at drawing international attention to the issues and urging other nations to put pressure on China.

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August 6, 2008

Nanjing (China) : Chinese archaeologists Wednesday opened a 1,000-year-old steel case that was believed to contain Buddhist relics.

A pagoda top wrapped in silk emerged after archaeologists removed two steel panels of the cube-shaped case, which is 0.5 metre long, 0.5 metre wide and 1.34 metres high.

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Protesters unfurl flags and banners near Bird's Nest stadium

# Tania Branigan and Paul Kelso in Beijing
# guardian.co.uk,
# Wednesday August 06 2008

Four protesters including two Britons have been detained in the Chinese
capital after hanging Free Tibet banners close to the main Bird's Nest stadium.

The demonstration underlined the clash between competing views of the Olympics in Beijing, as thousands of euphoric spectators cheered the arrival of the torch in Tiananmen Square while foreign activists launched a series of small protests around the city.

Given the massive security operation in the capital and the carefully organised audience, no one expected demonstrations in or around the square during the relay.

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Jenny Booth

Four US Olympic cyclists who caused an outcry when they arrived at Beijing airport wearing smog masks have today apologised to Games organisers.

The four - Mike Friedman, Bobby Lee, Sarah Hammer and Jennie Reed - said that they were wearing the masks because of pollution fears, a touchy subject for the Chinese authorities.

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If you're in Beijing for the Olympics kick starting this weekend, don't be spilling any beans (state secrets or otherwise) in your cab back to the hotel, because you're being listened to. As the WSJ is reporting, on your taxi's dash is a microphone that can be activated remotely, at any time and without the driver's knowledge, for a live listen into any one of Beijing's estimated 70,000 cabs. And then, if the folks on the other end don't like what they hear, they can take things even further.

The GPS-equipped devices also allow for remote disabling by "cutting off the oil or electric supply," effectively shutting down the engine and keeping it from being restarted.

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Actress from Newton hopes games alleviate cultural tensions

By Patricia Wen
Globe Staff / August 6, 2008

BEIJING - It was 19-year-old Kerry Brogan's movie debut, and she stood out just a bit on the set in southern rural China - with her light brown hair, blue eyes, and eagerness to prove that a Caucasian woman could make it in the government-controlled Chinese film industry.

The Newton South High School graduate had just landed a role in the 1999 film, as the headstrong and spoiled American teenager who falls in love with an earnest young man from one of China's ethnic minorities. She had impressed the director with her fluent Mandarin. Everything was going smoothly until news broke that the Chinese Embassy in Serbia had been bombed, in what China branded a deliberate act.

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Wednesday, Aug. 06, 2008 By SEAN GREGORY/BEIJING

...As the clock ticks down to the August 8 opening ceremonies in Beijing, China doesn't seem to be getting the best eleventh-hour PR advice. Now's the time when swimmers and runners could distract the world from the nation's much-criticized human rights record, and when athletic competition could supersede geopolitical tension for a few short weeks. Instead, in the weeks leading up to the Games Chinese organizers decided to censor websites about Tibet, Falun Gong, and other politically sensitive groups to the foreign media, causing the predictable outcry from international press and human right groups. (Officials have since backed down and opened up the sites). Now comes word that China has banned Cheek to enter the country on the eve of the Games, revoking the visa of an American athletic hero who donated his $40,000 in medal winnings from the 2006 Olympics to Darfurian refugees in Chad.

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CHRIS BUCKLEY AND BEN BLANCHARD

BEIJING — Four foreign protesters were held after unfurling Tibet independence banners in Beijing on Wednesday, and three Americans tested Olympic security measures by using central Tiananmen Square to decry abortions.

Two American and two British citizens displayed Tibetan flags and banners declaring “One World, One Dream: Free Tibet” and “Tibet will be free,” the group Students for a Free Tibet said in an e-mail. One of the banners also said “Free Tibet” in Chinese.

The four breached the general Chinese ban on protests, especially over restive Tibet, by scaling power poles near the heavily guarded Bird's Nest Stadium, where the Olympics open on Friday, Xinhua news agency reported. The protest also came as the Games torch began passing through Beijing under tight security.

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A reporter and photographer from two Japanese news organisations were detained and beaten by Chinese police as they were covering yesterday's terrorist attack on a police station in Xinjiang province, the organisations said.

Uighur separatists killed 16 police when they attacked a police station using a truck, home-made explosives and knives.

The two organisations said Masami Kawakita, a 38-year-old photographer from the Chunichi Shimbun newspaper's Tokyo headquarters, and Shinji Katsuta, a 37-year old reporter from Nippon Television Network's China General Bureau, both suffered light injuries.

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BEIJING: For their high-security Beijing Olympics, Chinese police have their bomb detectors and metal detectors. They could do with an absurdity detector, too.

Take the example of blacklisted author Yu Jie. Because the games are in town, police are keeping him under close watch at his Beijing home, 24/7, with plainclothes officers stationed outside in three rotating shifts. Yu says that only by police car, under escort, is he allowed to leave the gated middle-class community where he and his wife are raising their 4-month-old boy, Justin, who was born in the United States.

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BEIJING (AFP) — A 6.0-magnitude earthquake hit southwest China's Sichuan province on Tuesday, close to the area that was devastated by a quake earlier this year, the US Geological Survey said.

The quake's epicentre was located 48 kilometres (30 miles) northwest of Guangyuan city at a depth of 10 kilometres at 5:49 pm (0949 GMT), according to a statement on the USGS website.

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By Doug Hamilton 34 minutes ago

BEIJING (Reuters) - Some members of the U.S. cycling squad arrived for the Olympic Games on Tuesday wearing black respiratory masks, apparently concerned over reports of unhealthy levels of air pollution in Beijing.

About half a dozen members of the team, male and female, were pictured wearing close-fitting face masks covering nose and mouth as they went through Beijing airport. One was identified as Mike Friedman, a track cyclist who competes indoors.

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The Tibetan Youth Congress, known for spearheading high-profile rallies such as last year’s storming of the Chinese Embassy in New Delhi, has unleashed its latest salvo at Beijing: a slow and very public death.

“All our campaigns have been non-violent so far,” said Tsewang Rigzin, the president of the Tibetan Youth Congress. “That’s what we’re doing now.”

But this is the first time Tibetan demonstrators are declining water as well as food. Without medical intervention, they are unlikely to live beyond this week.

The Tibetan Youth Congress vows that for every striker that dies, another will take his place. The six demonstrators, said Konchok Yagphel, who speaks for the group, represent the six million Tibetans in the world still struggling for an independent homeland.

And they do not intend to let any police officer come between them and that goal.

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By ANDREW JACOBS
Published: August 5, 2008

BEIJING — Two men armed with knives and grenades ambushed a military police unit in Kashgar in China’s majority Muslim far northwest on Monday, killing 16 border patrol officers and wounding 16 others before being subdued and arrested, according to Chinese state media.

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Jane Macartney in Beijing

If the men of Beijing think they can still emerge from their homes of a morning – unshaven, a bit smelly, still in their pyjamas and slippers – and saunter down to the supermarket or the public lavatories, they can think again: the etiquette police are in town and it is time to spruce up for the Olympics.

Even clothes that Chinese citizens of both sexes would consider smart may not be good enough: white socks worn with black shoes are out, leather skirts are frowned upon, bright nail varnish is a no and woe betide anyone whose colours clash.

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A GUIDE TO CHINA'S LABOR CAMPS PDF FILE

The adjunct curator is living amid Chinese artists, watching history in the making in a rapidly changing culture.

By Suzanne Muchnic, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
August 3, 2008

LET OTHERS talk about the lure of art from China. James Elaine did something about it. He moved there.

"China is here to stay," says Elaine, an artist and curator who has organized edgy exhibitions and introduced emerging figures at the UCLA Hammer Museum for the last decade. "The culture, the art world, it's not a fad of the West that's going to fade away. China is a power."

With the help of a grant from the Asian Cultural Council -- and the windfall of the 2008 Ordway Prize, a $100,000 award for mid-career artists, curators and art writers -- he has traded his Hammer "curator" title for "adjunct curator" and taken himself to China, where he plans to stay at least two years.

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