I have joined Chinalyst.net (it’s now a NSFW site…), which is essentially a China blog feed aggregator. Hopefully this will drive some traffic to my site. ;-)

Um, I just found this article saying cars aren’t the problem, coal is. There. I’m smart. So my #4 suggestion in my previous article actually makes sense. But I still stand by all my other suggestions, except maybe #5.

Today is the first day (out fo 4) that almost half the private cars on the road (sources say around 1.3 million). Here’s an official news story on the event from the China Daily (the English newspaper here). We heard abour the prospective ban a month ago and I wrote about it here, although I thought it was going to be for a full 2 weeks. So how 4 days is going to make a real impact is anyone’s guess.

Went with some friends to Qingdao this past weekend for the opening of the Annual Qingdao Beer Festival. I have pictures on my flickr site, here’s the link . Saturday, the day we went to the festival, rained heavily all day. It sucked. Beer was expensive. Food sucked. Entertainment sucked. The festival was a “miss”. The 3RMB bags of Tsingtao, however, now that is what makes Qingdao worth it! Oh yeah, the beaches, too.

Driving is chabuduo easy here in Beijing, with the exception of occasional super heavy traffic that really tire you out. Traffic rules are (generally) commonsense - I say that lightly of course. I’ve had good luck with traffic police even - never been stopped - I’ve been on the road for 4+ years now. Note: unlike some people, I don’t go out of my way to do something illegal - especially when there are traffic police near by!

It could be that I am a bit “trigger happy” from this past weekend’s target practice. My previous post regarding maps.google.com may have been “jumping the gun” a bit (I’m trying to get as many cliche’s as possible here) as it appears the satellite data is working, albeit incredibly slow - but that could just be my local connection here. I’ll certainly be watching this…