Beijing Hot Pot Photos Added

Ulrich sent me his photos from our hot pot dinner. What they call hot pot we would call Fondue. This was probably our best meal from the whole trip, and it was very fun. More food and beer than we could possibly consume, and it was about $4 each. Unreal.

You might be able to see in the photos that our hot pot had 2 sides. One side is dark red and was so spicy that even some of the people from India said "No Thanks". I thought it was great (you can probably see my eyes watering in some of the pictures). Basically you order different kinds of raw meat and just throw them into the boiling oil until they are cooked. We had beef, lamb, and the best... sheep meatballs. I added the photos to the Beijing Photo Set.

Beijing has been getting a lot of press lately because they are hosting the upcoming 2008 summer olympics. There was a WSJ article today talking about how they are trying to "clean things up". This includes moving the worst polluting factories hundreds of miles away, and relocating poor people so they can build stadiums and upscale apartment buildings. This year, Beijing is struggling to meet its target of 238 "blue sky days", which is fairly obvious given that I didn't see blue sky a single day that I was in the city. Or the sun. If they can't do it in summer, it's hard to imagine they will do it in Winter. The article also said that if the wind blows the wrong way during the olympics, they will shut down factories hundreds of miles away.

No mention of actually trying to fix the problem or reducing emissions. They just want to hide the problem while their city is on display.