Beijing, a year later

Editor’s Note: You all remember Shawna Xu, the Renmin University student who helped out the group from the University of Missouri last summer while we fumbled our way around Beijing. Her translation skills saved us countless times.
In an e-mail, she reminded me that it’s been a year since we experienced Beijing and the Olympics. And [...]

Six-thousand hits!

Six-thousand hits?
Who would’ve thought that when we started this blog just three weeks ago that we’d get over 6,000 hits?
By all accounts, it’s been a popular thing on both ends. We enjoyed sharing our experiences. We watched the counter number grow and hoped that folks enjoyed reading our posts and personal blogs.
I’ve been trying to [...]

Sarah Orscheln: Beijing photos

Alex Monnig: Cheering China

The Chinese are putting their home-court/field/country advantage to good use.
The constant raucous support of Chinese athletes during these Olympics is different from the support we often see at home in the United States. I’ve written before that the US has traveled well at these Games, providing audible support for athletes in several venues. But the [...]

“I am so proud of China”

I watched the opening ceremonies Friday night with Shawna Xu, a student from Remnin University who’s been helping us during our stay at her school.
Her job was to give us translation of the commentator’s comments but you could tell, early on, that something was up.
Her eyes were wet.
“What’s wrong?” I asked her.
She shook her head. [...]

Lindsay Toler: Got Milk? In a Box?

“So the other day, I decided to grab some puffed-rice bars from the grocery store across the street. As I walked up to the check-out lane, I saw a stack of little juice-box-lookin’ things full of milk. How weird, I thought. You would never see unrefigerated milk anywhere in the States, let alone in funny [...]

The Night Market

Bowen says it’s a show put on for foreigners.
He says that most Chinese don’t eat this stuff.
Bowen says it’s a light, easy television story where the pretty reporter takes a bite out of a scorpion, scrunches up her pretty nose while the folks back in the United States laugh on their sofas till they drop [...]

Chros McDougall: High Fives Make Friends

There he is, every time, with that excited grin and open palm raised high.
And I don’t even know his name.
Well, technically I tried to learn it once, but that didn’t really work. Now, the happy security guard who loves to give high fives is known as, well, the happy security guard who loves to give [...]

The “Water Cube” at Night

The National Aquatics Center, also known as the “water cube,” site of the Olympic swimming events. Photo by Alex Monnig

You want to see more Beijing photos taken by Missouri School of Journalism students. You will click here.

Point-and-Eat

I can’t read Chinese.
Often that makes things difficult. Other times it makes things easy. Like breakfast. My choice is determined by the photo displays at the canteens on campus here at Renmin University.
At one of my favorite ones, just down the stairs in front of the business school, I just point at the poster. An [...]