There are two main public holidays in China: the spring festival (around late January, early February – also known as Chinese New Year) and the autumn festival (around early October). Each of these festivals lasts for approximately one week and is usually a good chance to go travelling. However, it’s often best not to travel around China at these times since every man, woman, child, dog and hamster journey back to their families’ homes in rural China. Leaving the country is therefore the best bet, and Hannah and I decided that we’d like to go to Japan; it’s only a three hour flight away and offered us the chance of further immersing ourselves into Asian culture ...   more »

Back in London, Hannah and I were regular attendees of the live music circuit, surely one of the best music scenes in the world (if not the best). One of the things we’ve missed the most since we’ve been living in Beijing (it’s been officially over a year now!) is the ability to go and watch some excellent live music at a moment’s notice, or buy tickets to see a live music juggernaut play to a stadium sized crowd (Muse at Wembley in 2007 springs to mind). This has been made so much more unbearable when you hear the kind of music that Beijingers seem to like. If you watched the Beijing Olympics closing ceremony you will have seen and heard the dreadful pap that they love here; boy and girl bands singing the type of fearsome rubbish spouted out by reality TV shows like X Factor and Pop Idol. Now, I think that my views are generally quite liberal, but for people and “bands” like these, and the boil on the anus of music that is their sound, I make a strong exception (and even more so for the, frankly, waste of sperm that are people like Pete Waterman and Simon Cowell). Drab music and meaningless lyrics sung by plastic shells of human beings with homogenised singing voices. There is no punishment in my eyes too harsh for the abysmal horse manure that is produced by these festering piles of sloppy excrement. People may say that they are clean cut, don’t do drugs and are a good image for our children to follow. Well allow me to quote the late, and very great, Bill Hicks in response; “when did mediocrity and banality become a good image for your children?!” Anyway…   more »

On the day before the race, David and Becky (in China on the last leg of their year long world tour and our guests for their stay) and Hannah and I decided that we would get up early and make our way to a section of the marathon in order to cheer on the athletes as they tried to write themselves into the history books. We had done our research the night before and found several sources depicting the route the runners would be taking on the Chinese version of that taken by Pheidippides running from the Battle of Marathon to Athens. This proved far trickier than we thought it would; a quick search turned up several different Beijing marathon routes, each of which claimed to be the “Official Route of the Marathon of the Beijing Olympic Games”. Deciding that the safest bet would be the route published most recently, we set our alarms for what can only be described as offensively early and retired to bed for what felt like about two minutes ...    more »