Baby Boom may leave companies short-handed

Since 2007 is the "Year of the Golden Pig" and that a child born during this year (according to Chinese astrology) will be polite, honest, hardworking, loyal and lucky there is a big Baby Boom expected during 2007.
A big survey amongst Chinese companies showed that more Chinese people got married during 2006 then in any year during the last two decades. And the result of this we will see during 2007...


More than 66% off the companies in the survey are not prepared for this sudden loss off employees.
The survey also showed that more than half of the women in child-bearing age would prefer to have a baby in 2007.According to Chinese law, a new mother is entitled to at least 90 days maternity leave, plus hospital visits before the birth, breast-feeding leave and other days off. A new mother may be away from her job more than half a year, which will put the companies under great pressure.
To make matter worse, about 10 percent of new mothers say they have considered quitting their jobs after giving birth.

China Nationalities Museum

China Ethnic Culture Park is a China in miniature. There are 56 ethnic groups in China and in this large park You will find landscapes and buildings from all these areas. At several places there are also singing and dancing showing You the culture from different parts of China.
Walk up the rocks to the streets of Lhasa, enter Dai Street and look at buildings from Ming and Qing Dynasties or the grassland with homes of Kirgiz, Kazaks or Mongols.
We spent the Sunday afternoon here and can really recommend a visit.
You will find the park just south of the North 4th Ring, just next to the Olympic Park. Open 8.30-18.00. Tickets 90 RMB.

Beijing Roasted Duck

One of my oldest friend (actually since 40 years back..) Mats and his wife Gunilla have been for a three week tourist trip in China and made a stop over in Beijing for the weekend before going back to Sweden on Monday.

Being in Beijing for the first time there were four things they wanted to see: Great Wall, Forbidden City, Tianamen Square and Beijing Duck.
So last night we was invited to join them and part of the group for a duck dinner at Hademen Hotel.
The restaurant in this hotel (Bian Yio Fang) have been serving roasted Beijing ducks since 1855 and can serve 1000 people at the same time...
The tour guide Bernt and his Hong Kong wife ordered a very nice dinner nor just with duck but also some other disches that goes well with duck - like duck leaver and duck feets. This was the first time a tested the duck feets and it was not that bad.....

Gunilla, Mats, Shi Zhiting and Luo Manxia enjoying the dinner.

Discussion in half-Chinese and half-Swedish between Shi Zhiting, Luo Manxia and the tour guide Bernt.

We had a very nice dinner and talked a lot about "old times" but also about their trip in China. They were very satisfied with the trip and also with their tour-guides Bernt Eriksson and his wife Luo Manxia organizing "private trips" for people that like to see China and other parts of Asia.

Thank You all for a nice evening!

A smoking nation

Nobody being in China and in Beijing could fail to notice that Chinese people smoke a lot.
Sometimes having dinner in a Chinese restaurant can be impossible due to the number of smoking men (not many woman smoke) in the room.

Many restaurants have "non-smoking" room but nobody cares. "I am having my dinner and I do as I want...."

For us having problem with the smoke it have spoiled more than one dinner so now we look for restaurants not so crowded and with some open space.

Chinese people are around 20% of the worlds population - but they smoke 35% off all cigarettes in the world!

The number of cigarettes smoked in China annually is 2,000,000,000,000.

That is roughly 80 packs per every man, woman and child in China a year. Assuming women and children doesn't smoke ? Then the average Chinese man smokes continuously for about two thirds of the year.....

Every day 80,000 teenagers start smoking in China...

Springtime in Beijing

Last weekend the spring arrived to Beijing and we had +18-20 and the sun was shining from an almost blue sky. The magnolia have flowers and along many streets You could see the cherry blossom.
We are lucky to live close to Chaoyang Park (one of the biggest parks in Beijing with lakes and a amusements park) so we spent the afternoon together with Bao Bao walking around in the park. There was a lot of people enjoying the nice weather by laying i the grass, flying kites, having a picknick or just walking around. It was really a nice afternoon and You could feel that now the long, boring winter is gone.

Along the street where we live there are a lot of cherry trees and You could see people get of their bikes, stopping and taking a picture of the cherry bloom with their mobile phone...

My Beijing is smiling!

Chaoyang Park

Some facts about Beijing
1,000,000
The number of cars in Beijing without any parking space
- or why we don't have any sidewalks in the city...

Some mornings I hate

When I wake up it is dark, cold and rainy. Have tooth pain. My driver is not here to pick me up - have sent his uncle. Very close to crash before even coming out on 3rd ring. Traffic jam on expressway.
Hate mornings like this one!

Architectural wonders?

Anyone visiting Beijing can not avoid seeing all new buildings popping up in and around the center of Beijing. Some of them is controvers but China is thinking big - also in construction!
One of the most spectacular and discussed buildings You can see developing now is the new CCTV headquarter - an acrobatic wonder. The buildings two 40-story, 60 degree-leaning towers connected by a cantilevered bridge that has inspired as much as dismissive disbelief as speechless awe from designers worldwide. It is one of the most complex building ever built!

This buildings are made by ten thousand construction workers who really testify to the scale and complexity of this remarkable building, which may be the Chinese government's best answer to the pyramids of Egypt.

The building will be finished during 2009 to a estimated cost of: RMB 5.8 billion.

I will try from time to time follow the growth of this building and report at this blog.

CCTV building 2007-04-07