First let me admit that I like the taste of this restaurant’s cheeseburgers, one of the foods I often find myself craving after days or weeks of only local fare. “Let’s Burger” opened just a few months ago in Sanlitun and I think I walked in by happenstance on one of their very first days in business. It’s run by a fellow from Hong Kong I chatted with that day, telling him his place filled a need in Beijing for a decent, non-fast-food hamburger.

There is such a need, but I decided Let’s Burger doesn’t fill it, and I don’t plan to go back again.

One of the first things that bugged me about the place is that there’s no free water, a courtesy nearly every restaurant here offers, from the cheapest to the most expensive. And you have a choice only of Perrier or Evian at prices horrific to contemplate. And this is the real rub: a can of soda is 18 kuai, which is highway robbery. This is a hamburger house, not a 5-star hotel. A glass of bad-tasting “house wine” is 38 kuai. A mango smoothie is nearly 40 kuai. (In America, that would be expensive.)

And then there’s the price of the burger itself. At first, 58 kuai for a cheeseburger seems kind of sane, since you always pay more for Western food here. However, it is not a meal in itself. It’s too small. Fries slap on an extra 25 kuai, so a burger, soda and fries will come to an unacceptable 101 kuai, or almost $15 USD. I might be willing to pay that around the corner at Blue Frog or Union Grill because you get your own private table and real service and they take your order from a menu – i.e., they’re real restaurants. Let’s Burger, OTOH, is cafeteria style. You stand in line, order off a big green board behind the cashier, they hand you a number and someone comes and drops the food at your table. You pick up the drink yourself. There’s no ketchup or anything else on the table; you have to get up and get it yourself.

This is not a good time for businesses to not give customers their money’s worth. I decided after leaving Let’s Burger hungry this afternoon that I’d never go again. They’ve got a great location, a decent enough product and a great opportunity to fill a need. A shame to see them blow it by being greedy and short-sighted. 101 RMB with no table service….

Pardon the rant. I was just soooo pissed this afternoon.

More than two and a half years ago I wrote about the inevitable collapse of China’s luxury malls. A brief reminder:

Anyone who’s walked around Shanghai’s more prosperous areas (and Beijing’s as well) is well familiar with the glut of luxury stores, with Bulgari and Gucci boutiques everywhere you look. This always fascinated me – the sheer number of such places in areas where I knew there couldn’t possibly be enough customers to ensure sustainable long-term profitability. I would sometimes stand outside the shops and watch for as long as half an hour (I didn’t have much better to do on the weekends). I remember seeing the shopkeepers going to fantastic lengths to look busy. One of them kept dusting the shelves obsessively. Another kept a book (or maybe a magazine) discreetly under the counter, at an angle where she could read while keeping an eye on the front door. One kept rearranging her hair. Another must have had the best-filed fingernails in all of Asia. This wasn’t a scientific study, of course, but based on what I saw with my own eyes I was convinced the high-end luxury goods stores had been overbuilt, and that eventually they’d either have to pack up and leave or keep eating what had to be painful losses.

Today I visited Beijing’s most stunningly dysfunctional, catastrophic mall, called The Place, and all I could think about was what I wrote back in 2006. Made to look kind of like Versailles on the outside, The Place is an irrational maze of stores and eateries that seems to have been designed to turn off and turn away customers. It has stairways that lead nowhere, unmarked elevators that take you to surprising places, not to mention a generally chintzy feeling created by all the faux marble and Grecian columns; it always looked pompous, but now it’s looking seedy and run-down as well.

The Place is around the corner from my office, and this was my first trip back in about two months, I was shocked at what I saw. Fifty percent of the eateries in the basement were boarded up. The cheap food court, too, was gone, covered up with ugly blue boarding, making the basement especially grim and dreary. The two good restaurants there, Ganges and Master Kong Chef’s, were still thriving. The few others that remained seemed to be just hanging on.

That same night I went by The Village, which seemed so cool when it first arrived and now seems so unnecessary aside from the Apple store and a couple of restaurants. Same thing as The Place: lonely clerks looking plaintively out the store windows, eyes begging you to come in and buy something. But no one does. There is simply too much stuff, too many stores, and no buyers. Do you have to be a rocket scientist to conclude this is unsustainable? And to top it off, they are now finishing the second Village mall down the street, across from the Poppa Bear of all disaster malls, 3.3. All I can say is, WTF??

I’m predicting The Place and many of its sister ghost malls, shunned by customers overwhelmed by so many malls to choose from, each selling the same crap that no one can afford nowadays, are going to experience a catastrophe, if they haven’t already, and will ultimately become burnt-out, boarded-up shells. In turn, this is going to throw a lot of fuel on China’s current financial crisis. Real estate will be further cheapened, and the general misery unique to times of deflation will set in. Brother, can you spare a dime?

All I want to know is how we got here. I told them this was coming 2.5 years ago and no one listened. The day of reckoning, the moment of truth is here. Even if things pick up, these malls are hopeless. Like the Mandarin Oriental, they will need to be razed and replaced with something useful, like affordable middle class housing (wishful thinking on my part). If not, Beijing could become a city pockmarked with looming dinosaurs, huge husks of once breathtaking buildings, now vacant and decaying, like so many of the Olympic structures.

I kind of understand why this overbuilding happened, as the economy became a vicious inflationary circle. Now we are experiencing the down wave, and it’s just starting. As we crash, The Place and many other useless mega-malls like it will serve only as reminders of the excesses of good times that we fooled ourselves into believing would last forever. Their time has now come. In fact, their demise is long overdue.

I can hear the hum of China’s media puppeteers gearing up for a controlled tidal wave of publicity designed to erase any doubts about the wisdom of China’s liberation of Tibet and to arm the public with easily digestible and regurgitatable memes they can use to ward off the claims of ignorant imperialists who look at Tibet and ask, “China liberated them from whom? Liberated them from what?”

As with my earlier post today, let me make clear that I am not stoking up the old argument about which point of view of Tibet is right or wrong. Most of us understand this topic pretty well by now, and know that there is no fast and easy feel-good answer. All I am saying is the Party is mounting a pro-active campaign to nip any such discussion in the bud by ensuring there is a monolithic and inarguable POV instilled in the minds of all its citizens, And let me add this: I see this campaign as unnecessary, and can only guess they are implementing it as a form of insurance, “just in case.” They have already been brilliantly successful in nurturing the Tibet meme, and anyone with close friends (and spouses) who are Chinese knows exactly what I mean.

So, the media campaign…. Instead of bloviating, let me simply share some headlines, links and excerpts from articles that started to appear within the past 48 hours, all uncannily similar in tone and message.

White paper published to mark 50th anniversary of Tibet reform

When you want to drive a point home in China, there is no better way to do it than a document you call a “white paper.” Now, I’m not sure how many people here actually know what a white paper is, but the educated classes do know that documents so named have a patina of certainty and authority, as if they were scientific and tested. Then, the media quotes from the “white paper’ as though it were an unquestionable source of factual knowledge. Case in point:

China’s government Monday published a white paper on the situation in Tibet before and since 1959 to mark the 50th anniversary of the region’s Democratic Reform. The paper, released by the State Council Information Office, reviewed the profound changes that have taken place in the past 50 years.

It also shed light on the laws governing the social development of Tibet, and attempts to rebut lies and rumors it alleges were spread by the 14th Dalai Lama and his hard-core supporters.

“It is conducive to telling right from wrong in history and helps the world better understand the real Tibet,” the paper said. Tibet had been a society of feudal serfdom under theocratic rule before 1959, with the 14th Dalai Lama as the chief representative of the upper ruling strata of serf owners, the paper said.

The long centuries of theocratic rule and feudal serfdom stifled the vitality of Tibetan society, and led to its decline and decay, the paper said.

The phrase “the paper said” is repeated several more times. It’s not the government saying this, nor is it any person. it’s The Paper. And the paper knows all.

Of course, these white papers tend to pop up when the government feels it needs to buttress public opinion in the wake of a potential threat. Hmmm, what could that threat be? 1959. 2009. 50-year anniversary. I think we may be onto something.

FOCUS ON TIBET: Origin of the title of “Dalai Lama” and its related backgrounder

A handy “backgrounder,” appearing in perfect synch with the white paper, this document, tortured syntax aside, offers an unbiased history of the Dalai Lama and his tireless campaign to enslave and brutalize the Tibetans, when he’s not busy tearing the wings off of flies and torturing small mammals.

[A]lmost all the Dalai Lamas of later generations, except for the 14th Dalai Lama, were patriotic, loyal to the central government, and devoted to safeguarding the national unity. What people could not understand is that now that every Dalai Lama was the reincarnation of the late Living Buddha, why the patriotic quality wasn’t passed to the 14th?

…[W]hat the 14th Dalai Lama loves is his personal reputation, personal status and old Tibetan local regime practicing a feudal serfdom under the theocracy. Since he fled to India in 1959, the 14th Dalai Lama has been depending on the western countries for survival and those politicians with ulterior motives who can support his living, to win his so-called honor, status and obtain more funds from them. How despicable it is that Dalai, a previously esteemed religious leader in Tibet, has been reduced into a card of others chosen to play in the game.

If that doesn’t read like an impartial, balanced “backgrounder,” what does? (And allow me to state for the record that I reject similar documents but out by extremists on the other end that portray the DL as the embodiment of love and peace and joy and light.)

Finally, as if this weren’t enough, yet another authoritative piece appeared today in People’s Daily – three reports on Tibet in 24 hours:

Erroneous understanding of Tibet goes against development trend

You gotta love the opening sentence:

The year 2009 marks the 50th anniversary of the end of rebellion and democratic reform in Tibet.

I’m going to assume that was a typo, and that what they meant to say was 2009 marks the end of rebellion and the start of democratic reform. Freudian slip? Moving on:

Since becoming free from a feudal serf system Tibetan people have become masters of a new socialist Tibet and now fully enjoy all kinds of rights that the country’s Constitution and Law endow them, creating a brilliant page in human history.

However, some westerners use the Tibet issue as a tool to damage China’s interests, and western media is overwhelmingly biased in their coverage of anything related to Tibet…

Like what they did in Africa and south Asia, some westerners believed they had the authority to interpret Tibet’s history and the right to explore the region. Their mentality to be colonial ruler of Tibet shows they intended to separate the region from China. Some western countries do not understand China’s stance on Tibet. However, in consideration to strategic interests, they used it as a tool to damage China’s sovereignty and put pressure on China.

There’s certainly some elements of truth to this argument, but I’m afraid the lady doth protest too much. This is ham-fisted overkill, flooding the media waves with time-worn slogans of the West’s conspiracy to destroy China, as though the West could ever do a better job in pursuing that goal than Mao Zedong did. Small wonder they are so eager to focus public attention on the West’s looting and plundering of sacred Chinese relics. That sets the stage for labeling any Western protests regarding Tibet as a continuation of the same imperialism.

Anyway, expect a lot more of this as the CCP annual congress approaches (groan – is it that time of year again?) along with the anniversaries they fear so much. It’s pointless, it serves no purpose, it fools no one, and yet they have to do it. Don’t ask me why. They just do. I stopped asking why a long time ago.

This story is rich. If the premise is true, that the Chinese government successfully spoiled a Christie’s auction, then you have to give them a goldred star for sheer chutzpah.

I began taking notice last week when China expressed hurt feelings and charges of looting and imperialism over Christie’s planned auction of two bronzes. China certainly had a point – the bronzes were looted by Western forces during the Opium Wars – but the auction was legal; the CCP had no actual claim to the treasures. It was the response by the owner of the bronzes, however, that pushed the story into the international headlines:

Mr. Bergé even seemed to goad Chinese officials before the auction, declaring he would give the heads to China if it would “observe human rights and give liberty to the Tibetan people and welcome the Dalai Lama.”

This was a pretty stupid thing to sayAnd then I, and the rest of the world, expected to bronzes to be auctioned off and the story to wither away. Wrong. Enter the spoiler, a well-known and hitherto respected art collector.

The man, Cai Mingchao, a collector and auctioneer, said at a news conference in Beijing that he had submitted the two winning $18 million bids for the bronze heads of a rat and a rabbit on Wednesday, but that he had no intention of paying for them. He described himself as a consultant for a nongovernmental group that seeks to bring looted artifacts back to China, and said he had acted out of patriotic duty….

[T]he latest twist suggests that Christie’s and Mr. Bergé may have underestimated China’s determination to foil the sale…. If Mr. Cai is indeed the winning bidder, his strategy raises the possibility that other well-heeled citizens sympathetic to China or other countries’ cultural restitution battles could disrupt sales of other disputed objects.

….At his news conference in Beijing, Mr. Cai said he submitted Wednesday’s bids for the bronze heads on moral and patriotic grounds. “I think any Chinese person would have stood up at that moment,” he said, adding, “I want to emphasize that the money won’t be paid.”

You have to hand it to China. They’ve managed to inject an old story with a new life, and this is almost certain to generate a new patriotic rallying call, which will be useful in a year replete with potentially embarrassing anniversaries. Just like the wheelchair-bound torchbearer who suddenly galvanized the patriotism of Chinese people all around the world, we now have a new superstar. And there’s very little that can be done to diminish Cai’s rising star.

Art experts have warned that Cai could be subject to civil and even criminal charges for submitting a fraudulent bid in the auction, which was conducted anonymously by telephone. However, Christie’s might be loathe to prosecute Cai, who has become overnight a Chinese national hero.

Photographs of the 40-year-old art dealer graced the front pages of many Chinese newspapers, and an online poll in China found that most approved of his actions.

“He is so much more civilized than those who did the looting,” wrote one of the commentators. At a session Monday of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, an advisory body to the Chinese government, spokesman Zhao Qizheng said the controversy over the bronze was a “history lesson for all.”

Zhao spoke approvingly of French culture and quoted the writer Victor Hugo, who wrote a frequently quoted letter about the looting of the Old Summer Palace.

“I hope there will come a day when France, liberated and cleaned up, will send back this booty to a plundered China,” Zhao said, quoting from Hugo.

Forget about Tibet, the Dalai Lama, the plundering of Chinese treasures – those things matter, but they’re basically irrelevant to the key point I’m trying to make: that China has just pulled off another incredible PR coup that, no matter how distasteful it may strike auctioneers and art collectors, and no matter how irritated it makes Free Tibet and other pro-DL groups, has brought its people together and rekindled their patriotism at a time of huge social and economic uncertainty. From a PR perspective, well done (which is in no way an endorsement of the government’s policies, just as recognizing the effectiveness of Leni Riefenstahl’s films in no way pays tribute to her patrons’ evil agenda). Now let’s see if they can sustain the patriotic momentum.

We ran into some light rain in Chengdu after nearly 10 days of perfect weather; Xi’an however, is cold and wet, sleet turning the sidewalks into slippery black puddles. I didn’t come to Xi’an to sightsee (I was here before in 2003 to do that). It’s been about research for a new project I’m working on, and in terms of actually reaching some of my work goals, it was the highlight of the trip. (In terms of fun, it loses by a long shot to Yunnan.) I actually think I’m getting somewhere. Along with the work, Xi’an has also been about the best dumplings and yangrouchuanr I’ve had in my life, anywhere.

Short thoughts about Chengdu and Chongqing: Chengdu is as relaxed and as civilized as they say. Chongqing is a teeming, frenetic, hysterical mass of development and anarchy and impossibly random construction. Needless to say, I loved Chongqing, and liked Chengdu. The latter was a little too civilized for me, with things closing relatively early and the city generally lacking the breathlessness of Chongqing, or even Kunming.

Back in the real world…. Suddenly work opportunities have jumped from few to several, not all of them set in stone, but at least things are looking positive for the future. At the same time, I hear from my twitter friends recently that out-of-work Westerners are arriving in droves to Beijing to take advantage of the relative work glut, real or imagined. A lot of the young Westerners arriving FOB don’t know anything about China’s visa policies, or anything else about China, but this is the Last Great Hope, according to my friends. It’ll be interesting to see how they fare, and what their presence means for freelancers here like me (like lower fees and greater competition for work as China becomes the biggest buyers’ market on the planet).

There’s no question now that MNCs are continuing to place even more hope and investment in China, accelerating their efforts to the clicheed fever pitch as they strive, maybe a bit desperately, to tap into “the final frontier.” The thinking seems to be this is the last possible bright spot on a planet consumed in a morass of economic chaos, confusion and despair. (Their thinking, not necessarily mine.) Time will as usual tell if they’re right, but as far as bets go, this one doesn’t seem too insane to me.

I wanted to meet friends for business in Guangzhou and Shanghai next, but time is running out and I really want to see Pingyao. On the other hand, it will be freezing in Pingyao, and Guangzhou will be a relative paradise of tropical breezes. And I really should see those business associates in Shanghai. So once again I’m using my blog as a sounding board to help me figure out what to do next.

Update: I’m probably going to go back to Beijing early. Enough travel; ever since Lisa went west and I went east two days ago I’ve sort of lost interest and feel it’s time to get back to Beijing. Work to do, promises to keep, etc.

Today, Lisa and I went to the Stone Forest, but we didn’t sight-see or go on a tour or spend a lot of time there (less than an hour, actually). Lisa had something to attend to, and I stood in silence as she completed her mission. It probably only took a minute, even less, but it seemed like a long time. (If any of that sounds mysterious, you must read Lisa’s post; only she can tell this story.)

On to a more mundane aspect of the day – mundane, and yet perhaps as unforgettable for both Lisa and me as was opening the hongbao and emptying its contents in Shilin.

When we set out from Kunming to the Stone Forest, we were too late to catch the bus as planned. A hawker by the bus station told us they could take us there and back for 400 kuai. We walked up to a taxi driver first and asked how much she would charge, and she said 500 kuai. When we told her the gypsy cab would take us for 400 she warned us it would be unsafe. The hawker stepped over, told us they would reduce the price to 350, and we went with them. A serious mistake.

The black VW looked fine, and there was no trouble getting to our destination, about an hour away. It was only when we tried to return that the trouble started, and not until we had reached the outskirts of the city. It was about 5.30 and I was falling asleep in the back seat when I heard Lisa say in Chinese to the driver that something was wrong. I thought she meant she saw an accident; I had no idea she was saying something was wrong with our car. We were still on the highway, and cars were whizzing by us. I realized we had stalled, and the driver was frantically trying to restart the engine. to no avail. It was a four-lane highway and we were in the third lane, smack in the middle, and cars and trucks and buses were coming at us from all sides. I looked out the back window and saw a tractor trailer careening toward us and Lisa and I quickly concluded that we had to get out of there.

As the truck and cars approached and suddenly realized we were stopped, they slammed on their brakes, swerved into the surrounding lanes and pounded on thir horns. It was a scene of perfect anarchy and chaos. The driver got out and lifted the hood of the car, which at least signaled to the approaching cars that we were stopped. When we had a chance, we bolted from the car, ran across the fourth lane and stood pressed against the median divider. Trucks kept coming at us, slamming on their horns, no doubt mystified to see two laowai standing in the middle of a busy highway in the middle of nowhere looking totally dazed and confused. A police car, seemingly oblivious, sped right past us.

The next scene was even more surreal. An older fellow on a motorcycle saw the commotion, stood on the shoulder and motioned to Lisa and me to cross the highway to get to safety in the shoulder. We quickly discussed the viability of this suggestion, and decided it would almost certainly lead to our deaths. “I did not expect the day to end like this,” Lisa said. Cars and trucks were still racing past us, some only inches away and in every lane. The motorcycle driver saw we couldn’t possibly cross by ourselves and took matters into his own hands. He zig-zagged diagonally across the four lanes ad reached us. Then he told us to follow him. He held out his hand like a traffic officer, and guided us across the road, using his motorcycle as a buffer between us and the approaching traffic. Horns blared, driver shouted from their windows, but they all stopped and let us cross. We made it to the shoulder alive. By this point we were laughing. We weren’t laughing as we stood pressed against the divider.

Meanwhile, the taxi driver and some other good samaritans managed to push the taxi to the shoulder. He wanted his 350 kuai and Lisa screamed in Chinese he hadn’t kept his side of the bargain – no way were we going to pay full fare. I gave him 300 kuai, in retrospect too much (were were still at least half an hour from the hotel). When Lisa shouted in Chinese, the motorcycle driver laughed out loud and told us for a mere 10 kuai he’d drive us off the highway to a place where we could catch a taxi. It sounded like an excellent bargain, even though driving for ten minutes on the highway with two others on one motorcycles is not something I want to do again anytime soon.

Bottom line: after a day that was dramatic enough already, this seemed like an eerily appropriate ending, “the perfect bookend,” as Lisa remarked once we were out of harm’s way. We both kept thinking of the first taxi driver’s warning that these gypsy cabs aren’t safe….

Meanwhile, we’ve changed plans a bit, staying a day longer in Kunming, and deciding to go to Dali tomorrow, and then to Chengdu. Chongqing is something we are still debating. Some friends tell us it’s not really worth the time unless you have a few days to explore the surrounding countryside. We don’t have that much time, but would still like to go there for at least a day or two. Is it worth it?

Final words: Everyone seems to agree that Kunming is one of the most enjoyable and relaxed cities in all of China, and I want to say they’re right. Aside from the highway insanity, every minute here has been magical. The food is beyond belief and as cheap as food can be without being free. The people seem unhurried, laid back and eager to help lost foreigners. I could retire here. Today. Lisa says the only place in China even more relaxed is Chengdu; I’ll find out in a few days. A near-perfect trip so far. But no more gypsy cabs.

Oh, I deleted the earlier post because the link I offered wasn’t working. It’s late. I probably won’t post for a few days.

Update: Forgot to mention we had brunch with a reader of this blog today, and will meet other readers along the way. That this silly hobby can put us in touch with such awesome people….

Update 2: For a far more detailed look at what we went through, complete with photos, go here.

The Mandarin Oriental Beijing hotel was destroyed by an unlicensed fireworks display set off by CCTV itself.

State TV company apologizes for Beijing fire

BEIJING – China’s state-run television broadcaster apologized Tuesday for an unlicensed fireworks display that sparked a blaze that destroyed a luxury hotel in the network’s headquarters complex in downtown Beijing.

The fire, which sent off huge plumes of black smoke and showered the ground with embers, left one firefighter dead and a handful of others injured, the official Xinhua News Agency said. The blaze was put out early Tuesday after burning for more than five hours at the unfinished Mandarin Oriental hotel.

Xinhua quoted Luo Yuan, a spokesman for the Beijing fire department, as saying that fireworks set off to celebrate the Lunar New Year were to blame for the fire that destroyed the nearly finished Mandarin Oriental hotel.

He was quoted as saying CCTV had hired a fireworks company to ignite several hundred large fireworks in an open area by the hotel. Video footage posted on Youtube showed spectacular bursts of fireworks above the top of the building in downtown Beijing.

“According to the Beijing fire department, this fire occurred because the person in charge of the construction of the new building project of CCTV, without permission, hired staff to set off fireworks that violated regulations,” China Central Television said in a statement on its Web site.

CCTV said it was deeply grieved “for the severe damage the fire caused to the country’s property.”

At lunch a few hours ago I was discussing with a friend the possibility of ordinary fireworks sold on the street having the force to set a skyscraper on fire. We both agreed it was more likely a professional display gone awry.

Heads are going to roll.

Update: I guess we now know why Xinhua sent out instructions last night to minimize and spin the story:

各网：“中央电视台新大楼北配楼发生火灾”相关报道，请各网站只用新华社通稿，不发图片、视频，不作深度报道；只放国内新闻区，关闭跟帖，自然滚动，论坛博客不置顶，不推荐。

To all websites: Report related to the Fire in the CCTV new building, please only use Xinhua news report. No photo, no video clip, no in-depth report; the news should be put on news area only, close the comment posts, don’t top the forum blogpost, don’t recommend posts related with the subject.

Another textbook example of CCP cover-upping.

Strangest thing. China Daily, Shanghai Daily and Xinhua (to name the first ones I’ve checked) seem to have minimized mention of the Mandarin Oriental’s destruction. Go to their home pages now and see. China Daily only has a reference to the story on its list of recent articles if you look hard enough, and the story it takes you to has no photo. Xinhua had one of the earliest articles out about the fire, with photos, and that, too, has been 100 percent scrubbed from the home page, though it’s still up on their site (which is of little use if you don’t know the link).

Similarly, the CCTV-9 home page only references the fire, with no mention of the hotel name, in the list of breaking stories; no story or photo on the home page, just photos of the moon and pretty red lanterns. The link takes you to a very brief story, with photo, that does admit the fire was caused by illegal fireworks.

A spokesman for the Beijing Municipal government says initial investigations showed the fire had been caused by illegal launch of fireworks. Firefighters found remnants of fireworks on the southern roof of the burning building.

China Smack says it didn’t take long for China’s propagandistsmedia specialists to start censoring reports, locking online threads and removing photos.

Really disappointing. You’d think this would lead everywhere, and it’s ironic there’s more coverage in the international papers. As usual, this approach has to backfire, making the world wonder why the government would downplay the story and censor photos of a hotel fire. Which seems to me like an excellent question.

Update: From the hotel’s web site:

Statement in response to the fire at the development site of Mandarin Oriental, Beijing
Mandarin Oriental, Beijing was scheduled to open in the summer of 2009. The property currently employs 60 staff, all of whom work in pre-opening offices near to the hotel, which were empty at the time of the fire. Mandarin Oriental has signed a long-term contract to manage the hotel and has no ownership interest in the building. Our local management team are doing all they can to help the authorities to ensure the safety and security of everyone involved. It is too early at the present stage to assess the damage, but we will make further updates as soon as we have more information.

Update 2: Fireman dies from breathing in toxic chemical fumes while fighting the blaze.

Update 3: CCTV admits the fire was their fault; Xinhua directive on censoring/minimizing the story published.

I was at the Bookworm tonight with friends, playing in the weekly quiz night (which, incidentally, we won), when the emcee told the audience that the new hotel next to the CCTV towers was in flames. We didn’t know if he was joking or not. Now I see he wasn’t joking.

From PanYi

The hotel is the Mandarin Oriental, and the cause was sparks caused by fireworks.

Anyone in Beijing tonight can tell you about the orgiastic explosions that rocked the city from 5pm to midnight setting off car alarms and leaving deep piles of debris on every street. Fireworks on the last night of CNY are always a very big deal here. Hastily set-up fireworks shops can be found everywhere, and they sell fireworks to people of all ages. Monitors with red armbands parade their neighborhoods to make sure people are using them safely. But something went very wrong tonight.

The Mandarin Oriental hotel caught fire sometime before 9 p.m. (1300 GMT) as the skies above the Chinese capital were filled with exploding fireworks — part of celebrations of the lantern festival that follows the Lunar New Year.

The entire hotel building was engulfed in flames, sending off huge plumes of black smoke and showering the ground below with embers. At least seven fire crews were on the scene and police held back crowds of onlookers and closed a nearby elevated highway to ensure safety.

Li Jian said he saw smoke arising from the 44-story hotel’s roof shortly after a huge burst of fireworks showered it with sparks, though it was not clear if they started the fire.

“Smoke came out for a little while but then it just started burning,” Li said….

Beijing usually tightly restricts the use of fireworks in the downtown area, but waives the rules each year during the Lunar New Year holiday. Monday, the final day of the exemption period, marked the first full moon since the Lunar New Year, and massive fireworks barrages exploded between buildings and in open spaces throughout the city.

Erik Amir a senior architect at building designers OMA said the fire had destroyed years of hard work.
“It really has been a rough six-seven years for architects who worked on this project,” said Amir, who rushed to the site after hearing of the fire.

“I think it’s really sad that this building is destroyed before it can be opened to the public,” he said.

This is right around the corner from my office; I passed by the hotel every day for nearly two years as it was being built.

So I had to ask myself: Should Beijing reconsider giving everyone the right to set off fireworks as they see fit during CNY? I’m just asking. I realize how difficult it would be to enforce a ban on fireworks when they are so much a part of the culture, and I don’t know if it would even be possible. I also don’t know whether tonight’s disaster was caused by amateurs lighting off fireworks for fun, or by a professional putting on a display for the public. I suppose we’ll find out the details soon enough.

But tonight is a reminder: fireworks can kill and destroy when they’re not used right. Should they be as freely distributed as tissue paper?

Update: Great live coverage from David Feng.

Eerily beautiful, frightening video footage here.

Update: China’s censors minimizing the story and blocking photos?

Update: CCTV admits fire was caused by their own illegal fireworks.

I’ve been working on a freelance project the past couple of days and have several more hours to go. So the best I can do is a thread, and a link to this new article on censorship that just caught my eye. Can the party really stand up to China’s Internet community?

The Web has become a forum for public activism that would be speedily suppressed, or widely ignored, if it occurred offline. In recent months, a spate of vigilante campaigns have been waged against low-level officials accused of corruption or unseemly behavior.

In one notable case in December, an ostensibly harmless photograph of Zhou Jiugeng, a Nanjing housing official, found its way onto the Web. Sharp-eyed bloggers could not help noticing the $15,000 Swiss watch on his wrist and the $22-a-pack cigarettes on the table in front of him. Two weeks later, Mr. Zhou was fired after investigators determined that he had led an improbably lavish lifestyle for a modestly salaried civil servant.

Two weeks earlier, a Communist Party official in Shenzhen resigned after he was accused of abusing an 11-year-old girl in a restaurant bathroom. What tripped him up was a security camera video, widely circulated online, that showed him waving off the girl’s distraught family as he taunted them with his lofty rank.

Then there is the case of a Wenzhou government delegation whose publicly financed junket to Las Vegas, Niagara Falls and Vancouver was exposed by a blogger who found a bag of incriminating receipts on a Shanghai subway. After the documents were published on the Web in December, two top officials were ousted from their jobs; the other nine travelers were forced to write self-criticism essays.

None of these stories is new (except for the Shanghai extravaganza fiasco used as the story’s news hook), but the pattern and velocity is what’s interesting. Looking at the Shenzhen example, I hope the official did more than resign – he should be drawn and quartered, very, very slowly. (Disclaimer: US politicians have done some bad things, too. Yes, I know.)

This is a thread for any and all topics.