Like seemingly everything else in China prefaced with ‘The World’s…Biggest, Longest, Most Populace, etc.,’ the Beijing Subway is presently the world’s fastest growing rapid transit network. By Tom Carter for Air Macau infight magazine.

"I have never heard of Watergate," a close friend told me a few days ago. "All I know is that Nixon was the first president of America to connect with China. He was a great man." There are very few Americans from the past 50 years who Chinese people will laud and defend as ardently as former President Nixon.

In 1979, Deng Xiaoping had consolidated his control of China, and Senator Joseph Biden was a young statesman trying to make his mark on the world.

It was quite a moment: the IOC president discovering that he does, after all, have the testicular fortitude to be something other than a complete Beijing sycophant.

PBS's wonderful site on China's rise as a world power. Loads of facts, figures and photos.

The US track team have the dreadded 拉肚子 also known as Diarrhea. Here's a quick run down of why when in China you should take your shoes off when at home, why to drink from the bottle and why to always wash those hands. And a picture never to forget.

Great photo by Reuters' Daniel Aguilar of Chinese dancers performing the thousand hands of Guanyin at the Olympic Village.

Chinese writer Ma Jian sums up the importance of the Olympics to the Chinese government.

There is another reason, however, that Chinese people almost seem to automatically express their hate for the Japanese when the subject is broached. State controlled television in China has for many years now been showing programs that constantly remind the Chinese of the horrors perpetrated upon them by the Japanese. According to some of my Chinese friends, the television channels in China are full of programs and movies that allow the Chinese to at least partly relive the Japanese incursion into China.

While there is plenty written about touring and living in China, there is relatively little information about what kind of formalities you would need to go through to legally work in China.