Hao Hao ReportThe best China news and blog posts

'In The Know' panelists discuss whether our athletes will be able to escape the bamboo cages the Chinese government will try to imprison them in.

Oops! Where did it go??? For more than a year, officials in Beijing have been designing a special laboratory to determine the sex of any athletes taking part in this year's Olympic games. 5 have failed.

Chinese Olympic organizers acknowledged Tuesday they were struggling to handle an unforeseen and baffling problem inside Summer Games venues and at the showpiece Olympic Park.

Not enough people.

Everything has been prepared, all tickets have been sold, yet Beijing is not ready for the games. The majors issues, air pollution, freedom of speech and journalistic freedom as well as the whole visa thing cast a dark shadow above these Olympics. What will the Olympics be under these circumstances? Doing a review later is easy... therefore I do a preview. What will happen during the Olympics, what will be the outcome?

The Granite Studio has an interesting post illustrating the inconsistency and division between BOGOG, the central government and reality when it comes to the controversy surrounding the deaths of workers building Olympic structures in Beijing.

The International Olympic Committee praised Beijing on Tuesday for setting a "gold standard for the future" in its preparations for the Games, which begin in a month. "The quality of preparation, the readiness of the venues and the attention to operational detail for these Games have set a gold standard for the future," the IOC said in a statement.

The New York Times (via CDT) describes how many people in China have been incensed by jubilant celebrations of the Olympics Torch relay in Fujian Province.

It seems rather futile blogging about other issues in light of the fact that thousands of people still left buried by the Earthquake in Sichuan. The death toll now exceeds 12,000 and is sure to increase. The Olympics seem relatively trivial.

Kaiser Kuo's posted a fantastic poem detailing China's various provincial stereotypes. It's hilarious and, more often than not, quite accurate.

A taste:
In Dongbei, whence the Manchus came, the men do like their liquor.
While effusive with their friendship, with their enmity they’re quicker
Though they’re honest and straightforward, at the slightest provocation
They’ll show why they’ve been slandered as the Klingons of this nation.

The leggy Dongbei ladies for their beauty are renowned,

All readers of the internet turn with undying devotion and respect to our beloved People’s Daily. Despite the blatantly false lies of a minority of lying liars, those who know anything will agree: The Beijing Olympics are to be the best ever held in Olympic history.