I wasn't going to mention this as it seemed too much of a non-story. But, it has taken a surprising twist.

A few days ago this Liuzhou story popped up on a French website. Someone spotted this new nightclub which was covered in the usual congratulatory new business opening  banners including one which appeared to be from the local branch of the police and another from the the local government. When a picture was posted on some internet chatrooms, a few people decided the nightclub was owned by the police and expressed outrage. Others expressed boredom.

"This is a real disgrace, it's corrupt. "

"What's the point of making such a big deal out of nothing?"

As you will see from teh comments I left, I fell on the the boredom side. I've been to nightclubs owned by the PLA; I've slept in police hotels (no not prison!). It's China!

A few days later, the local cops and government issued statements saying it was nothing to do with them. Everyone forgot about it and the banners disappeared.

Then, this weekend, on Saturday night, the club was raided by the police. 19 people were arrested on drugs charges and the place has now been shut down. 

Did the cops bust themselves? 

I've mentioned these horrible electric scooters before. They are classified as bicycles and therefore users need no training or licencing. The city is swamped by them. Roads and sidewalks are full of them. And they are extremely dangerous. Few people wear protective clothing or helmets as they charge along chatting on their mobile phones at the same time. And at night they don't use lights (it drains the batteries too quickly!)

I've also mentioned before that there have been a number of fatalities. Here is one.

At noon of Friday, in Jiahe Road, a woman riding a scooter collided with a cement mixer and died immediately. How many more will there be before the city leaders sober up long enough to ban the stupid things -as other cities have done?

Source (Chinese) 

A Liuzhou local has raised the art of Falling Down Holes to previously undreamt of heights.

This chap got blind drunk, stripped to his underpants and fell into a hole full of muddy water. Police and very red firefighters eventually dragged him out before he drowned. All through the rescue effort he was "talking nonsense".

After being dug out he was examined by medical staff who had been summoned. Seems he only suffered a minor scratch to his head. However, while being examined the doctor asked him where he was from and he answered "China! I'm in China" then attempted to attack the medical staff. Fortunately, some firefighters were still on hand and they managed to restrain him.

He was then removed to the nearest police station.

Class!

Somehow, I missed this earlier but now bring you the news that Liuzhou Government has handed over ¥1,000,000 of the locals' money to the city's Olympic gold medal winners. 

Controversial 16 - 14 - who knows how old gymnast Jiang Yuyuan and weightlifter Lu Yong were given ¥300,000 each. I know Jiang hasn't lived in Liuzhou for years (7 or 5 or 9). No idea where Lu Yong lives.

Their coaches were also awarded ¥200,000 each. This is addition to the cash awarded by central government.

I'm surprised they haven't given Olympic flame lighter, Liuzhou born Hong Kong resident,  Li Ning the entire city's budget. 

Source (Chinglish) 

Disaster. 

I planned a quiet weekend at home. Take in a few movies. Eat some unhealthy food. You know the sort of thing. Washed down with a few beers.

Unfortunately, my beer supply for the weekend was on its way when the idiot driving the truck had a collision with another truck going in the opposite direction. You just can't get the staff these days.

Both drivers were trapped and had to be rescued by the local rescuers.

All my beer was spilled across the highway. Sacrilege! 

(Both drivers were rescued without serious injuries. The other truck was laden with ginger. Thought you might want to know.)

The good old diplomatic brigade down at the Guangzhou British Consulate are really on the ball. 

About twenty minutes ago, they e-mailed me the July 2008 edition of their "newsletter". (According to my sundial, it's nearly September.)

The "news" letter advises me that the Olympic games "approach". Wow! Looking forward to that!

And apparently there has been some sort of earthquake in Sichuan.

Overpaid, underachieving prats.

(Have I mentioned before that an ex British Ambassador's wife was the rudest bitch I have ever met?)

UPDATE 5th September 2008

WARNING: Do not visit any of the gxtravel sites mentioned in this post. They all contain viruses and trojans. They were OK a few days ago, but not now. 

As regulars will know, apart from this blog, I have a website which contains information about Liuzhou. Useful for a few people. It's been there for about six years and has grown from one page to over 200. A lot of work, but fun. It pays for itself, but makes no money. That wasn't the point.

Shelton Lu, real name   is a travel agent who operates under a variety of company names. These include "Go China Adventure International Travel Service Co. Ltd" and "Shelton China Travel Online".

Here he is.

Mr Lu operates a number of interconnected websites to promote his travel businesses one of which is http://www.gxtravel.com

The site also contains lots of useful information about Liuzhou.

I know. It's the same. I wrote it!

Nearly everything about Liuzhou is stolen from my website. You can see which bits are mine. They are the ones with correct spelling, grammar and lack of Chinglish. 

http://www.gxtravel.com/Culture/ReadMore.asp?ArtID=6&Title=LIUZHOU&PClass=Int&TheType=ArtCarft&KeyWord=liuzhou

One of Liuzhou's more unusual claims to fame is its stones!
  There is a world-wide network of collectors of unusual stones. These stones are prized for their shape, texture, colour or markings. Some can be very valuable indeed. Used either on their own as display items, or incorporated into bonsai gardens, the stones are especially prized in Japan and South Korea among other places.
  Liuzhou is generally regarded as a world centre for these stones. The city has held four International Stone Festivals (1999, 2002, 2004 and 2006) and there are several stone markets in town."

"This delightful little poem translates as
Be born in Suzhou
Live in Hangzhou
Eat in Guangzhou
Die in Liuzhou
  Allegedly, the most beautiful people are from Suzhou, while Hangzhou is rated as China's most beautiful city.
  Guangzhou (Canton) is, of course, the home of Cantonese food, supposedly the best China has to offer. All highly debatable. In fact, having visited all of the cities mentioned, I don't agree with any of the claims!
  But what has poor Liuzhou done to merit its reputation as a great place to die? Well, it seems that in the past the best coffins were made here. Apparently, this was due to the fine quality of wood in the surrounding forests. 
  The forests have long gone along the way of the occupants of all those coffins. Now the only industry connected with dying seems to be Liuzhou Cigarette Company.
However, there is a hangover of the tradition in that many visitors to Liuzhou buy souvenir miniature coffins. These are inscribed which means "Win promotion and get rich". There is a play on words here, as the second and fourth characters sound exactly like which is "coffin".
The coffins come in various sizes from about 2cm long and up.

Notice that they fail to include the poem because it was a picture rather than text. Similarly, the missing words in sentences are Chinese characters which I always post as image files. The last sentence is cut off half way through.

http://www.liuzhou.co.uk/liuzhou/coffins.htm 

..........................................

http://www.gxtravel.com/Culture/ReadMore.asp?ArtID=6&Title=LIUZHOU&KeyWord=liuzhou&PClass=Int&TheType=Languages

This page is 100% copied from here. They haven't noticed that they have pasted part of it twice and (see above) refers to nothing because they didn't (didn't know how to) copy the pictures.

..........................................

http://www.gxtravel.com/Culture/ReadMore.asp?ArtID=6&Title=LIUZHOU&KeyWord=liuzhou&PClass=Int&TheType=CookingRecipes

The first part is copied from my page on local food. Again they copy references to pictures without copying the pictures. Amateurs. From "Pressed Oil Tea" on they probably copied from someone else. Nothing to do with me.

..........................................

http://www.gxtravel.com/Culture/ReadMore.asp?ArtID=6&Title=LIUZHOU&KeyWord=liuzhou&PClass=Int&TheType=Music

One thing the locals love to get up to is singing folksongs. Liuzhou is famous (allegedly) for its folk song culture and it is certainly possible to come across groups of people singing in the local parks and by the riverside

The locals often meet up and sing songs from Liu Sanjie repertoire (or from the movie) as well as other Zhuang songs.

What I haven't mentioned is that the local minorities are into what is known as "atonal singing"! It can be a bit difficult for the western ear, though some is beautiful."

Finally, they do me the honour of stealing from this blog, too. This comes from here. Note they don't remove the somewhat sarcastic "allegedly". They clearly don't know what it means.

According to the site, they are based in Nanning at  Rm. 605, 6th Floor, Jinhe Plaza, No.86 Minzu Dadao, Nanning, Guangxi, China  - Tel: 0771-5855587. None of the email addresses on the website work (how do they get any business?) and when I called the office they said they would look into it, but nothing happened.

Mr Lu is not based there. He is in Cenxi city, Guangxi. His mobile number is 13367815558, but he doesn't answer it or pretends not to understand. Nor does he answer his email at 13367815558@gx165.com. Guess where I found his mobile number. He has another at 13481000093

So, if you are thinking of touring Guangxi and want your tour to be organised by a thief, don't give him a ring. He won't answer. Go to the office.

One of my favourite places to go when I feel the need of a change from Liuzhou is the neighbouring city of Yizhou. Like most cities, it ain't pretty, but the surrounding countryside is. Very. It is similar to the famous scenery in tourist trap Yangshuo, but without the tourists or the hordes of rogues trying to sell you fake crap or offering to guide you to places you don't want to go. 

I also have friends living there. 

So, it is with more sadness than usual that I read this news from yesterday. 

16 people were killed and many injured in an explosion in a chemical factory. 17 more are still missing. Over 10,000 people have been evacuated from their homes.

Fire crews from various cities, including Liuzhou, have now put out the fires, but there is still smoke rising from the ruins.

Here are a few pictures from the local media. 

This is flying around the Chinese chatboards.

"The final medal tally for China in the Beijing Olympics was:

Gold 51   Silver 21   Bronze 28

Line up the numbers 5 1 2 1 2 8

Lay out the first three numbers as 5 - 12, the Chinese way to write May 12th. The Sichuan earthquake took place on May 12th.

What time? 1:28 pm. The next three."

Spooky or what? Well, not really. The earthquake was at 2:28 pm. They should have won one more silver.

There is something fundamentally wrong with this picture. It is supposedly a collection of licence plates from vehicles stopped by the cops for speeding on Guangxi highways during a 9 hour period.

Spot what's wrong?

The yellow plates on the left are used on larger vehicles such as trucks and buses. OK.

The next group. The blue ones are the most common and are used on all normal cars.

Then it gets strange. The white plates, which seem to make up the majority, are all from military vehicles, the PLA. There are even some armed police (Wujing) plates in there!

Now, I'm not for suggesting for a moment  that military vehicles don't break the speed limit. Quite the opposite. What I am suggesting is that there is no way the local cops can confiscate military vehicles or their number plates except in most unusual situations. 

The PLA do what they like. They are notorious for it.

Source (Chinese)

I spotted this a few days ago and thought about taking a picture to put here. At the time, the workmen were still installing it, so I decided to wait.

Yesterday, the local rag had an article explaining what it is and why it's there.

According to the article, it is in Wuxing (Five Star) Street. No. it isn't. It's outside McDonalds on the junction of Jiefang Nanlu (Liberation South Road) and Zhongshan East Road (Zhongshan is the Mandarin for Yat-sen, as in Sun Yat-sen. Every city in China has a Zhongshan Road except Beijing). It is outside Wuxing Department store which is behind the photographer's back.

Wuxing Street, named after the store, which has given its name to the area, was built as a pedestrain shopping area by a local man who had made his fortune in Wood Green, London where he had an estate agency. When he sold up, he returned to Liuzhou and built this short shopping street. Unfortunately, for him the local governement turned the whole area into a pedestrian zone and his street became a bit of a backwater, Today, it is somewhat deserted. There some fashion shops, but there are also many empty shop units. The only successful parts seem to be the Chinese fast food restaurant and the disreputable night club on the second floor.

Anyway, back to the statue. In fact it's not a statue, but a model for a statue. This one is made from plywood and is propped up using two random sticks. The real thing, designed by Professor Zhao Qiankun of Guilin Institute of Technology, will be made from two materials: stone to represents Liuzhou's history and culture and an unspecified metal to represent the future. It will be 6 metres high. It is meant to be five stars.

This will be the third statue on this spot in as many years. First was this idiotic disgrace. Click here for an explanation.

Happily, this didn't last long and was replaced by what I can only describe as a large cardboard box covered in aluminium foil.

We are promised the new statue will be in situ by October 1st, China's National Day.

Today, I walked past and took this picture from roughly the same place as the first.

Yes, the thing has disappeared already!

It seems that China is holding some kind of sports meeting. As far as I can make out this is taking place in Beijing, Qingdao, Shanghai and Hong Kong. All quite far away. None of the action seems to be taking place in Liuzhou. There's not much information in the local newspapers*.

But we all feel safer to know that, to assure our safety during this meeting, local police will ride the buses until the end of the games. Then we are on our own.

This started yesterday. Presumably, the guy in charge of giving the order was too drunk busy in a meeting to organise it until nearly a week into the games.

Wait a minute! I was on a bus yesterday. No cops!  Maybe they are riding one bus for the photo op!

* Apart from the first 29 pages.

Source (Chinese)

The FT is reporting that Liuzhou's most famous export, Li Ning is $30 million US dollars richer as a result of his 4 minute flight and torch lighting. Great work if you can get it.

Read and weep. 

However, I wonder. Has anyone seen him since he lit the torch? I hope they haven't left him hanging up there!