Clean Kanye MC'd to sitting fans, soldiers' orders

No cursing, no standing and your curfew is 9 p.m.! No, that's not your father speaking, it was the orders of the Chinese soldiers managing Kanye West's Glow in the Dark tour show on Nov. 1 at the Worker's Stadium in Beijing.

I admit, I didn't see the show--Kanye priced his tickets at 780 kuai a pop, more than a quarter of my monthly salary. However, I did celebrate the day after Halloween about a short distance away and saw the disappointed fans filter onto bar street, Sanlitun.

Kim, an American from Massachusetts, said she was ordered to sit down by a armed soldier after standing up to dance during "All Falls Down."

The Beijinger reviewers were pretty tough on the show too, calling Kanye's performance half-hearted and sanitized. (Kanye didn't swear, didn't perform "Jesus Walks" and didn't speak to the crowd once.) Read the review here.

If this is indicative of Western musicians performances in China, I think I'll wait to see them back home.

The Dirty Thirty free-for-all

With doomsday warnings keeping most of the world's shoppers at home, Beijingers nearly stampeded a Diesel jeans store in Shin Kong shopping mall Thursday to get a pair of Diesel's "Dirty Thirty" jeans. The limited release jeans, there are only 30,000 worldwide, were Diesel's "gift" to fans--they were sold for a mere 390 RMB (compared to a normal price tag of 1,000+ RMB). Customers were "screaming, shouting," and punching security officers to snatch the coveted denim, according to the Beijinger expat blog. Read more here. 

Though the "Dirty Thirty" jeans are cheaper than the normally extravagant price tag, they're still out of the price range of most Chinese people. This microcosm of extravagant consumerism is rare, but it does give light to a small cadre of consumers who are unaffected in spite of the global financial crisis. 

Beijingers want clean-air to stay

The South China Morning Post and the China Daily reported Monday that most Beijingers want the strict driving restrictions which took more than 1 million cars off the road to clear the air for the Olympics to continue after the gold is gone. 

"We want to hear more public opinion on whether, or how, to keep the rule," Wang Li, deputy director of Beijing's traffic bureau, was quoted by state media as saying. --taken from an article in the South China Morning Post. http://olympics.scmp.com/Article.aspx?id=2904&section=latestnews

Here's a China Daily article saying one environmental official is trying to keep the restrictions, though this article came out before Monday's article saying no decision has been made. http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2008-08/24/content_6965609.htm