There is a new blog in town. China Golf and has courses from around China featured on its pages. Soon, about 300 courses from around China will be featured on the site with prices, play dates and more.
China Golf : Hainan, Mission Hills, Sanya, Great Wall Golf Tours
My friend Siok Siok Tan is the multi-lingual marvel who, during her tenure with Discovery Channel, racked up a dozen Asian TV Awards as a documentary film director, and producer.
Her latest work, done in concert with students from classes she taught at the Beijing film Academy, is a fascinating pastiche of people obliquely impacted by the economic, political and athletic rush for gold in the 2008 Games.
Siok Siok renders her perspective on the games by examining the lives of Beijingers, so far from the torch run, that neither the western or Chinese media would even bother to distort or propagandize them. But, the stories, some that will move you to tears and others to great amusement, are emblematic of how deeply the allegiance to the success of the Chinese Olympic movement has permeated the collective conscience of a country.
Boomtown Beijing has everything and nothing to tell you about why 200,000 netizens on Baidu and the CEO of Sohu.com, Zhang Chaoyang, are calling for a boycott of Carrefour (France’s Great Wallmart) in response to western reactions to the torch run: It is a less about nationalism than it is about a new-found sense of international belonging, national pride and individual dreams of being able to even a small difference in a fast changing China. It is not a political statement. It is an authentic, objective and heartfelt look at a Beijing ad its citizens that few foreigners will ever see. Tan is one of the few film makers with the cultural savvy to ine and polish these rare human gems.
Boomtown Beijing is showing in cities world-wide and the proceeds are being donated to the Library Project. The next screening is in Beijing. The details from the FacebookFacebook group here:
The Film:
TThe 2008 Olympics Games is China’s debutante ball on the world stage. “ Faster. Higher. Stronger” — the preparation for the Games has turned Beijing into a hot spot of frenzied growth. A 11 year old boy wants to beat the odds to become an Olympics torch-bearer. A road sweeper dreams of staging his own mass Olympics countdown performance. An aging blind athlete makes one last stab at a Paralympics medal before he retires from sports. Together, their stories and scenes of everyday life in the city give a snapshot of Beijing the summer before the big games come to town. Running Time: 70 minutes
Language: Chinese with English subtitles
The Director:
Tan Siok Siok has built a career as an executive producer of international documentaries focusing on the China region. Her executive producer credits include award-winning shows for Discovery Channel and Discovery Travel and Living. Boomtown Beijing is her first independent film. She directed the film with the assistance of her studets while she was a visiting lecturer at the Beijing Film Academy
Tickets:
Pre-Sale: RMB 85 (before Saturday April 19th) Contact: mark at dembitz.com
At the Door: RMB 100
Included in Pre-Sale (1) Beverage with Ticket
CultureFish Media will host a one-day trio of charity events
Here are five ways to help the event out:
Come to the tournament and shot for one million dollars (HKD)!!
Come to the digital workshop.
Come to the night event bash with Che’nelle.
designed to raise awareness and generate funds for the China Dreamblogue and its associated charities. The three events (YOU CAN COME TO ONE OR ALL!)include:
1. A One in a Million Charity Golf Tournament,
2. The China Digital Media Workshop,
3. The China Dreambash featuring international hit singer and Capitol records artist Che’nelle.
TICKETS HERE!
Golf, Digitize, and Bash for Charity and shoot for $1,000,000(HKD) in our One in a Million Charity Daytime Golf Tournament:
The China Dreamblogue is the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) arm of CultureFish Media which seeks to create positive information about China and support educational opportunities for Chinese students.
At the fundraising tournament, which includes a one million dollar (HKD!) hole-in-one competition, the China Dreamblogue tournament will include:
PRIZES:
BUS SERVICE FROM GUANGZHOU WILL BE AVAILABLE!!
China Digital Media Workshop:
This half-day workshop will include information on digitization of press releases for professionals who work in SEO, SEM, online and traditional advertising, PR, new media, social networking, blogging, and other Internet-related businesses in China.
Topics and special features include: Myths, realities and benefits of online press releases and PR, trends in digital online ads, current trends in IWOM, reputation management: emerging trends and existing patterns
All speakers lined-up are experts in their respective fields. The awards ceremony and post-tournament banquet open to all conference participants
China Dreambash:
Capitol Records recording artist and international star Che’nelle will perform live.mYou can dance and party until you drop! 2 free drinks and discounts throughout the night with paid admission.
Discount room rates (1/2 PRICE!) will be available for workshop and tourney attendees and those who party hard.
The day of educationa and enjoyment is designed to raise awareness and generate funds for the China Dreamblogue and its associated charities. The three events (YOU CAN COME TO ONE OR ALL!)include:
1. A One in a Million Charity Golf Tournament,
2. The China Digital Media Workshop,
3. The China Dreambash featuring international hit singer and Capitol records artist Che’nelle.
Golf, Digitize, and Bash for Charity and shoot for $1,000,000(HKD) in our One in a Million Charity Daytime Golf Tournament:
The China Dreamblogue is the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) arm of CultureFish Media which seeks to create positive information about China and support educational opportunities for Chinese students.
At the fundraising tournament, which includes a one million dollar (HKD!) hole-in-one competition, the China Dreamblogue tournament will include:
PRIZES:
BUS SERVICE FROM GUANGZHOU WILL BE AVAILABLE!!
China Digital Media Workshop:
This half-day workshop will include information on digitization of press releases for professionals who work in SEO, SEM, online and traditional advertising, PR, new media, social networking, blogging, and other Internet-related businesses in China.
Topics and special features include: Myths, realities and benefits of online press releases and PR, trends in digital online ads, current trends in IWOM, reputation management: emerging trends and existing patterns
All speakers lined-up are experts in their respective fields. The awards ceremony and post-tournament banquet open to all conference participants
China Dreambash:
Capitol Records recording artist and international star Che’nelle will perform live.mYou can dance and party until you drop! 2 free drinks and discounts throughout the night with paid admission.
Discount room rates (1/2 PRICE!) will be available for workshop and tourney attendees and those who party hard.
Offer support as a sponsor.
Can’t come? Still want to be involved? Donate 100 Yuan and someone will shoot for you for the million!!
Just sign up at CFM and we will send details on how to participate from afar…
PRICE LIST:
Tourney (Caddy, Cart, Party, Lunch, Dinner and Million Dollar Shot) 2,500 RMB
Digital Workshop: 1000 RMB (includes lunch) for those in tourney or with sponsor agency (2000 for non-sponsored)
PARTY: 300 RMB Includes two drinks
Million Dollar Hole In One Shot Only: 100 RMB
Dinner–All You Can Eat Gourmet Buffet: 330 RMB
The American iconoclastic lawyer Clarence Darrow resigned himself to history’s repetitive nature, but never stopped challenging the powers to which most of us abandon control.
The British Olympic Team at The 1936 Berlin Olympics
Athletes have long been surrogates for our personal, school, community, and national wishes lies and dreams. We foist on them the responsibility of atoning for our own failures as sportsmen, parents and citizens. And visited on some are the the sins of governments who draft them as unwitting soldiers in wars of propaganda and ideology.
Section 51 of the International Olympic Committee charter, “provides for no kind of demonstration, or political, religious or racial propaganda in the Olympic sites, venues or other area.” That does not stop dozens of groups from calling on he most physically gifted and dedicated among us to end the bloodshed in Africa, restore the Dali Lama to sovereignty, or enforce Chinese intervention in Burma amid a long list of religious, humanitarian and political causes.
Many organizations are calling for a boycott of the XXIX Olympiad in Beijing to further their agendas. Many decry China’s denial of human rights while remaining silent as, paradoxically, some governments, namely New Zealand, Belgium and Great Britain are forbidding their team members to speak their minds before, or during the contest, or face immediate expulsion from the games. It is the western pot calling the tea kettle black.
As a former athlete and coach I might bow to tradtion and refuse to dip the flag for the Olympic reviewing stand, but I could never in good conscience sign any document that demanded surrender of a basic human right.
The web’s most articulate journalist-blogger, Rebecca McKinnon, writes with moving precision about the house arrest of Chinese human rights blogger Hu Jia , his wife Zeng Jinyang and the world’s “youngest political prisoner” their 2-month old daughter Hu Qianci. In the article, Rebecca clearly articulates Beijing’s poorly staged suppression of dissent during the dress rehearsal phase of its first leading role on the world stage. It is exactly this kind of scrutiny of the aging, fumbling power-elite that we might lose by disengagement.
To boycott the Olympics, an arguable failure of policy in Moscow and Los Angeles, moves the spotlight off China, punishes athletes in lieu of policies and leaves the average Chinese citizen, denied full access to information, angered and dazed by a seemingly xenophobic west. To even call for a boycott of the Olympics is to give spin doctors an award- winning script full of perfect, indignant replies to what we can only imagine to be true. Engagement in lieu of boycott will enlighten and inform us all. As the chinese proverb states, 拔苗助长 , you cannot help sprouts to grow by pulling them up.
I am hoping that history repeats only by way of expose made possible by athletic achievements–think Jesse Owens in Berlin– and not because of “free world” demands for the conscription of players into a silent Nazi salute to the abolition of free speech.