Event Name:  2012 Expat Show Beijing       

Organizer:  World Events Agency

Location:  Beijing, China

Venue: China World Trade Center

Address: 1 Jian Guomen Wai Avenue, ChaoYang District, Beijing （北京建国门外大街1号）

Date:  April 28th, 29^th, 2012

Event description / details:

The Expat Show Beijing has been successfully held for 4 years. It is an exhibition where you can find everything you need to feel at home. The last Expat Show Beijing has been successfully presented on March 25^th-27^th. 2011. It remains the biggest gathering of the Foreign Community. By visiting the show you will find everything you can imagine for your daily life in Beijing.

The 5^th edition of the Expat Show Beijing will be held from April 28^th-29^th, 2012 in the China World Trade Center.  In order to improve the experience of the attendance, many new activities will be set up during the Expat Show 2012:  The “National Villages” gives you the opportunities to experience different cultures from different countries. A new activity “The International School Tournament” will be launched during Expat Show Beijing. This tournament has 4 sections, “The Chinese Paper Cutting Contest”, “Drawing Contest”, “Talent Show” and “Flea Market”. All these activities will let your children have a wonderful weekend.

One more time the Expat Show will bring you the opportunity to meet many people, find everything you need, entertain your kids and spend a great time. We look forward to seeing you all very soon next in April.

For more information, please click here.

www.expatshowchina.com

Across the street from a five-story H&M flagship store on Huaihai Road in Shanghai, Wang Yan took a break from shopping to smoke a cigarette and reflect on how Chinese fashion has changed since the clothing chain arrived roughly four years ago.

“First, prices are cheaper,” the 32-year-old Beijing native said. “Second, for these stores, the clothes are more fashionable than before.”

Wang embodied the evolving tastes of the middle-class Chinese consumer. He wore sports brands – a Nike jacket and backpack – that formerly dominated the mid-tier branded clothing market, but in his shopping bag was spring jacket from H&M competitor Zara, a decidedly more fashion-oriented brand.
Wang is one of the many Chinese consumers who can rarely afford luxury products but want more fashionable clothing than is available from sports brands or domestic retailers. As the internet spreads and incomes increase, Chinese consumers are becoming increasingly sophisticated and aspirational in their purchases.

“Fast fashion” stores have stepped in to meet this demand, led by Sweden’s H&M and Spain’s Zara. “This is a big new thing that has happened in the China marketing scene,” said Tom Doctoroff, North Asia CEO of marketing firm JWT and author of a forthcoming book on Chinese consumerism, “What Chinese Want.”

The fast-fashion brands have filled a long-standing gap in China between low-end, local brands and the foreign, luxury or sub-luxury brands like Coach, Doctoroff said. “H&M and Zara came around at the same time, effectively setting up a new price tier.”

More brands than a cattle roundup

Clothing brands expanded only gradually after China’s economic opening in 1979. At first, Chinese consumers were not very brand conscious.

Among the first clothing brands to rise to prominence in the 1990s were foreign and domestic sports retailers such as Nike and Li Ning. The association with sports gave these brands easy cache: Li Ning, for example, was founded by the well-known Chinese gymnast of the same name, while Nike built its brand through sponsorships, starting with that of China’s national basketball team.

Some local and Hong Kong brands found early success as well. Metersbonwe and Giordano sounded foreign and emulate foreign styles, although they did not follow foreign trends closely. Metersbonwe, founded in 1995, now has more than 4,500 stores in China.

A luxury boom followed in the 2000s, rapidly introducing new brands. China’s luxury consumption skyrocketed from less than US$800 million in 1998 to an estimated US$12 billion in 2010. Nearly every major luxury clothing brand can now be found in first-tier cities like Shanghai and Beijing.

Chinese consumers who could afford luxury brands were quick to take them up as a badge of wealth and status. Seemingly overnight, Chinese consumers became familiar with dozens of brands. That awareness helped pave the way for fast fashion.

“Within a really short time, within one to two years time, everyone seems to know all the luxury brands and they read about it, they talk about it on forums,” said Mariana Kou, a retail analyst at CLSA. “And the same thing applies to mass market brands, the fashion brands [like H&M].”

Super models

By the time Hennes and Mauritz, better known as H&M, entered China, it had honed its business model through decades of expansion in Western markets. Founded in 1947 in Västerås, Sweden, the company expanded to Norway in 1964 and to the UK in 1976. The 1980s and 90s saw H&M reach further into continental Europe, and in the 2000s it launched its first stores in the US.

The company designs most of its clothing in-house following the style of the latest fashion trends. It then outsources its production and buys in large volume to keep costs down before distributing to stores worldwide. H&M prices its products relatively cheaply to appeal to a young market, mostly consumers in their 20s.

H&M introduced this model to Asia in 2007, when it opened its first stores in Shanghai and Hong Kong. The company’s customers also skew young in China; it appeals to Chinese consumers who have just entered the workforce, Kou said.

H&M’s worldwide strategy of occasionally teaming up with luxury designers and celebrities to design co-branded lines has been particularly well-received in China. The Versace for H&M line that launched last year, for example, gives some of the vaunted association of a sought-after luxury brand at a far lower price.

Zara, H&M’s primary competitor in China, opened its first store on the mainland in 2006 and adheres more closely to the definition of fast fashion, bringing the latest runway fashion trends to stores as quickly and cheaply as possible.

Unlike H&M, Zara wholly controls its manufacturing process, so that it can bring runway inspirations to market in as little as two weeks. H&M, by using subcontractors, often has longer lead times of six to 12 months. However, speed costs money, giving Zara a slightly higher price point than H&M.

Other brands are often associated with fast fashion because they have similar strategies and pricing in China, even though they offer less fashion-oriented clothing. Japan’s Uniqlo, for example, concentrates on high-quality, basic clothing at slightly lower prices than H&M.

This tier of clothing is more affordable than luxury brands, but it is not “cheap chic,” as the stores are described in the West. For example, an H&M sweater priced at US$35 in the US retails at roughly US$47 (RMB299) in China, about 36% more. Yet Chinese also have far less to spend than Americans: per capita disposable income in the US for 2011 was more than six times Shanghai’s average of US$5,760.

“Compared with the local brands, Uniqlo, H&M, Zara are a bit pricey,” said Takahiro Kazahaya, a retail analyst at Deutsche Bank.

First-tiers first

H&M, Zara and Uniqlo all focused on first-tier cities upon entering China. Typically, the companies first rolled out a flagship store in an attention-grabbing location.

“You’ve got to come in big. You’ve got to come in as a brand that is famous, and one way to do that is with a flagship store,” Doctoroff said. “Everybody has these larger stores for stature.”

That often means choosing a location in malls and on shopping streets that are already populated by luxury stores. Because launching ad campaigns is expensive in China and Zara and H&M had few stores until recently, these brands have generally relied less on advertising and more on generating buzz through flagships and events. Once Chinese shoppers are somewhat familiar with the brand, the chains then began to open smaller stores in that city.

The strategy has worked so far. H&M had 82 stores in China as of November last year after nearly doubling its stores on an annual basis. Zara had 91 stores as of October 2011.

It’s more difficult to discern the success of these stores financially, since the companies release little China-specific data.

H&M’s total sales for China were US$539.4 million for fiscal year 2011, up 42% from 2010. Zara’s parent company Inditex Group does not release China-specific sales data, but one analyst estimated that Zara sales were US$515.3 million in China in the fiscal year ending in January 2011. That estimate may be low, since Zara’s average store in China is larger than its average store in a Western markets.

Neither company discloses profits. But Kou of CLSA said their relatively high price points probably make them profitable. In Western markets, these stores generally start turning profits relatively quickly after opening; that likely holds true for the China market as well.

Both companies have consistently named China as one of a few key expansion markets. H&M says that it will open 275 stores worldwide in 2012 with the most being opened in China, the US and UK.

This expansion seems rapid, but it is slower than China’s sportswear and domestic brands, which use franchising to allow for more rapid growth. Giordano, for example, has 448 wholly-owned stores and 700 franchised stores, according to Kazahaya’s estimates. Opening wholly-owned locations takes more time, but it allows H&M and Zara to have more control over details like distribution, product rollouts and inventory. It also ensures consistency in how the brands are presented.

This slower pace means that H&M and Zara are just beginning to expand to lower-tier Chinese cities, a task not without pitfalls. Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou are often comparable to many major Western cities in their consumer demand and retail offerings. The gap is not always easily bridged between them and second-tier cities, where consumers typically earn less and have less exposure to foreign brands.

But these secondary markets can definitely support stores, albeit on a smaller scale, Kou said. Their strong presence in first-tier cities means many shoppers in second-tier city already know the brand.

These second-tier cities will soon become saturated with retail outlets, as first-tier cities have already become. At the moment, H&M has 14 stores in Shanghai and eight in Beijing while most second-tier cities only have one or two locations, according to the company’s website.

The mid-range price tier may be less than a decade old, but it is already growing crowded – as Gap found when it opened its first China store in 2010.
“A few of these players have a little bit of a head start on us. There are of course real estate challenges, where we’re fighting for the best locations,” said Jeff Kirwan, managing director for Gap’s Greater China division. “We certainly see the competitive nature of the landscape in China ramping up quite a bit.”

1.3 billion clothes-horses

The growing wealth and size of China’s middle class seems to ensure H&M and Zara’s success. As incomes rise in China, shoppers will raise their sights to more fashionable clothing, and H&M and Zara have helped light that path to ever-higher aspiration.

Consumers now have a clear trajectory from local brands to Uniqlo, H&M and Zara, on to lower-priced luxury brands like Hugo Boss and Dolce & Gabbana, before topping out at stores like Louis Vuitton and Prada, said Kou of CLSA.

As this retail space gets more crowded in China, stores will have to differentiate themselves, and branding will become even more important, Doctoroff said.

“Fashion brands are badges and you use them to express identity, so the allure of wearing a brand from… the next level up in the premium scale is not an enduring competitive advantage,” Doctoroff said. “You see the same thing happening in luxury. It’s a tangled glop of glitter [in need of differentiation].”

Flagship stores and grand opening parties likely will not be enough to accomplish that, he said, so stores will need to begin formal marketing campaigns in China, something that so far only Gap is doing in the mid-range price tier. The internet, and especially microblog services like Weibo, will only further encourage the pursuit of brands as badges of social success.

“The Chinese are the most brand-friendly people in the world,” Doctoroff said. “They use brands as tools for success in society, as weapons of advancement in the battlefield of life.”

Source From: http://www.chinaeconomicreview.com/node/56727

By Vivian Ni

Consumer goods retailers and female-oriented service providers across China are competing to launch promotional campaigns and offer discounts today in a bid to attract more female consumption. At the end of this year’s “International Women’s Day,” they hope to harvest profits from the wallets of the country’s increasingly wealthy female buyers.
 

In fact, not only on this symbolic day, but in Chinese people’s day-to-day lives, spending by women has become a significant contributor to the “great Chinese consumption power,” a concept that is becoming the mantra for international businesses nowadays. According to a Nielsen survey in 2010, the consumer confidence of Chinese women aged between 30 and 39 achieved the same level of men in that age group, and there is a growing tendency that younger Chinese women are willing to pay more for their favorite items than men.
 

“The future is female,” HSBC said assertively in a 2010 survey on luxury goods, highlighting the importance of female consumers to the investment decision-making of many global companies.
 

The changing face of Chinese women
Chinese women nowadays are receiving higher education, getting equal employment opportunities, and gaining increasing financial independence. Their income distribution to families has increased dramatically over the past few decades, from around 20 percent in the 1950s to 40 percent in the 1990s, and to over 50 percent today.
 

These social changes have shaped the new mindset of Chinese women (especially the younger ones), and made them more ambitious in consumption. Departing from a traditionally appreciated thrifty life style, women in China are more prone to enlarge their expenditures and lower their saving levels. Compared to the 55 percent savings rate back in 2006, Chinese women in urban areas only saved 24 percent of their incomes in 2009, according to a 2010 survey conducted by Women of China Magazine (WoC).
 

The improving gender equality has also offered more Chinese women the opportunity to move into leadership roles in corporate management and entrepreneurship. Among the world’s top 20 self-made female billionaires, 11 come from China, according to the 2011 China Rich List produced by Hurun Report, a Shanghai-based monthly magazine. The increase in female CEOs and entrepreneurs can potentially impact the business models of the financial market, as those women have a big say in the investment directions of company wealth.
 

As Chinese women make achievements in their careers, their family roles have changed as well – with Chinese families becoming less patriarchal and women having a greater voice. As a result, the consumption and investment preferences of women are now playing a larger role in the domestic spending structure.
 

Family decision maker
Women are the primary decision-makers when it comes to daily household consumption and bulk purchases for their families. In 2011, wives made about 77 percent of the household spending decisions, according to WoC.
 

The WoC research shows more than 60 percent of average household income went into consumption in 2011. On the list of Chinese women’s shopping priorities for 2012, household appliances were ranked third while real estate and vehicles are ranked fourth and seventh, respectively.
 

Businesses have started to learn some interesting household consumption patterns and the influence of women’s preferences. For example, what comes with house purchases is always furniture buying, and in China, it is mostly women who furnish the house, regardless of who pays. Therefore, furniture manufacturers that cater to the tastes of female customers may have a better opportunity to boost their sales.
 

Businesses should also learn that as family decision-makers, women do not only spend money on themselves, but also on every other family member. Therefore, women’s preferences may also determine the kind of suits their husbands are wearing, the kind of education their children are receiving, and the kind of healthcare products their parents  or parents-in-law are using.
 

Another large part of the household budget is investment, taking up 13 percent of average household income in 2011. More and more Chinese wives are managing domestic finance through investments in stocks, real estate, banking products, funds and commercial insurance. Such a trend may create a new market space for women-centric financial solutions in the future.
 

In pursuit of better life quality
Chinese women nowadays are spending money to improve every aspect of their life.
 

Looking good
It is in a woman’s nature to want to look beautiful, but with growing income and social power, their cult of beauty is more intense than ever. Clothing and cosmetics took the first and second place respectively on WoC’s 2012 shopping priority list and, according to findings by Nielsen, an increasing number of Chinese women are buying expensive, high-end beauty and skin-care products rather than traditional, simple cosmetics offering only whitening and moisturizing functions.
 

Manufacturers of “beauty tools” are not the only ones targeting female consumers – a variety of beauty service providers are also sharing the rapidly-expanding beauty market. Services for weight loss, fitness, beautification and aging prevention are burgeoning across China, expanding from the country’s first-tier cities to second and third-tier cities.
 

Followers of high-tech products
Thanks to improved educational opportunities, Chinese women are becoming more interested in using high-tech products. Purchases of mobile phones and electronic products are ranked fifth and sixth on WoC’s 2012 shopping priority list, and a 2011 Nielsen study shows 41 percent of surveyed Chinese women want to spend their extra money on electronics.
 

Getaway experiences
Over 70 percent of women responding to the WoC survey said they and their families had traveled for holiday during 2011. Those households spent an average of RMB8,858 on their vacations, a 56.3 percent surge from such spending in 2010. Women living in the cities of Shanghai, Changsha and Dalian spent the most on travel.
 

Luxury consumption
While traditionally, Chinese men have been regarded as the primary consumers of luxury goods, in large part because of the custom of giving gifts to business partners and government officials, Chinese women are now catching up in luxury consumption. They contribute over 50 percent to this market segment today, compared to the 20 percent contribution a decade ago.
 

China is expected to spend around US$14.6 billion on luxury goods this year and become the world’s largest luxury consumption market.
 

Business implications
The emerging female consumption power is providing international companies with a more nuanced China picture. While China is often seen as a monolithic market, companies are now gaining a better understanding of the country’s gender power dynamics and conducting more studies on the differences in male and female consumer behavior as well as psychology. For instance, a study by the global management consulting firm McKinsey finds that, compared to men, women tend to shop more, and spend more on personal-care products and foods. In addition, Chinese women are both brand and price conscious, while men usually go after the brands they prefer. Such market segmentation will help businesses determine better product and marketing strategies.
 

Source From: http://www.china-briefing.com/en/

Written by Jason Lasky

“Count back from ten,” is the last thing I remember the dentist saying to me before the operation began.  When I got to “seven” I suddenly remembered my very first visit to the dentist, and I remember cringing because the music in the waiting room was so awful. There I was, a tiny sea urchin, barely aware of the world around me, and I was being subjected to auditory torture the likes of which those Guantanamo Bay inmates knew nothing about.  My parents had told me not to fear anything about what the dentist might do to my mouth, but here I was less concerned about the happenings of my teeth as I was about the delicacy of my eardrums.  Flashing forward all these years, it is interesting how I’ve come to appreciate dental innovation almost as much as the evolution of music.  We have been living in the “I” generation, steeped in the iron grip of personalized power over music, continuing to accept the technological innovations of the most high-tech of companies.  And so my visit today to my dentist in Shanghai, this second day of January, 2016, is all about my taking that next inevitable step along the path of individual control: The iTooth.

As we all know, the Apple Company, one of the great technological innovators of the 21^st century, has had solid performance throughout the brightest and darkest of days.  The death of their leader, Steve Jobs, in 2011, left the world with a huge amount of uncertainty regarding the future of this innovative organization.  Luckily, though, Mr. Tim Cook, successor of Mr. Jobs and the man who took the reins and championed the continued evolution of technological interactivity, recently gave us such superior models of well-known hand-held products as the iPhone X, the iPad 7, and the gift that kept on giving throughout the cold, winter months: the iVibrator.  Cook announced on Thanksgiving day the newest additions to the Apple family, and the response has been tremendous!  Not to be outdone, but rather as a point of confluence, Apple also announced their joint venture with several insurance companies that would cover the somewhat costly surgery.  Throngs of people have been showing up to insurance companies around the world demanding for registration forms for iLife.

The movement from the bulky and cumbersome gramophone, to the portable radio and cassette player, to the iPod Nano, and now to this miniscule marvel over the last century and a half has been an exponentially increasing process.  What we have before us now, though, is a much more secure way of appreciating our music as we make our ways around town, as it is true that pickpockets do not stand a chance of ripping off unsuspecting passers-by.  As many people will attest, they often go about their days with songs playing in their heads anyway, humming along as they so often do from place to place.  With the music now occupying the sinus cavities completely, it will surely be less of a hum and more a full-on concert within peoples’ entire faces.  Having had my seven-year-old iPod taken off my person just a few days ago, I decided that it was time to take the next step along with the current flock of consuming masses and make an investment that will bring an immediate return.

The operation is akin to having a tooth removed, but in this case the tooth that is chosen has to be the strongest in the mouth.  Also, the nerve endings that the miniscule microchip hooks into have to be disease free in order to allow for the perfect neural connection.  The way the iTooth functions is startling, as it sounds like something straight out of some science fiction story.  After the natural tooth has been extracted, the exposed nerve endings are placed into a kind of bridge (think of a memory card reader for your digital camera) that connects to the iTooth.  Then, the iTooth is cemented into the jawbone.  A simple computer diagnostic is run to ensure that the iTooth and the iCloud are in sync with one another.  Once the connection is established, it’s then really up to whatever thought enters your mind since the iTooth is connected to your neural pathways.  If this sounds like those stories about a friend you know who got braces put in his mouth and then picked up alien signals from outer space that only he could hear, you are not far off.  The difference, though, is that you are fully in control of what you are hearing inside your head.

Unfortunately, this will not be something that everyone will either be able to afford or physically be capable of possessing, so it will be interesting to see what sort of ancillary effects the iTooth will have on consumers who do not brush between meals.  Already, though, a handful of celebrities are sporting the marvelous creation, and some American rap artists are even having their iTooth modified in the same way that grills began to be in the 1990s.  It will be equally exciting to see what kind of niche markets develop for the more fashionably loud who walk among us.

I woke up about half an hour later with quite a bit of pain in the back, left, lower side of my jaw, but that was to be expected.  Some pain medicine and ice were brought.  I looked over and found a computer screen next to me, and I was asked to sign into my iTunes account.  I was then asked to think of a song, and I immediately thought of Styx’s Come Sail Away.  In an instant, I heard the song playing at a low volume and as I next thought to ask how to increase the volume it did so by itself!  The moment I had any thought of a song it would begin playing, and so it was rather disorienting at first.  The dentist then spent the next half hour or so talking to me about how to properly control the device, and pretty soon it felt as though it had always been a part of me.  As I made my way home on the subway, I played The Buggles’s Video Killed the Radio Star several times, and I wondered what next eventual step may be in store for us just a little while from now and if the masses would eat it up as they had the iTooth, so to speak.  I also wondered what was playing in everyone else’s heads.

Want to see more and experience more, please visit:  http://www.beingfunchina.com/magazine/the-getgo-vol-15/

Written by Dr. David Morrison

Public concern about Doomsday in December 2012 has blossomed into a major new presence on the Internet. This fear has begun to invade cable TV and Hollywood, and it is rapidly spreading internationally. The hoax originally concerned a return of the fictitious planet Nibiru in 2012, but it received a big boost when conspiracy theory websites began to link it to the end of the Mayan calendar long count at the winter solstice (December 21) of 2012. Over the past year, many unrelated groups have joined the doomsday chorus, including Nostradamus advocates, a wide variety of eschatological Christian, Native American, and spiritualist sects, and those who fear comet and asteroid impacts or violent solar storms. At the time of this writing there are more than 175 books listed on Amazon.com dealing with the 2012 doomsday. The most popular topics are the Mayan calendar and spiritual predictions that the disaster in 2012 will usher in a new age of happiness and spiritual growth. Quite a few authors are cashing in with manuals on how to survive 2012.

As this hoax spreads, many more doomsday scenarios are being suggested, mostly unrelated to Nibiru. These include a reversal of the Earth’s magnetic field, severe solar storms associated with the 11-year solar cycle (which may peak in 2012), a reversal of Earth’s rotation axis, a 90- degree flip of the rotation axis, bombardment by large comets or asteroids, bombardment by gamma rays, or various unspecified lethal rays coming from the center of the Milky Way Galaxy or the “dark rift” seen in a nearby galactic spiral arm. A major theme has become celestial alignments: supposedly the Sun will align with the galactic center (or maybe with the Milky Way Dark Rift) on December 21, 2012, subjecting us to mysterious and potentially deadly forces.

Unlike most pseudoscience stories, there seems to be no factual core on which the Nibiru- 2012 hoax has been constructed. This is different from, for example, the claims of aliens and a crashed UFO at Roswell, New Mexico. The alien stories are a fabrication, but the core fact is that an instrumented balloon did crash in Roswell on July 7, 1947. There is no similar factual core to Nibiru—just dubious “predictions” from psychics, or the Mayans, or Nostradamus. The rest is pure fiction.

I answer questions from the public submitted online to a NASA website, and over the past two years the Nibiru-2012 doomsday has become the dominant topic people ask about. Many are curious about things they have seen on the Internet or TV, but many are also angry about supposed government cover-ups. As one wrote “Why are you lying about Nibiru? Everyone knows it is coming.” Others are genuinely frightened that the world will end just three years from now. My frustration in answering questions piecemeal motivates this “Twenty Questions” format to organize the facts and shine a skeptical light on this accumulation of myths and hoaxes.

1. What is the origin of the prediction that the world will end in December 2012?

The story started with claims that Nibiru, a supposed planet discovered by the Sumerians, is headed toward Earth. Zecharia Sitchin, who writes fiction about the ancient Mesopotamian civilization of Sumer, claimed in several books (e.g., The Twelfth Planet, published in 1976) that he has found and translated Sumerian documents that identify the planet Nibiru, orbiting the Sun every 3600 years. These Sumerian fables include stories of “ancient astronauts” visiting Earth from a civilization of aliens called the Anunnaki. Then Nancy Lieder, a self-declared psychic who claims she is channeling aliens, wrote on her website Zetatalk that the inhabitants of a fictional planet around the star Zeta Reticuli warned her that the Earth was in danger from Planet X or Nibiru. This catastrophe was initially predicted for May 2003, but when nothing happened the doomsday date was recalculated (a standard procedure for doomsdayers) and moved forward to December 2012. Only recently have these two fables been linked to the end of the Mayan long-count at the winter solstice in 2012—hence the predicted doomsday date of December 21, 2012.

2. The Sumerians were the first great civilization, and they made many accurate astronomical predictions, including the existence of the planets Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. So why should we not believe their predictions about Nibiru?

Nibiru is a name from Babylonian astrology sometimes associated with the god Marduk. Nibiru appears as a minor character in the Babylonian creation poem Enuma Elish as recorded in the library of Assurbanipal, King of Assyria (668–627 BCE). Sumer flourished much earlier, from about the 23rd century to the 17th century BCE. The claims that Nibiru is a planet and was known to the Sumerians are contradicted by scholars who (unlike Zecharia Sitchin) study and translate the written records of ancient Mesopotamia. Sumer was indeed a great civilization, important for the development of agriculture, water management, urban life, and especially writing. However, they left few astronomical records and they most certainly did not know about Uranus, Neptune or Pluto. They also had no understanding that the planets orbited the Sun, an idea that first developed in ancient Greece two millennia after the end of Sumer. Claims that Sumerians had a sophisticated astronomy, or that they even had a god named Nibiru, are the product of Sitchin’s imagination.

3. How can you deny the existence of Nibiru when NASA discovered it in 1983 and the story appeared in leading newspapers? At that time you called it Planet X, and later it was named Xena or Eris.

IRAS (the NASA Infrared Astronomy Satellite, which carried out a sky survey for 10 months in 1983) discovered many infrared sources, but none of them was Nibiru or Planet X or any other objects in the outer solar system. Briefly, IRAS cataloged 350,000 infrared sources, and initially many of these sources were unidentified (which was the point, of course, of making such a survey). All of these observations have been followed up by subsequent studies with more powerful instruments both on the ground and in space. The rumor about a “tenth planet” erupted in 1984 after a scientific paper was published in Astrophysical Journal Letters titled “Unidentified point sources in the IRAS minisurvey,” which discussed several infrared sources with “no counterparts.” But these “mystery objects” were subsequently found to be distant galaxies (except one, which was a wisp of “infrared cirrus”), as published in 1987. No IRAS source has ever turned out to be a planet. A good discussion of this whole issue is to be found on Phil Plait’s website. The bottom line is that Nibiru is a myth, with no basis in fact. To an astronomer, persistent claims about a planet that is “nearby” but “invisible” are just plain silly.

4. Maybe we should be asking about Planet X or Eris, not Nibiru. Why does NASA keep secret the orbit of Eris?

“Planet X” is an oxymoron when applied to a real object. The generic term has been used by astronomers over the past century for a possible or suspected object. Once the object is found, it is given a real name, as was done with Pluto and Eris, both of which were once referred to as Planet X. If a new object turns out to be not real, or not a planet, then you won’t hear about it again. If it is real, it is no longer called Planet X. Eris is one of several dwarf planets recently found by astronomers in the outer solar system, all of them on normal orbits that will never bring them near Earth. Like Pluto, Eris is smaller than our Moon. It is very far away, and its orbit never brings it closer than about 4 billion miles. There is no secret about Eris or its orbit, as you can easily verify by googling it or looking it up in Wikipedia.

5. Do you deny that NASA built a South Pole Telescope (SPT) to track Nibiru? Why else would they build a telescope at the South Pole?

There is a telescope at the South Pole, but it was not built by NASA and it is not used to study Nibiru. The South Pole Telescope is supported by the National Science Foundation, and it is a radio telescope, not an optical instrument. It cannot take visible light images or photos. You can look it up on Wikipedia. The Antarctic is a great place for astronomical infrared and short-wave-radio observations, and it also has the advantage that objects can be observed continuously without the interference of the day-night cycle. I should add that it is impossible to imagine a way in which an object can be seen only from the South Pole. Even if it were due south of the Earth, it could be seen from the entire southern hemisphere.

6. There are many photos and videos of Nibiru on the Internet. Isn’t that proof that it exists?

The great majority of the photos and videos on the Internet are of some feature near the Sun (apparently supporting the claim that Nibiru has been hiding behind the Sun for the past several years). These are actually false images of the Sun caused by internal reflections in the lens, often called lens flare. You can identify them easily by the fact that they appear diametrically opposite the real solar image, as if reflected across the center of the image. This is especially obvious in videos, where as the camera moves, the false image dances about always exactly opposite the real image. Similar lens flare is a source of many UFO photos taken at night with strong light sources such as streetlights in the frame. I am surprised that more people don’t recognize this common photo artifact. I am also amazed that these photos showing something nearly as large and bright as the Sun (a “second sun”) are accepted together with claims made on some of the same websites that Nibiru is too faint to be seen or photographed except with large telescopes.

One widely reported telescopic photo shows two views of an expanding gas cloud far beyond the solar system, which is not moving; you can see this from the fact that the stars are the same in both pictures. A sharp-eyed reader on my website identified these photos as a gas shell around the star V838 Mon. Wikipedia has a nice write-up and a beautiful photo of it from the Hubble. Another high school student was initially impressed by posted images of a red blob that were said to be of Nibiru. Then he worked out in his Photoshop class how to make just such pictures starting from scratch. One video posted in summer 2008 on YouTube shows a guy standing in his kitchen claiming that one of the objects discovered by NASA’s x-ray telescope is Nibiru. What is his evidence? That since this false-color x-ray image released by NASA is blue, this must really be a nearby planet with an ocean. This would be hilarious if it were not used to frighten people.

7. Can you explain the fact that the area at (5h 53m 27s, -6 10′ 58″) has been blackened out in Google Sky and Microsoft Telescope? People suggest that these have been blackened out because those are the co-ordinates where Nibiru is located at present.

Several people have asked me about this blank rectangle in Orion in Google Sky, which is a presentation of images from the Sloan Digital Survey. This can’t be a “hiding place” for Nibiru, since it is a part of the sky that could be seen from almost everywhere on the Earth in the winter of 2007–08 when much of the talk about Nibiru began. Plus, that would contradict the claims that Nibiru was hiding behind the Sun or that it could be seen only from the southern hemisphere. But I too was curious about this blank rectangle, so I asked a friend who is a senior scientist at Google. He replied that he “found out that the missing data is due to a processing error in the image stitching program we use to display the Sloan survey images. The team assures me that in the next run through, this will be fixed!”

8. If the government knew about Nibiru, wouldn’t they keep it a secret to avoid panic? Isn’t it the government’s job to keep the population at ease?

There are many objectives of government, but they do not include keeping the population at ease. My experience is that sometimes parts of the government do just the opposite, as in the frequent references to various terrorist threats or warnings about driving accidents on long holiday weekends, which are no more dangerous than any other time. There is a long history of associating bad things with political opponents (older readers will remember the “missile gap” in the 1960 election, younger ones will note the many current references to who is or is not keeping the U.S. safe from terrorists). Further, social scientists have pointed out that many of our concepts of public panic are the product of Hollywood, while in the real world people have a good record of helping each other in a time of danger. I think everyone also recognizes that keeping bad news secret usually backfires, making the issue even worse when the facts finally come out. And in the case of Nibiru, these facts would come out very soon indeed.

Even if it wanted to, however, the government could not keep Nibiru a secret. If Nibiru were real, it would be tracked by thousands of astronomers, amateurs as well as professionals. These astronomers are spread all over the world. I know the astronomy community, and these scientists would not keep a secret even if ordered to. You just can’t hide a planet on its way into the inner solar system!

9. Why does the Mayan calendar say the world will end in 2012? I have heard that they have been pretty accurate in the past with other planetary predictions. How can you be sure you know more than they did?

Calendars exist for keeping track of the passage of time, not for predicting the future. The Mayan astronomers were clever, and they developed a very complex calendar. Ancient calendars are interesting to historians, but of course they cannot match the ability we have today to keep track of time, or the precision of the calendars currently in use. The main point, however, is that calendars, whether contemporary or ancient, cannot predict the future of our planet or warn of things to happen on a specific date such as 2012.

I note that my desk calendar ends much sooner, on December 31, 2009, but I do not interpret this as a prediction of Armageddon. It is just the beginning of a new year.

10. What is the polar shift theory? Is it true that the Earth’s crust does a 180-degree rotation around the core in a matter of days if not hours? Does this have something to do with our solar system dipping beneath the galactic equator?

A reversal in the rotation of Earth is impossible. It has never happened and never will. There are slow movements of the continents (for example Antarctica was near the equator hundreds of millions of years ago), but that is irrelevant to claims of reversal of the rotational poles. However, many of the disaster websites pull a bait-and-switch to fool people. They claim a relationship between the rotation and the magnetic field of Earth, which does change irregularly with a magnetic reversal taking place, on average, every 400,000 years. As far as we know, such a magnetic reversal does not cause any harm to life on Earth. A magnetic reversal is very unlikely to happen in the next few millennia, anyway. But the 2012ers falsely claim that a magnetic reversal is coming soon (in 2012 of course) and that this is the same as, or will trigger, a reversal of Earth’s rotational poles. The bottom line is this: (a) rotation direction and magnetic polarity are not related; (b) there is no reason to expect a reversal of magnetic polarity any time soon, or to anticipate any bad effects on life when it does eventually happen; (c) a sudden shift in the rotational pole with disastrous consequences is impossible. Also, none of this has anything to do with the galactic equator or any of the other nonsense about alignments that appears on many of the doomsday websites.

11. When most of the planets align in 2012 and planet Earth is in the center of the Milky Way, what will the effects of this be on planet Earth? Could it cause a pole shift, and if so what could we expect?

There is no planet alignment in 2012 or any other time in the next several decades. As to the Earth being in the center of the Milky Way, I don’t know what this phrase means. If they are referring to the Milky Way Galaxy, we are some 30,000 light years from the center of this spiral galaxy. We circle the galactic center in a period of 225–250 million years, always keeping approximately the same distance. Concerning a pole shift, I also don’t know what this means. If it means some sudden change in the position of the pole (that is, the rotation axis of the Earth), then that is impossible, as noted above. What many websites do discuss is the alignment of the Earth and Sun with the center of the Milky Way in the constellation of Sagittarius. This happens every December, with no bad consequences, and there is no reason to expect 2012 to be different from any other year.

12. When the Sun and the Earth line up on the galactic plane at the same time with the black hole being in the center couldn’t that cause something to happen, due to the fact that the black hole has such a strong gravitational pull?

There is a supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, and like any concentration of mass it exerts gravitational force on the rest of the galaxy. However, the galactic center is very far away, approximately 30,000 light years, so it has negligible effects on our solar system and Earth. There are no special forces from the galactic plane or the galactic center. The only important force that acts on the Earth is the gravitation of the Sun and Moon. As far as the influence of the galactic plane, there is nothing special about this location. The last time the Earth was in the galactic plane was several million years ago. Claims that we are about to cross the galactic plane are untrue.

13. I am scared about the fact that the Earth will enter the Dark Rift in the Milky Way. What will this do? Will the Earth be swallowed up?

The “dark rift” is a popular name for the broad and diffuse dust clouds in the inner arm of the Milky Way Galaxy, which block our view of the galactic center. The entire “galactic alignment” scare is ridiculous. Late in December the Sun is always approximately in the direction of the center of the Galaxy as seen from the Earth, but so what? Apparently the scaremongers have decided to use these meaningless phrases about “alignments” and the “dark rift” and “photon belt” precisely because they are not understood by the public. As far as the safety of the Earth is concerned, the important threats are from global warming and loss of biological diversity, and perhaps someday from collision with an asteroid or comet, not the pseudoscientific claims about 2012.

14. I have heard that the Earth’s magnetic field will flip in 2012 just when the strongest level of solar storms in history is predicted to take place. Will this kill us or destroy our civilization?

Near solar maximum (which happens approximately every 11 years), there are many more solar flares and coronal mass ejections than near solar minimum. Flares and mass ejections are no danger for humans or other life on Earth. They could endanger astronauts in deep space or on the Moon, and this is something that NASA must learn to deal with, but it is not a problem for us. Large outbursts can interrupt radio transmissions, cause bright displays of the aurora (Northern and Southern Lights), and damage the electronics of some satellites in space. Today many satellites are designed to deal with this possibility, for example by switching off some of their more delicate circuits and going into a “safe” mode for a few hours. In extreme cases solar activity can also disrupt electrical transmissions on the ground, possibly leading to electrical blackouts, but this is rare.

The last solar maximum occurred in 2001, so the next one was predicted for around 2012, 11 years later. However, the most recent solar minimum was unusual, with a period of a couple of years with almost no sunspots or other indications of solar activity, so scientists now guess that the next maximum will be delayed, perhaps to 2013. However, the details of the solar cycle remain basically unpredictable.

It is true that the Earth’s magnetic field protects us by creating a large region in space, called the Earth’s magnetosphere, within which most of the material ejected from the Sun is captured or deflected, but there is no reason to expect a reversal of magnetic polarity any time soon. These magnetic reversals happen, on average, only once in 400,000 years.

15. I am confused about a report on the Fox News website that in 2012 a “Powerful Solar Storm Could Shut Down U.S. for Months.” They referred to a report from the National Academy of Sciences that was commissioned and paid for by NASA. If nothing is going to happen as a result of the event in 2012, why would NASA allow such nonsense to be reported?

NASA is pleased with the National Research Council report on heliophysics. As noted, this report includes a worst-case analysis of what could happen today if there were a repetition of the biggest solar storm ever recorded (in 1859). The problem is the way such information can be used out of context. There is no reason to expect such a large solar storm in the near future, certainly not in 2012 specifically. The reference to “the event in 2012” illustrates this problem. There is no prediction of an “event in 2012.” We don’t even know if the next solar maximum will take place in that year. The whole 2012 disaster scenario is a hoax, fueled by ads for the Hollywood science-fiction disaster film 2012. I can only hope that most people are able to distinguish Hollywood film plots from reality.

16. All my school friends are telling me that we are all going to die in the year 2012 due to a meteor hitting Earth. Is this true?

The Earth has always been subject to impacts by comets and asteroids (as has the Moon, as you can see because it has no atmosphere to erode the impact craters), although big hits are very rare. The last big impact was 65 million years ago, and that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. Today NASA astronomers are carrying out the Spaceguard Survey to find any large near-Earth asteroids long before they hit. We have already determined that there are no threatening asteroids as large as the one that killed the dinosaurs. All this work is done openly with the discoveries posted every day on the NASA NEO Program Office website, so anyone can see that nothing is predicted to hit in 2012.

17. If Nibiru is a hoax, why doesn’t NASA issue a denial? How can you permit these stories to circulate and frighten people? Why doesn’t the U.S. government do something about it!

If you go to the NASA home page, nasa.gov, you will see many stories that expose the Nibiru-2012 hoax. Try searching nasa.com under “Nibiru” or “2012”. There is not much more that NASA can do. These hoaxes have nothing to do with NASA and are not based on NASA data, so we as an agency are not directly involved. But scientists, both within NASA and outside, recognize that this hoax with its effort to frighten people is a distraction from more important scientific concerns, such as global warming and loss of biological diversity. We live in a country where there is freedom of speech, and that includes the freedom to lie. We should be glad there are no censors. But if we will use common sense we can recognize the lies. As we approach 2012, the lies will be come even more obvious.

18. Can you prove to me that Nibiru is a hoax? There are so many reports that something terrible will happen in 2012. I need proof because the government and NASA are keeping so much from us.

Such questions should be put to the doomsday advocates to prove that what they are saying is true, not to NASA to prove it is false. If someone claimed on the Internet that there were 50-foot tall purple elephants walking through Cleveland, would anyone expect NASA to prove this wrong? The burden of proof falls on those who make wild claims. Remember the often-quoted comment from Carl Sagan that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

However, I think that astronomers have reached the point where we can offer extremely strong arguments that Nibiru does not exist. A large planet (or a brown dwarf) in our solar system would have been known to astronomers for many years, both indirectly from its gravitational perturbations on other objects and by direct detection in the infrared. The NASA Infrared Astronomy Satellite (IRAS) carried out the first allsky survey in 1983, and several subsequent surveys would also have seen Nibiru if it were there. Further, if a large mass passed through the inner solar system every 3600 years, we would see its disruptive effects on the orbits of the inner planets, and we don’t.

But don’t take my word for it. Just use common sense. Have you seen Nibiru? In 2008 many websites said it would be visible to the naked eye in spring 2009. If a large planet or brown dwarf were headed for the inner solar system in 2012, it would already be tracked by thousands of astronomers, both professional and amateur, all over the world. Do you know any amateur astronomers who are watching it? Have you seen any photos or discussion of it in the big popular astronomy magazines such as Astronomy or Sky & Telescope? Just think about it. No one could hide something like Nibiru if it existed.

19. What about the scary ads for the film 2012? They tell us to look at these Internet sites to verify the doomsday threat.

The pseudoscientific claims about Nibiru and a doomsday in 2012, together with distrust of the government, are being amplified by publicity for the new film from Columbia Pictures titled 2012, to be released in November 2009. The film’s trailer, appearing in theaters and on their website, shows a tidal wave breaking over the Himalayas, with the following words: “How would the governments of our planet prepare 6 billion people for the end of the world? [long pause] They wouldn’t. [long pause] Find out the Truth. Google search 2012.”

The film publicity includes a faux scientific website for “The Institute for Human Continuity”, which is entirely fictitious. According to this website, the IHC is dedicated to scientific research and public preparedness. Its mission is the survival of humanity. The website explains that the Institute was founded in 1978 by international leaders of government, business, and science. They say that in 2004, IHC scientists confirmed with 94% certainty that the world would be destroyed in 2012. This website encourages people to register for a lottery to select those who will be saved; a colleague submitted the name of her cat, which was accepted. According to Wikipedia, creating this sort of fake website is a new advertising technique called “Viral Marketing,” by analogy with computer viruses.

20. Is it possible that the influx of questions you describe is part of some kind of campaign for a book or movie, in the hopes that the volume of denials is taken as more “evidence” that there is a conspiracy?

I ask myself the same questions every day, as the volume of mail I receive about Nibiru (along with various alignments and pole shifts) keeps increasing—now more than 20 per week. Clearly there is money to be made from people’s fear about an approaching doomsday. Many websites are selling books and tapes about Nibiru or even “survival kits.” It is all very sad, given the many real issues such as global warming and the financial collapse on which our attentions should be focused. In the final chapter of a new astronomy book (The Hunt for Planet X) Govert Shilling writes: “There is plenty to do for the debunkers—the archaeologists and astronomers who take a long and skeptical look at the tidal wave of Nibiru nonsense and explain with scientific precision what is wrong with this cosmic fairy-tale. They will have their work cut out in the next few years. And on December 22, 2012 there will be a new pseudoscientific cock-and-bull story making the rounds and the whole circus will start all over again, because no matter how many new celestial bodies are found in our solar system, there will always be a need for a mysterious Planet X.”

Dr. David Morrison is the Director of the NASA Lunar Science Institute and Senior Scientist in the NASA Astrobiology Institute. Dr. Morrison received his Ph.D. in astronomy from Harvard University (where Carl Sagan was his thesis advisor) and has spent most of his career working in planetary science and astrobiology. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the California Academy of Sciences. He is recipient of the Dryden Medal for research of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and the Sagan Medal of the American Astronomical Society for public communication. Morrison is a leading skeptic and proponent of improving science education and literacy. Asteroid 2410 Morrison is named in his honor.

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Written By Sarah Martin
Unless you head for the middle of the jungle or a deserted island somewhere it is impossible to avoid Christmas altogether. I should know because I have spent a lot of time trying. In the past ten years I have spent Christmas in Egypt, Thailand, Tokyo, India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia and now (for the last three years) China.
However, just because it is Christmas it doesn’t mean that there is no alternative to the traditional Christmas day. Many people now are tired of the endless commercialism that Christmas brings and are looking for alternative ways to spend the day. Here are some ideas.

1. Climb Baiyun Mountain or Lotus Mountain. On a day when traditionally everyone eats too much and drinks too much, how better to spend the day than with a nice healthy trek up the mountain? Both places are easy to get to from Guangzhou and you can even take a nice healthy anti-Xmas picnic with you: sushi would work well for this or dim-sum maybe. Definitely no turkey though.

2. Have a movie night. Forget about the traditional ‘White Christmas’ or ‘It’s a wonderful life’ and avoid like the plague anything advertised as ‘a feel good movie’. Horror movies work well with an anti Xmas theme. If you want to acknowledge the season you could try the slasher movie ‘Black Christmas’ (someone is terrorizing a bunch of college students on Christmas vacation). However anything with zombies and lots of death and destruction would work equally well.

3. Want to avoid the ‘traditional’ turkey dinner? How about going for an Indian curry instead? Or maybe Filipino food takes your fancy? Guangzhou is well served with food from all around the world and virtually anything is available. Alternatively, just pick a cuisine that you have never had and give it a try.

4. Travel to Hong Kong for the weekend. It’s not exactly anti-Xmas because you’ll probably find Hong Kong on Xmas overload. However it’s a nice place to spend the weekend. You could even give in to the season completely and spend the day with Mickey and friends at Disneyland.

5. Party! Hold a party and invite people you want to spend time with, so that they in turn also have some refuge from the trap of the traditional Xmas. You don’t have to cook; you can ask everyone to bring something with them. All you have to supply is a nice warm home, maybe a few movies and some music. Maybe add a Play Station or Xbox too if that’s your thing.

6. Sing. KTV offers a good Xmas alternative and it’s easy to avoid the Xmas tunes. If you really have to sing something Christmassy, may I suggest The Pogues: Fairytale of New York (sample lyric: ‘you scumbag you maggot/ you cheap lousy faggot/happy Christmas your arse I pray god it’s our last) or The Flaming Lips: Christmas at the zoo (a song about freeing all the animals at Xmas), Good luck finding either of those in the KTV bars of Guangzhou though.

7. Take a river cruise. You can cruise along the Pearl River, enjoy a few drinks and take in the views. The night cruises are definitely better value than the day ones and Guangzhou can look quite spectacular with the lights reflecting on the river.

8. Dance. Save your energy for the night time and head to the clubs of Guangzhou. There is no shortage of venues to enjoy some music and dancing, whatever style takes your fancy.

9. Discover art. Today would be a good day to visit the Redtory art district, or the Cantonese water town of Xiao Zhou, which has now become a haven for artists, or the sculpture park in Baiyun. You may well be surprised to discover just how much art there is in this city.

10. . Find something you enjoy and spend the day alone doing it. Perhaps you just don’t feel very social. Why not just spend the weekend indulging in something you like to do and not care what everyone else thinks? If you like photography, go out and take pictures. If you like painting, then spend the weekend creating your masterpiece. If you like reading then stock up on good books. If you like playing computer games then switch your phone off and enjoy your favourite game.

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Written By Kerry Naughton

Alcohol, Money and Food

Hmmmm, all I want for Christmas? I was dancing along to the classic hit by Mariah Carey this morning (My annual ritual to prepare me for the festive season) when I got to thinking about, well, gifts! We all have Christmas lists and desires, Christmas can be seductive and often teases these with promises and then snatches them away at the final moment. Well, maybe I’m exaggerating a little, but the point is it’s very easy to get consumed by the material side of Christmas, whereby we all spend far too much money, drink far too much alcohol and eat far too much food. I must admit I quite enjoy the eating and drinking side, it’s only for a couple of days and it gives you a perfect resolution for the New Year, like ‘Stop Eating Cake’.

What about Jesus?

What happened to the magic? Or baby Jesus for that matter? I’ve recently got a little older and have had to come to the realization that Mr. Santa Claus was actually just my mum and dad (way to do role play guys), and it seems that magical side of Christmas and the excitement of wanting to know what gifts I’ll receive has waned. That doesn’t mean I don’t like receiving presents. I do. I also like giving (I don’t know when that happened) and I really enjoy the whole process of choosing, buying and wrapping the gifts.

Friends and Family

It is as if I’m a completely different person to the me that existed 10 years ago. What I want for Christmas now are the simple things; to be surrounded by my friends and family, to have a stress free Christmas (no last minute shopping), to have a few days off from work and to get to see all my family, cousins, uncles and aunties that I don’t get to see very often.

This will be my second Christmas since returning from China (I lived there for a year). Last year I was a bit strapped for cash after returning from my China and Asia adventure so I couldn’t afford to go out and celebrate the festive season in the way that I wanted to. This year however, I’m looking forward to going all out! Parties, food, Santa, you name it! I’m particularly excited about my annual trip to the pantomime on Christmas Eve; it’s a tradition of my mother and I.

A Hong Kong Christmas

I’ve learnt that Christmas is just like any other day if you’re not religious, the thing that makes it different is the presence of your friends and family. Two years ago I spent Christmas in China without my family so I had no presents to open on Christmas day and no Turkey to look forward too.

Surprisingly, I still managed to have a great day. Myself and a certain GetGo editor went to Hong Kong with our Chinese friend and had a different kind of Christmas which started with lunch in Starbucks (very classy). This was by no means our first choice, but due to our poor planning skills we missed the early train to Hong Kong and had to sit around waiting for the next one for the best part of the day. When we finally arrived in Hong Kong we spent over 2 hours searching for our Hostel which upon arrival turned out to be far from what we were expecting. The hostel was being managed by one very chatty Chinese woman who was more like a substitute mom than a hostel manager. I mean, this woman had no boundaries, for example, we’d be getting changed in our very florescent and small room and she would just walk right in and start helping us adjust our clothing. I was in my bra! Then, when we wanted to leave she told us that there was no room key and that she would guard the door! (Which she did; when we got back at 5am, there she was sleeping on a blow up bed outside our door) Erm ok, so off we went to find a restaurant that served Christmas dinner, we eventually found one, however the atmosphere was far from a Christmas one, it felt like a lovers retreat. There was a dance floor filled with couples and the most nauseating and slushy romantic music that I have ever heard. After dinner, we needed to erase this from our memories so we hit the bars and clubs hard and eventually got swept along in the Christmas cheer. So I’ve learnt you can even have a good Christmas without your family and gifts, even if it is a little bizarre. The important thing is to keep the Christmas cheer with you, which can always be helped by a little alcohol. What do I want for Christmas day next year? I want to have a BBQ in Australia, jumping to trance music with Kangaroos. But this year I’ll settle with my family Christmas in Wales.

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Written By Andrew Corless

When I first came to China, I was surprisingly optimistic about finding ample amounts of food to support my vegetarian diet….I WAS WRONG. Sure, there are a lot of vegetables used in Chinese cuisine; however, 9 out of 10 times they are accompanied by a sprinkling of some kind of meat…EVEN IF IT DOESN’T SAY SO ON THE MENU.

So, what to do when you can’t get your point across in a restaurant and you don’t speak enough Chinese to string a sentence together? Go to McDonalds (they have a picture menu for foreigners). At least that’s what I did, and yes the only available option is French fries but when you are on the verge of malnutrition, standards go out of the window.

So there I am, a vegetarian in China, living off McDonalds. It doesn’t do much for the stereotype now does it? Chinese people think that foreigners LOVE McDonalds but in actual fact I HATE the place, before China I hadn’t eaten McDonalds since I was about 12, I’m 26 now.

Thankfully, this diet plan was temporary; I soon became accustomed with the culture, learned more of the language and came across several amazing restaurants that cater specifically for vegetarians…PHEW!

So I had found places to eat, the next thing was to find some friends to go with me. This is a challenge as Chinese people LOVE meat with every meal, in fact not eating meat can actually cast you out from your friends. Food and more specifically having dinner together is a major part of Chinese culture and if you don’t eat meat, meal times can be very awkward and a tad embarrassing.

Firstly, when you say you don’t eat meat, it’s almost like telling your traditional grandparents that you are gay, at first they pretend not to hear it, after a while they acknowledge it but consider it as a phase and finally when you still persist, they introduce you to potential girlfriends to alleviate the problem. Being a vegetarian here is very much like this, ‘I don’t eat meat’ is met with responses like ‘but you eat pork’ or ‘but you eat chicken’ or ‘oh well this dish only has a little meat’ and just when you think you have finally gotten your point across you are presented with a dish with meat hidden inside it; the response of the server? ‘You should try it, it’s a local specialty, and it’s not like other meat’…..But stay calm, there are places where you can meet other like minded people, all you have to do is visit one of the many temples and befriend a monk, failing this there are numerous vegetarian societies online (usually run by foreigners).

To get you started on your quest for vegetarian food, there is a fantastic vegetarian restaurant near the Guangzhou east railway station called 怡新素食(Refreshing Vegetarian Food).  I went there last week and took along two heavy meat eaters to see if I could enlighten them. I couldn’t, but they said it was good!

The restaurant is run by Chinese people which is interesting as I’ve never met a Chinese vegetarian before. Because of this, I decided to have a quick chat with the manager Miss Chai to see what she thought about vegetarian living in China:

Hello, nice to meet you. How long have you run this restaurant for?

Almost 5 years

Are there many vegetarians in Guangzhou?

A lot of local people here are actually vegetarian and they eat here everyday.

Are all of your staff vegetarian?

We don’t force them to be vegetarians, however after several years of working here I believe they will be influenced.

Do you think that the vegetarian diet has many health benefits?

Yes.

Do many foreigners come here?

Lots of Indian people come here.

Do people ever come here accidentally and order meat?

Yes (laughter) however when they receive their food they often think it tastes like meat and comment on how great it is. Those people come again.

Do you think that in the future more and more people in China will become vegetarian?

Yes. Last year there were only 20 vegetarian restaurants in Guangzhou now there are 45.

Do you often try to persuade people to follow a vegetarian diet?

Yes, family and friends. I try to make them aware of the diseases associated with eating meat, also when we go for dinner together, I will always take them to a vegetarian restaurant.

What is your favourite vegetable?

Tofu, because it is the most nutritious.

Have you always been vegetarian?

No, I have been a vegetarian since 2001.

Wow, I was surprised to hear that so many Guangzhou locals are in fact vegetarians, there is definitely hope for the Chinese veggie yet! Realistically though, being a Chinese vegetarian in China has to be much easier than being a foreign vegetarian in China. So, until you have mastered the Chinese lingo, there is always McDonalds.

Address: 林和西路161号中泰国际广场4楼    广州火车东站B出口

161 Linhexi Lu, 4^thFloor, next to Guangzhou east railway station.

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Written by Mike Smith

What’s the difference between a bum & an accepted & lauded bohemian? Talent!

Here is a definition that I found:

A Bohemian (/bəʊˈhiːmɪən) “a socially unconventional person, especially one who is involved in the arts.”

In a nutshell it’s a person usually connected with one of the arts who shuns conventional standards. Free & without a master, Experimental in lifestyle, drugs, alcohol, religion and morality. From Baudelaire & Byron to Jim Morrison & Jimmy Hendrix the art medium might change from words or paint to guitar & voice but the underlying sentiment is the same. Each generation has its own movement from teddy boys to hells angels & from hippies to punks. Each movement producing its own heroes in art which itself contradicts at least one edict of being a bohemian.

Radical Bohemianism

Radical Bohemianism is best explained by looking at the 19^th  century Satanist & author Alistair Crowley, he used the dark side to justify his own weird beliefs. “ Do what thou wilt, let that be the only law” he pronounced. Without regret or a care for legality. It’s a pretty powerful statement & the repercussions most ultimately would be like the character in the Luke Reinhart novel “The Diceman” where the character rolls a dice to decide which of the six predefined he should take. Scary stuff because complete abandon is a vortex to chaos & madness. Therefore bohemianism can only be taken so far & not to its ultimate finish of nihilism.

Socially Accepted Boho’s

There are more socially acceptable Bohemians many of whom have & continue to create great art. Dali, Warhol, Kessey, Huxley, Borroughs, Merry Pranksters, Bacon, David Lynch, even Johnny Depp!! The list goes on forever & will continue to do so as long as there is free thought.

Sadly the PRC isn’t at the top of the list for producing free thinkers because the education system creates minds great at remembering information but bad at free thought. Or perhaps there are more underground or maybe I just don’t get out enough!.

Festivals like Glastonbury & Stonhenge were the great gatherings of the unwashed masses. Off your face in the mud with The Prodigy banging it out. Surrounded by tens of thousands of like-minded “screw work until Monday” hipsters. True bohemians? Maybe not, but who says you have to be a bohemian 24/7… I am a big fan of Tom Hodgkinson’s  ‘The Idler publications’. His books are a smoky pub & a pint; humorous insights in to modern bohemianism & laziness with a great cross referencing to past historical thought & precedent.

My three favourite Bohemians

The first is Abbie Hoffman wrote a book called “ steal this book”  which is a hilarious yet thought provoking treatise on how to reject society yet still get all the fringe benefits without having to work. He founded the Yuppie movement in the 60s in California. I urge you to read his bio on Wikipedia , the dude was awesome.

The second is a painter from my hometown Plymouth, UK. Robert  Lenkiewicz who was a besmocked, paint spattered, galosh wearing, straggle haired bear. He was a Bohemian with a prodigious talent in oil who chose socially questionable subjects as themes for his art, such as the mentally handicapped, homeless, drug addicted, suicide etc. He painted in a renaissance style & I’m sure, had he been drinking buddies with Caravaggio, then his paintings would now be as widely known and respected. I’ve heard of being born before ones time but never after although this offers a good case.

He once painted a huge oil mural on a warehouse wall outside his studio. It depicted a renaissance street parade whose characters were all local faces. As time & weather took its effect on the by then famous attraction he asked & was refused a government grant to buy supplies to restore the painting to its original glory. He then whitewashed the wall and painted three flying ducks. He soon got his money. Incidentally he had a good friend called Diogenes who was a local vagrant. Diogenes died & the artist had him embalmed & kept him in his studio. There was the ensuing case of the Health Department officials raiding the studio but they never did manage to find the old boy. The artist died of a heart attack in 2002 leaving twelve pounds cash. He painted over 10,000 works now considered works of great importance. He also left behind a personal book collection worth over one million pounds.

My last favourite bohemian is Hunter S. Thomson who had a bizarre & hedonistic craziness tempered with truly great humour & political observations. There are books a plenty on this guy who invented a new genre of journalism named Gonzo…so again I urge you to discover him.

I believe that discovering a great artist in any genre is a privilege & like finding a diamond amongst sand. So, hail the unconventional & may your god bless Bohemians forevermore!

Want to see more and experience more? please visit:http://www.beingfunchina.com/magazine/the-getgo-vol-13/now!

Written By: Jason Jeffries

A conservative boy

When I was told the theme of this months issue was Bohemianism, the first thing that entered my mind was a long haired “hippie”, unshaven, sporting glossy eyes under an obviously old beanie. A throw back if you will, clinging to ideals of the flower children of the late 60’s in the United States. Yes, it quickly became evident to me that outside of some preconceived notions, I knew virtually nothing of the subject.  Born and raised by conservative parents in the deep south of the United States, being a registered republican and holding a mostly conservative view point on political issues, I knew writing an informed article on the subject would be a challenge, perhaps even futile.  However, it occurred to me that I wasn’t alone in my initial reaction to the mere word ‘Bohemianism’ in fact, my stereotyping and preconceptions of an actual Bohemian would find themselves right at home among most friends and virtually all family. My mission became clear. I needed a crash course in Bohemianism, and I needed to set out on a quest. A quest to find this mythical being that thus far existed only in my imagination, personal growth (and not to mention my article) depended on it. Perhaps I could even dispel the stigma of the ‘60’s hippie’ that is quite prevalent at least in my circles.

What do you do when you know nothing of a subject? That’s right, you google it.

What is a bohemian?

The American College dictionary defines a Bohemian as “a person with artistic or intellectual tendencies who lives and acts with no regard for conventional rules of behavior”. I couldn’t help but think to myself that I certainly have artistic tendencies, defiantly as a teenager I had little regard for conventional behavior…. could I have been… am I? 19^th century poet George Sterling said there are two elements essential to Bohemianism, the first being devotion to one or more of the seven arts and the second, poverty.  Well now! One… check … and two… check.

Spending a few hours arming myself with new information and a better understanding of the subject (plus a healthy dose of inner turmoil) I set out to find a lair for my subject. Wading through a jungle of sites for Bohemian clothing manufacturers and sellers in Guangzhou (which ironically seems like big business) I found an obscure description of an art gallery/bar that seemed a prime location to investigate. After all, I like art and I like bars, perhaps some fun could be had on this quest for knowledge, and dare I say…self discovery?

Catching a bohemian

Loft 345 was my destination and if not for my friend and photographer Andrey, I may have never found it. Tucked away in an inconspicuous alley, I felt upon arrival my chances of running across what I pictured to be an actual Bohemian were sound. After all, how many places does one go to in Guangzhou where you’re met with graffiti spray painted on the walls? Over the last few years I have taken up painting and in my own opinion and that of friends and family (yes I’m aware these opinions are biased to an extent) I feel that I have ‘some’ talent. This in no way makes me an expert on the graffiti art form, but I must admit that on studying the various graffiti expressions on the walls, I failed to ‘get it’.

It quickly became obvious to me that when I had read the descriptions on the net of an “art gallery/bar”, pretty much what made up the “art’ was the graffiti. Outside of a few paintings I didn’t see that much expression in that form. However, what Loft 345 lacked in the way of artistic expression it made up for in offering up an enjoyable night out without the customary blare of deafening zombie dance beats. Yes, this is a place one could go with a group of friends and actually carry out a conversation, which I did the entire night. A steady flow of westerns streamed in as the evening wore on and I found myself sitting quite cozy in a square shaped huddle of sofas carrying on with people from Russia to France on topics ranging from Vladimir Putin to everyday life in China.

The loft does offer a few activities such as billiards and foosball, which I only glanced at. For me, there was never a dull moment as I frequently found myself surrounded by a different group of people who all seamed friendly and very eager to talk. I didn’t meet anyone who claimed to be an artist or even really appreciate the arts, even on the same miniscule level that I do. I did find out from one at least one regular ‘The Loft’ does have a “spoken word” night on the first Sunday of every month, but he followed that tid bit up with “they haven’t had one in months”. In short, the patrons there whom I spoke to were not present due to their appreciation of the arts, but there for the relaxed atmosphere and camaraderie.

Drinks were decently priced with double shots 20rmb.One bartender who never seemed to get overwhelmed (perhaps his lack of caring allowed him to not succumb to pressure) meant that as ‘The Loft’ filled up, service slowed to a crawl, but he eventually delivered. Music consisted of mostly reggae with a dash of punk rock, always at a comfortable volume that one could make the choice to either get into the music or hold a conversation without yelling directly into the listener’s ear canal.

Revelations?

While there wasn’t any earth shattering revelations for me, no discovering the hidden Bohemian in myself, there was another discovery. An alternative to mainstream Guangzhou nightlife, which that in itself is a bit Bohemian. If you’re searching for an Art gallery Guangzhou certainly has more to offer, but if it’s a night out without dancing and minus the damage to your ear drums you seek, Loft 345 is worth a visit.

All photographs were taken by Andrey Smutkin.

Want to see more and experience more? please visit:http://www.beingfunchina.com/magazine/the-getgo-vol-13/now!