The Olympics

Many of you have asked if I'm heading to the Olympics. The simple answer is no. While I had originally thought it would be great I believe now it would be a challenge. First off you already have 1.3 billion people here! The local demand for tickets is so high that the web sites created to purchase tickets keep crashing!

The other thing that is making the Olympics and just living here in general interesting is the challenges in Tibet. I will try and outline here.

My boss flew over from Chicago a couple weeks back sitting next to the CFO Asia for a major brewery in the states. This guy said that they knew there were problems in Tibet 3-4 months before the actual news broke. He pulled out his computer and showed graphs of sales. 3-4 months back they totally started to nose dive! The unrest had begun but it hadn’t gotten publicity yet. Pretty interesting.

The most interesting thing about Olympic protests, Tibet protests, etc is that China has now put a stop on multi entry visas until at least after the Olympics. They will still do single entry or double entry but no multi entry. For example I have multi entry for 1 year (expires in Dec so I’m ok). I can come and go as much as I want with that Visa. If my Visa was expiring this summer (instead of Dec) I would probably have to come back to US. I know many people in that boat right now. The only way a Visa is being given is with receipt of round trip air tickets as well as confirmation of hotel reservation. This is putting a huge crimp on businesses right now.

Take it one step further and everything French is being boycotted to some extent. Carrefour is the number 2 retailer in world behind Wal Mart is a huge target. It’s funny b/c Carrefour sells many items made in China and they employ Chinese so a boycott of the stores here really isn’t going to do much. Now for French people living here they are having huge problems with their Visas! Basically the word is they are either being kicked out or denied admission altogether even with a valid visa!

All in all this is kind of unifying the Chinese people. They are becoming very patriotic about this, kind of like 9/11 was for the US. They are all rallying behind the government and feel that they will have no problems pulling off the Olympics.

It's an amazing time to be living here for sure!