Need2LearnChinese Blog

A list of ticket booths is below. The BBC's Olympic venue map is a great place to start if you don't know the location of an Olympic site. For a map that's less geographically detailed but includes the venues' Mandarin names, check out ChinesePod's Olympics site, where you can also pick up some last-minute Olympic-themed language lessons.

Get there early, and bring your passport and your patience. Cash and Visa cards are the only two forms of payment that will be accepted. The box offices close at 6 p.m., but it's a safe bet that tickets will be sold out long before then.

Beijing's main ticket outlet is on the north side of Beitucheng Road, on the west side of the public transportation parking space. Subway lines 8 and 10 meet at Beitucheng. This booth will sell tickets for events hosted at the following venues:

National Stadium (Bird's Nest)
National Aquatics Center (Water Cube)
National Indoor Stadium
Fencing Hall of National Convention Center
Beijing Wukesong Sports Center Baseball Field

Box offices at football (soccer) preliminaries sites—Shanghai, Tianjin, Shenyang and Qinhuangdao—will only sell tickets for events they are hosting.

According to BOCOG's ticketing site, the following venues will have booths selling tickets only for events that they are hosting:

Olympic Green North venue cluster
Olympic Sports Center venue cluster
Wukesong venue cluster
Laoshan Velodrome
Beijing Shooting Range CTF/Hall
Fengtai Sports Center Softball Field
Capital Indoor Stadium
Peking University Gymnasium
Beijing University of Technology Gymnasium
Beijing Institute of Technology Gymnasium
Beijing University of Aeronautics & Astronautics Gymnasium
Beijing Science and Technology University Gymnasium
China Agricultural University Gymnasium
Triathlon Venue
Shunyi Olympic Rowing-Canoeing Park
Chaoyang Park Beach Volleyball Ground
Beijing Workers' Stadium
Beijing Workers' Gymnasium

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Center Wang Zhizhi was China's top scorer with 18 points. The first Chinese player to play in the NBA, Wang's opportunities will likely dwindle once Yao returns to full strength, forcing him to come off the bench. Yi Jianlian was the team's third leading scorer with 14

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US-based Golf Digest magazine has released its annual list of what it considers to be the China's top ten golf courses. According to the magazine's editors, if you're looking for China's best courses, forget Shanghai, Beijing or Shenzhen – go west to the laid-back city of Kunming.

Sheshan Golf Club was the only Shanghai course on Golf Digest's list, coming in at third best. Kunming, capital of southwestern China's Yunnan province took three of the top six spots on the list. Here are the results:

1. Spring City Golf & Lake Resort (Lake course), Kunming, Yunnan province

2. Spring City Golf & Lake Resort (Mountain course), Kunming, Yunnan province

3. Sheshan Golf Club, Shanghai

4. Shenzhen Golf Club, Shenzhen, Guangdong province

5. Tiger Beach Golf Links, Haiyang, Shandong province

6. Lakeview Golf Club, Kunming, Yunnan province

7. Jian Lake Golf & Country Club, Shaoxing, Zhejiang province

8. Trans Strait Golf Club, Fuzhou, Fujian province

9. Pine Valley Golf Resort & Country Club (Old course), Beijing

10. Mission Hills Golf Club (Norman course), Shenzhen, Guangdong province

Kunming is home to the top two courses – both at Spring City Golf and Lake Resort. Designed by Robert Trent Jones Jr, Spring City's Lake course was named best in China, beating out Spring City's other championship course, the Jack Nicklaus-designed Mountain course.

Kunming reappears at the number six spot on the list with Lakeview Golf Club, which has been the site of the Yunnan stops of the Omega China Tour as well as the Faldo Series Asia.

Shenzhen is the only other city with multiple courses in Golf Digest's top ten – Shenzhen Golf Club was named number four, while Mission Hills Golf Club's Greg Norman-designed course came in tenth.

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Jackie Chan attends the ceremony held to inaugurate the construction of the Jackie Chan Film Art Museum in Shanghai, July 8, 2008. [Photo: xinmin.cn]

Jackie Chan's legendary career will be archived in a new museum for which the star laid the foundation Tuesday in Shanghai.

Chan handpicked the location for the museum, which will be named after him, in the Changfeng Ecology Commercial District in Shanghai's Putuo District, Sina.com.cn says.

The museum will largely be renovated from old factory buildings. When completed on October 1 next year, it will take up about 3,100 square meters.

Visitors will be able to retrace Chan's footsteps from Hong Kong to Hollywood, and navigate through detailed showpieces of Chan from being a Chinese icon, a kung-fu megastar to a charity devotee, Sina says

Also on display will be some of Chan's film awards, as well as costumes and props he has used.

Besides the museum, more side projects have been put on the actor's agenda. According to Chan's Web site, he recently signed a contract in Yunnan Province for a Jackie Chan Peace Garden, which he will cooperate with the local government to promote "Environment, Friendship, and Charity." An earlier report also quoted Chan as saying that he was planning to build a kung-fu school.

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A study released Tuesday by a U.S. research group concluded that China's economy will overtake that of the U.S. by 2035. The report, by economist Albert Keidel of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, also announced that China's economy will be twice the size of the U.S. economy by 2050. Under current market estimates, China's GDP now stands at about $3 trillion, compared to the U.S.'s $14 trillion, reports Rob Lever of AFP. Keidel, a former World Bank economist and U.S. Treasury official, predicts that

China's financial clout will spill into every conceivable dimension of international relations... [the United States] will have an important secondary influence, like Europe, but it will need to compromise, and its sphere for unilateral action will be increasingly curtailed.

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This Wall Street Journal report says an agreement was reached Wednesday that will allow broadcasters to air coverage live from Tiananmen from 6 to 10 a.m. and from 9 to 11 p.m. The agreement also will allow NBC, CBC and others to "roam freely with satellite trucks around Beijing and other cities co-hosting the Games," according to the Journal.

For those of you who like to count things, NBC, the network that owns Olympic rights for the U.S. market, will carry 2,900 hours of Olympic coverage. According to math whiz and USA Today reporter Michael Hiestand, "Those live hours, spread across NBC and its cable TV outlets, top the total U.S. TV hours — 2,562 — for all previous Summer Games combined."

NBC will be distributing programming across its stable of channels, including Oxygen (female-oriented), MSNBC (business-focused) and Telemundo (Spanish broadcast). It will be using the Olympics as a test ground for new media, experimenting with updates and broadcasts via mobile and online platforms. U.S. Olympic coverage has historically been loaded with heartwarming profile stories that can frustrate die-hard sports fans who would rather watch actual games than a tearjerker piece about an athlete's childhood. Maybe all this coverage will allow viewers to see more of what they want.

Also announced, and of more interest to those of us on the mainland, CCTV's Olympic channel says it will air its coverage without its usual 30-second delay, so it can coordinate with global feeds.

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Zheng was again the unseeded underdog, this time facing the 15th seeded player. She notched only two aces to Szavay's five. But she was patient, precise and unflappable, coming back from a 4-1 deficit to win the second set. On the last point of the match, she volleyed her opponent deep into her forehand corner before laying a hard shot to Szavay's backhand side.

Zheng will play Nicole Vaidisova at 9:00 p.m. Shanghai time. CCTV's Golf and Tennis Channel is airing games on the mainland.

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Hong Kong investment fund manager Zhao Danyang (赵丹阳) made the winning bid of $2.11 million in a charity auction on Friday for the privilege of having lunch with Warren Buffett. Zhao, the general manager of Pureheart Asset Management, won the right to dine with Buffett, now chairman of conglomerate holding company Berkshire Hathaway, on a day of his choosing at the famous Manhattan steakhouse Smith & Wollensky. Just who is this Zhao Danyang? An interview with Zhao conducted by Euromoney in 2006 describes him as "a refreshingly frank and down-to-earth figure in an industry still dominated by overseas-educated princelings and the politically connected elite." Tariq Ali of Street Capitalist reports that Zhao is a former factory owner who began his investing career in 1996. Ali points out that the philosophy of Zhao's first fund, the Pureheart China Growth Investment Fund, shows similarity to the ideas expressed by Buffett and Charlie Munger, vice-chairman of Berkshire Hathaway. Just how much knowledge will Zhao gain from his meal with Buffett, ranked the world's #1 billionaire by Forbes? Last year lunch with Buffett, which is an annual offering at the charity auction for the Glide Foundation, went for $650,000 to value investors Mohnish Pabrai and Guy Spier. Pabrai said it was "worth every penny."

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