Our secret weapon - Fast Food

If China gets too far ahead of us in the race for world domination, never fear....we are unleashing our secret weapon....American fast food, and the huge amount of meat on each on the sandwiches.

Here are actual advertisments seen by the McDonalds and Burger King near work in the past few weeks. First, the McDonald's new offering, which looks like something that would be on my plate during a 4th of July celebration:



And then the BK offering - the Quad!

How does this actually work?

The video below is from a typical intersection in Guangzhou. Traffic is coming from my left - and then also from my right, meeting at a right angle at the intersection.

To start - you see the traffic coming from the left. However - look at the traffic light above the yellow bus. It's green - and that's for the traffic from the right. As I pan the camera, you can see the traffic from the right moving - and you can see the light green as well for the traffic coming from the left.

The one thing to know is that the traffic from the right can not go straight; it's a one-way street coming at the intersection.

So we have green lights all over the place, cars heading straight and turning right into the same lanes - and it all somehow seems to work. Fascinating if it's not so scary.

Hometown boy at the Masters

By now, I'm sure many of you have heard about the 14 year old phenom from China that will be playing in the Masters this week. His name is Tianlang Guan. Gene Wojcechowski came to China in March to meet the kid. Here's the link to the story - it is a must read.

The kid is from Guangzhou! How about that! The picture of the airport check in is from the Guangzhou airport, and it is the exact same checkin booth that we use all the time (because we are "Sky Priority" for Delta, which is a China Southern partner). I left for Vegas on Tue, March 12; it looks like he left for the US on Wed, March 13.

Some comments about Gene's article:

- His description of Chinese Vodka (called "Bai ju", or literally, White Alcohol) as jet fuel is spot on.
- Do the Chinese lift their shirts and scratch their bellies in public? Is Tiger the favorite this week?
- The article talks about Tianlang going to the Zhixin high school, the best public high school in Guangzhou. I asked my driver about the school.
"Oh yes, good school"
Can anyone go there?
"Uh....no. only government and businessmen go there"
You mean their kids?
"Yes. Only government families and rich businessmen families can go there. You have to pay to get in....100,000 RMB" (about $15,000)

So, I wonder how "public" was translated....