I noticed a bunch of signs like this lately saying "Zuojiazhuang". The first word "zuo" is my family name ("Chor" was transliterated from Cantonese; the Mandarin pronunciation is "zuo".) The phrase "Zuojianzhuang" means "Chor Family Village". It turns out there's a section in northeast Beijing, between the Second and Third Ring Roads (just north of Sanlitun, if you know Beijing) that is called Zuojiazhuang. My driver thinks there must have been a rich family named Zuo that used to live there a long time ago. I'll have to see what else I can learn about this.

You can see the location here in Chinese Bing maps.

Pretty cool.

We have these lovely blossoms growing in front of my team's building in Beijing (it's called the Sigma Building). Nice that nature found a way to brighten up normally dreary Beijing.

Chinese people in China (vs. overseas Chinese) seem to have a love affair with wearing pajamas in public, despite government pressure to stop. Someone once explained to me that only richer people can afford pajamas, so they're kind of a sign of affluence. Anyway, I saw this guy today playing badminton in a hutong (old alley neighborhoods) in his pajamas. Maybe his neighbors think he's cool, but I think he looks silly.

I've regularly seen covers like this protecting wheels on parked cars in Beijing, but I've never known what they were for.

Today, my friend Stacy pointed out to me that they're to keep dogs from peeing on the wheels! Sure enough, a high percentage of uncovered wheels looked like this on the street we were on today. Who lets their dog pee on cars? Gross.

Saw this restaurant sign today in a hutong (traditional alley/neighborhood) in Beijing. I don't think they really serve dog (as a meal), but the sign is a bit confusing. The Chinese words don't shed any additional clues (it just says "Small Love").

One of these things is not like the others...

We've been eagerly awaiting the opening of Fatburger in Beijing for sometime. Last night, we saw the restaurant -- it opens tomorrow! It's been hard to find a good burger in Beijing, so we're looking forward to their opening.

Happy days...

Location: Grand Summit in the Liangmaqiao Diplomatic Residence Compound, across from the Kempinski Hotel (and right next to the Liangmaqiao subway stop!)

Press release from Fatburger

Here's a sign near our apartment in Beijing. Apparently, the construction project behind this sign isn't really the best.

I saw this ad near our apartment in Beijing. Not quite sure what they're really advertising, but it looks like the robot had a tough night of drinking and is not talking on the porcelain telephone to God. ("Oh God, <cough cough> oh God...")

As you've all undoubtedly heard by now, Google has decided to (someday) to stop filtering search results for sensitive content in China. They're apparently trying to help people in China circumvent the firewall through the ads they show too. As you can see below, there's an ad in the China Daily for a VPN (virtual private network -- a way to "tunnel" your internet connection out of China through another country). Even better, the ad was shown on an article about this spat between Google and the Chinese gov't (which the Chinese gov't doesn't seem to care too much about.)

Coincidence?

Although I thought winter had past (we had a few warm days already), we got a bunch of icy snow last night. After the snow here, armies of people set out to clear the sidewalks using shovels and brooms. Here's a shot of the action in front of my office building this morning. You can see the big brooms made of clumps of twigs tied together. Not many people use sand and salt on sidewalks because of the cost. (The crews who clear the roads use snowplows, sand, and salt -- more like the crews in the US.) I saw this scene repeated dozens of times in front of shops and office buildings on my way into work this morning.