1st day in Beijing

Safely arrived to Beijing around 2pm and jumped into taxi heading for hotel.
It is already so humid, no wind and smoggy haze covers the city and can not even see the forward. how can taxi driver run so fast?

Anyway, it's been 6 years since my last trip to Beijing, everything changed! I can not even recognize the street of Wang Fu Jing. Taxi driver showed me all the builidings that are in middle of constructing and said proudly these are going to be all for olympics. I wonder if they can really finish on time? seems like still need a lots of work to do.
He is a typical local Beijinren, talking about how Beijing is great and has a longest history that Shanghai can not even compete. He often mentions about Shanghai, seems like very concious about it and that is what usually get the reaction of each Shanghai and Beijing. It isn't changed from 6 years ago.

I joined from group interviews in the evening.
There were 2 interviews (the first group is 16yrs old high school girls, and the second is 24yrs old who has worked for a couple of years.)

1st interview:
3 high school friends enjoy playing badmington. I was very surprised that they look very young, definitely younger look than 16yrs old in Japan.
They all wore same school uniform like a bukatsu training wear with sky blue color. No fashion conscious at all even they love shopping, of course no make up, no hair arrangement. They look just very young like 13 years old.

Badmington seems to be quite popular, 3 of them all play because it's covnenient, you don't need any big place to play, influenced by parents and grand parents.
They categorized the sports as soft and hard. Soft sports like dance and badmington which women enjoy and easy to learn. But for Hard sports like football and basketball, it is more for men. Sports to men is a big of deal, but not for women. Seems like it needs more challenge and different level of motivation and think that different creature is playing like these sports. They enjoy watching the basketball game, but have never seen any of women actually playing it, so the doors for this sports seems to be higher too. They said they want to change the situation. They want doors more open to women as well for a new challenge.

One of girls said that sports to her has to be enjoyable too, not just "big challenge or big deal", she wants to socialize people through sports, that is why she is more interesting in dance lately. She mentioned the name of dancer from Hong Kong who inspired her a lot.

2nd interview:
They are fashion editors and event organizer who are all gym-goers who go to gym at least 2times a week. They go to the same yoga class.

Gym is a big trend in China , it becomes the place where you can get to see what is new and spend a time with friends.
Now the local gym is getting too popular, and all the machine is fully packed and no space to work out. The quality of the facility is very low too, there is no education for instructor or gym staff so that people use machine without any instruction. (instruction often written in English, so no one understands.)
* There are 2 kinds of gym: local gym is super cheap like $100 - $200 per year, and these girls called other higher standard gym as Nike gym where the entrance fee is higher and more exclusive type of gym.

They all wore same style, colorful polo shirts like pink and yellow and jeans with knee-length, and sandals. No make up, but adding something like necklace.
They look very feminine, but it is amazing that they know athletes names so well, mentioned Jordan, Kobe, Rooney, Sharapova, Zheng Jie, Yao Ming, etc. whom they think are great athletes. And they can also identify each brand such as Nike and Adidas. (They know Sharapova looks great with Nike wears so that their image of Nike is good design and innovative. Stella’s Adidas is nice, but they can not afford it.)
In the fact, they mostly buy the sportswear through online-shopping because it is very cheap.

Interesting point we found:
We found there is a big generation gap between 80's and 90's.

When we asked both "what is their goal?", "What do you want to become?", 24yrs old women were all no reaction, looked very at loss to answer what the answer is while 16yrs old said very clear what they want to become.
We first thought it is because teenager still do not face the reality and these working women have more experienced both enjoyable and tough moment to live in reality.
However, there was a background of cultural revolution (1966 - 1976) behind and it infulences the way of thinking in 80's generation.
The cultural revolution happened when their parents were teenager and the parents became lots of fear and afraid to do things they want. Their mind was closing and this influenced a lot to chilren who were born in 80's having lots of pressure from parents and fear that they can not fail and has to be succeed and get wealthy.
But the parents for 90's are more open-minded, very optmistic, and well motivated. They want to suceed their lives and they spend lots of money on children to become successful.
So the children in 90'have been grown up without any negative thoughts and hesitation, are always let to do whatever they want to do. That is how the difference of the reaction is. Very interesting.

(a photo with nike aphq and shanghai)