If you are up for a scary/awesome sight and have access to a roof then the mountains to the north of Bei shi qu are on fire. It looks contained to 2 hills so hopefully noone will get hurt.

I recommend the Chinese way. Act really surprised at checkin and start an argument with every airport official in sight. After they've refused to yield repack all your stuff into your 5 bags counting as hand luggage while the plane is being held back for you. After boarding make a big fuzz over why there isn't any room for your 20 kilo carry-ons, then store it in the isle, under your seat and on the lap of the passenger next to you.

Going for broke: keep walking around in the plane untill the stewardess breaks down in tears trying to fasten your seatbelt before takeoff. Then light a cigarette and complain loudly to noone in particular the entire trip.

It will cost you some 3-400 kuai. Don't bother getting anything done back home since they don't accept that anyway. The checkup here takes about 30 mins and includes an x-ray, ultrasound of kidneys and liver, tests of sight and hearing, a questionaire and a urine sample as far as I remember it. Don't show up ill or they might ship you back home.

There should be directions in the other posts but if you take bus 90 to the last station (10 minutes from Think UK) then it is just across the big road on the left outside of the station. Thing is that these markets tend to move around every couple of years -hence this sometimes confusing thread - so you can never be certain it's still there even if you went there last month.

Alyssa: Some stuff is new sure but most of it is cleaned and re-wrapped by the sellers (cheap process here) and they can make things look almost brand new. Noticed how many Chinese people love to keep the plasticwrappings on almost everything new they buy? Uncomfortable and weird yes but they get to sell the sofa looking brand new 5 years later as well.

All in all great for us foreigners who think that quality second hand furniture is awesome. The Chinese aren't really at that stage yet. Buying something others have owned before is strange and a bit of a face-loss.

It's not kept hush-hush as far as I know. The problem for the CCP is that either they let Google leave and risk a backlash from the young generation and an increased awareness of the internet censoring OR they have to lax their censoring a lot to keep Google here. The latter is highly unlikely so Google will probably leave or a compromise will be reached.

Semi-officially China has already called Google a spoiled child in the gov media so don't expect too much improvement in net-freedom.

Either way I don't think the official China will miss Google that much. It is so common here to make things difficult for the multinational companies in order to promote homegrown products and nurse a national industry. Just take a look at the restrictions on foreign movies in Chinese cinemas. They only allow some 20 foreign movies to be screened here yearly and the Chinese filmindustry has boomed in the last decade because of it.

There is more on the Google subject on www.Chinasmack.com or www.Chinahush.com with Chinese and foreigners comments for those of us who aren't that good with the hanzi.