My friend, a postgraduate student who studied human resources at a prestigious university, recently told me the tragic story of 'E', a classmate of hers.
From the scandalous and serious to the downright silly, there's been a massive increasing in the number of Beijingers flexing their legal liberties to solve domestic issues.
Let me paint a picture for you, a typical scene you might see on any Chinese street. There's a guy with a smoldering cigarette in his mouth.
Once upon a time, when mobile phones were rare, I made my first landing in Beijing and was not sure what I would find. I had imagined rice fields, Kungfu warriors and millions on bicycles.
My first experience on a bicycle in Beijing was not a moment of Zen. As I pedaled by Tiananmen toward Houhai, I found myself shoved over by bikes pulling carts, honked at by impatient drivers, and was nearly sandwiched between two buses at one point.
With the World Cup just ended and Beijing bars still full of Ronaldo, Maradona and Landon Donovan jerseys, sports merchandisers and marketers are blowing their own vuvuzelas in celebration of the growing Chinese consumer market.
If you have read any of my previous comments, you will know that I exist in China as a bit of an exception - I am too lazy to learn the language and too laid back to care what other people think.
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, crack up the air conditioner, break out some ice and cool the beers. The great Beijing bake has begun.
A couple of months ago, the newspaper headlines read "A ticking time bomb", referring to China's runaway housing market. More recently, the newspapers warned "Home sales plummet" and predicted sharp increases in property taxes.
Beijing, Athens and Rome have much in common. All have lots of history and remain the political and cultural centers of their countries.
Watching gay men and lesbians in China struggle for basic rights and dignity is like hurtling through a time warp to the past.
I come from a big clan that likes to apply the term "family" very generously. For many Beijingers and other Chinese urban dwellers, a family dinner means sitting down with mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, perhaps an uncle or two, and maybe some in-laws. But back home in the northeastern countryside, getting the family together meant I would be greeting relatives as tenuously tied to me as my grandmother's cousin's grandchildren or my mother's brother's brother-in-law.
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