Category — Beijing

Giant TCR full carbon monocoque (Asia Racing Team colours and edition) road bike for sale.

CLICK HERE FOR PICTURES AND EXTRA INFO ON THE BIKE.

Dura-Ace shifters, derailleurs, F&R brakes, with FSA carbon cranks, Ritchey DS Aero 16 front wheel and DT-Swiss RR 1.2 rear.

9 gears rear derailleur with 12-27 Dura-Ace cassette, double 39-54 up front.

Guizzo handlebars (42 but I think it is 44 cm wide), guizzo 100mm stem. Bike size is Medium (50 cm, but this is a compact frame, it is more like a 53cm standard frame – you will need to use the Effective Top Tube length for sizing) see this review full details on it.
Comes with very good Wellgo SPD road pedals (fits standard SPD cleats). Saddle is Giant ART – remarkably useable and very tough yet remains comfortable on long rides (100K + OK).
Asking price is 6000 RMB. Full details available here including detailed pictures of the bike.
Original price in 2004 was near 30000 RMB with lesser components (Tektro brakes, ART wheels – very flexy budget wheels) but was bought for 24000 – it was used by ART for the Tour de Qinghai.
Would fit a rider in the 175cm range – I am 182 and the bike feels too small.

Here is Giant’s archive page for the TCR

If you need info on how to measure yourself, here is a very useful calculator from Competitive Cyclist.

The bike is very agile and nimble, very fast esp on descents and seems to express itself best on rolling hills terrain where it can really allow you to power up hills at speed. Very good climber esp for a lighter rider . Total weight about 8Kgs.
Thanks for reading, feel free to contact me if interested or for more info. Bike is near Chaoyang Park in Beijing.

Patrick

Patrick [at] dean.be

13436447203

I came across this video from Dan Chung of the Grauniad and think it is sensational, not only because of the parade, but because of how he did it.

China’s 60th Anniversary national day – timelapse and slow motion – 7D and 5DmkII from Dan Chung on Vimeo.

see original in vimeo here

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The newly opened Hatsune restaurant at the Village in Sanlitun is most probably going to become one of the dining hotspots there, as they have actually managed to really produce the goods in a setting that is slightly unusual (seas of dangling (paper?) fishes from the ceiling) and in one of the few places in Beijing that seems to be a moderately successful ‘shopping mall experience’. [Read more →]

Bread:

ityms: 300 grams of bread flour, 100 grams of spelt (epautre) flour, 100 grams of oat flakes (oatmeal should be good as well) non instant variety, around 50 grams of leainsaadmehl or seeds (sunflower, linseed, sesame etc..) . 40-50 cl of warm (hand warm) water, 1 tablespoon of sugar or honey to add to water, 2 teaspoons dried yeast. Extra flour (and olive oil in option if you want) for kneading.
Mix warm water with dried yeast and sugar/honey to activate it, let it wake up. [Read more →]

Finally, we get some Olympic pictures up!

The Czech Republic suffers on the course. Time for a beer

Over 4 months after the actual event, here is the first batch, from the mens’ Mountain Bike competition. [Read more →]

Here are the pix from that race, there are some 300 or so uploading so it will take a while, esp if the bugger crashes

Jacob doing the rounds being chased by Hu Chen in the Trek Xcross 6th edition

I know there are zillions of places out there about eating in Beijing and how great it all is. So I keep on asking myself why is it that when asked ‘where do you want to go and eat tonight?’ I have *no answer*, I just don’t feel like there is anywhere that I can say – ‘yes let’s go there’. Nothing where you can eat reasonably good food, that is not more than 75 kuai/person (and let me tell you that this is a *lot* of money for most Beijingren who will eat for about 10 kuai or preferably less, usually max 20 kuai, including beer), that is not (ab)using oil that has been thrice recycled or taken from a sump, and where MSG and salt are used sparingly.

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Quick rant about our Xmas dinner at Feichang Thai (Very Siam) here in Beijing as it justs sucks to have to eat such fake thai when the place *was* so good in the past. Nothing is permanent here, and here is further proof of Beijing’s rapid descent *down* the culinary scales as people forgo authenticity in lieu of crass and in your face ‘trendyness’. It seems it is easier to make money selling crap wrapped up in gold leaf rather than making the effort of doing the real thing.

My wife asked me soon after we ordered ‘why are there so many dongbeiren serving us here?’ and it all clicked into place. I was the only paleface in the joint, last year it was full of them. It has changed its target clientele and is now aiming for the clueless hip ‘nouveau riche’ chinese and serves up Thai dishes that taste as if designed by a Dongbei chef. From the deep fried mandarin fish in sweet and sour sauce that looks and tastes exactly like a poor man’s song shu gui yu (but it ain’t cheap) to the Tom Yum soup that is tasteless and totally lacking in anything except maybe the name of the packet that it came out of to the masaman curry that is just totally weird and bears no relationship to the real thing. Oh and the ‘vietnamese spring rolls’ even had a layer of sugar to crunch on and no mint at all. Looked and tasted just like pillows. For 360 kuai per couple (and with only 1 beer! imagine how much if you buy drinks for two!) it is just a total waste of your money. Cool for dating clueless Dongbeiren though Looks nice, but it is all so shallow.

If you want real thai in Beijing, try somewhere else! (Purple Haze?)

This site is getting very slow. This is nothing to do with the provider, but all to do with me. So far MT has proven pretty good for my current modest usage of it, in particular it allows much better customisation of the PHP/Apache interface, so you can actually use a php.ini or .htaccess file with most of the options. SSH access is great and works very well, only pity is I could not find a way to bulk FTP my old site across using the default MT tools.

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