Bits and Pieces from Around the Web

On the heels of yesterday's news about China's World Cup draw, the team manager (not coach), has called it China's "worst draw ever." This will be China's 8th attempt at qualifying, only once has the team been successful.

In other sporting news, check out some interesting articles on golf in China, as well as a book project on the subject, at Par for China (h/t to Shanghaiist).

A very scary picture is painted of how one goes about setting up a company when challenged with bribery and corruption in smaller towns in China in this article on Danwei. However, I'm left to wonder how much of this bribery would have been necessary and how much of it was just the wrong strategy by the business owners who implemented it. The article seems to state that they never tried taking a more normal path and instead resorted to bribery from the get go.

CLB's entry on advice for anyone who wants to break into the Chinese law field is interesting and mirrors most of what I tell people when I get the same question. Like any specialized area, networking is crucial and keeping up to date on the important changes also can go a long way.

And I'm a day late and dollar short as everyone and his brother has already linked to the NY Times article on Rock in China, but here goes. For my money, the most interesting change over the past 2-3 years has been the diversity of the acts who are coming over. In the past, it used to be limited to the pop "tarts", but now hip hop, hard rock, and alternative are all growing. It would have been interesting if the article looked at Okayplayer's focus on China, considering in the past 2 years Common, The Roots, and Talib Kweli have all made stops here. In any case, here's hoping Jay-Z will try again and this time be allowed to do his big pimpin' in Beijing.