The Week August 20, 2010

Naked vacations

In this battered global economy, the vacation to take in 2009 was one where you saved money by staying at home. That was the "staycation." But according to a new USA Today report, this year you don't even have to wear clothes for a "nakation." A recent TripAdvisor survey says more people this year than in previous years are willing to take off their clothes at a beach or resort that allows you to bare it all. And some nude resorts are reporting higher profits. Is 2010 the year of the "nakation"? Let's ask our senior correspondent on travel trends, Chris Clark, who is on location.

A dirty diet?

Is eating dirt good for you, or just a dirty diet? That's the question being posed on the Internet this week at sites such as weirdasianews.com. Eating dirt is an ancient Chinese custom associated with Tomb Sweeping Festivals. But some scientists believe that eating at least parts of soil might be just as healthy as eating vegetables that grow in it. But still, there's the fact that it doesn't taste very good.

Kungfu Expo

Call it Kungfu Week at the 2010 World Expo under way this summer in Shanghai. There's so much to do, and so much to see! So let's go Expo! This week, more than 100 sculptures of Chinese-American martial arts master and movie star Bruce Lee, who died in 1973, are on display. That's because this week is Foshan Week at the Expo. The city in Guangdong province bills itself as the home of Chinese kungfu.

In fact, in Foshan, they're building a 30-meter-tall statue of Bruce Lee they hope will become a world-famous landmark. That's a lot bigger than the Bruce Lee statue on display on the harbor front in Hong Kong.

Little boxes

How affordable is your apartment? Huang Rixin this week introduced his capsule apartment 3.0 in Beijing. It's bigger than the capsule apartment 2.0 he introduced earlier this year. It rented for about 200 yuan, about $30, a month. But the 2.0 was too small to meet new per-person rental codes. Rixin's new capsule apartment 3.0 meets the minimum requirement that an apartment offer at least 10 square meters in space per resident. But is there an even newer, smaller, cheaper and more portable way to live in Beijing? The Week investigates …

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About the broadcaster:

Renee Haines is an editor and broadcaster at China Daily. Renee has more than 15 years of experience as a newspaper editor, radio station anchor and news director, news-wire service reporter and bureau chief, magazine writer, book editor and website consultant. She came to China from the United States.