Forget "The Great Firewall of China," please

By Paul Majendie

BEIJING (Reuters) - No more dragons rising. Enough of Beijing as a city of stark contrasts.

Beijing columnist and Internet pundit Kaiser Kuo is on the warpath and his target is the 30,000 reporters descending on China to cover the Olympics.

They outnumber the athletes three to one and he is on a crusade to ensure coverage is not drowned in cliches.

Readers discard your newspaper in disgust, viewers reach for the remote control if that flamboyant color piece goes over the top.

Kuo, who for the past seven years has written a monthly "Ich Bin Ein Beijinger" column for the magazine "That's Beijing," has penned a guide to forbidden cliches.

"I think the highest blood boiler for me is the phrase 'coming-out party'," he told Reuters after writing a tongue-in-cheek column warning the media of the pitfalls of reporting China with a supposedly fresh eye.

He warned that after appearing in 75.4 percent of stories about the Olympics being awarded to Beijing, talk of a 'coming-out party' "now incites English-speaking expats to an ugly violent rage. Use it at your own peril."

He pleads for an end to the city of ying and yang, the sprawling metropolis of startling juxtapositions.