Just moments ago, one of my colleagues spotted US Secretary of State and former ice-skater Condoleeza Rice downstairs at the ice-rink beneath our office tower in China World. She was engaged in some kind of presentation to the massed, ice-skating youth of Beijing. Possibly trying to explain the whole Iraq thing by way of a catchy Beauty and the Beast style musical number performed with a guy in an enormous, poofy, Rumsfeld outfit and a chorus line of women in desert-camo leotards. 

Bill Clinton three weeks ago, now Condi on Ice. I miss all the good celebrity pol sightings.

No doubt a full accounting of today's proceedings will be in tomorrow's China Daily. Stand by for an update.

Update 1: No ice capades. Just a press conference and the usual diplomatic banalities, as reported by the China Daily. Seems like a missed opportunity to me.

Update 2: Here she is with the skating youth of Beijing, courtesy of Bingfeng Teahouse.

Update 3: Finally, here we go. Official rinkside report from China's finest English language news source. Hearwarming and uplifting. And yet, the article seems to make no mention of Condi's criticism of the EU's plans to lift its embargo on arms sales to China, made at a press conference the same day. Fortunately the New York Times fills this inexplicable gap. (And, via the AP, also the one where Rice suggests tougher sanctions on North Korea, also somehow excluded from the China Daily's roundup coverage on her Beijing Press conference, linked under Update 1, above.)

Look for a future post deconstructing the China Daily's reality bubble. As a PR man, how can I resist? Of course, conservative wags might also suggest that the NY Times has its own reality bubble, but let us not quibble, lest we invoke here the specter of Fox News. There are, in the end, degrees of such things, and China Daily outclasses most American competition in this regard.