Co-Asiapundit Gordon, of the Horse’s Mouth, today posted photos of Chengdu skateboarders. I enjoy the blogs of all co-Pundits and hope to meet all of them for beers eventually. Now, I would like to meet Gordon even more so. I assume the photo of the skateboarder, and admission of being a skater, implies a liking of three-chord punk rock.

Segue to something more intellectual, according to the Christian Science Monitor, Beijing has now endorsed skating and other xTreMe sportz:

BEIJING – It might be hard for even the most lateral thinker to see how the Lions Club, skateboarding, and "American Idol" could have anything in common. But maybe they do in China, where all three are among popular culture imports that receive direct or indirect backing in a carefully crafted state practice of opening up - as well as shutting out. . .
Extreme sports is another example of what’s in. With the 2008 Beijing Olympics coming, and with skateboarding a possible medal competition, the Association of Extreme Sports in China invited about 75 Chinese kids to Beijing for the televised June 12-13 competition. There are some 6,000 serious skateboarders in China, and only slightly fewer in-line skaters. BMX biking is just catching on, the extreme sports group here estimates.
"China still doesn’t have that many skateboard parks, but I was pretty shocked at the number of boarders," says Reno-based Jimmy Coleman of Action Sports Association, who helped run the event. "And they are almost up to par, I mean competitively."

If I were a consultant, I’d tell my clients that a country of 1.3 billion with only 6,000 serious sk8ers has xTreMe growth potential. Of course if I were a consultant I’d have a tendency to exaggerate. I’m a journalist, that means I call consultants to get xTreMe exaggerated quotes. (Hopefully finding equally xTreMe contrarian quotes for ‘balance’ though)