So I’ve not been getting much sleep over the last few nights, though i have been unable to keep awake for the evening games – 3am kick off – as I have to get up at 6 for work.  Next week I think i’ll do an ‘allnighter’ as england are playing in the evening. 🙂 

Chinese TV is usually pretty awful, game shows, talent contests, and ‘historical’ sitcoms from the Chinese Civil War/WW2, depicting the communists as savours.  They love their adverts too, sometimes the breaks can last for ever and with (i suspect) no laws regarding what can be advertised, they try to plug some weird stuff.  From the local hospital, to strange weight loss techniques that are nothing but a fraud (one such is a patch that one puts on the bottom of the foot, clearly a scam)  to herbal teas and medicines.  So I was expecting the football to be interrupted at the very least, but to my surprise, CCTV have done a decent job. 

The coverage is actually pretty good, all of the games are shown live (KO 9pm,midnight, 3am) and full recorded replays the following day.  They have extensive analysis, pundits etc, and seem to know what they are doing.  Most of the games are show on CCTV 5, which is the state run broadcaster’s dedicated sports channel.   Of course everything is in Chinese, which is fine, but it can get tireing after 90 mins of listening to Yue(4) Wei(4)Offside, Tou(2) qiu (2) Header and  jing (4) qiu (2) Goal!

I’m stil trying to figure a way of getting the UK commentary over the web, but as i’m outside of the  UK I need to connect through a proxy and I’m yet to find one that is reliable enough for 90mins 

Just found out how to get this  –  http://www.bbc.co.uk/fivelive/live/surestream.ram