Last weekend a couple things were going on in Shanghai. Andy was in town and had the weekend off, so I meet him after he got off work on Friday night and had dinner together at a Japanese restaurant. He was shocked when I first opened my mouth to order in Chinese (though not very good Chinese), because the last time he had seen me was seven months ago. It’s barely noticeable to me because its slow and incremental, but I’ve improved a lot in that time and now can get by pretty well interacting with people in Chinese.
On Saturday we saw a lot of the city and did quite a bit of shopping. We were on the streets much earlier than when most stores open, so we spent the early morning walking around new and old parts of central Shanghai, including the new skyscrapers around People’s Square, the old two-story stone houses in Xintiandi, and the run-down, local neighborhoods around the touristy Old Quarter and Yu Yuan Garden. We saw the same little shops and businesses – noodle restaurants, barber shops, bike repair shops, tobacco vendors – over and over again. When we came upon a street full of fresh produce, seafood, and meat, the first thing sight we saw was a butcher chopping a chicken’s head off and draining the blood into a bucket before tossing it into a pot of boiling water. It’s very different on the streets of China, all normal to me now, but it was fun to see Andy’s culture shock and his interest in every little aspect of daily life.
Inside the Old Quarter, we waited in line for over an hour to buy a couple servings of xiao long bao, the Shanghai specialty of soup dumplings. The long wait was livened up by watching all of the tour groups shuffle around in big herds, and we were both interviewed by a marketing researcher, and then pestered with questions by an eager young Chinese guy. I get lots of attention, but even more when I’m with other foreigners. Andy and I seemed to be pretty popular.
When we started to make our way to an antiques market, the first taxi we saw was a three-wheeled motorcycle with a little bench in the back. It didn’t take long to realize we were both thinking, “sweet, let’s do it!” so we immediately hired the driver to take us to the antiques market. We later took some pictures by the river and then went to shopping in a big store… I can’t say the name of the place because it will give away the contents of many Christmas gifts.
That evening I met my roommate and about 18 of our friends for dinner. He only recently was able to check out of the Chinese hospital where he had been receiving treatment for his TB and get permission to return to his home country. (I got another TB test that weekend, by the way, and am still TB free!) We were there until the place closed and we all said our goodbyes before he flew home the next day.
On Sunday Andy and I took a day trip to Suzhou, a medium-sized city (5 million to Shanghai’s 18 million) roughly half an hour away by train to the southwest. We took another pseudo-taxi from the train station. This time it was an old guy with a bicycle rickshaw. It was a rusty old single gear bicycle, and with the two of us on the rear bench we were going along at about walking speed, until we reached a bridge and the poor guy had to get off and pull us up and over the bridge.
Our first stop was a silk museum, were we saw lots of old silk clothing and looms and a large, flat basket of leaves where hundreds of pasty white little silk worms were munching away. They were funny little things with six little feet near their heads that they use to hold a leaf, and then they nibble from side-to-side, making little half circles in the leaf. Like all worms, they have several hearts (or simple artery pumps, rather) that you could see rhythmically pulsing under their pale skin. It was a fascinating site to see this ugly little worms turning green leaves into beautiful silk (and feces).
Our next taxi ride was a regular taxi, probably an old VW, and the driver dropped us off on a street with plenty of good restaurants. We vacillated between a few before settling on one serving food from the southern Hunan province. Little did we know what we would discover on the menu. In the picture-filled English menu there was lots of good pictures and descriptions of dishes for adventurous carnivores, such as duck gizzards, “duck cooked in soil sauce,” hotpot with pig intestines, and turtles, both large and small (baby turtles). On the Chinese menu only there were two hotpots with dog meat. Finally, there was a simple vegetable dish with the most shocking name imaginable, “Fuckness w/ eggplant.”
It was hard to control our laughter (to the point of tears in our eyes, it was a good laugh), we attracted a few stares, and then were disappointed to learn that they were out of the fuckness with eggplant and that we could not keep the menu, despite Andy’s steady pleas.
We browsed some silk shops, a book store, pet stores, an antiques store, and saw a few canals and lots of rundown housing, and then got lost after walking for miles around the city. Minutes after Andy said in exasperation, “My dogs are barking, I don’t think I can walk much longer,” we came upon a foot massage parlor. Another spontaneous, “what the hell - let’s do it!” decision and we both found ourselves reclined in armchairs with our shoes off about to get our first ever foot massage. Two sister, Xiao Lei and Da Lei, spent 45 minutes soaking, moisturizing, kneading, and massaging our calves and feet. Most of the time we were gritting our teeth from the pain (it sometimes hurt a heck of a lot) or laughing from the ticklishness of the whole ordeal. And the two sisters were hilarious. They rarely get any foreign customers, and only from nearby countries such as Japan and Russia. Most of the time we were able to communicate in Chinese, and even when we couldn’t, they always understood our yelps of pain or our laughter from the ticklish sensations (or from the whole absurdity of a getting a foot massage in this little place).
Those are just some of fun stories and adventures from the weekend. I took some pictures on my iPhone, so the quality isn’t so great.
Lastly, the Milwaukee Bucks played an exhibition game in China the week before. And who knew their 2008 draft pick, Joe Alexander, spent part of his childhood in China and speaks Mandarin?
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Changzhou Sports Stadium
Several sports complexes have been built recently in Changzhou. A soccer stadium with a track, a badminton arena, and an exhibition center were recently finished. Another arena for tennis is still under construction. An electronics convention was held last week in the exhibition center and the China Master’s badminton tournament was held in the badminton arena two weeks ago. They were all built in preparation for Changzhou’s hosting of the 2010 Jiangsu province sports meet.
The stadium was used for the first time a couple weekends ago to hold an opening ceremony for the 13th Changzhou sports event. Every school and city seems to have an annual sports day or weekend now. Our school’s 11th sports day is Thursday this week.
Our staff or foreign teachers were invited to watch an opening ceremony for the stadium. It was only a couple days before hand that we found out we were also going to march in the ceremony. We have Saturday classes every other week but, including last Saturday, but I was excused from all of them for the event. It felt like a college football game day as thousands of people, mostly local students, stalled traffic walking through the streets towards the stadium. We were seated inside the stadium, called the Bird’s Egg because it’s similar in shape to Beijing’s Bird’s Nest, only with a smooth and solid silver-colored exterior. We weren’t inside for very long because we were soon taken outside to line up for the parade.
All sorts of civic groups and schools and performers were gathered outside and in the tunnels of the stadium. The police were in their uniforms, the students in their track suits, the performers in all kinds of colorful outfits, and then about 80 foreigners dressed in everyday street clothes. We really stood out from the other groups who all dressed the same and had practiced marching in order. We were a disorganized mix of business people, teachers, and high school AFS students waving our home country’s flags and snapping pictures as we marched around the track.
We entered the stadium behind a several groups of police officers and military and in front of students representing each of the city’s districts. Over 60,000 roared as we shuffled around the track. Hundreds of balloons were released, and then birds, and then several hot air balloons flew over the stadium. We went back into the stands to watch some performances and hundreds of people in the far stands held up colored signs that together made different pictures. It was both impressive and humorous and very Chinese.
Pictures here.
The stadium was used for the first time a couple weekends ago to hold an opening ceremony for the 13th Changzhou sports event. Every school and city seems to have an annual sports day or weekend now. Our school’s 11th sports day is Thursday this week.
Our staff or foreign teachers were invited to watch an opening ceremony for the stadium. It was only a couple days before hand that we found out we were also going to march in the ceremony. We have Saturday classes every other week but, including last Saturday, but I was excused from all of them for the event. It felt like a college football game day as thousands of people, mostly local students, stalled traffic walking through the streets towards the stadium. We were seated inside the stadium, called the Bird’s Egg because it’s similar in shape to Beijing’s Bird’s Nest, only with a smooth and solid silver-colored exterior. We weren’t inside for very long because we were soon taken outside to line up for the parade.
All sorts of civic groups and schools and performers were gathered outside and in the tunnels of the stadium. The police were in their uniforms, the students in their track suits, the performers in all kinds of colorful outfits, and then about 80 foreigners dressed in everyday street clothes. We really stood out from the other groups who all dressed the same and had practiced marching in order. We were a disorganized mix of business people, teachers, and high school AFS students waving our home country’s flags and snapping pictures as we marched around the track.
We entered the stadium behind a several groups of police officers and military and in front of students representing each of the city’s districts. Over 60,000 roared as we shuffled around the track. Hundreds of balloons were released, and then birds, and then several hot air balloons flew over the stadium. We went back into the stands to watch some performances and hundreds of people in the far stands held up colored signs that together made different pictures. It was both impressive and humorous and very Chinese.
Pictures here.
Saturday, October 04, 2008
Nanjing
I went to Nanjing for a few days during the holiday with three other teachers who work at a university in Changzhou. It was extremely crowded wherever we went – in the city the “Golden Week” sales brought tons of people out shopping and outside of the city when we hiked around Purple Mountain, the roads were packed up with tourists, taxis, and tour buses.
We visited the Nanjing Massacre Museum and Memorial. It was renovated a couple years ago. The events in Asia before and during World War II, outside of the United States and Japanese conflict, were relatively unknown to me. The history of the Japanese occupation of China was well documented. A timeline with pictures and newspaper articles traced the Japanese army as they moved west, through many places now familiar to me, including Taicang and Changzhou (which fell on November 29th).
On December 13th, 1937, the Japanese army reached Nanjing, which at the time was the base of the Kuomintang and the capital of the Republic of China. The museum houses artifacts and bones of the victims, news reports and diaries, including some by western teachers and professionals, and photographs, many of which were taken by the Japanese army. A lot of anger and resentment still linger over the massacre, and some of those emotions show up in the descriptions in the exhibits.
On National Day, October 1st, we climbed part of Purple Mountain, which is a big hill in an enormous park next to the city. We also visited Sun Yatsen’s mausoleum. He’s regarded as the father of modern China, so it was only appropriate to visit him on China’s national holiday, except for the dense crowds that day.
The rest of the week has been pretty slow. I have a cold and it’s rainy so I have done a whole other than study and read. A number of people stayed home because traveling at this time is not ideal (everyone has the same week off).
We visited the Nanjing Massacre Museum and Memorial. It was renovated a couple years ago. The events in Asia before and during World War II, outside of the United States and Japanese conflict, were relatively unknown to me. The history of the Japanese occupation of China was well documented. A timeline with pictures and newspaper articles traced the Japanese army as they moved west, through many places now familiar to me, including Taicang and Changzhou (which fell on November 29th).
On December 13th, 1937, the Japanese army reached Nanjing, which at the time was the base of the Kuomintang and the capital of the Republic of China. The museum houses artifacts and bones of the victims, news reports and diaries, including some by western teachers and professionals, and photographs, many of which were taken by the Japanese army. A lot of anger and resentment still linger over the massacre, and some of those emotions show up in the descriptions in the exhibits.
On National Day, October 1st, we climbed part of Purple Mountain, which is a big hill in an enormous park next to the city. We also visited Sun Yatsen’s mausoleum. He’s regarded as the father of modern China, so it was only appropriate to visit him on China’s national holiday, except for the dense crowds that day.
The rest of the week has been pretty slow. I have a cold and it’s rainy so I have done a whole other than study and read. A number of people stayed home because traveling at this time is not ideal (everyone has the same week off).
Monday, September 29, 2008
The Brewers clinch the NL wildcard
I didn’t pay any attention to this year’s baseball season until early September, and to my surprise, when I first checked the MLB standings the Brewers were above .500 and had a comfortable lead in the wildcard race. Then they started their late season slide, fired their manager, and slipped from the top spot in the wildcard standings. I thought they were done for, but they surprised me once again and made it to the postseason for the first time since 1982.
Perhaps the two biggest events in Wisconsin sports, Brett Favre retiring (only to unretire and be traded) and the Brewers making the playoffs, both happened while I was overseas. Both events were inevitable and the speculation and interest intensified each year about the Brewer’s success and Favre’s career. It’s been a big year in Wisconsin sports.
Perhaps the two biggest events in Wisconsin sports, Brett Favre retiring (only to unretire and be traded) and the Brewers making the playoffs, both happened while I was overseas. Both events were inevitable and the speculation and interest intensified each year about the Brewer’s success and Favre’s career. It’s been a big year in Wisconsin sports.
Historic space walk
An interesting event was recently going on in China… or rather, in outer space, but it was closely watched by many in China. The country’s first space walk was completed successfully and people everywhere tuned in on TVs and on the Internet to watch. I found out about the time of the launch through a chain text message. It is putting people in a patriotic mood, probably not unlike what the 1969 moon landing did for Americans, and just in time for the P.R.C.’s 59th anniversary on Wednesday.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
September
The past month has been pretty up and down with little time to relax and sit down to reflect, so blogging hasn’t been a priority.
I moved into my new place and started teaching a new semester of classes four weeks ago. I have a pretty light load of classes so I’ve taken up some tutoring work, Chinese lessons with a tutor, and some sports. Most of my classes are math classes, only one is an English class, and all are with middle school students. Teaching math is a nice change; I find it more interesting and easier to prepare for, though there was some adjustment in figuring out what the kids know and don’t know, and how to teach things that I learned ten years ago in a simple and understandable way.
I bought a new Giant road bike for about $100 and met a young guy at a small bike shop (there’s only three places that sell road bikes in the entire city) while looking at bikes. He owns several nice bikes and introduced me to a group of young people who do group rides and join mountain bike races around the area. I’ve also played some soccer and started a basketball tournament for the students at school. I went through a couple difficult weeks with little free time or energy to keep up on my running, but I did sign up for the Shanghai marathon, which is two months away so I should focus on running much more now.
One of my two roommates had a bad cough a couple weeks ago and went to the hospital to find out that he has tuberculosis. It’s one of those things that you hear about but never expect to happen to you. It’s also one of those diseases that has plagued humans for ages and you easily forget that it is still around in the 21st century since we have so little firsthand experience with it. So it’s a huge shock when it affects someone you know. He spent two weeks in the hospital before being able to part of each day and will likely go back home in another month or so. He’s able to get out of the hospital for part of each day now but is weak from the medication and limited in his diet and activities and has go back to his dumpy hospital room every night.
It was depressing to see someone’s life turned upside down so abruptly and face so much treatment and an extended hospitalization. It put a damper on our moods as others who live and work with him wondered how the heck he got TB and if we were going to end up like him. Everything has brightened up and improved lately, however. A friend from Beijing visited last weekend. School and work has become a stable routine, the weather has cooled down, I’m able to focus more on Chinese and the marathon, and starting today we have an eight day break for the Chinese National Day on October 1.
I moved into my new place and started teaching a new semester of classes four weeks ago. I have a pretty light load of classes so I’ve taken up some tutoring work, Chinese lessons with a tutor, and some sports. Most of my classes are math classes, only one is an English class, and all are with middle school students. Teaching math is a nice change; I find it more interesting and easier to prepare for, though there was some adjustment in figuring out what the kids know and don’t know, and how to teach things that I learned ten years ago in a simple and understandable way.
I bought a new Giant road bike for about $100 and met a young guy at a small bike shop (there’s only three places that sell road bikes in the entire city) while looking at bikes. He owns several nice bikes and introduced me to a group of young people who do group rides and join mountain bike races around the area. I’ve also played some soccer and started a basketball tournament for the students at school. I went through a couple difficult weeks with little free time or energy to keep up on my running, but I did sign up for the Shanghai marathon, which is two months away so I should focus on running much more now.
One of my two roommates had a bad cough a couple weeks ago and went to the hospital to find out that he has tuberculosis. It’s one of those things that you hear about but never expect to happen to you. It’s also one of those diseases that has plagued humans for ages and you easily forget that it is still around in the 21st century since we have so little firsthand experience with it. So it’s a huge shock when it affects someone you know. He spent two weeks in the hospital before being able to part of each day and will likely go back home in another month or so. He’s able to get out of the hospital for part of each day now but is weak from the medication and limited in his diet and activities and has go back to his dumpy hospital room every night.
It was depressing to see someone’s life turned upside down so abruptly and face so much treatment and an extended hospitalization. It put a damper on our moods as others who live and work with him wondered how the heck he got TB and if we were going to end up like him. Everything has brightened up and improved lately, however. A friend from Beijing visited last weekend. School and work has become a stable routine, the weather has cooled down, I’m able to focus more on Chinese and the marathon, and starting today we have an eight day break for the Chinese National Day on October 1.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
One year in China
I'm now into my second year here. I arrived on a Monday afternoon one year ago today - August 27, 2007.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
The last of the Olympics
The Olympics are finally over, Beijing can breathe a big sigh of relief, and the television stations can go back to showing… highlights and reruns of the Olympics. It never ends! Well, there is somewhat of a break from the Olympics and most things are back to normal, but it’s really more of an gradual moderation of Olympic mania during the interlude between the closing ceremony and the kickoff of the Paralympics next month. In a way, I’m glad to get out of here soon, before the traffic and air quality reverts (deteriorates) back to the norm (the rule banning half the city’s cars – about two million – from driving every day will be lifted in a month).
The third and final weekend of the Olympics was another eventful several days. I tutored a few more times after my Chinese class ended, and started on some of the things that I had not gotten around to doing yet. I also saw three events over the final three days of the Games.
I was offered a ticket to some water polo games Friday night but it conflicted with the mountain bike event that I planned to go see on Friday afternoon. On Thursday there was a heavy rainstorm and I learned that the mountain bike race was rescheduled for Saturday morning so I got to go see water polo after all, another sport that I had never seen before in person. My roommate’s friend had two extra tickets, and we showed up at the pool together to meet him, while both of had no idea who was playing. It turned out to be the men’s semifinals, with the USA team playing for the chance to go the gold medal game.
The guy who gave use the tickets was a former college water polo player, and he upgraded our seats as soon as we got into the venue, so we were seated in the section of family and friend’s of the American team. I saw the end of a game between Germany and Greece, who were playing to advance to the 7th and 8th place game, and then I watched Hungary defeat Montenegro in a very close game. Hungary is the best team in the world and have won more gold medals than any other country in the sport so they were surprised to find themselves behind early in the game. It was a really close game and the players got pretty physical and rough with each other. In the end, Hungary won 11-9.
The last match of the night was the USA versus Serbia. The American team was ranked 7th coming into the Olympics and had a great tournament, winning all but one game. The Americans were up by just one point at halftime, but built a solid lead in the second half and came away with a 10-5 win. It was a blast cheering them on with dozens of other Americans and watching the players and their families and girlfriends celebrate after their huge win.
On Sunday morning, their successful run ended and the US lost to Hungary 14-10 in the gold medal game. Hungary won their ninth gold medal, while Serbia beat Montenegro (they used to be a single country until two years ago) to win the bronze medal.
On Saturday morning, I took the subway to the southwest side of the city, were the BMX track, mountain bike course, and velodrome were all built for the Olympics. I got a ticket for the women’s final cross country race from a Chinese friend for face value, which was only ¥30 (about $4.5 USD). There were several preliminary races to decide the mass start in the final race. About 30 riders raced six laps, which took nearly two hours, and the medals went to riders from Germany, Poland, and Russia.
Spectators were able to hike around the hilly and densely forested course to see the riders from almost anywhere along the course. It was a normal looking new-growth forest and often times you would find yourself deep in the trees and unable to see any sign of the city around the park. I haven’t been in that kind of setting in a really long time. It was, however, highly wired, as there were TV camera towers in some places, cameramen seated next to the course in other places, cables crisscrossing the ground, and even some cameras zipping back and forth on wires above the trees and others secured to tree branches, turning and zooming so they must have been remotely control by someone in a media room somewhere.
The riders quickly thinned out after the first lap and I was able to watch them go by in five different places, including some steep climbs and descents. Some riders were going extremely fast downhill and others seemed to struggle in the heat and were trudging along with great difficulty. After the leaders went by for the fifth time, the two guys I came with grabbed me to go find the finish line. It was pretty crowded there yet I was able to get a good spot right in front of the finish line and watch the first dozen or so riders finish, including the three medal winners who raised their bikes over their heads to celebrate.
The medal ceremony followed and I had a good view of that as well. We were kicked out before the men’s final race later in the day so we walked around the area and saw the other two venues, for the BMX and track cycling competitions, from the outside, stopped at a Trek store, which was a pleasant surprise to find, and ate at a restaurant in a huge housing development for the Capital Steel factory workers (it was an entire neighborhood built by the enormous Capital Steel company, and even the metro line was initially a private line for the company and it’s workers decades ago.)
On Sunday morning I headed out the door at 6 a.m. to go downtown. I parked my bike outside of a metro station on the northwest side of the city and had a detailed plan to race around the city and catch the marathon race at four different spots. I wasn’t sure if the timing would work, or if I would get lost or find myself stuck on the wrong side of a closed road, which is what held me up during the women’s marathon, but in the end, everything went smoothly.
Seeing Beijing early in the morning was nice, and the excitement around the race got me going at that early hour. It was fairly cool and the sky was clear and spotless; the air quality was excellent after the heavy rain on Thursday. I went to a metro station at the south end of Tiananmen Square, only to find that the entire square and the streets around it were closed so I couldn’t get very close to the start, which was near the northeast corner of the square. The route runs a couple of blocks east of the square, then turns south and goes through a big park before looping back to Tiananmen and then goes to the northwest, passing through the area where I live. Just before the race got underway at 7:30 I had to readjust my plan and I jogged east until I ran into a closed street and happened to get there just before the race arrived. I saw the runners go by in one big pack and several smaller chasing groups at the two kilometer mark, six minutes into the race.
I ran back to the south end of Tiananmen, where the first runners went by the ten kilometer point in just under 30 minutes (6.2 miles in 30 minutes!). Half a dozen African runners and one Spanish guy were in the first group and smaller groups, which included the three American runners, followed soon after them.
I hopped on the subway and went northwest, where the subway line goes above ground and I could see the subway train overtaking the helicopters that follow the runners. I jumped on my bike and went to a street in between my apartment and Tsinghua University, this time staying on the east side of the road, where I could quickly head to the stadium and see the race just before it enters the Bird’s Nest. Just three runners were out in front this time, about ¾ of the way into the race, looking strong and still running at a blistering pace. The morning air had warmed up considerably under the glaring sun. Samuel Wansiru of Kenya would soon push the pace even further and break away for good. I stuck around to watch a few more runners and they all looked pretty beat.
I grabbed my bike and quickly pedaled east towards the stadium, trying to beat the helicopters as they looped south to follow the leaders on their last 10-12 kilometers. When I reached the wide boulevard south of the Bird’s Nest, I settled in for one last glimpse of the runners. Just south of the stadium – I would guess one mile – Samuel Wansiru came by at just under two hours. Everyone roared but he seemed to pay no attention to us and kept running hard towards the stadium. He would finish in 2 hours 6 minutes and 32 seconds to set an Olympic record. I saw him briefly at four different points, for maybe one minute total, but I can say I saw a record being broken. It was an impressive performance, the whole race was fun to watch, and witnessing the best runners in their world running their hardest was incredible. It was definitely cool to experience some of the race in person.
There were a couple more great performances left to watch in the Olympics, including the USA men’s basketball team getting back to winning gold in a close game against Spain, and the USA men’s volleyball team winning an exciting gold medal game against Brazil. The closing ceremony was pretty good, too, and now it’s nice to came back down to earth after two exhilarating weeks.
Pictures are available here:
Water polo
Mountain biking
Men’s marathon
The third and final weekend of the Olympics was another eventful several days. I tutored a few more times after my Chinese class ended, and started on some of the things that I had not gotten around to doing yet. I also saw three events over the final three days of the Games.
I was offered a ticket to some water polo games Friday night but it conflicted with the mountain bike event that I planned to go see on Friday afternoon. On Thursday there was a heavy rainstorm and I learned that the mountain bike race was rescheduled for Saturday morning so I got to go see water polo after all, another sport that I had never seen before in person. My roommate’s friend had two extra tickets, and we showed up at the pool together to meet him, while both of had no idea who was playing. It turned out to be the men’s semifinals, with the USA team playing for the chance to go the gold medal game.
The guy who gave use the tickets was a former college water polo player, and he upgraded our seats as soon as we got into the venue, so we were seated in the section of family and friend’s of the American team. I saw the end of a game between Germany and Greece, who were playing to advance to the 7th and 8th place game, and then I watched Hungary defeat Montenegro in a very close game. Hungary is the best team in the world and have won more gold medals than any other country in the sport so they were surprised to find themselves behind early in the game. It was a really close game and the players got pretty physical and rough with each other. In the end, Hungary won 11-9.
The last match of the night was the USA versus Serbia. The American team was ranked 7th coming into the Olympics and had a great tournament, winning all but one game. The Americans were up by just one point at halftime, but built a solid lead in the second half and came away with a 10-5 win. It was a blast cheering them on with dozens of other Americans and watching the players and their families and girlfriends celebrate after their huge win.
On Sunday morning, their successful run ended and the US lost to Hungary 14-10 in the gold medal game. Hungary won their ninth gold medal, while Serbia beat Montenegro (they used to be a single country until two years ago) to win the bronze medal.
On Saturday morning, I took the subway to the southwest side of the city, were the BMX track, mountain bike course, and velodrome were all built for the Olympics. I got a ticket for the women’s final cross country race from a Chinese friend for face value, which was only ¥30 (about $4.5 USD). There were several preliminary races to decide the mass start in the final race. About 30 riders raced six laps, which took nearly two hours, and the medals went to riders from Germany, Poland, and Russia.
Spectators were able to hike around the hilly and densely forested course to see the riders from almost anywhere along the course. It was a normal looking new-growth forest and often times you would find yourself deep in the trees and unable to see any sign of the city around the park. I haven’t been in that kind of setting in a really long time. It was, however, highly wired, as there were TV camera towers in some places, cameramen seated next to the course in other places, cables crisscrossing the ground, and even some cameras zipping back and forth on wires above the trees and others secured to tree branches, turning and zooming so they must have been remotely control by someone in a media room somewhere.
The riders quickly thinned out after the first lap and I was able to watch them go by in five different places, including some steep climbs and descents. Some riders were going extremely fast downhill and others seemed to struggle in the heat and were trudging along with great difficulty. After the leaders went by for the fifth time, the two guys I came with grabbed me to go find the finish line. It was pretty crowded there yet I was able to get a good spot right in front of the finish line and watch the first dozen or so riders finish, including the three medal winners who raised their bikes over their heads to celebrate.
The medal ceremony followed and I had a good view of that as well. We were kicked out before the men’s final race later in the day so we walked around the area and saw the other two venues, for the BMX and track cycling competitions, from the outside, stopped at a Trek store, which was a pleasant surprise to find, and ate at a restaurant in a huge housing development for the Capital Steel factory workers (it was an entire neighborhood built by the enormous Capital Steel company, and even the metro line was initially a private line for the company and it’s workers decades ago.)
On Sunday morning I headed out the door at 6 a.m. to go downtown. I parked my bike outside of a metro station on the northwest side of the city and had a detailed plan to race around the city and catch the marathon race at four different spots. I wasn’t sure if the timing would work, or if I would get lost or find myself stuck on the wrong side of a closed road, which is what held me up during the women’s marathon, but in the end, everything went smoothly.
Seeing Beijing early in the morning was nice, and the excitement around the race got me going at that early hour. It was fairly cool and the sky was clear and spotless; the air quality was excellent after the heavy rain on Thursday. I went to a metro station at the south end of Tiananmen Square, only to find that the entire square and the streets around it were closed so I couldn’t get very close to the start, which was near the northeast corner of the square. The route runs a couple of blocks east of the square, then turns south and goes through a big park before looping back to Tiananmen and then goes to the northwest, passing through the area where I live. Just before the race got underway at 7:30 I had to readjust my plan and I jogged east until I ran into a closed street and happened to get there just before the race arrived. I saw the runners go by in one big pack and several smaller chasing groups at the two kilometer mark, six minutes into the race.
I ran back to the south end of Tiananmen, where the first runners went by the ten kilometer point in just under 30 minutes (6.2 miles in 30 minutes!). Half a dozen African runners and one Spanish guy were in the first group and smaller groups, which included the three American runners, followed soon after them.
I hopped on the subway and went northwest, where the subway line goes above ground and I could see the subway train overtaking the helicopters that follow the runners. I jumped on my bike and went to a street in between my apartment and Tsinghua University, this time staying on the east side of the road, where I could quickly head to the stadium and see the race just before it enters the Bird’s Nest. Just three runners were out in front this time, about ¾ of the way into the race, looking strong and still running at a blistering pace. The morning air had warmed up considerably under the glaring sun. Samuel Wansiru of Kenya would soon push the pace even further and break away for good. I stuck around to watch a few more runners and they all looked pretty beat.
I grabbed my bike and quickly pedaled east towards the stadium, trying to beat the helicopters as they looped south to follow the leaders on their last 10-12 kilometers. When I reached the wide boulevard south of the Bird’s Nest, I settled in for one last glimpse of the runners. Just south of the stadium – I would guess one mile – Samuel Wansiru came by at just under two hours. Everyone roared but he seemed to pay no attention to us and kept running hard towards the stadium. He would finish in 2 hours 6 minutes and 32 seconds to set an Olympic record. I saw him briefly at four different points, for maybe one minute total, but I can say I saw a record being broken. It was an impressive performance, the whole race was fun to watch, and witnessing the best runners in their world running their hardest was incredible. It was definitely cool to experience some of the race in person.
There were a couple more great performances left to watch in the Olympics, including the USA men’s basketball team getting back to winning gold in a close game against Spain, and the USA men’s volleyball team winning an exciting gold medal game against Brazil. The closing ceremony was pretty good, too, and now it’s nice to came back down to earth after two exhilarating weeks.
Pictures are available here:
Water polo
Mountain biking
Men’s marathon
Monday, August 18, 2008
Liu Xiang is out
I heard the news when walking through a subway station Monday evening. People were staring at television monitors, stunned into silence. China's most popular athlete, Liu Xiang, dropped out of the hurdles event during the first round with a hamstring injury. The 110 meter hurdles was the most anticipated event of the Games because Liu was expected to go head-to-head with the Cuban runner who beat his world record earlier this year. More importantly, he was going to defend his 2004 gold medal in this event, which was the first track gold medal won by a Chinese male athlete. I felt bad for him because of the immense pressure he was under and now he has suffered from a common injury at the worst possible moment and everyone is devastated.
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Olympic events
I bought two tickets to a beach volleyball event off the Internet a while ago with some help from a Chinese friend. The event was Saturday night and was the first time I've attended a sporting event in China. The venue is a temporary stadium that was put up in a parking lot in Beijing’s largest park. Although there’s no real beach in Beijing, the setting of the beach volleyball arena was pretty nice.
You can see my pictures here.
I went with an American student I met through Chinese classes and initially we couldn’t believe we were at an Olympic event. We sat in the 11th row and later moved down the 6th row while watching a total of five matches. There was a sixth, but five hours of volleyball was enough. An American pair played in the first match, beating a team from the Netherlands. It was the first of three women’s matches, followed by matches between Germany and Cuba and then Brazil and Georgia. The two Georgian players are originally from Brazil and later this week they played a team from Russia.
The first men’s match was an American team versus a Latvian team. The two Americans were ranked second in the world and were a seemingly perfect pair – a shorter guy with years of experience and outstanding defensive skills, and a younger guy who is 6’9” and was a dominating blocker and attacker. The two Latvian guys were young, both 23 years old, and were very similar players, both with good all-around skills. The Americans started off strong but showed lackluster play through much of the match while the Latvians were always tenacious and energetic. It was a thrilling match and the Latvians were able to pull off an upset. We were more happy to see a thrilling game and see such spirited play from the Latvian team that we didn’t care that the Americans lost. In the next game a Swiss pair beat two experienced players from Argentina, including one who is the only player to compete in beach volleyball at all four Olympic Games that have included the sport.
On Tuesday afternoon I went to the subway station near the Water Cube and Bird’s Nest with my roommate and a Chinese friend. This spot has become the unofficial gathering point for ticket scalpers and we wanted to see what was available. There were really expensive tickets for popular events like basketball, soccer, and diving. It was impossible to find tickets to one widely popular sport – ping-pong. Tickets to final events were going for a lot of money – over $100 USD for a fencing final later that night and over $1000 for the 100 meter final in men's track.
We had no luck getting reasonably priced tickets from the serious scalpers until two Europeans approached us and said they couldn’t go to an event later that night and had to get rid of a pair tickets to two handball matches. Handball happened to be one of the sports we were most interested in seeing. I met an American guy who was attending his fourth Olympics and he said handball was his favorite sport, so it was near the top of my list. We offered ¥100 for each (about $14) and snapped them up as quickly as possible. They were pleased to sell the tickets to us because we were excited for the chance to see handball and told them we wouldn’t resell them.
Not long after, a Danish guy and then a German woman who were looking to buy handball tickets to watch their home countries play offered us several times the price we paid for them, but we turned them down. We still needed a third ticket and almost bought one from another Dane who offered us one for ¥400 but we decided to try our luck closer to the handball venue. On our way there we found a Chinese guy who had two tickets and was asking ¥300 for each; we got him to sell us one for ¥200. Our Chinese friend had low hopes of attending an event because prices were outrageous for so many events. She balked at the handball tickets because ¥100 means a lot more to her than it does to me, but my roommate and I didn’t want her to go home alone and miss out so we bought the third ticket for her. It was well worth it because she was ecstatic and came close to tears.
Handball turned out to be even better than we expected (pictures here). We saw two back-and-forth games full of action and high-flying goals. It was a really small arena packed with fans from the four countries playing that night. We knew nothing about handball and it was the first time any of us ever watched a full game. In the first game Denmark played South Korea. Denmark is one of the gold-medal favorites so we assumed they’d win.
The two teams had very different playing styles. The Danes were big and had some extremely powerful shooters and passed a lot. The Koreans were smaller and didn’t pass nearly as much, but they were faster and pulled off some highly coordinated attacks. They made a few tricky goals by leaping at the goalie and drawing him out with a fake throw only to softly float the ball over his head. They also scored the best goal of the night. It was like an alley-oop – one player passed the ball from one side of the goal arc to the far side (except for the goalie, no player from both teams can enter the goal arc until the ball first enters that area) with a hard bounce pass. A teammate on the opposite side anticipated the pass and leapt into the arc, caught the ball as it bounced up and turned and threw it in the goal before his feet touched the ground. Denmark was up more often than not, though never by more than three points. It was extremely close throughout the second half and Korea scored a goal in the last ten seconds to win 31-30.
Germany and Iceland played in the second match and we all thought that Germany looked like the better team. It was close in the first half but the Germans fell apart and they couldn’t stop a couple Icelanders who had flawless games and seemed to score at ease. We were surprised once again as the Iceland team won the second game.
It was a really cool atmosphere; the arena was very intimate – no more than 6,000 seats – and loud because of the rabid fans from each of the four countries. A few members of the Chinese men’s handball team sat a few rows ahead of us during the first game and a dozen or so Danish and Korean players sat in front of us to watch the second game. Some Danish fans near us knew a bunch of the players personally. And the games were non-stop action and fun to watch. There was lots of passing like in soccer, lots of scoring like in basketball (though only by single points), and it was very physical. The rules seemed to allow for a lot more contact than basketball does, but when a foul was called (using yellow or red cards), a player was given a 7 meter penalty shot. Those were cool to watch because the player would stand on a line and do several fake throws to get the goalie to jump before falling forward and whipping the ball towards the goal. I don’t think the U.S. has a team and it’s unfortunate that the sport is not more popular in the States because I wish I had more chances to watch and play the sport.
Like everyone else, I have watched a number of past Olympics on television, however, I’ve never given much thought to what it is like to see one in person and I never thought I’d have the chance to do just that so soon. It has turned out to be much cooler than I expected. There are so many visitors from around the world, which is a novelty after living here for almost a year and having very limited contact with foreigners. It makes me appreciate the multiethnic qualities of large American cities because it’s not usually that way here and all Chinese all the time gets old (I'd say the same for small town America). By the way, demographers project that the U.S. will no longer have a majority ethnic group in about 35 years.
There is a lot going on, from country-specific events sponsored by the embassies and various other groups, big corporate events like the Coca-Cola one where I saw the opening ceremony, and all the media (I’ve never seen more cameras before), and athletes (I've seen buses full of athletes and cyclists riding the streets around the Olympic village). And you get to attend events and watch sports that you’d never think of watching in person, not to mention see those sports played at the highest level by the world’s best athletes. Over 16 extraordinary days you are in the middle of history in the making (if only I could go to a swimming or track event and witness a world record-breaking performance), and the whole time people around the world are watching intently.
If you have any interest, make plans for London 2012 soon!
You can see my pictures here.
I went with an American student I met through Chinese classes and initially we couldn’t believe we were at an Olympic event. We sat in the 11th row and later moved down the 6th row while watching a total of five matches. There was a sixth, but five hours of volleyball was enough. An American pair played in the first match, beating a team from the Netherlands. It was the first of three women’s matches, followed by matches between Germany and Cuba and then Brazil and Georgia. The two Georgian players are originally from Brazil and later this week they played a team from Russia.
The first men’s match was an American team versus a Latvian team. The two Americans were ranked second in the world and were a seemingly perfect pair – a shorter guy with years of experience and outstanding defensive skills, and a younger guy who is 6’9” and was a dominating blocker and attacker. The two Latvian guys were young, both 23 years old, and were very similar players, both with good all-around skills. The Americans started off strong but showed lackluster play through much of the match while the Latvians were always tenacious and energetic. It was a thrilling match and the Latvians were able to pull off an upset. We were more happy to see a thrilling game and see such spirited play from the Latvian team that we didn’t care that the Americans lost. In the next game a Swiss pair beat two experienced players from Argentina, including one who is the only player to compete in beach volleyball at all four Olympic Games that have included the sport.
On Tuesday afternoon I went to the subway station near the Water Cube and Bird’s Nest with my roommate and a Chinese friend. This spot has become the unofficial gathering point for ticket scalpers and we wanted to see what was available. There were really expensive tickets for popular events like basketball, soccer, and diving. It was impossible to find tickets to one widely popular sport – ping-pong. Tickets to final events were going for a lot of money – over $100 USD for a fencing final later that night and over $1000 for the 100 meter final in men's track.
We had no luck getting reasonably priced tickets from the serious scalpers until two Europeans approached us and said they couldn’t go to an event later that night and had to get rid of a pair tickets to two handball matches. Handball happened to be one of the sports we were most interested in seeing. I met an American guy who was attending his fourth Olympics and he said handball was his favorite sport, so it was near the top of my list. We offered ¥100 for each (about $14) and snapped them up as quickly as possible. They were pleased to sell the tickets to us because we were excited for the chance to see handball and told them we wouldn’t resell them.
Not long after, a Danish guy and then a German woman who were looking to buy handball tickets to watch their home countries play offered us several times the price we paid for them, but we turned them down. We still needed a third ticket and almost bought one from another Dane who offered us one for ¥400 but we decided to try our luck closer to the handball venue. On our way there we found a Chinese guy who had two tickets and was asking ¥300 for each; we got him to sell us one for ¥200. Our Chinese friend had low hopes of attending an event because prices were outrageous for so many events. She balked at the handball tickets because ¥100 means a lot more to her than it does to me, but my roommate and I didn’t want her to go home alone and miss out so we bought the third ticket for her. It was well worth it because she was ecstatic and came close to tears.
Handball turned out to be even better than we expected (pictures here). We saw two back-and-forth games full of action and high-flying goals. It was a really small arena packed with fans from the four countries playing that night. We knew nothing about handball and it was the first time any of us ever watched a full game. In the first game Denmark played South Korea. Denmark is one of the gold-medal favorites so we assumed they’d win.
The two teams had very different playing styles. The Danes were big and had some extremely powerful shooters and passed a lot. The Koreans were smaller and didn’t pass nearly as much, but they were faster and pulled off some highly coordinated attacks. They made a few tricky goals by leaping at the goalie and drawing him out with a fake throw only to softly float the ball over his head. They also scored the best goal of the night. It was like an alley-oop – one player passed the ball from one side of the goal arc to the far side (except for the goalie, no player from both teams can enter the goal arc until the ball first enters that area) with a hard bounce pass. A teammate on the opposite side anticipated the pass and leapt into the arc, caught the ball as it bounced up and turned and threw it in the goal before his feet touched the ground. Denmark was up more often than not, though never by more than three points. It was extremely close throughout the second half and Korea scored a goal in the last ten seconds to win 31-30.
Germany and Iceland played in the second match and we all thought that Germany looked like the better team. It was close in the first half but the Germans fell apart and they couldn’t stop a couple Icelanders who had flawless games and seemed to score at ease. We were surprised once again as the Iceland team won the second game.
It was a really cool atmosphere; the arena was very intimate – no more than 6,000 seats – and loud because of the rabid fans from each of the four countries. A few members of the Chinese men’s handball team sat a few rows ahead of us during the first game and a dozen or so Danish and Korean players sat in front of us to watch the second game. Some Danish fans near us knew a bunch of the players personally. And the games were non-stop action and fun to watch. There was lots of passing like in soccer, lots of scoring like in basketball (though only by single points), and it was very physical. The rules seemed to allow for a lot more contact than basketball does, but when a foul was called (using yellow or red cards), a player was given a 7 meter penalty shot. Those were cool to watch because the player would stand on a line and do several fake throws to get the goalie to jump before falling forward and whipping the ball towards the goal. I don’t think the U.S. has a team and it’s unfortunate that the sport is not more popular in the States because I wish I had more chances to watch and play the sport.
Like everyone else, I have watched a number of past Olympics on television, however, I’ve never given much thought to what it is like to see one in person and I never thought I’d have the chance to do just that so soon. It has turned out to be much cooler than I expected. There are so many visitors from around the world, which is a novelty after living here for almost a year and having very limited contact with foreigners. It makes me appreciate the multiethnic qualities of large American cities because it’s not usually that way here and all Chinese all the time gets old (I'd say the same for small town America). By the way, demographers project that the U.S. will no longer have a majority ethnic group in about 35 years.
There is a lot going on, from country-specific events sponsored by the embassies and various other groups, big corporate events like the Coca-Cola one where I saw the opening ceremony, and all the media (I’ve never seen more cameras before), and athletes (I've seen buses full of athletes and cyclists riding the streets around the Olympic village). And you get to attend events and watch sports that you’d never think of watching in person, not to mention see those sports played at the highest level by the world’s best athletes. Over 16 extraordinary days you are in the middle of history in the making (if only I could go to a swimming or track event and witness a world record-breaking performance), and the whole time people around the world are watching intently.
If you have any interest, make plans for London 2012 soon!
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