Wow. Olympics is finally over. All in all, while exhausting, it was great. And since my last post, my Olympic fervor only heightened, as I had the chance to see track & field, baseball, synchronized swimming, and boxing last week. What was just as impressive, I also had the chance to view the Bird's Nest and the Water Cube up close for the first time.
Bird's Nest on a sunny day? Truman Show! --
Stepping inside the stadium, you couldn't help but feel like you were in a special place. Like's it's China's Wembley Stadium or Rose Bowl. I could see the power of Architecture and how it can play into the collective self-esteem. I went with a Chinese friend, and he would later say he had goosebumps entering the stadium for the first time.
The Olympics really did intertwine with many of the Chinese people's collective self-esteem.
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This was my first time watching track & field competition live. There's like 3-4 events going on at the same time! People with very low body fat percentages high jumping, throwing javelins, triple jumping, and of course...ruuuunnnnnnniiinnng.
-- Ussain Bolt's 200M medal ceremony.
I wonder who would win...
-- The Olympic...well you know what it is.
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At the outer edge of the Bird's Nest lattice. -- People were taking pictures of this:
The Water Cube, site of Michael Phelps' Olympic triumps. USandA! USandA! By the way, Phelps in Chinese is pronounced, "Fe-le-pe-se." But you have to say it really fast. --
-- Was also my first time to see synchronized swimming. It was actually pretty dope. The swimmers reminded me of dolphins. (Dolphins I would take to a dinner and a movie...)
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My cousin, Sherlynn (big ups!), hooked us up with the tickets, and we were seated right next to the Spanish cheering section.
The drama!
[Not sure if anyone caught the event on any of the cable channels, but when the Spanish team entered for their routine, the TV camera zoomed in on the Spanish fans...and because of our proximity, my friend and I got some CCTV love.]
Speaking of drama, one of the Japanese swimmers fainted in the pool after their routine. It was a bit surreal. All the swimmers had started to head towards the steps, but then there was this blob underwater. Luckily one of her teammates noticed the girl underwater and pulled her up.
I looked around for a lifeguard, and saw one of Olympic staff on his walkie-talkie. But no lifeguard or medical help.
So then I'm looking at this poor Japanese girl, body limp, in the arms of her teammate, and nobody else seems to be responding to this situation. Some of the ladies (presumably mothers?) in the Japanese cheering section in front of me are screaming hysterically.
Still no lifeguard or medical team.
Finally these two portly Chinese dudes in speedos emerge and dive into the pool to "save" the Japanese swimmer. My Chinese friend was like, "Who are those guys and why are they so fat? It's embarrassing." (We theorized they must have been nephews of some Chinese Olympics official(s).)
The girl appears to regain consciousness and looks around in a daze. The hysterical shrieking subsides. The portly "lifeguards" bring the girl to the side, but then at the edge of the pool the girl's body falls limp again.
At this point, I'm wondering where the fock is the medic?!! Bird down bird down! After yet another few minutes, a medical team emerges with a stretcher and carts the girl to the back...out of sight.
Now I am no doctor, but I am thinking that this might not be so good. Can't oxygen deprivation cause irreparable brain damage?
There is no mention, at least in English, about this incident over the PA. I am wondering if it's because of impression management? Would the Japanese girl, and by extension her team, and by extension the whole nation of Japan lose face if there was all this TV coverage of her getting brain damage in the pool?
Anyway I later Googled and found an AP article quoting a Japanese official explaining that the swimmer is basically a Nervous Nelly but is fine. (More Truman Show?)
[For those of you who read that article, I know I know. After seeing an event firsthand and then reading a media report about the same event, I was struck by all the information omitted. Was/is the swimmer actually OK? And how could the writer not have mentioned how fat the lifeguards were?!] --
In an earlier post, I had commented that I felt a festive atmosphere in my neighborhood was lacking for watching the Olympics events. Here at the main Olympic site, however, the energy was palpable. It was great. I wished more Chinese people, the common folk, could experience this.
-- Another day, I had the chance to see one of the baseball semifinals. South Korea vs. Japan. The weather that day was beautiful. Look at that sky!!!
Just outside the baseball stadium lies the basketball arena where the Redeem Team brought home the gold! --
South Korea won that game on its way to the gold medal. --
A couple of Korean Juelz Santanas...
-- Many media reports commented on the friendliness of the ubiquitous Olympic volunteers/greeters. They were on point.
Team Earnest! --
Lego bathrooms in the Bird's Nest.
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There was a Kurtis Blow bush around the corner. -- Something about the Olympics, like Disneyland, seems to signal to people that it's cool to wear matching hats.
-- The last event I attended was the boxing finals, which was also the first time I had seen boxing live. No US boxers competed in any of the 4 bouts I saw.
Mongolia did though.
-- So did Kazakhstan!
The Kazakh dude took home the gold, and it was weird. The Kazakh boxer didn't really look like...
People have also been asking me if I would be seeing any Olympic events, and being the lazy guy that I am, I did not make any effort to procure any tickets. I thought, eh, the Olympics. I already went to one in Atlanta.
But last week I caught the Olympic fever! Was it all the free beer that I couldn't drink? I began to rue my laziness at ticket procurement. But then the good Mr. Touff sent me an email saying he had extra tickets to see beach volleyball and asked if I would be interested.
"You're gosh darn right!"
Get to the stadium at about 9:30pm.
No super long lines. --
Entered the stadium, which reminded me of the US Open tennis stadium in Flushing. Except this stadium had...cheerleader/dancers! Boo-yaaaahhh!!! (Do cheerleaders make China a Modern Country or what?!)
There was a DJ that played short clips of songs in between points. "I like to move it move it...I like to move it move it...I like to...MOVE IT!"
You may be asking, what is that inflatable thing with the cheerleaders? --
That, my friend, is one of the Fuwa. There are 5 of them. They are the Beijing Olympic mascots, as seen on one of the 149,235,382 Olympic billboards now plastered all over China.
Their names are: Beibei, Jingjing, Huanhuan, Yingying, and Nini. They are inspired by the five Olympic rings. When you strategically put their names together--and only say the first syllable--together the Fuwa names form like Voltron to say: "Beijing Huanying Ni!" Which means "Welcome to Beijing!" (How adorable).
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They didn't tell us the cheerleaders' names, but the cheerleaders did have cowboy hats.
-- Below another Fuwa came out to hype up the crowd. I ain't gonna lie. The Fuwa got me amped son!! (Not as amped as Chief Illiniwek though).
There was also an MC that got the crowd chanting, "Beijing Jia You!!!" (pronounced "jaahhh yooooo"). I was like, why is everyone saying "jia you," as it means "add oil."
BEIJING...ADD OIL!!!! I just got the memo that it basically means, "Let's go!" Apparently this chant has been around for decades (since cars entered daily life?). --
Oh yeah, there was also beach volleyball. Below is a pic from the 1st (of 3) matches we saw. Here the men's team from Australia battled the men's team from Brazil. Brazil won.
-- The second match featured the US women's team vs. Cuba. However it was not the US team that beckoned good ol' President "Boo shi" (that's the Mandarin pronunciation) to get his Akon on.
That was actually the first time I saw that video. What a storyline! Oh and the US won, although Cuba had this player named Crespo that was dooooooooooope. --
The last match was a showdown between Holland and Germany. Germany won.
As you can see there were quite a few empty seats, although it was getting pretty late by that point. I was curious about the crowd size, because I had also been hearing/reading reports that there lots of empty seats at most of the non-finals events.
One might have thought that since everyone here was so excited about the Olympics and patriotic fervor that all the events would be sold out. Since this is China's moment in the sun around the world, I was kind of hoping to see more local Chinese experiencing the Olympics.
At the beach volleyball stadium, though, much of the crowd seemed to be comprised of foreigners cheering on their own country and of course adorning themselves with flags.
-- I have been curious about what the laobaixing (aka "common folk") in Beijing think about the Olympics, now that this glorious moment has finally arrived. Earlier I mentioned that nobody seemed to be complaining about the driving restrictions or some of the other sacrifices for the Olympics.
You'd see signs like the one below all over Beijing. (I find this signs to be so "Chinese" in that they lack any irony. Then again, most public service announcements are pretty un-ironic. But Chinese public service announcements are even more un-ironic. This reminds me of a comment I heard about irony not being as heavily trafficked in Chinese culture as in, let's say, Williamsburg. I think this difference has a pretty huge impact on the music scene...but more on this later).
"I participate, I contribute, and I enjoy" -- Anyway now that the Games have started, I have started to hear some grumbling, which I suppose should not be so surprising. Whereas before August nobody really knew exactly what to expect, now it's quite apparent that these Games are more for the powers-that-be, the huge multinational corporations, and the viewing enjoyment for the rest of the world.
"Acting like life is a big commercial."
On the other hand, it's hard to see the immediate benefits for the common folk. Prices are going up for basic necessities, and the Olympics aren't helping the peeps, just causing inconveniences. For example, my Chinese teacher said that the powers-that-be wanted to shut down her neighborhood fruits and vegetables market during the Olympics because of crowd issues. The people got salty and protested, and a compromise was reached stipulating the market could remain open for 2 hours a day (instead of 4).
I've heard vendors having to move locations or shut down operations altogether, because they don't fit with the Beijing Truman Show image and storyline. (see below).
This photo of the "Coca Cola Zone" was taken at The Place, right outside the venue which held the Puma and Jamaican embassy party.
-- What is for the laobaixing? The common folk?
As far as viewing the Games, practically all of the local Chinese just watch the events on TV at home or in small groups in restaurants or shops. (I noticed almost every shop has a small TV!)
Not the same festive atmosphere as watching sporting events in large crowds, in my opinion.
I had heard that most of the local Chinese were not really making much of an effort to see events live. There is the perception that the lines are too long, it's too much of a headache, and the tickets would be too expensive.
Then I heard that people (foreigners) have been able go to non-finals events and get tickets at face-value (around 30 USD) with relative ease. No waiting in huge lines.
I wondered if the ticket procurement motivational disparity centered around the notion of watching sports itself. For many of the Chinese, because they are so personally invested in seeing their athletes win and represent China favorably against the rest of the world, maybe the joy of watching sport for the sake of sport is sometimes absent?
I was reading a sports article written by a guy, who was saying how much he was enjoying watching random countries compete and just seeing the athletes perform at such a high level. He had no emotional investment in any of the events, but was explaining how much fun he was having just watching all these random sports that he normally does not care about. And to him, that was what made the Olympics experience great.
I think it is this sentiment the drives many of the expats to try and find tickets now that the Games have started. (It also helps that many expats work for or know friends who work for Olympic sponsors who have huge batches of tickets that often go unused).
On the flip side, I think many Chinese feel like why should I waste my time waiting in line to try to pay for a ticket that's still a huge chunk of my salary and to see non-Chinese athletes who have no bearing on how China is seen by the world. Again it helps me to understand the Olympics in the context of the past 150 years in China (e.g., enduring things like England taking over Hong Kong because China unsuccessfully did not want England selling opium in China).
Maybe each Chinese gold medal is somehow a chip against those memories for the collective Chinese psyche.
One day maybe we can all follow the words of Speak. (Had to bring back this oldie, but oh-so goodie).
Since I moved to Beijing, pretty much everyone has asked me about the Olympics. The 2008 Olympics has been one of the most hyped events of the century. The Chinese government, of course, has fueled the hype as much as possible, seeing the Olympics as a golden PR opportunity to show the world that China is no longer a Backwards Country. That China is now a Modern Country. A Developed Country.
[More on this later, but what has helped me to understand contemporary China immensely is to understand how demoralizing the past 150 years or so were, until Deng Xiaoping opened up China to market reforms in 1978. It's interesting to note that Chinese people see their culture and heritage through the lens of its 5000+ year history; America just reached its 200th birthday not too long ago.]
Of course what do "modern" and "developed" mean? Globalism has apparently worked its magic quite nicely and imbued the terms "modern" and "developed" in China with an overt materialistic bent.
Now that the Olympics have arrived, and this aforementioned opportunity to show the world that China is a Modern and Developed Country, I can't help but notice how big of a business this whole shebang is.
The multinational corporations are dropping some serious, serious duckets...for parties and open bars which I am not entirely mad at.
The other day I was DJing at this media event put together by Puma and the Jamaican Embassy.
Press interviewing some of the Jamaican Olympic athletes (below). If I'm not mistaken, Usain Bolt the recent 100M gold medalist and WR holder, was the guy fielding the questions.
-- Afterwards, there was a "fashion show" where Chinese dancers decked out in Puma gear danced to reggaeton and the Jamaican athletes decked out in Puma gear came out with their faces painted in Chinese opera mask style. Where the East meets the West (Indies)!
-- Afterwards the head of Puma Asia Pacific and the Jamaican ambassador had nice words for the crowd. (Buy Puma!). There was also a live video feed from Jamaica so that the Jamaican president could wish the Olympic athletes good luck.
-- Another night I went to help my friend, DJ Wordy (the dude in the DJ booth in upper lefthand corner), to set up for an Adidas party, the event for which they flew out Neil Armstrong, Jay-Z's Tour DJ, who, uh, also DJed at my old bar in NY back in the day. Represent!
Since Adidas is an Olympic sponsor, this event--which I did not attend (more on that later)--was supposed to have all these high-ranking government officials and Chinese celebrities like Jet Li, Maggie Cheung, etc.
Adidas had rented out this huge space. Above, Wordy setting up the other DJ booth. That's right, a double DJ booth event. --
Last Saturday, we went to the MTV-Budweiser party, which featured...a Budweiser open bar.
-- Budweiser had rented out (constructed?) this huge warehouse space with 2 huge rooms and an outdoor space for "pool parties."
-- A half empty (half full?) pool.
-- And dancers.
-- Next to the MTV-Budweiser party warehouse is the Holland House. Here, Heineken rented out the the Beijing Agricultural Museum. Heineken > MTV-Budweiser
-- The hall entrance.
-- Heineken, in keeping with the Olympic spirit, set up a museum highlighting past Dutch Olympic triumphs.
-- Further inside, the festivities, which of course included cold Heineken beers in plastic cups. Unfortunately, Heineken was charging 30 RMB for beers...and making you buy beer credit cards.
-- Rumors swirled that DJ Tiesto was DJing. (Holland represent).
This was on a Wednesday night and the Holland House was rocking. Apparently all the Dutch people were celebrating a Dutch judo athlete's bronze medal earlier that day, which led my friend, Eveline, to remark that smaller non-Olympic powerhouse countries rock because they're not afraid to go buck when they win a medal, any medal. --
Heineken = see China is a Modern and Developed Country! -- The outdoor patio space of the Holland House.
