It's about 11am here as I watch Leon Powe absolutely go off on these Lakers. The commentary is entirely in Chinese which is definitely an interesting experience. Undoubtedly the best part of the commentary is the "sino-nization" of the player's names. See if you can guess who Ke-Bi, Pe-Si, Jia-So, Jia-Nar, Far-Mar and Fei-Shir refer to (answers below). I also have a glossary of basketball terms in Chinese open which is pretty cool: http://www.confucius.ku.edu/bball_terms.shtml Hopefully I can become fluent in Chinese basketball which will certainly be useful during the Olympics.
Each commercial break shows this one bit of Tracy McGrady in China working a camp for young Chinese basketball players, one of those Impossible Is Nothing ads. The ad shows how much the Chinese look up to American basketball players and is really interesting. My male co-workers all love basketball, and they tell me that the average Chinese's four favorite basketball players are 1. Yao Ming, 2. Yi Jianlian, 3. Kobe Bryant and 4. Luis Scola. If you're scratching your head at Scola you're not alone, but Rocket teammates of Yao are popular here and even though Scola isn't the best, he's also foreign and they love his scrappy style of play, so go figure. They don't understand team loyalty here though, my coworkers don't understand why I like the Celtics and hate the Lakers - they just like basketball for its own sake. I can watch the game on 12 hour delay in English at a popular bar around here which is nice but I wanted to watch it live today. Its Monday but a holiday, an annual Dragonboat racing day so no work.
So my friend Lisa arrived last week and is studying Chinese at Bei Da in an 8 week program. I tagged along her program as they took a trip to the Forbidden City and met a bunch of Hoyas and college students. Of course the Forbidden City is a must-see for an American tourist and was very cool experience. It is rather repetitive, while the architecture is nice they're all the same, but the uniqueness of the place dawns on you once you realize that this was the sole residency of the Emperor and his associates. It is huge, just a giant walled off part in the center of Beijing. Can you imagine a square mile in the center of Boston that only people involved in the government could enter? Btw its a 4 point game now, not sure how that happened. We also saw a Buddhist temple that was only moderately cool until we went to the last temple. The statues had been getting progressively bigger and then the final one, which is all indoors and supposedly carved from a single trunk of sandal wood, stood 18 meters high...over 60 feet. It was just gigantic and I couldn't believe my eyes. No pictures though, they weren't allowed. That night we went out clubbing in my Wudaokou district, which is really too foreign a district for anyone who's been in Beijing for a while to enjoy...which does not include me. We went to Propaganda, a dance club staffed by Chinese bartenders, Chinese waiters, Chinese bouncers, and a black DJ. They played American and European music and we all loved it, but as we went crazy on the dance floor I couldn't help but notice a lot of locals sitting around watching us. Why are they even there? There are plenty of Chinese nightclubs - I don't see how they would enjoy these American songs and these drunk American college students getting into them. Its not like I would go to a European nightclub in DC more than once a blue moon.
Crystal should be getting in today, then Kate on Sunday and I think Rob later that week, and that'll be my entire American base here, other than the people I meet. Life is good, I'm cooking more and more, I have so much freedom and the Celtics are 2-0. Zai jian for now.
(Answers: Kobe, Pierce, Gasol, Garnett, Farmar, Fisher)
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