MATH: Beijing by the numbers

Today we have a Math post, which is really just because numbers are involved. Like any by the numbers column, I list some number and then explain it. So knock yourself out.

1,300,000,000 - people in China
17,000,000 - people in Beijing, plus or minus 1 million
91,000 - seating within the Bird's Nest, which was packed except for the media section right in front of the finish line
70,000 - Chinese volunteers during the Olympic games spread throughout Beijing streets, subway stops, hotels and Olympic venues
15,000 - Performers at the Opening Ceremonies. No performer appeared in more than one act
1,200 - Foreign volunteers during the Olympic games
1,100 - Estimated amount, in RMB, spent by me on Long Island Iced Teas
900 - Estimated amount, in RMB, spent by me on Long Island Iced Teas at Lush
212 - NOCs participating at the Olympics
90 - Days spent in China, including 6 in Hong Kong
80 - Estimated bottles of Tsingdao consumed
55 - Estimated visits to Lush
53 - Coworkers taught by me
51 - Gold medals won by China
37 - Estimated times I was asked if I was mixed
36 - Gold medals won by the US, the exact same amount they won in the 2004 Games
24 - Hoyas I met in Beijing
20 - My age after July 22
18 - Floor I lived on
16 - Building number I lived on
11 - Olympic events I attended
10 - Hucks that I threw in league play
7 - Olympic venues I entered
5 - Hoyas that I met by design in Beijing
4 - Hoyas that I met in Hong Kong, all by coincidence
4 - Days I couldn't walk without crutches
4 - Syllables in Michael Phelps' last name in Chinese
3 - Hucks that I threw that were caught for scores in league play. My team could have been more athletic
3 - Dinners that I cooked
2 - Times I ran out of electricity
1 - Times I ran out of gas
1 - World records I saw set live (women's 3000m steeplechase)
1 - Rank of this summer on the list of best summers of my life

CUL: List of things I miss from home

I'm t-minus 45 hours or so until I arrive back in Boston. Life has been very different here in the far East, and many aspects of life, such as public bathrooms and morning coffee, totally blow. Here's a list of things I miss, not including people, cause of course I miss every single one of you readers. Both of you. But seriously, I miss a lot of people :(.


15. Peanut butter and jelly: Not that I eat it very often, but you just don't see a whole lot of PB&J here in Asia.
14. Reading lamp: I just never had one here in Beijing and turning off the lights was cumbersome. Didn't read as much as I expected I would have.
13. My US cell phone: This China one sucks so much omg I can bite it in two right now but I need it.
12. Baseball: And major league baseball, I don't care much for Olympic baseball.
11. Suburban life / driving: I've been in cities for too long, and would really like to see flowers and trees. If I recall correctly, they're pretty.
10. SportsCenter: Duh. Da-ne-na, da-ne-na!
9. Dairy products / CHEESE: They just don't do it right in China, and I can't even drink the milk in China for fear of getting sick. And I love cream cheese, ice cream, grilled cheese, milkshakes, frappes, cookies & milk...basically all things that I have very limited amounts of for the last 3 months.
8: My toilet: It's just...so nice. Some points you can't express. There's a difference between the toilets here in Asia and the one in my bathroom, and I don't want to go into it, but believe me, it's there...and it's dirty.
7. Cleanliness: This ranges from the streets to the food to my sheets.
6. Coffee Coolatas: Gimme! GIMME!@@#!#!$
5. Anna's Taqueria: I could go for a triple cheese quesadilla right now. And similarly:
5b. Avocado: Although I had a burger with some here in Hong Kong - it was my first avocado in 3 months since I left LA.
4. Stomach security: the food in China just doesn't agree with Westerners and even 3 months later I still hadn't adjusted. Which SUCKED.
3. No more government censorship: Big brother is no longer watching me!
2. English: It's a great language. And I know it. At least one of the previous sentences do not apply to Mandarin Chinese, and as much as I enjoy improving my Chinese and practicing it, and as much as I fear I will lose my competence by not taking any more classes and living in Europe for the rest of the year, I am sick of the language. I want to be able to you know, understand people around me.
1. My shadow: Did you know? Because of the air pollution, you can never see your shadow from the sun in Beijing. Not only does it throw off a lot of metaphors and sayings, but it deprives me of my best friend.

EDIT: Somehow I left out both hanging out with guy friends (after a summer of lots of girl time), and American money, especially those pretty quarters from different states.

STO: Closing ceremonies

Crystal insists that I not judge people. Though I try to avoid displaying any signs of inconsiderate judgment, I must subconsciously exhibit some signs. Almost certainly my parents greatly affect this, as I noticed that when my dad spent the last 2 days with me, he judged everything I did, whether it was deciding to pack my used Olympic tickets or not worrying about being 10 minutes late to our handball match. He greatly infuriated me and thus I will try harder to eliminate any premature judgment of anyone I met, a lesson that also applies to living abroad. It did hearken me back to the Great Gatsby, where the main character Nick explains how he deliberately avoids judging people. Although in that story, this ended up being a weakness and he got caught up in a tangled love affair and bloodbath. I'd like to avoid ending up shot in a swimming pool, but I think it would make for a critically-exclaimed story. Just to wrap up the Gatsby conversation, I'll leave you with a quote I just lifted of wikiquote: "There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy, and the tired."

Ok so I'm alone in Uncle Andrew's apartment in Hong Kong now, for the third and final time this summer. I've got some time and hope to make a bunch of blog posts right now about various reflections of the summer and hopes for the immediate future. This post will be a simple recap of the last 3 days.

My dad flew in on Wednesday night and we spent the night at separate events - me at wrestling, him at field hockey. Thursday night included a dinner with my dad's friends, including his Australian coworker Mark who had gotten me two Olympic tickets. The restaurant was in 世贸天阶, an upclass area near Guo Mao. This part of Beijing doesn't feel like Beijing, and while it's nice, clean and fancy, it seems designed merely for Western businessman - aka it's Shanghai in Beijing aka it sucks. But on this night, upon leaving the restaurant, a special event was happening. My dad pointed out to me the world's largest outdoor LCD screen, this gigantic piece of covering. Acting as a roof with the screen facing directly downwards, the proportions were something like 25 meters by 150 meters...it would have taken Usain Bolt like 14 seconds to run across it, which means the screen was pretty big. The ground directly underneath the screen was walled off by large canvases covered with the Coca-Cola logo, so we couldn't see what was going on. Suddenly dad's friend Daniel, whom we had just eaten with, stops and says, "Did you hear that voice? That's Yao Ming in there." Pause. "WHAT?"

I run around the canvas looking for any openings - there are some and although I couldn't see the stage, I could see another giant screen, this one facing normally, and Yao Ming is clearly being interviewed. Then I hear the word "Jams" and the screen shows highlights of an American dunking. I figure they're showing a highlight reel of slam dunks, but then I see layups and jumpshots. Finally I realize that the same guy is taking all these shots, and his name in Chinese is "Jia Ma Se." The next thing I knew, LeBron James steps onto the stage to uproarious applause. At this point I am legitimately giddy; I feel like a 13 year old girl at an Aaron Carter concert. Upon reflection, that is not a feeling I am very proud of, but bear with me. I mean, I've never been this close to LeBron in person in the states, and here I am in Beijing marveling at how much Yao Ming towers over LeBron. The whole show was rather dull, where a white girl asked LeBron some basic questions, "How are you guys feeling for Argentina tomorrow?" and then translating his answers into Mandarin (her Mandarin sounded native). There were no good questions that I would have asked if offered the gig, like, "How do you like Beijing?" or "What was the coolest thing about the ceremonies?" or "How do you like being surrounded by Asians?" or "How excited are you to joining the Brooklyn Nets in 2010?" or "How much did it hurt when Pierce matched you jumper for jumper and the Celtics beat you?" I definitely spend too much time thinking of questions for hypothetical encounters with famous athletes.

But now I actually had a chance! I went around until I saw a lot of bystanders, and correctly guessed that Yao and LeBron would be leaving via those exits. After a rousing edition of 我和你, a ton of Chinese cops file through the exit, then some entourage, someone who looked like Tayshaun Prince, and then suddenly LeBron James. I had been thinking of what I should say and as he passed within 5 feet of me, I could only shout, "Good luck against Argentina tomorrow!" As the only native speaker of English in the crowd, I had hoped that I would get some sort of reaction, but alas, one was not received. Upon reflection, I should have said something like, "Go St. Vincent St. Mary's!" (his high school) or "I saw you on TV the other night" or "You know the Celtics have a ton of cap room in 2010!" And then Yao Ming was there, indescribably tall in person, and I couldn't think of a thing to say nor did I know what language to say it in. Then they were gone, ushered into a parking garage to return to the heavily guarded Olympic village.

Friday morning I went to work for the last day. Considering my job was not even close to my number 1 concern here in Beijing, and I often came into work late, disheveled from a night of drinking, and almost dozed off during a lesson once, they absolutely loved me. I was stunned by the reception I gave when I told people I was gone. I actually gave a presentation the previous Thursday, my usual presentation time slot, in which I gave a powerpoint summary of my summer (minus any foxy pictures) and then gave a short speech in Mandarin. I spent the morning crafting the speech with my boss Jessica, i.e. she wrote it, and then the rest of the afternoon practicing it. I delivered it awfully - while my colloquial Mandarin and ability to make expressions has improved leaps and bounds, my ability to read a large piece of unfamiliar words was still unrefined, even though I had all the pinyin. But they loved it and that's what counts. And now I know how to say good luck in Chinese! 祝你好运！

That evening, dad and I went to see handball, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I had seen the sport on TV here and had some idea of what to expect, although I didn't realize how close the movements and motions can be to those of basketball. The fast break action is furious, the goal keeping is exceptional to watch, and the athleticism is superb. Among the highlights are the foot saves by the goalies, as the foot tends to be the blocking medium of choice (they'd get their share of foot blocks in Ultimate) and this French guy who on a breakaway, jumped so high on a shot that when he landed he actually did two somersaults. The game really does require the base athleticism of speed, power and coordination that sports were originally about, not the pseudo-athletic (though nonetheless impressive) skills that say, synchronized swimming or canoeing requires. Not to hate on water sports. That said, much of the game is infuriatingly repetitive. Take away the fast breaks, and every offensive possession is the same. Unlike in basketball, where shots can come anywhere, from 28 feet to 0 feet from the hoop, and in any shape and size, handball shots are basically just a player jumping from outside their no entrance zone and throwing the ball down as hard as he can. Occasionally there'd be a dramatic alley oop type play, or a player would fake a goalie out and lob a soft shot over him. But that's it. Team handball is a nice simple game, but too simple to really catch on as a popular sport.

Well there are big plans for after the Handball, so after entertaining dad's unquenchable desire for photograph poses, I hurry back to Wudaokou and meet up with Crystal for one last night of partying. We set out to make the night epic, and I'm afraid to say we did not fail. Here's how events unfolded:
Crystal and I wandered around San Li Tun looking around for Anastassia. Initially failing to find her, we instead bumped into Karen Wu, another Georgetown '10 member who apparently lives in Beijing. That was really cool and we chatted for a bit before I went into Shooters and downed a shot and a Long Island Iced Tea. Crystal and I regrouped and found Anastassia with her girlfriend Kerena, and btw they are so cute together. We chilled there for a few drinks before going off for a chicken and beer break. At the chicken stand, I saw my American co-worker Dan, legally wasted from an Olympic baseball game where the US lost, and let's just say that that was freaking awesome. Soon after, I had to head to a boat party for Peter and his Columbia program. Although Crystal had initially wanted to go, she elected not to join me, and I made a 4 block walk alone and without a real idea where I was going. Somehow I did make it, and I think that was the beginning of the end of my night. Seeing Peter brought out some drunken hugs, and I had by now met enough of his classmates that I rolled around the boat chatting it up with a bunch of different people. I think here I had Long Island Iced Teas 2 and 3, and afterwards I heard from Anastassia that they were going to White Rabbit. So I got into a cab with someone else who was going to White Rabbit (apparently a Chinese teacher from the program) and I guess I made it to the club and got a beer or something. I don't know how long I was in the club, but Anastassia wasn't there yet, and I was basically alone with a Chinese teacher, so I scrammed pretty quickly and got into a cab for home. It must have been 2:30 at this point. In the cab, I get a call from Anastassia that she's at the club, and I tell the driver to go back to the club and fall back into the club. I don't know if they were all there at the same time, but eventually I clubbed with Anastassia, Crystal, Clary and I think Nick the wrestler. Come to think of it, the only thing I remember is getting another drink...guess what it was? Yeah, Long Island #4. See the problem is, well it's kinda multifolded. First, I have a really difficult time speaking in loud places, especially when I'm drunk. Second, the bartenders have a difficult time understanding drinks in English. Third, the Chinese drinks I'm most comfortable ordering are Qing Dao and Long Island Iced Tea, the translation 长岛冰茶 is a rather humorous literal translation of each individual word. So I can bust out those words at any time and get a drink, and I did that...4 times. Oh one final problem? Long Islands are lethal.

I hadn't booted in Beijing all summer, but I did at least once that night, out the window of a cab. Yeah I really don't want to think about that. I don't remember calling Crystal from the cab, I don't really remember getting back into the apartment, and I don't remember what I told Lisa when I skyped her (the call ended at 4:57am - fuck!). I do remember waking up the a guy knocking at the door at 11am, and just feeling awful. Worst hangover I've ever had...I barely made it to a final lunch at Lush with Crystal and wasn't totally fine until around 6:30pm.

I did make it to track & field that night, which was a ton of fun. Dad and I sat next to a guy who used to throw javelin at Berkley and tried to qualify for the 2000 and 2004 teams. He and I talked track for the whole time, which was great cause I never get to talk track with anyone. The javelin finals were going on and he explained everything I want to know about that, and I'm not convinced that along with the high jump, the javelin requires more power and explosiveness than any other event. Before talking with this guy, John, I considered the event a specialty event, for smaller throwers. I mean, on the RL team, everyone tried out the jav including skinny cross country runners like Billy Hubbard, and our best thrower was Fernando, who while big, is hardly a model of speed. But as John explained to me, the best jav throwers have to not only have a really strong throwing arm and shoulders, but need to bench a ton, and have the same extreme leg strength that sprinters and jumpers have, as well as impeccable technique. While bigger guys can get away with good results amidst poor speed in high school, at this level these guys are supreme athletes who are often pretty good decathletes. And speaking of decathletes, John trained with Bryan Clay, the American gold medalist, and described him as a really cool guy who could just do it all. In fact, if you don't know about Clay, get to know him. Besides being one of the best half-Asian athletes of all time, his results are absolutely fantastic. he runs a 100m in the low 10s, clocking 10.44 in a first place finish in the pouring rain in Beijing. His weaknesses are the 1500, which every decathlete sucks at as they're all fast twitch guys, and the shotput, and he's not too consistent at the high jump. But his discus throw was insane, his long jump would have placed him in the finals of the real long jump competition (which is insane), he won the 110 hurdles, and he can toss that javelin pretty far too. It's tough to gauge where that ranks with someone like Usain Bolt, but I gotta put Clay up there as one of the dominant athletes of these Games.

Oh so yeah I didn't actually see Bryan Clay that night. I did see this Norwegian throw a Javelin over 90 meters for an Olympic record in a really awesome display. I saw a great, heralded Croatian female high jumper who was a 12:1 favorite to win gold start off hot, not missing any of her first 6 attempts, but eventually being stunned by a Russian who cleared 2.05 on her first jump. I saw the US women win the 4x400 in super exciting fashion and called Sanya Richards comeback on the last 100, which was definitely the highlight of the night, especially her baton pump at the end. I loved every second of the men's 4x400 when the US won every single lap, and the event I was most excited for, the 800m, turned out to be totally unexciting as some dude went wire to wire and Abubaker Kaki wasn't even in the finals. Nonetheless, it was the favorite of the 11 events I attended and afterwards dad and I got some nice shots of the Olympic torch.

Packing up was awful, I dallied and did a poor job, getting 4 and a half hours of sleep, but whatever, I made it here to Hong Kong. Here I managed to meet up with Conor, who had been in Shenzhen, despite him not having a cell phone and not knowing the city. We met up with his older friends for dinner and watched the Closing Ceremonies at an Irish bar, which did not fail to disappoint. I'm very burnt out now though and totally needed the quiet night of blogging that I'm currently undertaking.

STO: Close Encounters

Monday morning Triathlon: A 10am event that I could barely bother getting up for. I mean, who wants to see a long endurance race on a huge course, even if people do change modes of transportation? Well I did get answer the 9am alarm, and looked up the venue site. On the official Olympic map, the Triathlon site was at the very northern tip, above the Bird's Nest and the Olympic Village. Ok, so its a bit up there but probably less than half an hour away. I hail a cab and explain where I want to go, and while he understands me, he has no clue. He does start driving and after calling his company or someone he finds out where he's going, and I settle in. And settle. And settle. All of a sudden I look around and we are nowhere near Beijing - I mean I see fields. Soon there's a sign that says Badaling, 17 km. Yeah, Badaling is a section of the Great Wall, about 90 minutes away from Beijing. Yikes. So at this point I realize that the Triathlon site was placed at the north of the map because it was off the map, and I'm wondering how I'm going to get back. At this point I seriously consider turning around, because after all, I didn't even buy the ticket - it was given by an Aussie friend of my dad's.

Well it is an Olympic event, and if I had told myself 6 months ago that I would turn around from an Olympic event, I would have slapped myself. And it was worth it. The setting was gorgeous as the big picture indicates. There is this beautiful lake up by the Ming Tombs, a tourist attraction even without Olympic racing, and on a blue sky day, I couldn't think of a better place to be. So there's that pagoda in the middle of the lake, then a long track that's part of the 2.5km course where the running and swimming take place. I had come late and missed the swimming, which I really regret, but was able to catch the transition from biking to running and enjoyed that. It was cool that everyone was biking and running in their swimming uniform. Wait, did I mention that this was the women's triathlon? Well there you go. An American was in the leaderpack at the start of the running segment (10km) and eventually finished 4th, but an Australian named Snowsill ran away from the field, winning by over a minute. The up close viewing really made me understand how hard the triathlon really is. While I think most people would argue that the marathon is a more grueling cardiovascular workout, as the cycling portion of the triathlon really does give the lungs a break, the triathlon reigns supreme in terms of sheer muscular fatigue. I mean I was cringing just watching those girls bike uphill and then run their hearts out for 50 minutes in the baking sun. And to think that they had already swam 1500 meters. Snowsill finished in just under 2 hours and I bet she's still sore. Did you know? Lance Armstrong used to be a competitive triathlete. Yeah you didn't know that. You welcome.

Despite my previous fears, I successfully found a cab by hitchhiking with 2 American women. They were in-law relatives of an American rower who had just won gold, and they described to me the details of the gold medal. Did you know? The medal's are all carved with the specific event's names in English, and of course have that ring of white jade on the back. Boy I'd like one of those. The women were impressed by my Mandarin and thought I had had the best summer ever, which of course is true, and one of them said, "I have a hunch that [coming to the Olympics] will become a pattern for you." Hmmm, I don't know. And I'll get to that in another post.

After a quick workout on my last day as a member of Total Fitness, Vivian came over and we headed to Gymnastics. The venue was on the Olympic Green, the same complex that holds the Bird's Nest, Watercube and many other Olympic venues. Have I blogged about this place? It's Olympic extravagance meets Tiananmen Square, where tons of open space are sparsely filled with flashy lights/speakers and Olympic stores. To get there, I take the new 10 line to Bei Tu Cheng, where it intersects with the new 8 line, the Olympic line. Although the two lines share the same subway stop, you actually have to get out of the stop, walk about 300 meters, show your ticket, and then go through security before re-entering the subway. While walking out of the 10 train, you can actually see the 8 trains, even though they're about a half hour of security away. But this is good because it ensure that there's no security at the actual venues.

Vivian was REALLY EXCITED about the gymnastics. As a former gymnast, she explained to me the nuances of a sport I've always marveled at but never understood. I mean I think a standing back flip is one of the hardest athletic feats to do, and these people do that on one leg on a balance beam. I enjoyed women's uneven bar the most, followed by trampoline (almost as fun as it sounds) with men's vault the lamest event of the night. The trampoline consisted of more than just jumping up really high, although that certainly did factor in. The difficulty lay not only in performing multiple flips in mid-air, but also in landing near the center of the trampoline in order to not lose air on the succeeding jump. And the flips are pretty hard too. A Chinese girl won that in rather dominating fashion, if one can dominate a trampoline. In the uneven bars, Russian-American Nastia Luikin shown, performing a great routine and as far as I could tell, flawlessly. She also managed to keep every single facial muscle perfectly still, not just during the routine, but during the entire event, the medal ceremony, and probably her entire life. Two other Chinese gymnasts, who are about as old as Google, also performed superbly, but I was surprised that the lesser of the gymnasts was awarded a higher score, which happened to tie Luikin. The Chinese gymnast was awarded gold because apparently, she had had a higher lower score than Nastia. So China won gold and bronze, and the US won silver, and no one was really happy with those results, especially Luikin, who really could be made of marble. But at least she won't have to wait 5 years for her license. I don't know which would be a worst idea - riding shotgun to a Chinese gymnast, or attending Nastia's wedding.

On Tuesday morning and afternoon, I accomplished absolutely nothing. I was resting up from those 2 events (following these Games are tiring!) and had tickets for Crystal and I for track & field that night. Still, I intended to update this blog, do some reading, register for classes in Dublin...hey my life isn't that exciting when not attending Olympic events. Well Crystal and I head to the Nest and even before taking our seats, we order 8 beers. We go big in Beijing. Actually a little known fact is that these events are one of the best places to get drunk. They sell beer (Tsingdao, Yanjing and Budweiser) at 5 kuai a can and 8 kuai a bottle, an unbelievable bargain especially when you consider that a Bud at Fenway Park costs $6, and a Samuel Adams costs $8. I do not get why the venue beer was so cheap, but I'm going to treat it as one of those "Don't ask don't tell" scenarios and cheers to it. So yeah, for 40 kuai, about 6 bucks, we had an octet of beer. We had to ask for them to get a box as they just handed us 8 cups - the attendants were clearly not used to being asked for 8 beers. Noobs.

Our seats were next to two Americans. This would normally be cool, as USA chants become much more manageable, but it was a lot cooler when one of the Americans leaned over and said, "Crystal?" Apparently the two of them are at the Columbia program here with Peter Kong, and Crystal had met the guy when hanging out with Peter. I'd say small world but it's more like small stadium. The highlights of the night were clearly the high jump finals, the 1500m finals, the discus finals, the 200m qualifers and the women's 100 hurdles. The lowlight was the women's 400 meter, when Sanya Richards, whom I had been whole heartedly cheering, choked on the final straightaway and went from comfortably first to barely holding on for 3rd. I saw the whole collapse unfold and really felt her pain, even before reading about it on ESPN. An even worst collapse happened in the 100 hurdles, where American Lolo Jones led the race going into the 9th hurdle, which she hit with her lead leg and totally lost her balance. She ended up finishing 7th and could have cried right there. At least in that event another American took gold. The high jump is always an exciting event to watch, as every successful jump is greeted by cries of "OH!" or the Chinese equivalent of that. I rooted for a German named Spank, cause he was named Spank, but he got spanked by the bar at 2.32 meters. A charismatic Russian whom we all liked was the only guy to clear 2.36m and thus won gold. He then tried to go for 2.42m and an Olympic record, but just barely clipped it 3 times. Still pretty sick though. Surprisingly about half the high jumpers were white - my theory is that a flat butt is very important in high jumping. Anyways, discuss was also really fun but I forget who won that. Probably a Belarussian or another Eastern European. And then in the 200, we saw Bolt blow out the field like always. I snapped a bunch of pictures of him, and of course last night he topped Michael Johnson's ridiculous world record and now he's positively the fastest man ever. I'm kind of obsessed with him, but here is not the time to share it.

Yesterday, Wednesday, my dad arrived in Beijing. This kinda took me by surprise because I had thought he was coming a day later. Anyways I had a freestyle wrestling ticket and he had field hockey so we went our separate ways. I had 66kg and 74kg again, because I wanted to see Ben Askren wrestle, but unfortunately he got eliminated in the morning session. Very unfortunate. These tickets, which I had bought on cosport, somehow put me in the front section that was actually gated. I got there early and moved right up to the front row and snapped some pictures like the one on the left. As luck would have it, I again sat next to a wrestling parent. This one was a Canadian wrestler who had already been eliminated, although I learned that he was actually an American who went to Stanford, but his mother was Canadian so he had dual citizenship and thus made that Canadian team. Freestyle was again very confusing and not as similar to folkstyle as I had thought it would be. While grabbing of the legs was legal and thus neutral was the wrestling I was used to, there was almost no mat wrestling. If there was a period of inaction on the mat, the ref would blow his whistle and both wrestlers would return to neutral. There are no points for an escape, and a takedown ranges from 1 to 3 points. I learned that Olympic wrestling rules change a lot, and they are now in a Round system. While wrestling has always been divided up into 3 rounds, now each round has a winner (if it's tied, the last scorer wins it. if it's tied 0-0, there's a weird wrestle off), and so you need to win 2 out of 3 rounds. It's really lame and I can discuss a match in which this Indian wrestler almost got screwed before pulling a victory out of his ass. Btw, there is about a 20 minute break between some matches - one wrestler had 3 matches in a 70 minute span. Simply absurd. A Russian legend won the 74kg class for his 3rd Olympic gold (to go with 6 world championships) and got adored by the Russians in the crowd. He even jumped into the stands to hug his fans, despite protests from his Chinese security guards. It was really a site to behold, but unfortunately my camera ran out of batteries at that point.

I gotta wrap this up cause once again I'm getting tired - look for an edit in the near future. After the matches, I went out to get a cab, but so did everyone else so there was none to be had. Well I walked down the street a ways and stopped by 4 Americans in USA Wrestling shirts. I pause and look at the shortest American and listen to their conversation while peering for a cab. The American looked very familiar... After about a minute, I stepped in and asked, "Hey, are you Jake Dietchler?" Jake is the 18 year old American Greco-Roman wrestler I had seen last week. The kid looks dumbstruck, then exclaims, "Yeah" in muffled shock like you would if a random stranger came up to you and called you by name. I replied, "I sat next to your family last week when you wrestled." Jake thought that was really cool and asked for my name and shook my hand and all. He was really down to earth and chill, because he's not a celebrity and was totally not used to be treated even as a pseudo-celebrity. He had just been recognized on the streets of Beijing by someone whom he probably didn't suspect spoke English. After asking about his matches, whether he'd continue wrestling Greco even though college wrestling is different, I got his autograph.

Stay tuned for my chance encounter with 2 other Olympic athletes. These ones were more recognizable - in fact, I'd wager that most of my readers will have heard of LeBron James and Yao Ming.

STO: From sleazy to classy in 1 weekend

I haven't posted since Thursday, which means that I have a lifetime worth of new stories. I now fully understand the term New York minute, but I'm not sure how even that compares to an Olympic Beijing 分钟. I'm going to have to leave stuff out, particularly because it's already 1am and I have a ticket to watch the triathlon tomorrow morning at 10. I think I'll start with last Friday, an all around great day. After a Thursday night rainstorm, Friday could legitimately be described as gorgeous, with the blue skies and 75 degree weather that is not among the normal list of reasons for visiting Beijing. I had to pick up tickets from cosport, this company that sells tickets at very cheap prices to Americans, and a hotel where a friend of my dads had left the aforementioned triathlon ticket and a track & field ticket, which I just used. Walking around to these sites was just pleasant, a word I rarely use in this country. The hotel was in the center of Beijing near some Hutongs, and I found myself unexpectedly sight seeing again. Walking around the center of Beijing in the great weather with 5 Olympic tickets in my backpack may not seem like a highlight compared to climbing the Great Wall, going to Olympic venues or downing shots in San Li Tun, but it was a spectacular, worthwhile hour of reflection on just how lucky I have been this summer.

The rest of the night turned out significantly less philosophical than the afternoon. At 8:30, I met Crystal and Anastassia at a side alley of San Li Tun that was quite lively and much cheaper than the rest of Beijing's premier bar street. We made our way to a bar called Shooters, that had tons of hilariously named shots. Our favorite was "Crystal Virgin" which we promised to pair with Sex in the Jing. After throwing down an "Abortion" and 4 other drinks, we decided to take the S off of Shooters and go eat dinner at Hooters. Yes, Beijing has a Hooters. Unfortunately I didn't bring my camera to this night, but I hope my writing sufficiently describes the absurdity of the Beijing Hooters. All the waitresses were Chinese, but taught to at least sing songs in English. They were decently hot, and on a dare, I actually asked one of them, "多少？" For the non-Chinese literate readers, that question best translates to, "How much?" The waitress didn't understand, so I played it off like I was asking how much the dinner cost. While I was at the bathroom, Anastassia thought it'd be funny to tell the waitresses it was my birthday, and they stopped by and did a little dance and song for me.

After a pitcher and a Philly Cheesesteak, we left in search of the proverbial pot at the end of the rainbow, which in this case was Paddy O'Sheas, the Irish bar of Beijing. Great call. I have to say that my navigational skills were instrumental to our reaching our destination, because if we had listened to Crystal, we would have gon Southwest instead of Northeast, so you welcome. Entering Paddy O'Sheas really made me question why I am going to Dublin in a month, but if the best night in Dublin was like this night, I'll have made a good decision. The atmosphere of that place bore little resemblance to most bars we've visited, as typically active debauchery is discouraged. I don't think the Irish think the same way as the Chinese though, especially with regard to beer. We grabbed a table near the corner and somehow were joined by 2 American college students. Nick was a big guy who had attended UConn to wrestle 197 but had quit after a successful freshman year because he had cut too much weight. We bonded about wrestling and the Olympics, while Crystal and Anastassia bonded with him for different reasons. His friend was named Sean and he was a rising sophomore at GW. Naturally I asked him if he knew my good rising sophomore friend at GW, and when he replied that he was good friends with Thao I think I went nuts and we bonded over that.

That should have been the end of my night, but after catching a cab back to Wudaokou, I decided to enter Lush. I think I justified it within my mind by saying I'd ask for a glass of water. Well inside I spotted John Loong, a Georgetown grad who took me on as his Asian protege, and so I had a glass of water along with a glass of Long Island Iced Tea. John was with 3 Chinese girls, so that was fun, although I'm not sure if any were cute. I think we only stayed at Lush for a few minutes, enough time for me to kill the Long Island, before I headed to La Bamba where I knew Peter Kong awaited. While extremely fun and entertaining, the rest of the night wasn't eventful enough for me to blog about it, or even to remember.

Ok forgive me, I'm editing this on Wednesday morning, after having seen my 8th Olympic event in 7 days. So Saturday afternoon I went with Jansen, Angela and Xavier to see track cycling, or the velodrome, or whatever. The stadium was kinda in the middle of nowhere in the burbs west of Beijing but was actually the first stadium I had visited that was packed. Among the events I've seen, this sport was perhaps the most unusual and therefore the most interesting. Our session contained many different races, all men, including time trials, sprint races, and the incredible points race. The time trials involved two riders, each starting at an opposite part of the track, and then completing their 15 laps as fast as they could. The good British riders were able to catch up to their counterpart, which was thrilling for them and embarrassing for their rivals. The sprint races, I think they were called the Keirin, involved 6 or 7 laps, the first 4 of which are led by a motorcycle. During those initial laps, the cyclists just pedal in a line behind the motorcycle, which slowly builds up to 50 km/hr. I thought that whole buildup was pretty silly, but once the motorcycle left with 2.5 laps to go, things got heated and there was a good deal of lead changes, passing and all out bike sprinting. Fun stuff. But the points race was the coolest event, if most confusing. Encompassing 160 laps, the event required endurance, but it wasn't a simple race to the finish. The race was separated into 16 sprints of 10 laps, and the winners of each sprint would gain points, 5 for the winner, 3 for the 2nd place, 1 for the 4th place. In addition, any rider who managed to gain a lap on the peloton would gain 20 points. A Hong Kong rider was involved and so I cheered him on in Cantonese. The race was extremely difficult to follow because it wasn't always clear who was on what lap, and the riders used very confusing strategy that we couldn't understand. Nonetheless, it was an exciting and intriguing race, and I yelled 香港加油 more times than ever before.

Sunday night held my first trip to the Bird's Nest where I saw Bernard Lagat choke away America's hopes in the 1500m. Monday morning I went up to an hour north of the city to watch Triathlon, which surprisingly rocked. That evening included a trip to Gymnastics. I made a return trip to the Nest last night, and this evening I'm watching freestyle wrestling. I'm busy right now registering for classes for Ireland, packing up cause I'm leaving surprisingly soon, and going to Olympic events, so lots of updates to come later, perhaps in Hong Kong.

CUL: Counting up the Gold

As of right now, the medal count currently stands 1) China, with 22 gold and 35 medals total, and 2) US with 13 gold and 41 medals total. It's very strange to look at these medal standings and not see the US dominating in all categories, and while its nice to still have the medal lead, Gold medals are still the number 1 concern if one judges the Olympics as an international competition (which is debatable). Regardless, China views this as a competition and has made it a top priority to win the most golds. In fact, they launched Operation 119 after Sydney, an athletic operation designed to pick and train athletes in the 119 sports that give the most medal opportunities. While these include swimming, gymnastics and track, most of them are sports the majority of Americans don't care about like shooting, diving, weightlifting and archery. Well it seems Operation 119 is working, and while I hear from some American commentators that this isn't a competition, why should we care about women's weightlifting, I steadfastly believe that Americans do care.

The Olympics are such a symbol, one of the only real ways countries can compete directly against each other without declaring war. They've always been dominated by the economically strong countries, and the Olympic battles between Soviet Russia and the USA are legendary (DO YOU BELIEVE IN MIRACLES?). So China's sudden surge up the medal stand has to correspond with economic development and political power, and to a ton of Americans, that's a scary thought. If China wins the medal count, they can claim to be the superior athletic nation of the world and Americans can't just argue, "but our basketball team crushed yours!" Speaking of which, I am absolutely furious about ESPN's Olympic Coverage. The only stories they ever show are Michael Phelps and the USA basketball team. I want to hear all the stories from all the sports of all countries, but I can't even find out how American wrestlers are doing, much less how fencers from Qatar have fared. ESPN is a joke, a fact that is readily apparent when compared to the sports coverage here in China, which will Chinese-centric, covers a hell of a lot more. All of these fringe sports which may not be a concern to the American public are a huge concern for the contestants. Trust me, every single ping pong player, including the Americans, wish they were as good as the Chinese. Every female diver looks at Guo Jingjing with the same envy that we look at Kobe Bryant.

Anyways, I want to make a side note about my identity. Obviously I was born in America and am an American first and foremost but would draw pictures of the Chinese flag in kindergarten. But once I visited Hong Kong and learned of that island's history, I stopped seeing myself as Chinese. After all, my ancestors had not been part of China since the 1800s, and as I still argue, Hong Kong is not part of China even after the handover. Well, the Chinese people I have talked to have convinced me that while I am not a 中国人, a title reserved for the Mandarin-speaking Chinese-born people of Chinese descent, I am a 中华人, which encompasses the greater Chinese nation of China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and overseas Chinese. I'm not always treated well here because of my ethnic and linguistic identity, but the exact same can be said in the United States. Furthermore, living in Beijing for an extended period makes everyone an apologist for China. All the white people I know who have spent significant time here love China and attack people like Steven Spielberg and Nikolas Sarkozy. So now when I root for countries, its in order 1) USA 2) Hong Kong and 3) China and possibly 4) Ireland :). And since I've yet to see an athlete from Hong Kong, it's basically just US and China.

When I watch a Chinese volleball team compete against Brazil, I root for China. When the American boxer steps in against a Russian, I'm going nuts for the red white and blue. And when USA basketball faced off against China, I cheered whole heartedly for all of LeBron's dunks but hooted politely when Yao Ming nailed a jumper. I definitely feel happy for the Chinese people who have devoted so much to these Games and are seeing them pay off, at least on the field. Surely you can feel sympathy that the most populous country in the world has only just received the Olympic Games (after Australia had had 2) and still the IOC gets criticized for choosing Beijing.

That said, I have a difficult time looking at the medal count and seeing China firmly in first place. And it's going to stay that way. I predicted beforehand that China would win more golds (check the archives) but it's surprised me how badly they've crushed the competition. Even though the American dominated track & field hasn't started yet, the US is so far behind that a comeback is nearly impossible. Maybe James Blake, who just finally defeated Roger Federer, can change that, but don't back on it. Of the 13 American gold medals, 6 belong to Michael Phelps; who would have guessed that the great American juggernaut would be a one man show? Having settled that China will win the most golds, how do we feel about that? I simply cannot identify myself with these Chinese athletes, who have been hand picked from the fields before the age of 7 and sent away from their parents to train full time at a sport they had never even heard of before. How can I support that practice? Is there any part of the Olympic spirit there? Has anyone ever raised the question of why there are almost no athletes of Chinese descent on the squads of other countries, but so many great ones on the Chinese team? It's because Chinese culture and the Chinese body are not generally suited for most Olympic sports, and the only way to get around that is a freaking lifetime of hard training. The government has hired French fencing coaches and Russian wrestling coaches and manufactured medal contenders, and the rest of the country barely knows how to perform a bench press. And then there is gymnastics, a sport in which athletes from all countries devote their early lives to, permanently altering their bodies, especially for girls who usually end up upsetting puberty. The Chinese gymnasts perform with trauma visible on their expressions, as if they will never get over how brutally they were pushed to train. In addition, they looked like 13 year olds, a suspicion that seems to have been proven true with the recent allegations of age fraud (the Olympics have a 16 year old age minimum). I'll still chant 中国加油 but seriously, that's disgusting. The Olympic ideals of bigger, faster, stronger may not necessarily be the best ideals.

On the other hand, how do you identify with most American athletes? While the Chinese athletes are the pinnacle personification of hard work, the Americans represent the natural talent that are also frustratingly unfair. The Americans best event, the sprint and field sections of track & field, are the sports that most reward natural talents. I'm a pretty fast kid but even if I trained lights out for 20 years, I will never run a 200 meter dash in under 21 seconds. How is it fair then that Tyson Gay, who couldn't even get a scholarship to college out of high school because he didn't study shit, can run that in jeans? The American team has Carmelo Anthony, a talented asshole with a giant shoe deal. Not exactly my model athlete. If China is the wrestler who started wrestling at 4 and pins everyone in high school, America is the wrestler who picked up the sport in 9th grade, eats snickers bars before meets, slacks off in practice, and still wins state.

I do identify with various members of the teams. Who doesn't like Liu Xiang, who seems to be athletically inferior to most of his competitors, in a sport that is 85% athletic, and still sets world records? Or Michael Phelps, who has a bulls eye on his swimming cap in every event he competes in, swims a ton of different strokes that each must be trained separately, and wins gold every frekaing time? I also like the American archers, boxers, badminton players, all those competitors in sports that their country could care less about. These are usually the athletes that are here for the love of the game and have been training while no one is watching. That is a the concept I take from a quote on Jeff Kirchick's AIM profile that I use to determine the athletes I respect most: who works the hardest when no one is watching? Who is the most self-motivated athlete out there? That is the person who deserves gold. And the country that deserves gold? The one that is motivated not for money, fame nor power, but because it knows that teaching self-motivation to its populace is a recipe for success.

SPO: Olympic Overload

So last night while writing the post, my cousin Lincoln hit me up on Facebook chat with offers for tickets to the Spain-Germany basketball game. Obviously I said yes, basketball tickets are harder to find in this city than Sri Lankans. The 8:15am meeting time wasn't ideal but I can sleep when I die. The basketball arena at Wukesong University obviously did not have the same architect as the Watercube or the Bird's Nest because it is a masterpiece in fugliness. I don't even want to share a picture from there because I don't want to ruin the sanctity of my blog. I think the idea of the design was to resemble a large structure made from bamboo, which would have been sweet if they used bamboo, but using fiber optic glass material to simulate bamboo - epic fail. The game however was sweet. Spain was the big favorite going in despite their overtime squeakout against China as they boast a ton of interesting NBA players. Though Germany's Dirk Nowitzki was the best player on the court, Spain had 2 Gasols and the 4 best point guards. In fact, Jose Calderon of the Raptors, Juan Navarro also of the Raptors and Ricky Rubio all started the game on the bench, as Raul Lopez was the starting point. Nonetheless, the big story was definitely Ricky Rubio, to whom Steve Daroci alerted me. Guess how old he is? Try 17, the youngest basketball player in these games. I mean, he was freaking born in the 90s, and is regarded as a child prodigy. I saw him on TV pickpocketing the overmatched Chinese guards but seeing him in person was special.

Let's not cut any corners here: I officially have a mancrush on Ricky Rubio. He's lightning quick, Iverson-esque, with the ability to totally lose his man off the dribble. Apparently he had a double OT game in a U-16 tournament where he put up 51, 24, 12 and 7. Those numbers are so high I don't even need to explain what stats they refer to - any way you cut it, they're impressive. His penchant for steals is remarkable, although the German guards were nothing special either so its unclear how this skill will translate in the game against the US. I couldn't find any faults with his ball-handling or decision making as he didn't make a single turnover but I get the feeling he's not a terrific playmaker. He's also not a great shooter either, but if you think about it, what great point guard was a good shooter when they entered the league? Among the elite PGs in the NBA today, only Nash is an elite shooter. Chris Paul, Deron Williams, even guys like Derrick Rose, Dwyane Wade and Iverson are much better drivers than shooters. The biggest problem I see with Rubio though is that he clearly acts like a pre-Madonna, so much so that I'm surprised he's Spanish not Italian. Against China he dramatically bitched about a foul call against him and I saw him waltz back to the bench after his steal and layup led to a timeout call. When you're a "child prodigy" in a sport that doesn't have child prodigies, I can see why one might be a tad arrogant. Well this will affect him when he goes to the NBA and I would bank on him not being rookie of the year. His rookie year will probably resemble Rajon Rondo's. But I'm getting way ahead of myself, he's not nearly strong enough now to defend someone like Deron or Dwyane...whom coincidentally play on Team USA. Count on a US romp of Spain by at least double digits. I guarantee it.

I grabbed a quick Zhan Bing for lunch and hurried to find out where my boxing match in the evening was, then went off to the Olympic Village to meet up with Chirona, who is leaving Beijing in a few days and hadn't seen the Bird's Nest yet. Well apparently the new Green line that services the Olympic Green and Village is only accessible to people with Olympic tickets for that day, so we had to walk from the nearest other subway stop in a torrential Beijing downpour. The view was nothing I hadn't seen before although the torch was kinda cool, but I'll have more of that when I actually go into the Nest.

Boxing in the evening was also sweet. I'd never attended a boxing match and was expecting a Las Vegas big money showdown with people cramped close to the ring yelling their heads off. Well that part of me is massively disappointed as the nearest seats were like 60 feet from the boxers. Furthermore the style of fighting was so different from what I expected - the fighters didn't go for knockouts but rather needed to land as many body punches as they could to get points. The boxers, in the 64 and 69kg weight classes, were ultra quick and most of the punches were too fast for me to catch. Seriously there'd be a series of blurs and then one fighter's score would increase by 1. While interesting and kept everyone on their toes, boxing rarely featured any comebacks because if a boxer was down by 8 in the final round, they really had no chance to come back. There's no pin like in wrestling because knockouts are nearly impossible. I did my research though and found 2 compelling boxers. The first was the reigning gold medalist, the Thai legend Manus Boonjumnong, whom Wikipedia says spent 2 years partying after winning at Athens. He certainly showed charisma and an ability to entertain the crowds. Possibly the quickest of them all, Manus also displayed unnerving laziness, often sagging his arms way down, and other times overacting like a praying mantis. The crowd loved these and actually broke out into laughter. Manus got huge applauses, and some Tai Guo Jia You chants, and beat his Japanese opponent 8-1. The other fighter I had my eye on was John Joe Joyce, the triple J from Ireland. I actually don't know much about him but I saw a Youtube highlight of him and his initials are JJJ and I'm going to Ireland in less than a month, so that was enough for me. His match against a Dominican fighter proved to be the best of the night. Down 7-4 after 2 periods, Joyce stormed back in the third and took an 8-7 then 10-8 lead. However the Dominican landed two punches in quick succession in the fourth to tie it at 10, and then the fourth (last) period ended in an 11-11 draw. I expected an overtime, but apparently the decision was left to the judges who chose the DR. I was crushed, as was Joyce, but such are the Olympics.

I was going to leave after the 64 kg bouts ended, but I hadn't realized that my ticket also covered the 69kg round. The third matchup featured an American against a Russian so I was like, I gotta stay for that. Totally worth it. I moved seats to get near an American flag and started screaming USA, USA and 美国加油! His name was Demetrius Andrade and he crushed the Russian 11-3 in a rematch of the Cold War. For some reason, most of the Chinese people sided with the Russian.

In conclusion - Olympic boxing gets my thumb up. Really enjoyed myself there. Stay tuned tomorrow as I need to talk about allegiances, which I had meant to do in the previous post.

SPO: Wrestling with allegiances

Today I attended the first Olympic event I had ever attended, which should give this blog some more legitimacy because I am no longer just an opinionated guy watching events on the same TV feed as everyone else. Although I'm very glad to be in a country where the top national sports story is not "Brett Favre runs a penalty lap in practice." I hate Brett Favre.

But I like wrestling, which is why when Angela called offering wrestling tickets for this morning, I jumped at the offer. An unintended side consequence was that I lost my ping pong tickets for later that day. I called the people who had my ticket, my dad's coworkers and upper manager here in China, and asked them what time I had to show up, explaining that I might be late because of wrestling. Long story short, the Australian upper manager I talked to revoked my ticket but promised to find other ones for me. Life's crazy, especially in China. So instead of seeing the national sport of China, I find myself in a stadium of 60% capacity but observing a sport I used to be very interested in at a level I could not possibly conceive. Most American sports fans forget how difficult it can be to watch sports, because when you're watching baseball, football and basketball all the time, you know what's going on in every single play. People forget that when they first played or watched those sports, they were extremely confused, couldn't understand rule nuances and couldn't keep track of all the different players. Americans are rarely exposed to other fringe sports unless Vince Vaughn makes a movie about it. But seeing an unfamiliar sport can be very difficult, which is why ESPN tends to stray away from that trend, although it was certainly an exciting prospect for me. I've already expressed my interest at seeing something like badminton or handball live at the Olympic level.

Since the torch was lit, I've obviously seen a fair share of sports I know little about. A prime example would be fencing: even though I get that the goal of the sport is to hit the other person with your epee before they hit you, I watched the sport and had no idea what was going on. The fencers would eye each other for a few seconds, en garde, then in a flash of a second both would jab, both would get hit, and one would celebrate. It seemed as if there was no parrying, no real fighting, just quick pokes and then a Chinese guy won and a French guy looked pissed. One needs to do research before watching these games.

So I did plenty of research after getting my wrestling ticket. The weight classes were 66kg (145.5 lbs) and 74kg (163 lbs) and I was initially thrilled because Ben Askren, one of only 2 wrestlers in the Olympics I had ever heard about, is in the 74 kg class. Then I realized my tickets were for Greco-Roman wrestling, and started to frown. There are two styles of wrestling in the Olympics - Greco-Roman and Freestyle - in addition to the style we do in American high schools - Folkstyle. Folkstyle is very similar to freestyle, I don't know the differences yet, but Greco is really freaking different. Any grabbing below the waist is illegal which totally changes the complexion of match play in neutral because shooting is essentially non existant. In addition, a wrestler on top is allowed to lock hands, and the sport is more about turning the person on bottom than trying to pin. It's very upperbody-centric and IMO not as exciting. The Americans were 37 year old T.C. Dantzler in the 74kg class and 18 year old Jake Deitchler, both making their first appearances. Both are intriguing stories for their respective ages but I was most impressed by Deitchler because he hasn't even attended college yet (he'll be a freshman at Minnesota come fall). That must be a pretty exclusive club - Americans who reached the Olympics before college. He's only the 3rd high schooler to make the US wrestling team.

I arrived late at China Agricultural University Gymnasium and Dantzler was already losing by the time I sat down. I soon realized how little I knew of the sport, even the scoring and the time periods. Apparently there were 3 periods of 2 minutes, just like high school wrestling, but each period was broken in a 1 minute neutral section, then 30 seconds intervals of alternating top and bottom. There was 1 point for a simple takedown, 2 or 3 for a "danger exposure" and up to 5 for a baller takedown. You can read more about that here. Anyways while I'm trying to figure out these rules, I notice a ton of Central Asian and Eastern European countries being represented. While I stereotype Russia's as a traditional power, there were wrestlers from Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and notably Kazakhstan. We were actually sitting next to a giant delegation of Kazakhs all dressed in light blue, and waving Kazakh flags. No joke, the Kazakhs outnumbered the Chinese in that gymnasium, and when their wrestlers came out, they all started chanting "Kazakhstan, Kazakhstan" in this odd tone that I just can't describe. I really felt like Borat was going to come out at any moment. Kazakh nation is on display on the left. I really need to meet more Central Asians.

Jansen had also bought a ticket from Angela and explained that the American would be wrestler on the mat in front of us soon (there were 3 mats, with matches taking place simultaneously and making action very difficult to follow). Then I hear someone behind me saying "Jake is up next." I turn around and ask the prototypical American dad I see in front of me, "Do you know him?" The man replied, "Jake's my son." Wow. I was stunned that the parents of the participants wouldn't be given special seats and instead be in the stands with a schmoe like me, but I guess there weren't really any extra seats to be had. I became obsessed with that family and asked them a bunch of questions like "How much weight does Jake need to cut? How'd he get into Greco? What weight classes did he wrestle in high school?" Answers: about 28 pounds, he picked it up a few years and it came rather naturally cause he's got a lot of upper body strength, and he was state champ at 135, 145 and 152. It amazed me that all these wrestlers had weighed in at 145 pounds, which would be difficult for me to make now. These guys were all universally huge, with especially defined shoulder muscles. Jake's opponent was from Kyrgyzstan and looked really Asian and pretty much handled Jake. However we rooted for that guy for the rest of the night because if he won his next 2 matches, Jake would be able to return and wrestle from bronze. It's an odd system that I never dealt with but pretty common in high level wrestling tournaments. Amazingly, the Kyrgyzstani did win his next two matches, in rather dramatic fashion, including an upset of the 2005 world champion from either Hungary or Bulgaria. His coaches went ecstatic when the seconds ticked off the clock during that match and we likewise cheered ecstatically. I wouldn't get to see Jake wrestle though as the later matches took place in an afternoon session that my ticket didn't cover. Overall the morning session was extremely enjoyable, and even though I don't fully understand the rules and can't name any moves they used, I could follow along and oohed and aahed at the right moments. There were 2 total pins during the day, both extremely exciting, and some really fucking strong throws.

I gotta crash now, I JUST got a ticket to see Spain play Germany in basketball at 9am, and have a boxing ticket for the evening. Lovin' it!

SPO: An All Star performance

Sometimes, especially back in high school, Sunday meant waking up at 9:30 and rushing to Mass at 10, coming back for a leisurely lunch, reluctantly helping my mom out in the garden, doing homework or during football season, watching TV all day, eating take-out pizza from Newton Highlands, then calling it an early night after pointlessly surfing the web. This Sunday meant spending the entire day in various stages of inebriation looking for a good place to watch the Olympics.

Things change, and you may find yourself on the other side of the world. So, in what was originally the brainchild of Vivian Chen, we spent the whole day searching for the Perfect Sports Bar. Like good Georgetown students, we had done our research and had found the All-Star, which I had mentioned in my last post. It was supposed to have an absurd number of TVs, good food, drinks, dance floor etc and be open 24/7. In comparison, Lush might as well be a drink stand, with its pathetic 1 small screen. Armed with such valuable information, we strolled out of the Dongzhimen subway stop with confidence and excitement. I guess the first sign of bad news was when 3 consecutive cab drivers did not recognize the place - and Vivian speaks fluent Mandarin so that wasn't the issue. All-Star is located within a chic mall that was opened just before the Games, but as we found out upon arrival, those two qualities had spelled financial disaster. This mall seemed well designed in theory, but so did the 2004 USA men's basketball team, and it appears that neither will ever strike gold. Solana (sic?) as it was called, could have been airlifted from Orange County or Tampa Bay. It had that reddish clay Moroccan-esque architecture that seems to accompany warm-weather malls, a gigantic fountain (with too many fountain offspring scattered around), a large poorly-laid complex, a wealth of moderately classy stores and a total ghost town feel. Considering we visited on a Sunday afternoon, Solana was creepily unoccupied, and both Vivian and a total stranger remarked on the creepiness of this abandoned mall. I guess when you throw an American mall into the middle of a poor neighborhood in Beijing, open up during the craziest times possible, you might not instantly get a huge following. There are other established malls in Beijing and there was nothing special here that would draw an average local to it. Nonetheless we arrived at All-Star, only to find this 24/7 super club would be open at 5pm. They apparently needed to train their workers, who were incidentally all sitting down watching the Olympics on their many TV screens. Well that was a bit of a letdown, but the club looked cool so we decided we would return, at the very least for the US-China uber match.

We found another bar in the same ghost mall containing a few bored-looking Caucasians. It was around 2:45pm in Beijing, but 11:45pm Pacific so I decided it was safe to start drinking and ordered a Singapore Sling. A near TV showed women's gymnastics and we oohed and aahed at American female strength, while a far TV showed women's synchronized diving and we gaped from afar as Guo Jingjing and her partner figuratively lapped the field. Then a lone white guy dressed in a Hawaiian shirt who had been fiddling on his laptop on a table next to us asked us whether we wanted to watch gymnastics or diving in accented English. I guess I said something along the lines of I'd prefer to watch gymnastics but whatever. He then asked the other table, which contained two white guys and 1 Chinese girl first in Mandarin, which got blanks, then in English, we got intrigued blanks, then finally in German, which got a response. That encounter alone interested me as trilingual conversations are rare even in Beijing, so I asked him if he was from Germany. He responded yes, but that he had been in China for 3 years and would soon be moving to Macau. And this was where things got interesting.

Macau eh? Who moves from Beijing to Macau? Macau is a Cantonese-speaking former Portuguese colony that now makes more gambling revenue than Las Vegas, and incidentally on the list of cities I want to (re) visit. Already suspecting an answer, I asked him what line of work he was in. Nonetheless, I was a little taken aback when he unabashed replied, "Professional poker player." Although he refused to tell me how much he had won, he said that he had gotten started played 30/60 blinds online a few years ago, and described how he would start at 8am with a cup of coffee, while Americans would be starting at 8pm with a glass of whiskey. That combo apparently allowed him to rake it in. Further along in the conversation, we learned that he had just gotten married 2 WEEKS ago, that he was a year ahead of Dirk Nowitzki at the same high school, that Dirk was rather unpopular as a freshman cause he was so gangly, that he thought I looked mixed (who doesn't in this town?) and when I told him about my Dutch heritage, that I looked like Marco Van Basten, a Dutch football coach whom I'm currently wikipedia-ing. All fascinating stuff, but it took the entrance of his wife to really cause Vivian's jaw to drop. His wife was really Chinese, probably speaking English as well as he spoke Chinese (decently) and at least 7 months pregant. She could have dropped right there in the bar. As Bjorn, as he introduced himself, told us that he and his wife were going to watch diving, I could feel Vivian concentrating with all her might not to disintegrate into peals.

As he began to leave, I asked him, "Have you heard of Stanley Ho?" Bjorn answered, "The Macau casino owner? Yeah. What, is he your father." Me, "No, my uncle." You can imagine that he was interested in this - I think Vivian may have slipped off her seat and collapsed onto the floor at this point. I talked a little bit about how he was related to me, how he had like 25 kids with 4 wives ("He really got the most out of them didn't he," was Bjorn's clever response) and how I also dabbled in sports betting. He gave me his business card, or more specifically, Dr. Eldo Radon's card. Dr. Radon is a partner / poker coach at Asia Poker Academy, which you can reach at www.asiapokeracademy.com. I'm looking at the card right now...you cannot make this stuff up. Bjorn explained how when playing poker in China, you never use your real name. He did not explain why he invented a name as ridiculous as Dr. Eldo Radon - I mean radon is a freaking radioactive gas - but some questions are best left unanswered. I gave him my number so this may not be the end of the story.

I downed my Sling and we bounced. We weren't 200 meters away before Vivian cracked up, saying that this was all too much too soon for a Sunday afternoon. We got a cab and left this ghost town for the more traditional party locale of San Li Tunr. Unfortunately we didn't know where to go, and failing to find Paddy Oshea's, I walked several blocks on my hobbled ankle to the Saddle, where July 4th had been spent. The Saddle was a little bit less lonely, containing several tables of Westerners, but unfortunately just 1 TV showing women's weightlifting. I don't want to bore you with the details, but let's just say I don't think I want to watch women's weightlifting for another 4 years. Vivian also displayed her ability to get totally wasted by a sole margarita, despite claiming to be from Texas, so we hopped across the street to a bar that was showing basketball on the big screen. Argentina was playing Lithuania in what would turn out to be the game of the day, yet I would read about that on ESPN because lightning cut out the feed for a while, and when the TV did come back on, the bar could not find the channel again despite my constant pleas. While watching swimming re-runs, I killed another beer and then proceeded to go to the Rickshaw, a very popular San Li Tunr bar for Westerners.

If I had a belt for sparsely populated bars, the Rickshaw would be another notch on it. To be fair to all these bars, we were visiting from 2-7pm on Sunday afternoons. But then again, it's the Olympics, and we were constantly asking, "WHERE IS EVERYONE?" If you haven't gotten the sense yet, Beijing is a very large city and I couldn't understand why all the popular bars were devoid of rabid sports fans. I guess the Rickshaw was nice because from 5-9 pm drinks are half off, and a Hurricane and a Tsingtao only cost 40 kuai. But once again, there were only about a dozen patrons, 3 of them hardcore pool hustlers, and nothing good on TV so we decided that the time had come for our return trip to All Star.

All Star looked like a totally different site upon rearrival, outfitted with sharp lighting and squeaky clean tables. All of the tables were reserved but we were lucky to get 2 seats at the bar. The club was just starting to get crowded (it was probably around 8, with the USA-China uber match set to begin at 10) and seats would be gone within half an hour. We had to endure high prices and a long China-Belgium men's soccer game that saw more Chinese red cards (2) than Chinese goals (0). Why is soccer the most popular sport? Give me a game of Ultimate any day. Finally, after eating myself sober, Yao Ming entered the TV and basketball coverage came on. Now All Star was absolutely hopping, with at least 4 times as many people as seats, but for such a successful venue, the place was hilariously flawed. The place was supposed to open on August 1 but instead was delayed to August 9, missing out on the 8/8/08 bonanza, although they reportedly sold out of food and booze the first night, and things were still shaky, first exhibited in the 5pm opening time. Among the defects: the material underneath the table came off like chalk, only the first page of the 20 page menu was relevant, there was NO BATHROOM in the bar but we had to walk outside in the rain (they provided umbrellas) to the dance club on the second floor (co-owned by not actually attached to All-Star), and get this: ALL the TVs HAD to be tuned into the same channel. They literally could not change our TV from soccer to judo or whatnot, the technology had yet to arrive. You may ask the question: what's the point of having so many TVs then? Yeah, we did that too - loudly and rudely to the fuwuyuans - but apparently an answer does not existed.

Come 10 o'clock this was not a problem, because everyone was there to watch the Uber Match, the most watched basketball game in history, the most hyped first round match ever, China - USA, aka World War III. There were over 1 billion viewers worldwide - count me in there. We all knew for a long time the game would be overhyped, after all it was ordained to be a first round blowout, but the atmosphere was fucking awesome. China and USA were both lustfully cheered and both sides knew players from both teams. The pre-game commentary mentioned Yao Ming at least once per sentence, to the extent that when he was shown on screen, a Canadian behind me jokingly asked, "What's that guy's name again?" And when he opened the game with a freaking 3 point swish (reminiscent of Roy Hibbert vs. UConn), the house roared and buzzers blared. Literally, the club had buzzers that flashed orange and shrieked whenever China scored a nice bucket or an American had a thundering dunk. The first quarter was painfully sloppy for the 梦队,Team USA, but enough throwdowns from Dwight Howard and LeBron James gave us something to cheer about. Yi Jianlian shat the boat until his incredible dunk on Carmelo Anthony off a Yao Ming miss that hopefully will be replayed 1000 times when the Nuggets enter opposing arenas. My favorite player on this team (and my pick for leading scorer), Dwyane Wade, was absolutely phenomenal, going 7 for 7 from the field, 5 for 5 from the stripe and dropped down a sweet reverse flush and a rare contested fadeaway jumper. The only mini-story from a rather predictable, if thoroughly entertaining, story was the performance of Sun Yue, China's 6'9" shooting guard. Sun was drafted by the Lakers (Phoenix totally dropped the ball on that one) in the second round of '07 and he has recently signed with them so we'll see him in the NBA. He's pretty silky smooth with a good handle and a great shooting touch, and hit a nice contested 3 pointer to tie the game in the second quarter. The Chinese think he's their second best defender after Yao, but his weak-ass frame was bowled over one time he was accidentally matched up with Dwight Howard. If he's quick enough to defend other shooting guards though, he may be fine, although he'll definitely need to bulk up either way. In addition, word on the streets was that Sun Yue had dunked on the US in international competition 2 years ago and the US team had put out a bounty. If anyone dunked on him, they would get like $20,000 from the rest of the team. If anyone got dunked or on blocked by him, they would have to pay $50,000 (something like that). Amazingly, Sun Yue stuffed Dwight Howard. I don't know what the outcome was there, no English news source that I read reported anything about this, but hopefully I'll run into some basketball players and ask them.

I'll have more to blog about later. I missed Michael Phelps and the US swimming team's incredible 4x100 relay this morning, which is already the highlight of these Games, but will catch live wrestling Wednesday morning and then ping pong that afternoon. Btw, Marco van Basten kinda does look like me, maybe I should visit the Netherlands in the fall.

SPO: Day 1

Due to complications from last night, namely a rogue dancer stepped on my bad foot, my ankle did not feel very adventurous today. So it was one of those days in which I didn't leave Wudaokou, eating 2 meals at Lush and soaking in a lot of rather mundane Olympics action and missing Michael Phelps' 400 IM heat because the people at Lush were dumbasses.

I saw a ton of highlights of the first Chinese gold, in women's weightlifting. I'm already sick of the gold medal winner and that sport. There were some pretty squeamish "highlights" of various girls failing to lift the bar, with a particularly brutal one where a Taiwanese girl successfully lifted the bar, then lost her balance and dropped the barbell and fell down backwards. The barbell almost broke landed on her knees and may have broken them. I can't imagine maxing out like that without a spotter... not a safe sport. Also, weightlifter girls...not my type...or anyone's.

The gold medal for most boring sport on TV has to be Shooting. First, the athletes are expressionless, locked in concentration, and in an added bonus that further takes away any possible charisma, their eyes are blocked by odd eyeshades. The TV feed just shows them aiming straight ahead and then has a computer generated image of the target on the side. They create a point to represent where the shot hit. Um ok. I literally did not know how far away the target was, what the shooter's view was, and why it was so difficult. Just terrible coverage. Also, the shooters would take a long time before their shot, during which the TV would be focused on them the whole time, and it was rarely clear when they actually shot. A Chinese dude won gold, yet the TV never caught him smiling. I'm afraid this guy will use his shooting expertise to become a serial killer.

But let's not joke about that, cause the death by stabbing of the American tourist here shook most of us a little bit. With safety concerns returning, we all thought that the dead American easily could have been us. It seems that the violence was senseless, so as heartless as it sounds, I won't try to make sense of it. Just pray that no one else dies.

Back to sports, I also watched a ton of women's basketball (the US team was surprisingly compelling and dominant, even though the sport is normally a bad joke), gymnastics, cycling (totally boring even if they bike to the Great Wall and back...7 times) women's handball and volleyball. The last two sports were awesome to watch. I can't wait to go to my handball semifinal match now, and see a combination of alley oops and fastballs. Volleyball was also exciting as I got into a well-played match between the US and Japan. The two were clearly good teams and featured several good rallies with spike after dig after spike. The US won 3-1 and gold looked pretty promising.

Tomorrow should be a full day of sports as I plan to spend the entire day at a sports bar called All Star. I think it sponsors the US and is open 24 hours, contains a restaurant, bar, like 20 tvs, and a dance floor. Should be wild.

STO: Best show ever

Hopefully you guys all got to see the Opening Ceremonies - I defy you to bring up a better performance of any kind witnessed by human eyes. It was part Cirque du Soleil, part DisneyWorld, part fireworks extravaganza, part mass demonstrate and part cinematic brilliance. And we barely found a place to view it. I may never know where we should have seen it, but some of the outdoor theaters that had been set up were closed without notice and most of the good bars were full. Crystal and I, trying to meet up with other Georgetowners, eventually made it to an abandoned bar/restaurant called Sangria club which had just 1 table of 4 Chinese nationals. It wasn't the ideal setting but it had its perks and we loved it.

The first hour or so of the Ceremonies were the best and absolutely spectacular. Several moments drew forceful and voluble gasps as we, and the entire stadium audience, were taken in by totally surprising perfection. The first example would be the opening firework that just shot into the stadium, and we joked about unintended casualties. Then the whole lit drum thing blew our minds. The show quite aptly represented Chinese culture and performance, and the mass of drums beating in coordination showed the great Chinese manpower and unity. If you haven't seen it, there was a rectangular mass of square drums, probably at least 800 of them (EDIT: there were 2008), each complete with a Chinese drummer of almost the exact same height and haircut. When the drummers beat the drum, it would light up, and the drummers would make images for the bird's eye view. When they began the countdown, the bar boiled over with sheer adrenaline. At first we had no idea what was going on, then we saw a 60 materialize. Then a 50. When they hit 10, they added the Chinese characters and counted down by 1 and you can hear the stadium go nuts and chant the Chinese numbers as it counted down. 十，九，八，七，六，五，四，三，二，一 and then FIREWORKS! The whole city exploded in fireworks down the median, through Tiananmen square and the Forbidden City and ended in an absolute conflagration over the Bird's Nest.

The other huge scream of shock was when they laid a set of sparkling Olympic Rings on the ground. While a bunch of people on wires hovered over the Rings, they suddenly started floating upwards and we went nuts. Then the Globe where people were running sidewalks along it was sensational, and the theme song was performed on top of it. Sarah Brightman apparently did sing in Chinese, but the effect was modest as we could barely tell. The little girl singer probably stole the show - she was indescribably adorable and seemingly showed not the slightest apprehension about singing in front of 91,000 live and 4 billion on TV. The following cultural show, including the character tiles and the dragonboat display, were meant to depict China's 5000 years of history. Although most of it flew by me, several of the people I was with had studied Chinese history and understood many of the references. They described the evolution of the Chinese character, using 和 which means so much more than "and," the beginning of trade, the silk road, the Great Wall and Confucius, to name a few. The show accurately and artistically demonstrated the essence of China in an authentic manner far differently than the commercialized depictions we often see in the West. It was Zhang Yimou making his country proud.

The countries' entrances was longer than ever, easily over an hour, but it was worth it just for the American entrance. Other countries had appropriate responses as well as the various students I was sitting with, nearly all American, had their own ancestries. Poland, Italy and Germany all got respective cheers, and I went particularly active during Hong Kong's entrance. For some reason when Ireland came in, we all finished our beers. I first spotted the US flag in the background and started going ballistic. We all instantly stood up on our chairs and took a shot of vodka and then proceeded to chant USA, USA, USA, a chant that may be stuck in my head for the next 2 weeks. While the sailor outfits didn't really do it for me, it was fantastic seeing Phelps, Kobe, Tyson Gay et alia come in the stadium, really proving that we are all in the same city. A rendition of the Star Spangled Anthem ensued, and then for some reason we snuck in a few Hoya Saxa chants (7 Hoyas were present at Sangria Club, amidst many other annoyed students of other less international universities). After the gigantic American entourage went through, we mulled around until the Chinese team entered. Finally Yao Ming stepped out holding the red Chinese flag and the place erupted again. In addition to the bartenders and 服务员 and the other Chinese people in the bar, we probably went more nuts to China's entrance than we had to the USA's. I don't know why but something about living here has given us all some loyalty to this country. Either way, everyone screamed 中国加油 for at least 5 minutes straight and that chant is probably still echoing in the Bird's Nest. The Chinese delegation was even bigger (cause they automatically get contestants in every event) and fucking delirious. You could tell how happy they all were to be there, parading in the capital of their country, the largest in the world.

There was an infuriatingly long time of inactivity between China's entrance and the lighting of the torch, but the torch lighting exceeded even our inflated expectations. As I correctly predicted, Li Ning was the final torch bearer - it's as if I'm good at sports predictions or something. I couldn't foresee though that he would be raised to a height of 15 stories and fly a lap around the stadium, before setting that gigantic torch ablaze. London - good luck.

A final word on torchbearers - basketball players were disproportionately represented, which goes to show how popular that sport is. In fact, basketball is the only global Olympic sport where all the well known superstars participate in, since the other other global sport, soccer, is essentially a U-23 tournament. Someone could argue tennis belongs in that conversation, but even tennis players don't care about the Olympics because it's not much different from any major except that it rewards no prize money. I think it was great that Manu Ginobili carried the Argentine torch - he carried that squad to gold in Athens - but I was surprised that Nowitzki carried the German one (there have to be some defending German gold medalists) or that Yao carried the Chinese one. I know Yao is clearly the biggest Chinese superstar, but I had heard it would carried by Liu Xiang and Guo Jingjing, who have actually won, and can win again, gold. It was cool to see Yao carry it though. The Americans were represented by Lopez Lomong - I was among few who actually knew who he was. I actually heard his story first on NPR, about his escape from Sudan and scholarship to Northern Arizona. I then saw him run in the NCAAs where he won the 1500 in a spectacular kick. I swear this guy absolutely flies - while he's a distance runner, his pure speed and strength is definitely not distance-like, and I bet he can run a sub 47 400 meter dash. His 800 pr is 1:45.79 and 1500 pr 3:37, so I don't know if he can realistically medal. While one theme of these Olympics have been to separate sports and politics, Lomong's nomination as flag bearer was CLEARLY political. A Lost Boy of Sudan and member of Team Darfur, his amazing story will undoubtedly bring resentment to China's pro-Sudan policies. I think I saw Hu Jintao cringe when the American team came in.

Btw, Bush was badly booed.

CUL: We are ready

I'm in a rush here because I'm about to head out to watch the opening ceremonies. Really quickly, go to Youtube and watch the Beijing theme song "We Are Ready" sung by like 1000 different Chinese artists. Its catchy and nice, but here's what I read out of it: Hi I'm Beijing. Lots of people said I couldn't host the Olympics but guess what? I'm ready. Take that.
Instead the song should celebrate how awesome Beijing and the Olympics are, because they're both awesome. Whatever.

Ok so today is 08/08/08, one of the most celebrated days in recent memory. I think its on par or higher than 5/19/99 (Star Wars Episode 1, kind of a letdown), 1/1/00 (definitely a letdown, stupid Y2K), 7/21/07 (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, well worth the wait) and 7/22/88 (me, jury's still out). I've been scrambling around all day taking the subway to meet people for tickets, got them now, took a picture which I'll upload later, and yeah I gotta head out cause this shit should be off the hook.

SPO: 中国加油

The Olympics are under a day away so more sports. But first, a few words on American sports, especially trades in American sports. But just a few words. Brett Favre has gone from mythological legend, to silly bore, to uber villain. Brett it was awesome that you almost retired and then came back and led your team to the NFC Championship! Brett it's awesome that you're going to retire. Wait you're not going to retire? You're not ultra loyal to the Packers? You're a JET??? Consensus: Brett Favre is an unexpected douchebag. Manny Ramirez has gone from whacky to...whacky to ex-whackjob. Actually I don't want to talk about it. Manny, I appreciate you winning 2 World Series for us and being thoroughly entertaining and smiling at me that one time I went to work really early, but seriously...get your shit together.

Those are my few words on American sports, cause really, American sports < Olympic sports. They really do pale in comparison, but that's cause there are no trades in the Olympics. People just swap countries for money, but it's cool cause you get to see Kenyans trying to speak Danish. But today I want to talk about China, probably one of the least ethnically diverse teams (except for their coaches, which are very global in origin). I have heard the subject of this post, 中国加油, at least 100 times in the past few weeks, mostly from little kids, TVs, and Lisa He. So 中国 means China, zhong guo, it's pretty simple. 加油 means add gas, literally, but it also means like Go, as in Go China! So China add gas is how people say Let's Go China! It's not easy being a translator. People chant that phrase here a lot, often while carrying small Chinese flags. While talking sports with my barber, I said 中国加油 and he responded with 美国都加油, which means "America also add gas." I gave a hearty chuckle.

So who are the Chinese athletes garnering attention mainland wide? What sports do people here care about? Is Yao Ming really as big in person? I hope to answer at least 2 of these questions...

1) Yao Ming - basketball. I have yet to see him in person, but he is the 7'6" bamboo shoot that anchors the Houston Rockets and the Chinese National Team. Easily the most recognizable Chinese athlete worldwide and probably the most famous Chinese person alive, since Mao Tse-Tong and Bruce Lee are dead. He's got some pressure on him, as every Chinese athlete does, but not that much cause the Chinese people I've talked to would be thrilled to beat Angola and Germany and make the round of 8, and many don't even see that happening. ESPN says he'll be the flagbearer (contrary to China Daily's report) so he'll be one of the biggest (tallest) figures of the Games.

2) Liu Xiang - 110meter hurdles. He's arguably bigger than Yao Ming here. The only Chinese track & field gold medalist ever, Liu Xiang is the beneficiary of a genetic anomaly that has somehow put insane fast twitch muscles on an abnormally tall Asian man. At 6'2" and a former competitive high jumper before switching events, Liu Xiang has basically all the physical attributes that I really want. Although he won the 2004 Olympic Gold, the 2007 World Championships and held the world record of 12.88 s all at the same time, Liu Xiang is not the clear favorite. The emergence of Guantanamo-born Dayron Robles, who ran a 12.87, has set the stage for a real tense showdown. Nonetheless, the one wish that the Chinese people hope for in these Olympics, besides safety, is for Liu Xiang to win gold. I'd put money down on that too. His form is so effortless and perfected - watch him race and see how steady his upper body is during the entire race. I'm not sure if he has the pure speed to match many of his competitors, but he could hurdle blindfolded.

Disclaimer: While typing this post, I took a break to get drinks with Vivian Chen, Georgetown '11. Since then, I have shot down a mojito, long island iced tea, vodka cranberry red bull mix, 4 beers, and a 23 year old stewardess. Then I woke up today and got boxing tickets. What what?

3) Guo Jingjing - diving. While you've probably heard of Yao and Liu, Guo Jingjing is a relative unknown in the US, but of nearly equal celebrity footing in China. She's a diver, just 26 but appearing in her 4th Olympics, having competed in Atlanta at 12. She won 2 silvers in Sydney and 2 golds in Athens, where she broke out as a mega superstar. She was signed by McDonald's and then briefly kicked off the national team for commercializing too much. In addition, she hit the tabloids because of a relationship with Kenneth Fok, "the playboy grandson of the Hong Kong business tycoon" according to Wikipedia. Sounds like a few of my relatives. Anyways, she's a diver, which means she spins and rotates very well and is surprisingly jacked. She's decent looking but IMO doesn't deserve the tabloid hype. Also, her relationship has gotten mostly negative publicity cause Chinese people apparently don't want their athletes having fun and just want them training. This is kind of the opposite of American sports fans who go gaga at the sound of "Brady & Gisele."

4) Wang Hao - table tennis. Ping Pong is China's national sport, and nothing would bring more national shame than an upset in Ping Pong. Ensuring gold in men's singles will be Wang Hao's (and Ma Lin) mission, and he's in prime position to do it as a defending silver medalist and the current world #1. Ma Lin is the world's #2. Wang Hao uses an unorthodox grip that they call the penhold, which looks and sounds really freaking tough. The feeling I've gotten from co-workers is that China dominates this sport, expecting to win at least 3 of the 4 golds offered, but South Korea and Sweden are strong rival contenders.

5) Lin Dan - badminton. More on the sport in a second, but first be aware of Lin Dan. He's the 2 time defending world champion in men's singles and apparently has kind of an edgy personality that the media likes, and going out with a female Chinese badminton team member. I've never seen him play so I can't really add anything else.

6) Zuo Shiming - boxing. Zuo is a 2 time world champion amateur boxer and won bronze in Athens. According to Time, which placed him #20 on 100 athletes to watch for, he's 5'6" yet somehow boxes in the 48 kg light flyweight division (the lightest division), and he's very muscular. 48 kg is 105.6 pounds, which means he almost could have wrestled Joseph Baron. I don't know how he can possibly be that light, but as a former wrestler, I know it couldn't have been fun and I wouldn't be stunned to hear that Chinese doctors had removed several heavy organs from his body. He may very well win gold in a sport that the Chinese are again traditionally not very good.

Once again, there are 639 Chinese athletes and I don't know all of them, so if there are other compelling figures to include please let me know. I do know what sports the average Chinese is interested in though after asking that question 1000 times at work. Like most people, they're interested mainly in the sports that their countrymen are good at, so 110 meter hurdles, diving and ping pong are big events. In addition, basketball is HUGE here - a good anecdote is my conversation with a taxi driver while returning drunk from San Li Tunr one night. My Chinese is still fairly hard on the ears, and unlike some people's, alcohol does not improve it. Nonetheless, I had a 30 minute conversation about the NBA with this guy, who knew the Chinese name (can you guess who Ji-nu-bi-li is?) of at least half the players, and he told me he's not expecting much of the Chinese team in the Olympics but would be thrilled if they advanced. The Chinese are in a "pool of death" with the USA Redeem Team, defending world champion Spain, Greece (which beat the US in said world championships), Germany and certain cellar dweller Angola. 4 teams advance and essentially China will have to defeat Dirk Nowitzki and the Germans to do so. Anyways, the Chinese love basketball and tickets for the opening game, China vs US are going for 5000 kuai, which is ridiculous for a first round certain blowout...although if China won, God knows the absolute riot that would ensue. But back to other sports, Badminton and Tennis are also extremely popular. There aren't too many Chinese tennis hopefuls, one girl is decent, but badminton is a sport that China actually dominates.

I had never watched badminton at a competitive level before I came to China but I've seen a lot of it here. Apparently, Indonesia, Malaysia, China and Denmark are some of the sport's powers, which surprised me because I always thought of it as the lawn sport of the British elite. While a lifelong tennis player and big tennis fan, badminton objectively contains more action. Whereas tennis points end quickly, as short as one service ace and typically as long as a few strokes, badminton volleys as they call them last much longer. Because of the shuttlecock's floatiness, contestants can basically slam upwards all the time, and the cock will fall back down in play. It's like a polished version of a tennis game where both players are at the net and just volleying back and forth. Badminton players are rail-thin but extremely quick and often with good ups. Almost every volley contains at least a few drop shots and a ton of slams. Despite its feathery form, a Chinese player n 2005 slammed it 206 miles per hour for a world record. The fastest tennis serve was 153 mph by Andy Roddick, and his serve once got stuck in clay, so you should be impressed. It really is an exciting sport and I'm surprised it hasn't caught on in the States. A few more notes on badminton: serves must be in this weird backhanded underhand form while standing in front box and must reach the back box. The boxes are shaped like a tennis court, except that the alleys in doubles also extend back behind the baseline. If you've never seen this sport played, like I hadn't, I strongly suggest you tune in during the Olympics and watch Lin Dan slam some shuttlecock.