Olympic memories

Being a compendium of recollections about the 2008 Beijing Olympics told through pictures that didn’t fit in other posts.

Here’s a local scene that is symbolic of Beijing during August and September of 2008:
That’s the eastern entrance to the building where our office was, the one I used on days when I either walked from home or took a taxi. You can’t read the sign from this angle, but you can see the red arrow telling you to go around to the north entrance. This was a frequent minor irritation, as the bicycle parking area is on the south side of the building.

Note that the doors are chained shut with bicycle locks. The people with the cart are making a delivery of vegetables to one of the restaurants in the building, and the security guard just finished digging through the bags looking for...whatever he was looking for. This was part of the increased security initiative all over the city. Around on the north side, they were checking building passes for all who came in, and visitors had to sign a log. At least that’s what the sign said – my Chinese teacher walked right in a couple times, and another time she had to wait while I came down to vouch for her. Anyone with an Olympic credential was also let in without question.

With the chains on the door (note that the one on the right side is on the outside of the door, while the other is on the inside), I couldn’t help thinking that in case of an emergency evacuation, people could easily get trapped trying to go out this way, depending on where the key is kept and how quickly the chain could be opened.

Here’s another typical scene.
The town was full of volunteers. This is a bunch of them at the Yonghegong Lama Temple subway station.

For the Opening Ceremony, I went to a place called Club Obiwan, which is along the shore of Xihai, one of the lakes in the western part of downtown.
Club Obiwan has three levels of fun, as well as a pretty cool name.
They had a big projection TV on the roof for the Opening Ceremony, and it got pretty crowded.
That was early in the evening, just before the show proper started, and before the place really filled up. Given all the hype about 08/08/08 8:08, I was a little surprised that the festivities started so much ahead of time. At the actual appointed time, I couldn’t tell any difference from what was happening at 8:07.

Several hours later, the festivities were over, and it looked like this:
I’m not sure how they managed to accumulate so many bottles. There was so little room on the roof that I went four hours without having a server get anywhere near me. I must say it was quite inspiring to see the amount of pride the Chinese people watching obviously felt in this whole thing. This was their moment, and they were very proud of their country.

From our rooftop, we could kind of see a little of the fireworks, and we clearly saw a couple of the infamous footprints that were computer-enhanced on the broadcast. They just looked like rings from our angle.

As I mentioned in my Beach Volleyball post, RR and I had to walk a long distance around Chaoyang Park after leaving the competition area. Here’s something we passed on the way.
Giant inflated kids, one doing martial arts, and one shooting a gun. Near them was another oddity.
I knew Shaq was tall, but dang!

At the Fencing session I attended, there was some entertainment in the break before the medal ceremony.
I clearly remember them dancing with swords, doing a kind of martial arts choreography, but you can’t see any swords here.

I mentioned a few of the corporate pavilions on the Olympic Green, but only showed a few pictures. Here’s the China Mobile building.
I’m told that’s the face of a famous Chinese actor known for comedy. Around the side, you can see a basketball player breaking through the wall. It’s actually a pop star, not an athlete. There were several other pop stars represented.
And the hostesses wore strange costumes that made them look a bit like anime characters.
Volkswagen had one of the few exhibits that was actually interesting. OK, to be fair I didn’t go inside any of them, but they looked really dull. VW had an outdoor display area with some cool cars behind glass.
Of course people like to pose with such things.
But you can occasionally get a clear shot.
They weren’t all race cars.
Several times a day, they had an aerial acrobatic show above the cars.
The Olympic Green was really huge, and given how restricted access was, it often looked like this over large areas.
While walking to the Closing Ceremony, I saw a group of volunteers (possibly with some kind of celebrity) showing the love.
I don’t know if it was a spontaneous outburst of collective spirit, or if they were rehearsing for something.

Near them were some cool statues on a historical theme.
In the large pond running up the middle of the Green, there were fountains.
And we saw a proud member of the Fire Department.
There you go. An assortment of Olympic-related odds and ends.

Let’s go to bed

Here’s a quick post about a little joke that’s been going around China lately involving the Olympics. It requires a little setup. Whether you’re aware of it or not, Trampoline is one of the disciplines of Gymnastics in the competition. The Chinese for trampoline is bengchuang, where beng means jump, bounce or hop, and chuang means bed. Makes sense, as trampoline is kind of like bouncing on a big bed.

As it happens, Chinese athletes took three of the six possible medals in Trampoline, including both Men’s and Women’s Gold.

As we’re all aware, China suffered some disappointments in other sports, however.

So now they say here, “The Chinese may not be the best at running or cycling, but they’re good in bed.”

Pomp and Circus Pants

(Photos to be augmented/replaced after I copy D’s shots to my hard drive)

To wrap up my ever-so-timely Olympic coverage, here is my report on the Closing Ceremony (24 August). Just think: a hundred years ago and more, most news was this old by the time people read it... So I’m not slow, just following an old tradition.

D and I met my colleague HC and took the subway together to the Olympic Green. We had the plan of looking around there and grabbing something to eat before going into the Bird’s Nest, but while we saw some interesting things (separate post), the food options were so limited and crowded that we ended up abandoning that part of the plan. We spent most of our time in the chaotic Olympic Mega Store picking up souvenirs and waiting in line to pay for them.

It’s a long walk from the Mega Store to the National Stadium, and the closer we got the bigger the crowd was.
Once inside, we found our seats, which were on the second level, much better than where we sat for Athletics. HC had a ticket downstairs, but eventually RR showed up to sit next to us.

The first thing we did was check out the swag bag that was on every seat. It contained a big program book, an electric mini replica torch, an orange fan, a little noisemaker drum, Chinese and Olympic flags, and a bottle of water. After we got situated, I braved the concession lines to get some beer and snacks. It was pretty much the same stuff as they had at Beach Volleyball, and even though the show hadn’t started yet, they were already out of some items. I got a couple of sausages, a couple bags of chips, and a couple glasses of Tsingtao.

We all knew that one part of the ceremony would be presented by the London Organizing Committee to set up the next Summer Games. Speculation was rife as to what the UK would choose as a symbol of their culture. Surely the Beatles were out, as we couldn’t imagine Sir Paul signing up. The Rolling Stones, maybe? That got my vote.
Before the start of the show, there was a coaching session on when to wave the fans, when to turn on the torches, when to cheer, and so on. D and I both decided we would rather take pictures than participate, but the majority of the crowd was more with the spirit.
We were intrigued by the giant drums visible down on the floor. They strapped drummers onto both sides, and we could see the rigging, so it was obvious that they would be going up in the air.
It all started the way you expect a big show in China to start: with dramatic music and a huge number of performers entering en masse.
And, of course, fireworks.
When these fanciful drum/parachute contraptions came in, my first thought was “Designed by Dr Seuss” and I know I’m not the only one who noticed.
Then the lightcycles came in, and my first thought was: Tron. Others have noted this as well.

When it comes to spectacles like this, too much is never enough, so next we had acrobats on high-tech spring stilts.
All in all, it was rather like four or five different Cirque de Soleil shows splattered Pollack-like onto a massive canvas.

This was one of the audience participation segments.
I was relieved that when the athletes entered, they did not make the slow, country-by-country march, but just streamed in. That hour-and-a-half part of the Opening Ceremony was pretty tedious to watch.
After the athletes were in, they had the dousing of the torch. It was directly over our heads, so we couldn’t see it other than a vague yellow glow through the ceiling material.
You may ask yourself: After they put out the torch, what more is there to do? As it turns out, lots.
We could see a red London double-decker bus waiting in the wings.

At first, the London portion of the show seemed okay. Maybe the bus is a bit of a cliché, but certainly China has leaned on its clichés during the Olympics, making the most of symbols like the Great Wall, the Temple of Heaven, and so on.

Little did we imagine that the bus was actually a Transformer!
It opened up and there was Jimmy Page playing the opening riff of “Whole Lotta Love.” So it was not the Stones, but Led Zeppelin. Interesting choice, and why this particular song, given its sexually suggestive lyrics? I guess LOCOG is trying to present England as the Land of Sexual Innuendo. Is this some sort off subtle, subversive criticism of the uptight Chinese? Or just desperate lack of imagination?
From there on, the London segment just got sillier and sillier. The singer who belted out Robert Plant’s part of the song was good, but then we got a strange cross-section of Brit celebs. David Beckham kicked a football into the crowd of athletes, waved, and disappeared; we had a violinist and cellist; and it kept going downhill from there. It was a virtual London Cliché Checklist, with the umbrellas, lollipop ladies (crossing guards for the Americans), and token representatives of every British trend you can think of. Later I spoke with some of my colleagues who are here from London, and when they saw it (from the comfort of an Irish pub on Dongzhimenwai), they hung their heads in shame.

After the London hand-off was done, things got ultra-Chinese. Clearly this show was designed for the domestic audience, though there were a few English-language bits to keep the foreigners engaged.

After seeing a couple of Spring Festival Gala shows on CCTV, I have learned that the Chinese capacity for dramatic, sappy, uplifting ballads with positive messages is effectively bottomless, and five minutes or more per song is perfectly acceptable. You have elaborate costumes, spectacular staging, fireworks, appearances by all the minority ethnic groups, traditional folk songs done in a modern style, references to Chinese history and culture, large groups doing choreographed moves, and every available Chinese celebrity who is not involved in any sort of scandal. Jackie Chan singing? Yikes! Anyway, in another country you might get one or two of these songs, and they would be kept short and snappy, no more than a few minutes each, but here they had eight or nine of them, and each lasted ten minutes (so it seemed). Maybe this is the downside to not having atrophied attention spans.
But aside from the length, the staging was pretty darn amazing. A tower rose out of the circular platform in the center, and a squadron of performers swarmed over it and performed choreographed moves.
It was kind of like the Millennium Show that Peter Gabriel was involved with in London, scaled up by the factor of the Chinese population.
Giant banners!
Fireworks!
More aerial work than you’ve ever seen in one place!
More fireworks! A cast of thousands! Fireworks!
“We Are the World”!

Anyway, it was quite a spectacle, and I’m certainly glad I got to see it in person.

Beijing, Beijing! Wo ai Beijing!

It took a long time to get out of the stadium. We followed the herd to the subway.
This is an alternative entrance to the station we used all the other times. I had never seen this area open to the public before.
We had to wait for a couple of trains before there was room for us.
For once, the exit from an Olympic event was relatively smooth. We took the subway to Dongzhimen, then caught a taxi to a restaurant for much-needed food and refreshment. Several colleagues (including the aforementioned Brits) were already there.

And that brought the Olympics to a close. Next chapter: Paralympics. Plus a little out-of-town getaway and the great unknown.

Keep on Running

To back up a bit from the previous post, I got to see the inside of the incredible Bird’s Nest on 20 August for a session of Athletics. I’ve already described the process of getting to the Olympic Green – it was the same this day as for when I went to Fencing. As we walked from the subway stop to the stadium, we passed by the set used by the Today Show, and since it was almost time for them to start their program (7pm local time, 7am New York time), we decided to skip the beginning of Athletics and watch.

The first thing we saw was a rehearsal of the routine the Hip-Hop Grandmas would be doing on the show.
This is a group of older Chinese women who have achieved internet fame by dancing to American hip-hop music, and being pretty good at it.

Given the chance to be on TV, even in a foreign country, will attract a crowd. Not a very large crowd in this case, but people do like to try to get their kids on TV.

Eventually the stars of the show arrived. Here’s Matt Lauer preparing for his work.
I don’t know if they showed it on NBC, but they have a pretty cool location.
We watched them do the first part of the show, then headed off to the Bird’s Nest.
Our seats were up on the third level, and this is how you get there.
There are a few elevators – somewhere. We didn’t see them. There are no escalators and no ramps, just a long hike up and up and up.

This is what it looked like from our seats.
That’s what you get for ¥200 a ticket (about US$28).

It’s kind of hard to tell at this distance, but the scoreboard on the far end (the only one we could see) displayed only Chinese. The one above and beside us (that we couldn’t see from our angle) showed the English. Seems like it would make sense to alternate the languages on both boards so everyone could read them, but apparently no one thought of that.

Sorry, no exciting action shots for this one. We were much too far away to see any details. The events we saw were Women’s Hammer, several preliminary heats of Men’s 800m and 5000m races, and a bit of Pole Vault way at the far end.
The only event we saw final results for was the Hammer, in which Aksana Miankova of Belarus set a new Olympic Record for the Gold, Yipsi Moreno of Cuba took Silver, and China’s Zhang Wenxiu took the Bronze, which pleased the crowd greatly.

Another highlight was in the first heat of the 5000m. This is a pretty long race, so as the laps went slowly by, most people were paying attention to the hammer throwing going on. But as it progressed one particular runner started catching people’s attention. Not the guy in the lead, but the guy at the very end. He was clearly out of the running, but courageously continued on, even after all the other runners lapped him. He finished more than a minute and a half behind the next best finisher, but got a huge cheer when he did. It wasn’t until after we got home that I looked up the results online and discovered it was Min Thu Soe of Myanmar.

Since there really wasn’t much to see, we left early, missing various other races, to check out the Green at night.
It was a warm night, so the fountains around the Water Cube were popular.
Back over on the Today Show set, they were wrapping up their final hour.
Note that Ann Curry has taken off her shoes. We watched her interview figure skater Michelle Kwan, who was in town as one of President Bush’s representatives for the Closing Ceremony.
By then it was getting kind of late, so we walked to the east exit of the Green and managed to find a taxi after maybe ten minutes. As we hadn’t eaten at all on the grounds, we were starving and headed for dinner.

Pretty much all pictures by D this time.