Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Yuan Li Liang Shi Yi Nin

Okay, see if you can guess what these mean.  They’re the names of two famous movie characters transliterated into Chinese.

Dasi Weide
Annajing Tianxingzhe

Answer below.

Another Claim to Fame

I get about a hundred hits a day from people using Google Image Search for a picture of elevator buttons.  I just tried it myself and, sure enough, my picture of the elevator buttons in my apartment shows up on the main page.

That’s my picture in the middle.  Hey, everyone needs to be known for something.  This is my contribution to humanity.  (Original elevator button post here.)

Sunday, August 24, 2008

Agincourt Comes to China

Here’s a sign outside the games listing prohibited items.

They banned crossbows.  Good thing the only weapon I brought was my longbow.

*Title explanation here.

Olympic Memories, Part IV

Yesterday was my last day of Olympic activities, the gold medal baseball game.  It should be noted that since there are so few countries that field baseball teams these days, and of those that do they dominate the sport, the IOC has decided that, starting with the London Games in 2012, baseball will not be on the roster.  Unless this changes in the future, which is doubtful, I can say I was at the last ever Olympic baseball game.  It kinda makes sense, though.  Think about baseball countries—the US, Cuba, South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan.  Other countries fielded teams, like the Netherlands and Canada, but they didn’t get very far.

The Americans blew it in the semifinals, getting their asses beat by Cuba and earning a bronze, so the gold medal game was between Cuba and South Korea.

I was cheering for South Korea, of course.  I’ve had enough communism to last a lifetime, I’ll be damned if I’m going to cheer for another bunch of commies.  We were, naturally, seated right in amongst a group of rabid Cuba fans, which made the game all the more interesting.

The game started of 2-1 Korea in the first inning, and stayed that way for most of the game.  The rest was pretty much three up three down on both sides for most of the game.  Until the 9th, that is.  Going into the 9th the score was 3-2 Korea, and Cuba was last at bat.  Korea started out the inning and didn’t score, so it went into the bottom of the 9th still 3-2.  The crowd was going insane at this point, both sides could smell Olympic gold.  The Korean pitcher had, in the 8th, thrown a few balls in the dirt, so it was obvious he was getting tired.  The Cubans came up to bat and he ended up striking out the first guy.  One out.  Then he walked the second guy.  He started pitching to the third, and believe it or not walked him as well.  He’d just walked the tying run, two on base.  One home run and it’s all over for Korea.  I can’t remember what happened next, but either someone got a base hit or there was another walk, but one way or another the bases ended up loaded.

The stadium was going berserk.

There was some commotion at home plate.  Apparently the Korean catcher said something to the umpire because the ump kicked him out of the game.  The managers of the Korean team came over and there was a lot of yelling and screaming going back and forth.  The Korean catcher, realizing that there was no way he was staying in the game, threw his mask at the dugout and angrily stormed off, throwing his equipment everywhere.  “Pissed off” doesn’t do it justice.

The door to the bullpen opened and out walked another catcher.  I said that they ought to take this opportunity to take out that pitcher, which they did.  So, here we are, bottom of the 9th, bases loaded, only 1 out, with a completely new pitcher and catcher.  They do a quick warm-up, then play resumes.  The Cuban batter walks out, the Korean throws his pitch—the Cuban hits a solid drive to the shortstop.  Then, in a fucking TEXTBOOK example of how baseball is supposed to be played, he tossed it to second base who stepped on the bag, then hurled it to first, who got the runner on a double play.  That’s it, game over, Korea wins.  The Koreans in the stands were going apeshit, while the Cubans just stood there with their mouths open, wondering what the hell just happened.

That’s baseball, and man do I love this game.  It was a fantastic end to what was otherwise a pretty boring game.  If this was Olympic baseball’s last stand, that 9th inning couldn’t have been a better send-off.

Update: Here’s the Koreans as they ran past us on their victory lap.

Great game, great way to end its Olympic run.

Olympic Memories, Part III

The next two events I went to were boxing.  Wednesday at 5 a coworker who was out sick called and said that he felt like shit, he had three tickets to the boxing, and did I want them?  Hell yes!  The problem was that they started at 7, and I had to find two friends who could drop what they were doing and head down to the Worker’s Gymnasium in time.  It took a lot of phone calls but I managed to do it.  We got there a little late, around 7:30.  The seats were up in the middle section, and by the time we got there it was a madhouse.  We walked up to try and find our seats and there was no way we could, so we walked down and asked one of the ushers to show us where they were.  She said “follow me” and walked off in the opposite direction, then led us to a section right down in front which was full of empty seats. 

Being tardy does sometimes have its advantages.

I’d never been to a boxing match before, and I’ve never really been much of a fight fan, but I have to admit I enjoyed the hell out of it.  We were really cheering on some of the boxers, including the guy from Ireland—“Come on you drunk bastard!”

At the second night of boxing there were a couple of noteworthy events.  France was boxing someone, I think Morocco but I could be mistaken.  At any rate the French guy had about a four inch reach on this guy and was dominating the fight up until the third round.  (There are four rounds in Olympic boxing.) The little guy just couldn’t get in close enough to hit him, so I’m sure his trainer said, “Get in there and lock up with him, then punch him in the guts.” Round three and four basically looked like the two of them were dancing, because the little guy just kept locking up the Frenchie.  The referee is supposed to break these up and separate the fighters if they last more than a second or two, but this guy wasn’t doing his job and the French guy ended up losing.  It was a real bullshit fight, and the French boxer was robbed.  It was actually kinda sad to watch because you could see the agony on his face of knowing he just lost a fight which, by all rights, he should have won.

Then there was the American heavyweight fighting an Italian.  The American was a big black guy, about six inches taller than the Italian, and had quite a reach on him.  It should have been a severe ass-beating, but the Italian just flat-out worked him.  The American wasn’t taking many swings, he was on defense the whole time, and the final score was something like 12-0.  It was really humiliating, especially when just based on size the American should have beat the piss out of the little guy.  Good for Italy, they definitely deserved that win.

Olympic Memories, Part II

Because of our little subway misadventure we were about 45 minutes late getting to the athletics.  Nonetheless, the Olympic Park was amazing, a true sight to behold.  I got some great video, which I will be posting later today, after I get all my memories recorded in these posts.  As I said before, our seats were phenomenal.  Here’s a panoramic view I stitched together from about six different photographs.  (I won’t embed it because it’s too large, click here to see it.)

The men’s long jump was taking place right in front of us.  Off to the left were the discus, hammer throw, and shot put.  To the right was the pole vaulting, which when you see it in person is actually a hell of a lot of fun.  Something odd about the place was the lack of concessions.  They didn’t really have any food other than potato chips or popcorn, so if you went there expecting to buy a hotdog or something of that nature you were pretty much shit out of luck.  Thus if you bought tickets for multiple events and were going to be at the stadium all day there wasn’t really anything to eat.

There was, however, a McDonald’s on the way into the stadium.  And let me tell you, this is the most elegant Mickey D’s you’ll ever see in your life.  Massive.  But there’s no way that McDonald’s paid to have the only food in the stadium; they’d have paid to have McDonald’s for sale inside the stadium otherwise.  This is just a cultural difference.  There were also, surprisingly, no t-shirt sellers that I could see anywhere.  At major US sporting events you can’t go ten feet without someone trying to sell you a souvenir, but other than one little stand selling stuffed fuwa dolls I didn’t see anyone peddling anything.

The one thing the Chinese did get right, however, was the beer.  They were ¥8 each, which is about $1.12, for a large beer, the size you’d get in the US.  Accordingly, we proceeded to get completely shitfaced.

A few of the evening’s highlights:  when the medal winners were announced for the long jump Cuba came in second.  As the guy was taking his victory lap he came near our section, and was maybe 20 yards from where we were at, I yelled “Viva Fidel!” The guy just turned and looked at me like “fuck you, asshole,” which of course made me laugh even harder.

All the cameramen were wearing these blue vests with BOB written on them, with a number underneath.  This brought a number of jokes that all the cameramen were named Bob so they had to assign them numbers to avoid confusion.  The BOB working in front of us was 118, so we started saying, “Hey BOB 118, you’re doing a hell of a job.  BOB116 isn’t half as good as you!” After a while BOB118 walked past us again and we yelled out “Great work BOB118!” Then my friend, who is from the UK, yelled out “BOB112’s a cunt!” (For those of you who don’t know, “cunt” does not carry the fainting-woman cultural significance that it does in the US.) At any rate I thought I was going to pee myself laughing.

There were three significant athletic memories of the evening.  One was when an American woman won gold in one of the events, hurdles I think, so I got to stand up, wave the flag I had brought with me, and butcher our national anthem in my horrible singing voice.  Then there was one event, the men’s 400m hurdles if I remember correctly, where the US had three runners and won all three medals.  (I have that event, and my drunken cheering reaction to it, on video.) Me and all the Americans around us were going insane when they announced the winners and USA was after all three names.  When the guys took their victory lap I got to reach down and shake their hands as they went past and congratulate them, which was super awesome.

The final event was for the Russian pole vaulter, who on her last vault broke the world record.  She’d done a few vaults before and had just barely knocked the bar off each time.  This was the last event of the evening, and the stadium got quiet as she prepared.  When she went over and won the world record the place went insane.  We were all screaming “Russia!” and “Russkie!” as she ran past. 

Honestly, if someone had told the Reagan-era Cold War teenage Lee that one day he’d be cheering for the Russians at the Olympics I would have laughed in your face.  But there I was, yelling as a true admirer of what she had just accomplished.  It was a great moment.  As I’ve mentioned before we go to Russian clubs a lot here, and I have to admit that I really like Russians as a people.  I’m really looking forward to visiting Russia someday.

I was so excited about being there for the presentation of the medals to the three American runners when they made the announcement that the medal ceremonies for the men’s 400m hurdles and the women’s pole vault would be held tomorrow.  In other words, get the fuck out.

Speaking of getting out, there’s one noteworthy cultural thing I’d like to point out.  China had a number of athletes competing that night.  As soon as the final event in which one of them was competing had finished, I’d say 2/3 of all the Chinese got up and left. They didn’t give a shit about anything else.  Athleticism?  Sportsmanship?  Spirit of the Games?  Bah, not important.  The entire point of these games is to stoke China’s already rampant nationalism.

Let me put it this way.  On China’s state-run CCTV networks they show two things:  China winning, and other major countries (US, UK, Europe, Australia, etc.) losing.  That’s it.  There really wasn’t any point in watching the games on TV unless you were watching the pirate satellite feed from the Philippines, because the Chinese government wouldn’t show anything on TV where China was beaten.

Olympic Memories, Part I

I apologize for the lateness of writing this stuff up. The last two weeks have ben a non-stop orgy of work, play, and the Games.  I’ve just been exhausted, and writing posts as long as the next few turn out to be is a daunting task.  Nevertheless, let’s begin with Athletics on Monday.  If you look at a seating chart of the Bird’s Nest we would have been sitting on the 50 yard line in the 3rd row.  We had PHENOMENAL seats.  The men were doing the long jump right in front of us.

The evening began with the trip on the subway.  For security reasons they want everyone to use the subway, which seems reasonable enough to me.  I was at my friend’s house, and the nearest stop to him was in Dongzhimen, so we went there. This meant we had to take three different trains:  line 5 to line 10, like 10 to line 8 (the Olympic line), and then line 8 to the stadium. Seems simple enough, right?  And if you have questions, there are official Olympic helpers in every subway station to direct you to where you’re supposed to go. 

Line 5 to 10 went fine, as did line 10 to 8.  Surprisingly (or, not surprisingly, because this is China) there were no signs whatsoever saying OLYMPICS THIS WAY.  You would think they would be everywhere, considering the number of different nationalities who were teeming around the city, but nope, not a word.  The exit you get off to transfer to the 8 line is Beitucheng.  Now, review the map below.

On the right you see Beitucheng station, with the train going to the left.  The first stop is called Olympic Sports Centre.  The second is called Olympic Green.  In between are pictures of the Bird’s Nest and the Water Cube.  We didn’t know which exit we were supposed to take, so we went and asked one of the Olympic hosts.  This broad didn’t speak ONE WORD of English.  We were saying “Bird’s Nest?” and she looked at us like we were speaking Martian.  We were even able to ask her questions in broken, half-assed Chinese, and finally she pointed on the map to Olympic Sports Center exit.  Okay, great, one exit up the line.  The train came, we went one exit, and were informed that we were at… Olympic Green. 

“What the fuck!  How the hell did we end up here?  We didn’t go two stops did we?”

We got off the train and asked another Olympic helper.  This one spoke a little English, and at least understood what we meant when we said Bird’s Nest.  He said to go back the way we came one stop, then take exit number so-and-so.  Great, we though, finally someone who knows what the hell he’s talking about.  The train came, we went back one exit, and ended up at… Beitucheng.

You can imagine the stream of expletives.  So we followed the guy’s advice and took the designated exit and then realized where we were.  You see, since the subway is the only way into the Olympic area, you actually clear Olympic security at Beitucheng before you can get on line 8.  We had already been through this security once, and here we were 15 minutes later, back in line to clear it again.  It’s standard airport-type security, metal detectors and x-rays and wands, the usual drill. 

We went to the local Olympic helper and asked her what exit we took to get to the Bird’s Nest.  The conversation went something like this.

“Yes, can you tell us which exit to take to get to the Bird’s Nest?”
“Ah, please go here and take subway.”
“Yes, we know that, we’ve already done it once.  Which exit, Olympic Green or Olympic Sports Center?”
“Ahhhhh… please to take subway.  Line 8.”
“Yes, we know that.  Which exit do we take?” We used our arms to mimic the subway line and counted.  I pointed to my arm and said zhege ditie, meaning “This subway,” then we counted off stops—yi, ar, san, si.  Which one?”
“Ahhhhh… please to take subway.  Line 8.”

Another string of expletives and grumbling about the Chinese.  I mean, really.  We live here and we were having a hard time finding the place.  The alleged “helpers” did nothing but give us contradictory information all day.  We headed back to security and line 8.

In the run-up to the games I read an article about what they were teaching their security staff to say to foreigners.  One of these phrases was “Don’t be nervous!” (It goes without saying that if China wasn’t a police state which locked people up without trial very few foreigners would be nervous about their security, considering everyone had to go through similar security just to get to Beijing.) At any rate, as we were about to go through one of the security guys looked at me and said “Don’t be nervous.” I replied, “I’m not nervous, I’ve done this a million times.” I wish I spoke enough Chinese to have been able to have said it to him using the putonghua, but alas.

Thus we found ourselves going through exactly the same security.  And, lo and behold, we ended up with exactly the same security guy.  He immediately recognized us and we told him “Your Olympic helpers told us the wrong way to go.” He smiled.  “Don’t be nervous.” I wanted to say “Fuck off, you Chinese twat” but I’m sure that wouldn’t have gone down too well.

Anyway we went downstairs at Beitucheng, again, and were confronted with the same map, again.  We got on the same train, and went one stop, and arrived at… Olympic Green.  It appears that the stop for Olympic Sports Center doesn’t exist.  It wasn’t like we passed an unused station on the way to Olympic Green, there simply isn’t one, despite the clear indication on the maps that there are two distinct stops.

It is worth noting that we were not the only ones confused by this.  The confusion presented on the subway trip to the Bird’s Nest has been overheard in many a bar here during the games, and there were actually people on the train with us who got off at the same stop we did, then ended up making exactly the same round trip.  (We recognized them because they were Brazilians and, like most Brazilian sports fans, they were decked out in green, yellow, and blue, including wigs and huge hats and painted faces and flags worn as capes.)

We got off at Olympic Green and it was indeed the right place to get off.  Thanks to China’s crack system of signage and helpers who could speak English, the lingua franca of the civilized world, the trip was as pleasant and hassle-free as most things are in China.

This is the way EVERYTHING here works.  And people wonder why the foreigners drink a lot. 

Update: I have discussed numerous times the way Chinese girls dress, and the weird clothes they have with Chinglish on them.  This is one great example I saw during the subway trip.

I’m sure to the Chinese “wear juicy” sounds like it makes sense in English.

Friday, August 22, 2008

More Olympic Fun

So tomorrow at 1:00 pm I’ll be at the boxing again, a buddy of mine got tickets today.  And Saturday I’ll be at the gold medal baseball finals.  The US is still in it.  Man, it would be fucking awesome to sit in the stands at the baseball field and cheer for the US team for the gold medal.  We’ve got really great seats, too, down near third base.

Oh, and if you ever wanted to see the word pwn3d defined, look at this.  That’s some serious fucking pwnage.

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

More Games

Sorry for the lack of posting.  I’ve got a ton of great stories to tell about the Olympics on Monday night.  Tonight I’m going to see the boxing semifinals.  A coworker had three tickets and he was sick, so he called and asked me if I wanted them.  You can see the fight card here.  No Americans, unfortunately.

Saturday I’ve got tickets to the baseball finals.  I really hope the US is in that one.

I got some insanely hilarious video on Monday night, this weekend I’ll cut it into something and get it posted online.

Monday, August 18, 2008

Good On Ya!

One quick story about Saturday night:  I actually got to touch a gold medal.  We were in a bar when the Australian rowing team came in.  They won both the gold and the silver and they were there to celebrate.  The bar gave them all free bottles of Johnny Walker scotch and they were literally sucking it down like water.  This was, clearly, the greatest night of these guys’ lives, and it was cool to watch them enjoy their victory.  Everyone was giving them high-fives, and they were being cool and let everyone look at the medal.

It’s weird.  I only held the thing in my hands for three seconds but I could feel the awesome symbolism attached to it.  You could tell you were a part of something amazing.  Well, these guys won those things, I can’t even begin to imagine what that must feel like.  My three seconds was mindblowing.

The club we were in was a total sweatbox, I guarantee it was over 100 degrees in there.  Everyone was sweating like crazy, so these guys all took their shirts off.  Male readers, let me tell you something.  You don’t know the meaning of the word emasculation until you’re standing next to a group of five half-naked 25 year old Australian gold medal winners.  I mean, they were rowers, you can imagine their physique—they looked like Greek sculptures.  One guy was fully tattooed, he had a huge tribal going from his waist to his neck.  I swear, every woman in the bar got moist the moment he went shirtless.

There were about fifty girls who wanted to get their pictures taken with the guys, and probably thirty of them who wanted to have sex with them.  It was a great thing to watch.  I just smiled and thought, enjoy it guys.  You earned it.  These are the spoils of war, and you’re entitled to them.

A Day at the Races

I’m off to the Aolinpike Yudonghui.  As I said before I’m in the third row, so I’ll be in prime TV territory.  I’m wearing a gray t-shirt with NAVY on the front of it in blue letters with a yellow border.  So basically look for the fat drunk pale-skinned doofus wearing that shirt, that’ll be me.

U-S-A!  U-S-A!

Make War, Not Love

I had a wild time Saturday night.  I’ll tell you all about it later, but for now I’ll give you one quick anecdote.  I happened to start talking to a guy from the US wrestling team.  He wasn’t competing, he was part of the coaching staff or something.  I asked how his experience had been so far, and he said that everything was fine except for one incident.  He’d been at the Forbidden City, taking in the sights.  He was wearing a USA WRESTLING t-shirt which had a US flag on the front.  He said a young woman came up to him, pointed at the flag, and started saying “Make war!  Make war!” He went off on a rant about how lame this was, that he didn’t have anything to do with US foreign policy, that he was an invited guest, and so on.  I was listening sympathetically when it suddenly dawned on me.

The girl wasn’t saying “make war,” she was saying Meiguo, which is how you say “America” in Chinese.  When spoken aloud mei guo sounds virtually identical to ma-kwar.  The girl was pointing to the flag saying “America!  America!”

Too damn funny.

Saturday, August 16, 2008

Battlestar Jihad

Remember after 9/11 there was that anti-drug commercial which claimed that marijuana funds terrorism?  I’m sitting here watching Battlestar Gallactica on DVD.  (Which, by the way, is a fucking awesome show.) I bought a boxed set of all three seasons.  The first season was a copy of the American DVD release, but the second and third are of the British release.  I just got through watching the first disc of season 3, and at the end they had an anti-piracy message, similar to the ones they have in the US.  It said something like “Piracy harms our film and television industries,” then “Piracy harms our music industry,” the usual shit.  Then it actually said, “Piracy funds terrorism.”

That’s right, folks.  I bought a pirate DVD in China, and I’ve unwittingly funded the next 9/11.  Somewhere in a cave in Pakistan Osama bin Laden is smiling with glee that his plan to use mass media to destroy the infidel is going so well.

Hyperbole, anyone?

The Games

Anyone who has been reading this blog for the past few months will know the general sense of dread that the city has been feeling regarding the Olympics.  One of my friends swore that he was going to leave the country for the entire month.  We’ve been imagining every worst case scenario possible, and none of them were good. 

We couldn’t have been more wrong, and we’ve all grudgingly admitted this to ourselves.  This has been an AMAZING experience.  So much so that I’m actually going to go to the Bird’s Nest on Monday night to watch some of the athletics finals.  Here are the tickets.

The seats are amazing.  If this were a football stadium we’d be on the 50 yard line, in the third row from the front.  So we’ll be in prime TV range, maybe someone back home will catch a quick glimpse of us.  We’ll be there for the following events.

Women’s discus final
Men’s long jump final
Women’s pole vault final
Women’s 100m hurdles semifinal
Men’s 200m semifinals
Men’s 3000m steeplechase finals
Women’s 800m finals
Men’s 400m hurdles finals

Plus there will be the whole experience of taking the subway, plus going to the Bird’s Nest, and the Olympic Village, everything.  I’ll have the video camera out, of course, so expect some YouTube experiences. 

I’m fucking stoked, seriously.  This is going to be incredible.

Thursday, August 14, 2008

Old Habits Die Hard

Well, we all knew this was going to happen sooner or later.

Chinese police knocked a British TV reporter to the ground and dragged him away from a pro-Tibet protest on Wednesday in an incident that is sure to exacerbate concerns about media freedom at the Beijing Olympics.

Police hauled John Ray, China correspondent for Independent Television News (ITN), from a park less than a mile from the Bird’s Nest stadium to a nearby restaurant, where they threw his shoes in the corner and sat on his arms. The police took this action shortly after foreign protesters unfurled a pro-Tibet banner.

``I wonder how this fits in with their solemn promise of free and unrestricted reporting,’’ Ray said shortly after his release. ``This was a wrestling match.’’

Ray, who is fully accredited to report in Beijing during the Olympic Games, said he was detained for 20 minutes and his equipment bag was confiscated despite repeated protestations - in Chinese - that he was a journalist.

He was thrown into a police van, his pants and shirt were covered in grime, and his hand was bruised from where a police officer stood on it, he said.

Cameraman Ben England was also manhandled and prevented from filming the protest by police.

Pro-Tibetan independence group Students for a Free Tibet said two of their protesters who unfurled the banner were arrested while six other members were detained for protesting nearby.

They included six Americans, an Israeli-American and a Japanese national.The British embassy expressed ``strong concern’’ to the Chinese authorities about the incident, and the Foreign Correspondents Club (FCC) in Beijing demanded that police apologize to the ITN reporter.

``The FCC is appalled by this treatment of an accredited journalist within half a mile of the main Olympic stadium. We call on the authorities to return his equipment, to apologize and, if it is proved that a crime has been committed, to punish those responsible,’’ said FCC president Jonathan Watts.

This is exactly what the protesters wanted to happen.  China fucked up.  If they’d let the guy file his report it would have barely registered a blip in the foreign news.  Now this has the potential of turning into a major international incident.  What would have been an insignificant story about foreign hippies with a banner is now going to highlight the internal policies of the Chinese government.

Wednesday’s incident is just the most recent of several since the Games started in which journalists have been harassed and prevented from working by police, including one in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.

Last week, two Japanese journalists were forcibly detained and beaten up by police in northwest China, where they were reporting on a violent attack blamed on Muslim Uighur separatists in the restive Xinjiang region.

Okay, China, you wanted it.  Now you’re going to get it.