olympics!

(all my pics have been uploaded to http://picasaweb.google.com/Zheng.Crystal)

August 22nd 7:30 AM venue: national stadium aka bird's nest

events: Men's 50KM walk final

Men's decathalon 110m hurdles, discus, pole vault, preliminaries

my seat number: 3rd tier section K row 522 seat 17 (aka very sucky and far away)

Since the event started at 7:30 I left my house at 5:40. I am staying with parents' friends right now, and I had to first go to my own home to get my glasses, because I left my contact solution at home so had no place to store my contacts lens, so i had to get out and get on a cab and get home, wihtout being able to see anything.

Finally i found my glasses and left for the metro station. i had to take the metro because the cab cant even get anywhere near the bird's nest. I took the metro to the special olympic metro line, which you cant get into unless you have a ticket. to enter the metro stop, you have to go through security, and walk a whole freaking long time. finally by the time i got to the olympic park, the two friends i was going with, Yan and Lin, from the place I work, were stuck at the security checkpoint at the bus stop because the tickets were with me. and to walk from subway to bus station took me 40 minutes! basically walking through the entire olympic green and back again because the 50km walk was going on so i couldnt go straight. 

We were so hungry for breakfast that we bought 3 bowls of noodles without asking the price - and it was 30Y each! (for convenient noodles that should be 1Y). later we found the same noodles inside the stadium for 2Y. weird that its cheaper in the stadium. 

By the time we got inside the stadium, nothing was going on. the 50km walk already started and the only thing happening was that the walk was being broadcast on a big tv. We couldnt see that much, so we used the binoculars we bought the night before. We had 4 binoculars for 3 people bc i brought an extra, so we lent it to the couple next to use, who only had one. in return they gave us a paper bag so we could take off our shoes and not get our feet dirty! pretty comfy!

among all the decathlete candidates, there was one chinese - qihaifeng. so whenever he came up, the stadium started roaring. among 50km walk, there were 3. one was 2nd for a while...and then 4th....and then 10th...and finally 14th. there were almost 50 total. some of them after finishing collapsed. oh - what is walk? it means at any one time, at least one foot must be on the ground - basically olympic power walking. the winner was an italian guy, and 3rd place was a russian guy.

After the discus throw, it was lunch time, a lot of people left to get food so the line was really long. you couldnt leave the stadium and reenter, even with your ticket - i guess they dont want you to give your ticket to someone else. a lot of people left and didnt come back. in the morning the first two tiers were full and the third tier half full, but by lunctime, more than half of the audience left. honestly it wasnt the most exciting event to watch.

that was good for us, because we switched to the other side of the stadium, where the pole vaulting was held, and also was able to sneak into the first tier, and got seats really close to the action! the seats we took were vacant because they were in the sun, but after a few minutes, the shade came and remained that way for the rest of the time. we were in the 6th row, amongst the coaches and other olympic personnel. whenever the athetes needed to talk to their coaches, they came really close! sitting there was so awesome!

i like pole vaulting, because its like you set your bar a little tiny bit higher each time, and you try over and over. i think its a good philosophy for life. it's really exciting to see an athlete clear the bar. although the chinese guy didnt make it past 4.5m, it got really exciting once the bar reached 5.0 m. the first place was a german guy who reached 5.2 m

after this british guy named daniel finished, he came to talk to his coach. i shouted daniel! and he turned his head - you're awesome! - he smiled. Later when roaming around the olympic green, we bumped into four people with tshirts saying team dan - they were his mum, gf, first coach, and friend! i got their signatures too - (best you can do right?). Yan told them that i shouted, "daniel, you're awful!" - sigh, fob

After the event ended, we tried to stay in the birds nest so that we could watch the night event at 730. unfortunately, they did a pretty good job of clearing everyone out. that was around 4:30. we left at 10:30 - what did we do for 6 hours? took lots of pictures in the olympic green of the birds nest, the water cube, the random scenery, and lots of foreigners. anytime foreigners were really decked in their patriotic attire, we took a pic with them. i made Yan or Lin ask, or i did it in a fake bad english. We even met some Russian athletes, including the bronze medalist of the 50km walk (i got his sig!). chatting with foreigners about their beijing experience was the most fun part of the day! I even got to practice my spanish with two guys from spain, who were there supporting their cyclist friend. I also realized how much my spanish had deteriorated. i was too embarassed to say that I learned 5 years, so i just said i learned 1 year. I think they were really excited to meet someone who could finally speak to them in Spanish, and not in English. I also chatted with a sports health researcher from brazil who had been to the athens olympics as well - he collects lots of olympic pins.

There is a mcdonalds in the olympic green, thankfully, and its the same as mcdonalds outside, so we got to eat dinner there. we started playing this game where we guess where foreigners are from - canada, US, etc. I dont think people were happy to be disturbed while eating...

We decided to stay in the park until nightfall, because you cant enter the park without a ticket, and because the night scenery was supposed to be great - it was well worth it! the water cube lit up as a bright blue, the media tower changed colors, the miniature birds nest lights, the nest glowed red, and the fountains lit up the lake. the fountains were coreographed to music, they made different movements and different heights to the music, like ballet dancers. so graceful!

we tried to get into the night event, by smooth talking the volunteers - hey were both students, we bought these tickets for really expensive, and only got to see a little bit of the event, the event is halfway over, we'll just stand in the back etc. no good. they told us to go home and watch on tv, its clearer. sigh, it sucks because i watched the 50k walk, but didnt get to see the medal ceremony! 

so we decided to go home, but on the way we saw an NBC station - they were interviewing american athletes - and I got to be in the background! If anyone can find the NBC clip in front of the birds nest (national stadium) interviewing BMX medalists Mike day and the other two - can you tell me? ive been trying to find it to no avail. One of the anchors was meredith viera - I got her sig and a pic with her! she is so nice, willing to sign and pose for her fans, and when she shakes peoples hands she says so nice to meet you! i said - meredith i really admire you! in the end, after the interview, they ran around high fiving everyone in the audience's hand and broadcast on tv - so i really want to find that segment! unfortunately, all three of our cameras had run out of batteries, so we had to ask a stranger to use her camera to take, and she said she would email it to us...dont know if that is ever gonna happen :( but it was still nice of her to offer.

Sigh, yesterday was just such a cool olympic experience.

Some lessons for future olympic visiting - buy food, flags, stickers, etc BEFOREHAND! they dont sell them there or they sell for very expensive. also - bring some small things from your country to trade with foreigners. also - i only thought of this after i left, but i should've made a sort of guest book, with signature, country, and comments. it would be so much fun to collect those from foreign visitors! For example, the nice souvenirs i bought from yunnan were only .7 Y (or roughly 8 cents) - i couldve traded or given those away to people who signed my guestbook. I will try to do that for when i go to the closing ceremony today. ALSO - v important! bring a camera with plenty of memory and also plenty of battery! We brought three cameras, and all three ran out of batteries. which is a shame!

My Yunnan adventures

The last time I talked about what I did - I was in Shiping. My uncle drove us the 1.5 hours to Gejiu, which included a lot of mountainous roads. On the way, we stopped in Jianshui, which is where a famous Confucian temple is located. Apparantly my great aunt went to school there (its now a normal school - not a confucian school). I didn't get to go, because they said it was boring, but i did got o Zhu Family Garden (朱家园). It is the home of a very rich family - and we also got a guide, which was pretty informative. I learned that I should always get guides when i visit places, because there is no way that I could have learned or noticed all of that stuff on my own. She talked about all the intricate reasons for architecture, like why this drain is in this position and in this shape, and why this door is here and made at this angle. The home was pretty impressive, and the story of the family is pretty sad. They became rich through business, but in the early 1900s, because they supported a miner rebellion, they were forced to flee. Later, they also supported Yuanshikai - the army general who tried to overthrow the imperial order. The family basically lost everything. This story reminds me of the story of House of Red Dreams - and being in the house made me feel like i was back in ancient China living as a girl in that house. It was a pretty wonderful feeling. The guide asked me where i was from and I said US. Later she asked me to write on a guestbook where I was from, and when I wrote US she said - whoa i thought you were trying to trick me!



My grandparents live in Gejiu, a small town whose economy is dependent on tin mining. There is this nationally owned company called YunXi who takes care of the mining and basically is responsible for the development of the town. In Gejiu, I mostly played around, shopping the streets, going to the plaza, strolling around Golden Lake, looking at the statues of people in the tin making process. Because, the ILO kept telling me that they were going to come on a certain day, but then they never came. And they never came. and they pushed it back until I finally got fed up and said - I'm going back on the 20th - if you dont come before then well screw you. Finally they came around the 15th, but they told me only the day they came that I couldnt do the survey with them. So I basically waited around for them in vain! They pretty much did NOTHING to help me. This was after I had already bought 300 gifts, made 300 copies of my survey, and 300 of everything else needed. I was so pissed off. I dont think I ever wanted to work for a large multinational, bureaucratic institution. I used to dream about working for a noble group like the UN, but I am now so disillusioned. Luckily, I was able to get about 1000 myself, and I also contracted the rest of the surveys out to a non-profit group. However, they wanted cash, not gifts, and they also changed my survey a little bit, so that i had to make 300 more copies and the other 300 copies went to waste. Sigh - i am very very annoyed with the ILO. I dont think I want to hear their name again for a while.



There are some good things that cameo out of it though - like, I got to observe an ILO training, and attend a meeting at the CDC with them. However, I feel like they got more from me than me from them - because I helped their intern with Chinese during her interviews.



Other notable things in Gejiu that I did - paint a mud picture - very hard to describe, and also very hard to paint - it's basically coloring with mud, and it took many many hours, probably over 10. Finish a puzzle - that my cousins and i were supposed to do tgoether, but they always fell asleep, so i had to finish it myself on th last day. Develop a wild night life - after my grandparents went to their upstairs apartment (because the downstairs one was too small to fit so many people), my cousins and I would take the key and go out and play - for example - to the internet cafe, to buy food, to watch movies at home, etc. We ended up sleeping during the day for a lot of it. I still havent fully turned my schedule aroudn. it started out with the days before one of my cousins was leaving, we decided to stay up two nights in a row to hang out more. After they left, the remaining cousins and I were so tired all the time. Sometimes at night - i would be doing random stuff for my prof, or for other research fellows who needed me to edit their english. Which is why i am so tired all the time - research in the day, english editing at night.



Some places we went to play were in rural places nearby. You stay there for a day and eat, play mahjong, drink, etc. going with a whole bunch of familes, it is really fun. In some parks, there was a swimming pool, water park, and water slides. My cousin, while sliding down one, made a hole right on her butt in her swimsuit. I also hurt my back, because the slide scratched it. We also went to Forest Park 森林 and it was so boring there, except to ride horses - but the horses went so slowly, they wouldnt let me make the horse run.



I realized that I really like animals, especially pigs and cats. Oh that cat was soo cute! it kept trying to bite me but its teeth were not yet developed. But I did get bit by a hamster, and started bleeding. Stupid hamster.



I also learned how to play mahjong, yunnan style, which is a bit different from hubei style. i found out that my grandparents life after retirement is pretty happy, playing mahjong, smking, drinking, etc.



In Kunming, I did some more surveys, but I found out that people in Kunming are not as welcoming as in smaller cities. They are so fierce, and it was so hard to find anyone willing to do a survey. I also did learn that giving gifts out instead of money is much better - people are less suspicious and more doing it in the spirit of research.



Thats all for tonight, I am so tired and I have to wake up at 5 to go to the Olympic games! yay! I bought binoculars tday!

Back in Beijing, and back in cyberspace

Whew - the last month has been a whirlwind for me, but I think that I can finally start updating my blog regularly again! I arrived in Beijing yesterday afternoon. In Kunming, my luggage was over the 20 kg weight limit due to all the surveys I had completed. So I had to pay almost 600Y (slightl less than 100$) in overweight fees. The price of the luggage was almost as much as the price of the airplane ticket itself! Sigh, looking back, I shouldn't have done so much shopping in Yunnan, because a pair of cute, cheap shoes in Yunnan becomes another 30Y i have to pay in overweight fees. Oh well, a lesson learned.

When I arrived in Beijing, I felt so good, because I had not been in Beijing for so long! I really almost consider Beijing my home now, I feel so familiar in it. I really missed it, and was upset that I had been away during the Olympic fever season. In hindsight, the first time I heard that the ILO was pushing back the trip, I was still in Nanchang, not in Yunnan. I should have just went from there to Beijing, and went to Yunnan later. But, I will try to get a feel as much as I can for the Olympic atmosphere while I am here. There are a few main venues for Olympics: 1. Bird's nest for track, 2. aquatics cube for all water events, 3. Chaoyang park for beach volleyball (Across the st from my house), 4. the Olympic Ping Pong Stadium (right next door to my office), 5. the workers stadium for hockey, etc. 6. Peking U Gymnasium for Gymnastics. I have already seen Bird's nest, Chaoyang, and PingPong, and before the Olympics end - I want to see all the other venues.

So on the way from the airport to my home, I started chatting with my cab driver about the differences in Beijing due to the Olympics. I asked him if he had more customers, especially foreginers, due tot he Olympics. He said no, it's pretty much the same as before, the customers are mostly Beijing people who are not here for Olympics. Those who come especially for olympics all have their own rented cars. I thought that was interesting because after all that effort Beijing government made to make the cab drivers learn English, they don't really use it. Also, we talked about how the price of gas increased, traffic in Beijing (on even days, only even numbered license plates can drive, etc.).

Last night I also found out about a dinner that my research center was having to send off two of the fellows - by the time I found out about it, they had already started eating. It takes me at least an hour to get to the office, and by the time I arrived, they had already finished eating and told me to meet them at the office. I had hoped to meet the two fellows they were sending off, because I had never met them before, and also to talk to my professor, but two of them had left after dinner. Sigh, I made such an effort in vain. Afterwards, I went to my parents' friends house to spend the night because my parents dont trust me to live in an apartment by myself. I'm really annoyed, because I'm already 20 years old and they still treat me like a kid. However, it didn't turn out to be that bad, because that family is really nice, has a nice house, has a nanny who can cook, clean for me, and also I haven't seen them in a few years. The only draw back is that - I have to come home relatively early, at least by 10:30 - and sometimes, as a college student in a big city, I just want to have fun at night.

Last night I stayed up until 3 am - partly because I needed to register for classes and because the internet connection at their house is way too slow. Also the keyboard is so annoying. every other word disappears so that if I wanted to type: this is a sentance - it looks like: tasc
Also reading up on Olympic news -

First and foremost, Liu Xiang's dropping out: I don't think anyone in the US can understand the importance of Liu Xiang to this Olympics. He is the face, the symbol of the olympic spirit- the strive for excellence despite the preexisting circumstances. He is a national hero - representing the triumph of Chinese in areas traditionally dominated by western and African athletes. Without him even being able to qualify for the finals, there is no more excitement to this Olympics. So many Chinese have already given up on following the Olympics. Today, I looked out my window and found Beijing overcast with a burdensome fog and a mournful light rain, meanwhile I find myself overcast with an unbearable sadness.

The underage use of Chinese female gymnasts - I have no idea if it is true or not, and I would suspect that it is true. I think it is pretty dishonourable of the Chinese to do that - to use younger smaller athletes who have an advantage over their clumsier, pubescent, colleagues. However, if I had to guess, I would guess that it is the athletes themselves who covered up their ages, and not the nation. Thus, if we were to blame anyone, we can only blame the athletes themselves, and let them carry the burden of having received a gold medal under dishonorable circumstances.

The fatal stabbing of an American - Although he turned out to be related to the olympics, it doesnt seem to me like this was targeted at the Olympics. It seems like the guy was just crazy, randomly stabbing two foreigners and then committing suicide. Perhaps he is in the camp of those who resent western influence in China. However, I would have to say that China is one of the safest places I have ever been. Everyday in the Washingtonpost, I don't even bother to read the numerous articles with titles such as "homocide in northeast dc", "woman dies due to random gunshots". So many in American don't pay attention to the abundant violence in their own country, but balk at Chinese when one isolated instance occurs.

The protests - the Chinese government, in response to criticism surrounding the strict repression of freedom of speech in relation to protesting, set up designated parks as protest zones. The protests all have to be approved beforehand - and so far, not a single one has been approved. Two Chinese elderly women whose homes were destroyed to make way for the Olympics applied to protest, and were turned down. Some media say they were sentenced to one year of labor reform, but according to Chinese media, they were given a warning, and if they do it again, then they will be sentenced.

This whole experience of reading different news sources reporting on the olympics and China has made me realize how amazingly biased media is. It just seems impossible to find one reliable source, where you can always count on the information to be the truth. That goes both ways - western media reporting on China, and Chinese media reporting on itself and on the west. However, reading a lot of the newspapers, i just find it amazing that those journalists were ever allowed to write in the first place - using facts that simply aren't true, and always bringing up unrelated things simply to criticize.

My thoughts on the issue of human rights and the olympics: human rights and the olympics have no place together. it's like religion and government. The olympics are about sports, and that is all. It's about athletes coming together, regardless of race, religion, the political system of their country, politica, sexual, etc. orientation, performing at their best, uniting the entire world in watching and cheering own the athletes. Such controversial issues such as human rights, where depending on what part of the world you come from, you have a widely different view than another, should be totally absent from consideration of who should host the Olympics.

Now what about the argument that - hosting the olympics improves a country's economy, and thus supports human rights abuse. I bet you that if you track economic progress and human rights record, you will find that the richer countries have a better human rights record, while the poorer countries do not. One does not have time to worry about human rights, when people are starving and dying. Also I bet you will find that as a country's economy grows, that the human rights abuses decrease. Human rights is a progressive line, it is impossible to go from all to none. Just like in the US, where the fight for human rights has started since the Revolutionary War's fight for freedom, to the Civil War to abolish slavery, to the umpteen amendments added over time to protect our rights. None of those could have been done in a single day. Similarly, China has made huge progress in human rights, adding new laws to protect its citizens and esp its minorities. There is definitely still a long way to go. I have to remind you that the US government got to where it is today over more than 200 years. How many years has the Chinese government been in place? Only 59 years. When governments are first formed, there is of course a period of authoritarianism - look at Taiwan, the west's hail to of democracy and human rights in asia - the first regime was also ruled by tyrants. Gradually, as the country becomes more stable, only then can one start to worry about things as abstract as human rights.

With that being said, it does not make sense that only countries with clean human rights records should host the olympics. that means, the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. The human rights abuses in the poor countries get worse, and no one wants that. Why not improve a countries economy so that it can improve the living standards of its people, bring people out of poverty, make sure everyone can survive first - that way it can finally afford to focus on human rights. On the thought of those protesting by not watching the olympics - watching does not support the chinese economy, rather the TV station that airs it -- the AMERICAN tv station. Unless you are in China, well that is a different story, but I'm guessing that if you are in China you are also too in the olympic spirit, too caught up with the amazing athletic skills and intense competition, to think about anything else. I don't think that Michael Phelps, (well maybe Phelps can given the margin of victory of some of his races, very calmly compete) but - let's say gymnast Nastia Liukin, or Yang Wei - neither of them are thinking during their competition - oh, the Chinese, what a horrible human rights record - they are only focused on what they came here to do, compete, as an athlete, not as a human rights advocate. I guess it just comes down to this - the olympics are about sports.

soo tired

it is 3 am over here, I am in an internet bar, editing an 85 page paper for my prof, who told me he needed it ASAP.