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On our way to Yin bar at 6 pm. Yin bar is off Chang’an Road, where the Forbidden City and Tiananmen are located, but conveniently, the entire road was closed, as was the 2nd Ring road. We got out of our cab here and decided to walk to the subway. You will notice the caravan of white vans on the other side of the road driving the wrong way. Gotta love a totalitarian government that puts its needs before its citizens.
Walking to the subway. This 15 foot bridge had 10 policeman guarding it. The road it was next to was closed, so there were nor cars. What were they gaurding? 3) The subway at 6 pm on a Friday evening, normally the busiest subway time, is eerily empty. 4) Olympic “volunteers” man the streets at 5o ft. intervals. I don’t really know what they are volunteering to do, because they refused to help me take a picture. I guess there only job description is to stand on the street and wear an armband.
There was a lot of Olympic spirit on the streets. These girls in a van shout to us and wave flags. We responds with a cheery “Happy Olympics!” 6) This Chinese man loves the Olympics. 7) We take a picture with him, no thanks to the “volunteer” on the side of the street who refused to take the picture for me. We got a fellow Olympics lover to help us.
At Yin Bar, We enjoy our free champagne. Although the TV screens were as not as big as we would have liked, we did get to meet the designer of the Olympic Medals, and the designer of the Olympic torch. We even got to take a picture with the torch!
After staying at Yin for an hour, we decided to go to another party at our friend’s house, who had a projector and a ten foot screen. American colors and flags were everywhere, as the party consisted of mostly Americans, with three Canadians, two Irish, and two Inner Mongolians in the mix. When the American team marched out onto the field, we cranked up an American song extremely loud and simply went crazy. Dancing, chanting, and yells of “America, F*** yeah!” filled the air for a good 5 minutes.

Intermittent Boos could also be heard whenever the camera panned to our 所谓 president. But immediately reverted back to cheering when the camera panned back to the athletes. I believe Putin was also heavily booed for some reason. When the Chinese team came on, we started chanting “Inner Mongolia, Let’s Go,” to the delight of our two inner Mongolian friends. The Candadians and the Irish did their best to cheer with the same enthusiam as the Americans, but to no avail.

As the camera panned from the waving athletes parading their colors at the Olympic Open Ceremony to their respective nation’s leaders sitting in the stands, it was clear that the joy of one world coming together and engaging in friendly competition was not a sentiment equally shared by the world’s top leaders, at least according to their facial expressions.

As the camera panned from the waving athletes parading their colors at the Olympic Open Ceremony to their respective nation’s leaders sitting in the stands, it was clear that the joy of one world coming together and engaging in friendly competition was not a sentiment equally shared by the world’s top leaders, at least according to their facial expressions.
When the British team entered the stadium, the camera shot to Gordon Brown, who smiled reservedly and waved. President Bush and wife gave their classic, well-rehearsed wave and bemused smile that they display at every public event, which at least imparted a small sense of enthusiasm and joy of attendance. Russia’s Vladimir Putin didn’t even crack a smile when his compatriots paraded in, and instead remained rather grim, as did the elderly Chinese woman sitting by his side (Who was she?) But his grimness was no match for the Chinese statesmen, who despite all the hype, media attention, BILLIONS of dollars spent, countless international battles to save the “face of the nation,” extraordinary economic policies and pollution measures, and 7 -count them, 7- years of waiting, their faces did not show the slightest trace of pride, joy or enthusiasm. Instead, they were stoic, blank, even hostile looking, as they watched, as we Americans joked, for any one of the thousands of performers to mess up and then order him jailed for “subverting state power.”
I guess the Chinese government has always been above the law it dictates and the slogans it spews, including the sartorial slogan, “Volunteer’s Smile, Beijing’s Image.” I guess in it’s efforts to clean up Beijing’s “image,” the Capital Spiritual Civilization Construction Commission missed the country’s leaders. Hu was not smiling, and was probably even wearing white socks with black shoes (gasp! what an uncivilized country this is!).
However, in truth Hu’s dour face was an anomaly amongst the super excited Chinese people within the stands and out on the streets of Beijing. In the two hours leading up to 8:08 on 8/08/08, even babies were proudly displaying their Olympic spirit with flags stuck into their hats, in their pockets, taped onto their shirts, and fake tatooed on their faces. Having had the day off, the atmosphere reflected that of a holiday. It was like Christmas. We even began shouting “Happy Olympics!”

(奥运节快乐！）with the same cheer as one would say Merry Christmas or Happy Birthday. The volunteers and even the policemen were in a good mood. Earlier that day I even had a nice chat with a policeman and helped him help lost foreign tourists. Everyone, except Hu, was in a good mood and showed it openly.
Even the goverenment’s idiocy in closing off an entire ring road (way to convenience your citizens and tourists there government) was not enough to really dampen our mood in the beginning. It was hot and we walked 1 mile to our destination after the subway could only take us so far. However, we finally got to the Emperor Hotel and sat on the roof of Yin bar, drinking free champagne as we watched the first half of the Opening Ceremony. The ceremony was truly incredible. Zhang Yimou does know how to put on a good show, although it is interesting to note that many of his films are banned by the government, and now he is a tool of the state. I guess times change.
Many more Olympic posts to follow!

Metro goers heading east on the 1 line at 4:30 pm last Saturday watched in bemusement and maybe some consternation as the crowd of twenty-something, inebriated and mostly Americans belted out “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” loudly, unabashedly yet amazingly on-key, fulfilling in that instant every stereotype harbored by foreigners against Americans. They are loud, they always wear jeans and sneakers, and they sure love this sport called baseball.

On March 15 and 16, the LA Dodgers and San Diego Padres came to Beijing to play two matches. The relatively cheap tickets -starting at 80 kuai ($11.32)- were quickly “sold out” for both games, which was half a marketing gimmick and half the result of corporate buy outs. In truth, there were still large sections of empty seats that defied the “sold-out” label, and our friend Jack who did advertising for the event told us that by the 5th inning, free tickets were being handed out to anyone with a Western face. However, the turnout on that sunny, spring weekend was still phenomenal. The 12,000 people that attended the games over last Saturday and Sunday were fully aware that they were participating in a historical experiment; the Wukesong Stadium will be the official baseball venue for the 2008 Olympics. The matches were not just an MLB breakthrough in expanding the sport to China, but an initial test of Beijing’s ability to host the Games in terms of infrastructure, coordination, security and assembly of thousands of avid sports fans in one spot. Unfortunately, this first test did not bode well for Beijing.

To start, the Wukesong stadium was touted as being a renovated and modern baseball stadium, worthy of being an Olympic venue. However, at first sight we were immediately filled with trepidation as to the safety of the stadium, which looked, as one friend commented, “like it was built out of tinker toys and finished yesterday.” Granted that it probably will never be used for baseball again after the Olympics -especially in light of the fact that this year’s Olympics will be the last time baseball is an official sport- we were still quite thankful that our seats were in the third row and not the nose-bleeds. We also learned later that management had rectified the field’s dying, brown grass by spray painting it green. From MLB.com, this is what players said about it:

“It looked like [artificial] turf when I first stepped on it,” said infielder Ramon Martinez. Manager Joe Torre said that the field appeared to be “quick but fine — I don’t think it’s dangerous. It will be like playing on turf — a ball in the gap will go to the wall.”

Secondly, logistics and management for the game on Saturday failed miserably. The game started at 1 o’clock, yet at this time only 10% of the audience was actually inside the stadium. The rest were standing in unmoving long lines, growing increasingly disgruntled and frustrated at the immobility. 75% of the spectators were still waiting to get in when muffled cheers broke out at 1:15 signaling that the teams had taken the field. The culprit? Poorly planned security measures and only one small entrance for thousands of spectators. By 1:30 security was all but abandoned as the guards just started waving people in through the metal detectors in one continuous stream of beeping. Water bottles ceased to be a security threat, and my bottle of soup was only curiously examined before being put back in my bag. We finally got to our seats at the beginning of the third inning.

Beijing did get lucky in one way however, the weather was undeniably beautiful -clear, blue, sunny, breezy, intoxicating. The crowd was full of energy and excitement, cheering at pretty much everything. Although the Chinese don’t know the rhythms to “We will Rock You,” and other clapping melodies, often messing up the rhythm for the rest of us, they were quite good at the “wave” and soon learned to yell “charge!” at the end of one particular melody. American traditions were a little distorted as Korean cheerleaders came onto the field in between innings and did a few booty-wiggling routines to Beyonce wearing glittering red undies and cowboy boots, and most of the audience watched in puzzlement when “Friar Boogie,” the Padres’ mascot, came onto the field doing pelvic thrusts and more booty wiggling.

The event was coated with multiple layers of meaning and significance: it was an MLB breakthrough, an important display of cultural exchange, a preliminary test of Beijing Olympic infrastructure, a worrisome potential public platform for protests and demonstrations, a PR blitzkrieg. It was all of these things, but for the group of young Americans singing on the subway after the game, it was simply a fun time and a taste of home.