I forgot to add this in my earlier post. This is the highlight of the gymnastics so far for me. A handspring front double pike. Stuck.
(If the embedded video doesn't play, click here)
Sunday, August 10, 2008
This ain' no city champ'n'ship, it's the 'lympics!
Finally, the Olympics have started. The opening ceremony was ok. I have to admit, it didn’t live up to my expectations for some ridiculously awesome stuff put on by the Chinese, and the way the torch was lit was kind of lame (even though it was awesome that Li Ning, China’s most famous gymnast, got to light it). The lit drums at the beginning was awesome and at a calibur way beyond the rest of the ceremony.
The spirit of the games is also worth mentioning. I've been watching the Olympics on tv since 1996, but there's something about walking around the Olympic Park with the torch burning in the background that adds an intangible to the excitement of the games:
The past two days have been centered around the gymnastics. We got to see the USA Men’s and Women’s preliminary rounds. The nice thing about the entire Olympic venue being barricaded -meaning you must have a ticket for an event the day you want to enter the area, makes the entire Olympic Park much less crowded. The Olympic subway system is much more manageable this way as well as shopping in the Beijing Olympic store -which has all kinds of crap. Especially when China develops not one but five mascots for the games (one for each Olympic ring). However, this also makes finding people who want to sell tickets especially difficult, so we’ve been emailing classifieds off craigslist any chance we can- many of the postings are fakes but we’re hoping to get at least a couple more finals tickets over the next few days.
The meets themselves were awesome! The Indoor Stadium is really well designed and modern looking. Here are photos of the arena w/ the men’s equipment:
The USA had a really good meet- much better than I would have predicted. Our seats were not so good… extremely high up and far away. Ryan, Dave, and I managed to sneak down to the lower levels after a couple rotations though and so we ended up in really good A category seats. That was something that bugged us- ticket demand is really high right now, apparently, but there were still a large portion of empty seats scattered around the arena. Additionally, there is apparently a large portion of reserved seating- maybe a third of the stadium- that went completely unused. I guess the people they’re reserved for don’t care to see the qualification rounds, aren’t interested enough, whatever. Anyways, its pretty lame that so many seats go unused when there are plenty of people who appreciate Artistic Gymnastics who would gladly buy tickets to those seats.
This is us in the venue:
The women had an OK qualification round. Barring some shaky bars routines we did very well over all, about as expected as the USA girls dominate the field.
Scott, if you’re reading this (and I know you are, you Juno lover!) this picture’s for you:
The spirit of the games is also worth mentioning. I've been watching the Olympics on tv since 1996, but there's something about walking around the Olympic Park with the torch burning in the background that adds an intangible to the excitement of the games:
The past two days have been centered around the gymnastics. We got to see the USA Men’s and Women’s preliminary rounds. The nice thing about the entire Olympic venue being barricaded -meaning you must have a ticket for an event the day you want to enter the area, makes the entire Olympic Park much less crowded. The Olympic subway system is much more manageable this way as well as shopping in the Beijing Olympic store -which has all kinds of crap. Especially when China develops not one but five mascots for the games (one for each Olympic ring). However, this also makes finding people who want to sell tickets especially difficult, so we’ve been emailing classifieds off craigslist any chance we can- many of the postings are fakes but we’re hoping to get at least a couple more finals tickets over the next few days.
The meets themselves were awesome! The Indoor Stadium is really well designed and modern looking. Here are photos of the arena w/ the men’s equipment:
The USA had a really good meet- much better than I would have predicted. Our seats were not so good… extremely high up and far away. Ryan, Dave, and I managed to sneak down to the lower levels after a couple rotations though and so we ended up in really good A category seats. That was something that bugged us- ticket demand is really high right now, apparently, but there were still a large portion of empty seats scattered around the arena. Additionally, there is apparently a large portion of reserved seating- maybe a third of the stadium- that went completely unused. I guess the people they’re reserved for don’t care to see the qualification rounds, aren’t interested enough, whatever. Anyways, its pretty lame that so many seats go unused when there are plenty of people who appreciate Artistic Gymnastics who would gladly buy tickets to those seats.
This is us in the venue:
The women had an OK qualification round. Barring some shaky bars routines we did very well over all, about as expected as the USA girls dominate the field.
Scott, if you’re reading this (and I know you are, you Juno lover!) this picture’s for you:
Friday, August 8, 2008
Thoughts of Baby Pigeon + Pictures
The Li Ning Store (check out the gymnast maniqinns!):
At the Great Wall:
Baby Pigeon and Duck are my favorite food items so far:
The 'Change Face' lady:
The entrance to Dave's Condo:
-People wear Olympic credentials around Beijing like Orientation kids wear their name badges around Ann Arbor. The only difference is a credential gets you in the fast track at many places, so rather than being made fun of you get nicer treatment.
-Chinese people seem very impatient compared to other people when it comes to waiting in line, driving, and the subway system. People practically have their noses on the subway door before it stops, push and shove regularly through crowds, and drivers will cross into oncoming traffic not only to pass cars, but to just drive alongside of them if they don't like driving behind them.
-Gymnastics is much more highly regarded/ respected here. To say you train/ play a certain sport, the Chinese phrase is more or less “I like to kick” for ball sports, “I like to hit,” for things like tennis, etc. For Gymnastics and martial arts you use the qualifier lian- 'intensive train.' So you say, “Wo xihuan lian ti cao” which translates to “I like to intensively train gymnastics.” Check out the top photo of the Li Ning store. All of the maniqinns (at least 6) are male gymnasts:
-Yesterday at the massage parlor I definitely butchered the Chinese language. When the lady came in the room, she immediately started talking very quickly in Chinese. My mind went blank. I had all sorts of phrases in my back pocket- “I don't understand” “I don't speak Chinese” “sorry,” etc. What came out of my mouth was “wo bu Zhongwen”… “I- no- Chinese language.” It was terrible. But the foot massage I received for an hour was not. It was unbelievable.
Livin' the good life
We've only been here for 2 days and already done so much: we've tried a lot of bizzare food (baby pigeon and duck being my favorite so far, kidney and cow stomach being my least favorite), done some shopping at the extremely crowded Wufujiang district, climbed the Great Wall, and had foot/ full body massages. Dave's parents have been absolutely incredible hosts. We ate lunch yesterday at the clubhouse and had dinner again with them at a very nice restaurant downtown. Dinner included more bizarre food and lots of good food as well as a performance called "Change Face" or something like that. A masked woman would do a traditional dance while waving her arm across her face every minute or so. Each time she did, her mask would change (she did this about 7 or 8 times, meaning she was somehow concealing 8 different masks on her.)
The Chinese are taking security at the games as well as the issue of smog- "haze"- very seriously. The Olympic area is completely blocked off (probably an entire square mile). The only way to get in on a certain day is if you have Olympic event tickets on the same day you want to enter the area. Cars can only drive on odd or even numbered days depending on if their license plate is odd or even. The Chans have a driver which is awesome and extremely convienient even if we can only be driven every other day. Still, taxis are extremely cheap (5$ per ride) and the subway system is easy to navigate.
My chinese is slowly getting better and we're all extremely excited for the opening ceremony tonight. We're not going, but we are partying with the Singaporians (Else, her husband, and their daughter Alyssa) in their condo downtown, which should be a lot of fun.
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
In China
Ryan and I are finally in Beijing. The flights went more or less smoothly. Dave's parent's place that we're staying in is like a miniature palace; marble floors, walls, balconies. Ryan and I have our own room with our own balcony and our own marble bathroom/ shower. Not too shabby.
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Dink
Well, the trip so far has been rocky at best. While driving to Indianapolis, the battery or some fuse in Ryan's car must've given out, because the radio, AC, everything failed and the transmission wouldn't kick in. The car died, and after a talk with AAA, were waiting for a tow when it miraculously started again. Relieved, we got back on the road… until the car died about 30 miles later. It stalled, of course, during a segment of construction where concrete walls left us no room to pull off. Fearing that we'd literally clog the highway with the car, we managed to find an area to the right of newly paved road and parked it there. AAA said they would dispatch a tow truck soon, would flag our car as 'urgent' since it was on the freeway, yadda yadda. Well, as these things go, the tow truck arrived almost 2 hours later (during the wait we haphazardly traversed a partially completed bridge to reach a gas station for drinks).
The towman, wearing a blue collar shirt with 'Dink' on the sewn namebadge, stepped out of the car. While repositioning Ryan's car, he described himself as a 'horse' if that's any indication of his stature. The three of us wedged into the front seat. He was quick to talk, tell, and advise us on anything from the reason gas prices are high, to the war in Iraq, to the world of 18 wheeler truck culture, where they have nicknames for all the big companies (C.F.I.- “Can't Find It”) and where prostitution in truck rest stops is commonplace. He told us he hadn't slept in almost 3 days straight because of work (it's about midnight at this point). As he talked more and more about himself, his job, and his childhood, I realized that this was a man who had grown up too fast. His current boss, a family friend his whole life, had a daughter who had just passed away in jail, incarcerated for the murder of her husband, which occurred when Dink was 5. Dink had beat a friend in a drinking contest at age 12 by downing a case of beer in 3 hours. His speech, peppered with a chain smoker's cough and his droopy features gave him the look of a man in his 40s, although he was only 28 (only 7 years older than us!) For all of this, Dink had remained very genuine and simple, with an ingrained desire to help people. It was obvious from the way he talked. He described the horrors of traffic accidents that he had to help clean up as a towman, scenes so vile and sickening that we could hardly fathom their existence in reality. But in some of these stories, lives were able to be saved, sometimes directly because of him. Yet he didn't seem overly proud of these things; it was, it seemed, just a part of his job.
We finally made it to Indianapolis at 2:30 AM (instead of our planned 10pm arrival) and got to bed, in the end, around 4AM at Ryan's parent's new condo.
The towman, wearing a blue collar shirt with 'Dink' on the sewn namebadge, stepped out of the car. While repositioning Ryan's car, he described himself as a 'horse' if that's any indication of his stature. The three of us wedged into the front seat. He was quick to talk, tell, and advise us on anything from the reason gas prices are high, to the war in Iraq, to the world of 18 wheeler truck culture, where they have nicknames for all the big companies (C.F.I.- “Can't Find It”) and where prostitution in truck rest stops is commonplace. He told us he hadn't slept in almost 3 days straight because of work (it's about midnight at this point). As he talked more and more about himself, his job, and his childhood, I realized that this was a man who had grown up too fast. His current boss, a family friend his whole life, had a daughter who had just passed away in jail, incarcerated for the murder of her husband, which occurred when Dink was 5. Dink had beat a friend in a drinking contest at age 12 by downing a case of beer in 3 hours. His speech, peppered with a chain smoker's cough and his droopy features gave him the look of a man in his 40s, although he was only 28 (only 7 years older than us!) For all of this, Dink had remained very genuine and simple, with an ingrained desire to help people. It was obvious from the way he talked. He described the horrors of traffic accidents that he had to help clean up as a towman, scenes so vile and sickening that we could hardly fathom their existence in reality. But in some of these stories, lives were able to be saved, sometimes directly because of him. Yet he didn't seem overly proud of these things; it was, it seemed, just a part of his job.
We finally made it to Indianapolis at 2:30 AM (instead of our planned 10pm arrival) and got to bed, in the end, around 4AM at Ryan's parent's new condo.
Sunday, August 3, 2008
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