Why he liked the Olympics

Carl just sent me this, and I liked it so much that I thought I'd share it. Far more articulate than I could ever be and nicely summarizes what it was like to be a foreigner here during the Olympics.
It was written by a journalist called Mitch Albom who writes for the Detroit Free Press, and the link to his blog is at the bottom. Here it is:

Why we loved the Olympics

Because it's China.

Because I can still see the opening ceremony in my head.

Because the first people who greeted us gave a small bow, a symbol of respect that repeated itself every day.

Because of Michael Phelps.

Because of his mother.

Because of stories that turn on one hundredth of a second.

Because of NBA players jumping up and down at center court like they'd just won a high school title.

Because of seeing Kobe and LeBron, unannounced, clapping for U.S. athletes at the pool.

Because 20 Chinese will gather to give directions.

Because 20 Chinese later, you're still lost.

Because, for once, drugs were not the story.

Because of Natalie Du Toit, an amputee from South Africa, who swam a marathon with one leg.

Because of Eric Shanteau, who arrived with testicular cancer but still competed in the breaststroke, serving notice to his disease: you will not kill my dreams -- or me.

Because who knew beach volleyball had that much drama?

To the Great Wall and beyond

Because I thought I knew about China and was wrong on so many levels.

Because a worker shared with me an old Chinese expression, "You're so poor, you only have money."

Because of Peking Duck.

Because of Usain Bolt.

Because of dropped batons and gold-medal relays.

Because fans actually cried when Liu Xiang walked off the track.

Because a 67-year-old farmer led us up a mountain to the Great Wall of China, and when we gave him more than the $4 he'd requested, he invited us to his home for a meal.

Because, despite what we heard, the Chinese do hold hands in public.

Because, despite what we heard, you do not need a mask to breathe.

Because, despite what they're told, the Chinese do long for larger families, same as us.

Because, despite what they're told, many Chinese seek out God and religion, even at great risk.

Because the Chinese volunteers took on Western names, like "Betty," to make it easier for us.

Because the Chinese will give you a Chinese name if you ask, although I still can't pronounce mine.

Because, while undeniably under a Communist government, Beijing seemed nothing like the old Soviet Union or East Germany, grim places with miserable people looking over their shoulders. There were smiles and laughter and hope and growth and a belief in their system, even if we doubt it.

Because I didn't know that before going.

For the old and the young

Because our female gymnasts were as graceful in defeat as they were on the bars and beams.

Because our softball players cried real tears when they lost their finale -- not just over a silver medal, but because their sport was being eliminated.

Because an American you never heard of -- Bryan Clay -- won the decathlon; still, in my book, the greatest athletic feat in the world.

Because women like Sheila Taormina, Dara Torres and Lisa Leslie proved you're never too old.

Because 14 year-old divers and who-knows-what-age gymnasts proved you're never too young.

Because of the Forbidden City.

Because of the Temple of Heaven.

Because in two-plus weeks of sporting competition, I never heard a boo.

Because of busses next to cars next to bicycles next to a mule.

Because of hutongs (or alleys) that show what Beijing once was, and gleaming shopping malls that show what it's becoming.

Because you never appreciate another country -- or your own -- until you walk on foreign soil.

Because of these reasons, and a million others, I have an answer to the question I've been asked upon returning: "Was it worth going all the way to China?"

I thank you and this newspaper for the privilege of telling Beijing stories.

Because it really, truly was.




http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080825/COL01/808250346/1082

Missing daddy

Carl left for a week in Singapore on Sunday afternoon. Now that we have our routines down here in China, nothing too traumatic about that. However Olivia keeps looking for him; in the morning when I bring her into our room to have her milk, she asks "daddy?", and her first word when I walked in the door from work last night was "daddy?". Carl says that she does the same with "mummy" when I'm not around.
Anyway, on Sunday night she picked up a Tshirt which was on the floor and said "daddy", now Daddy does technically leave more clothes on the floor than I do but I'll confess that it was my T shirt. Anyway, she decided that it reminded her of her missing daddy and she put it on. I couldn't get it off her until she went to bed. Very cute, especially dancing in it although I was worried that she be falling down the steps as it was too long.

Great Wall at Xiangshuihu

David, our Apple and INSEAD friend, took myself and two dutch friends (one also from INSEAD) out on a hike on the Great Wall. We went very 'local' which meant that not only was the section of the wall that we hiked on deserted, but it also hadn't been hiked on by anyone else for weeks. Very overgrown, covered with HUGE spider webs, and giant cicadas.
We had some early translation issues with Driver Wang. We were completing and A to B hike along the wall; initially we drove to point B along a long bumpy remote road to make sure that Driver Wang knew where to pick us up. He couldn't understand why we would make him drive all this way and then not get out of the car. We had to call both Robert and Shane to try and explain. Finally the penny (or rather, Yuan) dropped. Ah hah. We then drove to point A to start the hike where we had to evade two separate guards trying to keep us off the trail. We finally got onto the trail (which was far from a trail really, more like squeezing through bushes). Stinking hot, humid, scratchy, scary insects, and convinced that the 75 year old Chinese guards were after us. Not exactly what I had in mind. After climbing 2km, we reached the Wall. It was well worth the effort. Photos don't do it justice, you really can't get the scale without seeing it. No-one was up there, no civilisation in sight. Very impressive.
In total, we hiked just 6km in 5 hours. Lots of photo opportunities and stops to rehydrate.
I've requested another Wall hike in winter with a nice dusting of snow.

China's golden rings

We managed to get tickets to see some finals of the gymnastics on Monday night. We saw Women's uneven bars, Men's vault, Men's rings, and Women's trampoline. We had amazing seats (again), and it was the first time I'd been to an event like that. Each routine was over surprisingly quickly, although to be honest, it all looked so difficult that I couldn't even do 10 seconds of any of it. The Men's rings was the most impressive.
Of the 12 medals given out during the evening, China won 5 including 3 out of 4 golds. They deserved it, although the American girl tied in points for the Gold on uneven bars but ended up with the silver medal because the Chinese girl received the highest individual score. I felt sorry for her, although not as sorry as I felt for one of the men's vaulters who was due for gold and slipped on his last leap. Poor guy.
Anyway, as I write this, I can hear the British National Anthem in the other room on the TV. The closing ceremony is on, and I am assuming that they're playing it as part of the Olympic handover ready for 2012.
It has been a great Olympics medal-wise for Brits (and Chinese!), and having seen the home advantage from the crowd, I am hoping that it gets better for us in 4 years time.
London has a lot to live up to after Beijing and I think that it'll be different type of Games. Here the scale of events, venues and organisation has been impressive and the Chinese must consider the Games a success. I know that there have been many complaints in the Western media about the promises made by China before they won the bid to host the Olympics and China's poor record of human rights; however if you talk to people who have been here a while, apparently it is a very different country than it was even 4 years ago. The pace of change and opening of the country is more than many were expecting. It still isn't perfect (and we'll see if my little blog gets blocked for the above comments) and I hope that it doesn't stop just because the Olympic are over.
Between us, Carl and I got to see 7 events: gymnastics (twice), swimming, athletics, boxing, BMX (huh, and you didn't even know it was an Olympis sport, did you?), and rowing. Given that two weeks ago, we had no tickets, I think that we did well.

A Sunday morning in the life of Olivia

So here is a typical weekend day for Olivia.
I'm still having trouble editing the code to rearrange photos and put comments between the photos. But this set of photos doesn't take too much explaining.
This was last Sunday, which was pretty typical. She gets up around 7-7:30am and runs around jumping and climbing on us or the furniture! We eat breakfast (she was naked at this point!) and then go to the pool, and play with our toys. This Sunday we also played with chalks which were very popular with all the kids in the apartment block. At one point i felt like I was running a playschool. After playing with the chalks outside, I asked her to wash her hands. It is one of her favourite things to do, the problem is more about stopping her doing it. She'll go into the bathroom and turn on the taps herself. If I let her, I think that she'd use an entire bottle of liquid soap in one washing.
The afternoon was spent at the art district (see previous posts). Isn't our life exciting?!

Art District 798

On Sunday we headed out to District 798 which is only about 15 minutes from our apartment. It is an area of 50-year old decommissioned munitions factories and is now home to Beijing's modern art galleries. Many of the galleries are in the old Russian designed factory buildings with high ceilings and vast open spaces. The art isn't exactly to Carl and my tastes but it is a great place to go browsing. There are many cafes and restaurants and it is mostly car-free (which helps when you have a stubborn toddler). We have found one artist we like, called Wu Guanzhong. Sadly, when we inquired about the prices, we discovered that his work is displayed in major galleries around the world including the Metropolitan Museum in New York. The work we were inquiring after cost $13000, and was a print not an original. Hmm, we will have to rethink our strategy as that isn't exactly in the price range we were looking for.
Comments for the below photos:
Always good to hear that surprises are upstairs (actually this is the gallery where we found the art that we liked)
Carl feeling thirsty!
Restaurants in China seem to 'brief' the staff every day. This is a regular scene in China. The Manager talking to employees before the shift starts; sometimes they also get them to do exercised.
Andy Warhol art in one of the galleries.
Olivia showing us what she thinks of gallery viewing!
Outside of one of the galleries. No charge to view.
Random outside sculpture. There are many like this.

The Bird's Nest

Yup, more Olympics.Very exciting time to be in Beijing. I have a friend here who works for Olgivy and they don't even have to come into work during these two weeks! Sadly that is not the case for us at Apple. However on Friday evening we made our way to the Bird's Nest for the first day of Althetics. It took a week of rebuilding after the opening ceremony to get the stadium back to a sporting venue. We saw early rounds of men's 100m (jeez those Jamaicans are fast), discus, the shot put and 200m for Women's Pentathlon, Mens 300m hurdles, medal competition for Men's shot put (American got a silver) and the women's 10,000m (although that didn't start until 10:45pm and we had to get back to relieve the ayi so we missed the exciting finish and new world record.) We had excellent seats, right on the lower tier. The stadium was packed the whole time. Luckily it wasn't as hot as at previous events we've been to. The only thing we would complain about is the food. There is a distinct lack of food in the venues, only crisps, chocolate, popcorn and beer. And what is wrong with that I hear you ask? Well, nothing too much except we arrived at 6:30 before dinner and stayed until 10:30, so that junk food combination was dinner. Not ideal.
I can't figure out the HTML code to put comments next to each photo. So here are my comments for the following five:
Carl outside the Nest
Me posing for the "I was there album"
Men's 400m hurdles
Even the logo for the disabled toilet is cool.
The Water Cube at night. The colours go from purple to blue in waves. I love this building.

Olympic rowing

Or crew for the American contingent. We managed to score a few more tickets to Olympic events and on Wednesday afternoon we headed out to Shunyi. This is about an hour or so out of central Beijing, all the international schools are out there and Carl had considered living out there, I'm very glad that we didn't, the commute would have been worse than Half Moon Bay. Anyway, the Chinese have created an artificial rowing lake, and a white water rafting venue. Although it was smoggy, it was very muggy and hot for us just sitting down, I'd hate to think how hot it must have been for the rowers. There were no medals, just early rounds, but the stands were fairly full. There were a few Chinese rowers throughout the afternoon, and there is a definite home advantage to these Athletes. As soon as a Chinese rower came into sight, the crowds went wild. It was good to see.

Some rowers, Brit in the lead.

Pre-Olympic week

Here are a few photos; slightly random as the only connection between them is the fact that they all were taken last week.

Olivia dancing while waiting in the square outside the Apple store (we tend to spend a while sitting here waiting for Daddy who's second job seems to be store sales associate!) He likes to go in the Apple store and pounce on unsuspecting Olympic tourists who are in the store looking confused.

For anyone who thinks that the food in China is dodgy. Here we are having a very nice steak (medium rare) at a Belgian restaurant near our apartment. Delicious.

Here is our ayi #1 blowing bubbles for Olivia. Actually we think that Olivia managed to put ayi #1 in hospital last week due to high blood pressure. Apparently she is better now, but we may have to rethink our childcare options both for Olivia's sake and ayi's.


A hideous Coke giant screen and exhibition near the office. Impressive to look at but not remotely subtle or tasteful in design. Perhaps I'm getting too used to Apple's excellent design aesthetic! This screen is about 30m off the ground and it must be 20om long. Normally it shows images of fish in an aquarium, much more impressive than giant Coke logos (and to think that I used to work for them!)

A good day at the pool

We have managed to get Olympic tickets!!! Carl has already seen boxing, women's gymnastics, and we both got to see swimming in the VERY cool National Aquatic Stadium also known as the Water Cube. We had a slight lost in translation with the ayi (she thought we needed her at 9pm instead of 9am) but managed to scramble and had everyone running around trying to get us to the venue in time. Carl and I had to run the 1500m in Olympic record time from where we got dropped off behind the barriers all the way to the security lines.
The Olympic park is vast. Security checks (just like the airport) get you inside the Olympic village where you can access the major Olympic stadiums. Once inside the main area, getting into your specific venue really was much easier (other than another 1500m dash to the water cube) just a wave of the ticket and you are in.
The water cube from the outside looks like it is made from cling film (saran wrap for the Americans), and is constructed like giant bubble wrap. I just wanted to try and pop a few but given the fact that we were late, we had to hustle.
We had seats up in the nosebleed section but managed to sneak closer to the front and nab a couple of seats that were unoccupied. We had an excellent view of the pool, and were right across from George Bush, Bush Sr, Henry Kissinger and a few other politicians who I don't recognise (and neither does Carl!). George was surprisingly animated with his flag waving but he had good reason. The USA had a great day at the pool. 1 gold (Phelps in the 400m medley relay), 1 silver (Women's 4 x 100m freestyle relay), and 3 bronze.
I think that we have tickets on Friday to the Athletics in the bird's nest and we'll just be winging it and waiting for other tickets to come up. Anyway, now I've been to one Olympic event, anything else is just a bonus. I'm now trying to see if I can work some connections to see if we can arrange for tickets to the Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Now that will be one to go to.
Posing outside the Bird's nest.

Hopefully we'll get a closer look later in the week.

Here it is, a coveted Olympic ticket. During the lead-up to the Olympics, most people we know didn't have tickets. Now there seem to be many available. Hopefully we can get to see a few events. I've put Carl on a mission to get me tickets to the rowing finals on Sunday.

Carl on the phone talking sailing with Ryan while in the line at security.

Phelps on the podium.

Gold and Bronze for the USA.

The outside of the water cube.