Weekly Roundup: Olympics Update
Recently, I wrote a negative piece on my students view of sports and the Olympics. I’ve heard some of my friends comment on this and I may have been too critical of my students. Since then, I’ve been fortunate to have gone to an Olympic Game: watching Belgium upset Italy in the quarterfinal 3-2. At that game I saw lots of Chinese fans cheering for non-Chinese teams. The atmosphere was electric. At one point the wave the fans produced was so intoxicating that I was looking more for it than and the game. Hearing the cheers, “Jia You”, “Jia You I-Da-Li”, “ta-ta-ta- Bel-Gium”, my favourite was a combination of an Italian guy yelling, “I-tal-i-a” and the fans yelling, in unison, “Jia You” to make a beautiful combination of “Jia You,” “I-tal-i-a”, “Jia You,” “I-tal-i-a”. It was a great experience.
Lately, I’ve found some interesting reads on the Olympics, buying scalped tickets, the Olympics in QIngdao and the history of Olympics and politics. All quite interesting reading.
China Briefing’s Olympics an Outstanding Success.This is nice to read. It’s good to hear the games have been so successful so far. The games have been quite emotional too, especially after seeing Liu Xiang the other day. Overall, it’s nice to hear the games are going off successfully. From my point of view, the venues, security and volunteers have been fantastic. They’re volunteers almost everywhere you look in blue and white shirts ready to help with a nice smile and a great attitude.
China Briefing’s Scalping Officially Discouraged. This one I’m not too happy about as I unfortunately do not have tickets. From reading the short piece, it sounds like selling tickets is highly discouraged, while buying them may not be. A friend of mine bought some yesterday to see boxing for RMB100 per ticket instead of the RMB30 ticket price and they were fine.. As a person living in Beijing, watching the TV and seeing the stands half empty, it really upsets me that I cannot buy tickets. I guess like with everything: buyers beware.
China Law Blog: Qingdao Olympic Update talks about the sailing competitions at Qingdao and the overall feeling there towards foreigners. I understand the author’s point, when he mentions the Chinese are very afraid of foreigners making “trouble” for China. This piece does a good job capturing what it feels like to be living in China during the Olympics. Even though I’m living in Beijing, a bigger and more “open” city than Qingdao, it still often feels as closed and protected as Qingdao.
Olympics as a political arena, from The Asia Times, talks about how the Olympics and politics have been linked since the beginning of the games. Quite interesting.
Beijing Olympic Games 2008. For anything to do with the games, or medal counts, this is the best site I’ve found so far. Enjoy the games.