Photos

I didn't think I'd be able to keep up with posting photos in a timely fashion, but it's been killing me that I haven't had the time to post anything from China yet. So, I powered through a couple sets last night.

Great Wall



Basketball semifinal — USA vs Russia



Track & Field

Beijing Day 7

Today was an open day. We had nothing planned and no Olympic events. So first thing we did was sleep in some. After getting up at 6 am or earlier every day, regardless of having been up until midnight or later the day before, we slept in until 8 am. We then had a leisurely morning getting up and going and finally left the hotel by about 10:30 am.

Our plan for today was to re-visit some of the areas we had visited on tours but hadn't been able to spend an adequate amount of time at. So our first stop was the Luilichang Commercial District and some hutongs. We grabbed a taxi in front of the hotel and headed off. This was by far our worst taxi ride yet. We've become used to the crazy close calls while driving so it wasn't that. This taxi driver kept sharply braking for no reason. We'd be going down an open stretch of road and he'd just brake hard for a second or two and then keep going. It was a very jerky ride and very annoying. We couldn't decide if he was doing it because he was a crappy driver or just didn't like foreigners. Anyway, no tip for him.

We arrived at Luilichang and began our stroll. This area is full of interesting shops full of handicrafts and arts and we were both interested in taking a look around. Unfortunately, the Chinese have no concept of window shopping or browsing. If they notice you even slowing down in front of their windows to look, a sales person will rush out and push the hard sell. No peaceful browsing for us. We didn't even go into any of the stores because of the hard sell. Too bad for them. Neither one of us are very big shoppers, but without the added annoyance of the hard sell, we would have bought stuff if we could have looked around in peace. I'm actually looking forward to getting back to the U.S. where you can wander a store (like Home Depot) for hours without being bothered or helped for that matter.

When the Luilichang portion of the street ran out, it dumped us into a hutong. We wandered around. Scott took lots of pictures. We were as much of a tourist attraction to the locals as their homes were to us. There were food stalls which were scary. Normal type food, but no refrigeration. Fresh eggs and meat sitting out in the sun in 80+ degree weather. We saw several pet dogs but due to warnings from the health nurse, we didn't try to pet them. Scott, of course, took pictures.

Scott had one older man sitting out selling shoe parts and repairing shoes indicate that Scott should take his picture. Then he wanted money. Nice. We also had a little boy, about 3 or 4 years old, playing in the street ham it up for Scott and then come running over each time he took a picture to look at the back of the camera. Apparently, not a new thing for him. He didn't ask for money though. His grandmother was watching us closely, but with a smile.

After about an hour, we'd reached a major road and decided we'd had enough. We were just across the street from Tianammen Square, so we decided to head over. We had to go down through a pedestrian underpass and go through a security check. They kept closing off the underpass to slow down traffic coming through the x-ray machine at the security check and left us all standing out in the hot sun. Scott mentioned after we got through that if they'd just let us go with the flow, like other security checks, we'd all have made it through in about the same amount of time, without all the fuss. Go figure.

Once in the Square, we just wandered around taking pictures. Scott offered to take pictures of at least a couple of families with their cameras. We then ended up being in photos like we were an attraction. Weird. Mao's tomb was closed that day and at the south gate, they were setting up some fireworks. Maybe for the Closing Ceremonies? The funny thing was that they had put up police tape or do not cross tape surrounding the fireworks. Because it was in a shady area, people were crawling over and under the tape to go sit in the shade. Right in front of the police that were supposed to be keeping order. You'd get tazered for that kind of behavior in the U.S. these days, so you have to ask, who's really living in a police state?

Next, we wandered over to the Forbidden City via another underground pedestrian underpass. Again, Scott starts taking pictures. It's much more crowded over here, but we are getting used to the pushing and close quarters. We enter the outer courtyard of the City and are immediately approached about going on a tour to the Great Wall, asked if we want a tour guide for the City and told there is a student art showing if we just had 5 minutes (this one is a scam that is so prevalent, it's listed in the tour books). Then, of course, there are at least a dozen "souvenir" shops before you reach the inner gate. Yikes. I did manage to find some postcards that I will get out when we return to our hotel.

We pretty much spent the next four hours wandering around the City at the speed we would have liked to conduct our tour during our first visit. We ate at a "fast food" restaurant. The dish we ordered was "Two meats with vegetables and rice." It appeared to be beef cubes and pork meatballs. Rather tasty. I grabbed chopsticks thinking we'd have no real choice in utensils before we headed outside to eat. One of the bus boys came out a minute or so later and brought us spoons. I'm not sure if they see us having difficulties or if they just assume Westerner can't use chopsticks. We aren't ever going to get any better if we don't practice. We were sitting on the ground, eating with our spoons and noticed that every single Chinese person passing us was looking at us and laughing. We weren't sure if this was beause we were sitting on the ground instead of squatting like they do or because we were using spoons to eat. Apparently, it was the spoons. Scott made a comment that he was tired of being stared at like a sideshow freak just because they used sticks to eat with instead of civilized eating utensils. I snorted some rice laughing. We had set down our trays, mine still had a significant amount of food on it, and some woman came passed and threw her trash right into my plate. She didn't even look to see if I was done eating. I made a comment about how rude and apparently, she noticed my tone and gestured an apology to Scott. What's with these people? We were standing less than 5 feet from a garbage can.

We then continued on our tour and tried to stay off the main meridian of the City an check out some of the side buildings. We came across a display (air conditioned, yay!) of the elaborate clothing the Emporer and the Emporess wore. Very beautiful stuff. No photos because they were prohibited. We next stumbled upon a display of anciet calligraphy writings. Nice but we couldn't read it. There was a beautiful display of a room screen that was made of wood and had the characters carved in jade and embedded in the wood. It was amazing just contemplating the artistry and skill that would have been required to achieve that.

Scott was having troubles getting photos in places due to the number of photographers trying to get similiar shots. Most would take their shots and move on allowing the next person to get a shot. However, there was more than one that just stood there taking shot after shot for like 5 minutes. Annoying, especially in this heat. We did see this one guy who had a special camera that would allow him to stand in one spot and take a panoramic 360 degree photo. It only used film, but was pretty cool. We watched him use it from a distance a couple of times.

Overall, my impression of the Forbidden City is one of granduer that has seen better days. They seem to be having troubles with the upkeep and this national treasure is crumbling with age and use around their ears. I think they would have been better off spending the money they spent on the Olympics on restoring the Great Wall and the Forbidden City.

We left the north entrance of the City across from Jingshan Park. Now we began our search for a taxi. We ended up walking east and then north for about 20 minutes trying to find an open taxi. Every one that drove passed was full. We eventually spotted one that was dropping off someone almost right in front of the bike tour company's offices. We nearly got hit crossing the street to snag the taxi. However, we weren't the only ones. We've noticed that with the Chinese, it doesn't matter how long you've been waiting for a taxi, if you are the first one at the taxi, it's yours. There are no lines, no taxi stands. It's chaos and first come, first serve. Aggressiveness is rewarded. But, they don't fight over them. If you miss out on one, you just move on to finding another one.

With this in mind, we started getting into the cab while the other guy was still at the front fender of the car. This guy, another American, was really pissed. He said he had been waiting 5 minutes for a taxi and this was his. We explained that we'd been walking and waiting for nearly 20 minutes and we were taking it. Scott told me to get in the taxi. As I started to do so, the guy grabbed the door and pushed it closed on me. I'm going to have another bruise on my arm. He then took a swipe at Scott and knocked his glasses on the ground all the while cursing at us. That got Scott going and he started cursing back in spectacular fashion and telling the guy that after a week of being in Beijing, he had the distinction of being the rudest, most obnoxious person we had met and wouldn't you know it, he was an American. Despite all the drama, viewed very curiously by the Chinese I might add, we got in the taxi and left. That guy needs to chill out or he is going to have a very, very frustrating trip, especially if he thinks we were rude. I personally think he was just frustrated in general and we were the only ones that spoke English that he could take it out on. And honestly, the Chinese don't care if you are frustrated or pissed if you can't speak Chinese.

Back at the hotel, Scott finished up yesterday's blog and started working on his photos (they should be posted for your viewing pleasure). We had dinner at the restaurant on the second floor of the hotel. It was very good, more expensive than you would pay outside the hotel by about 3 times, which always pisses me off until I realize that it the equivalent of what you'd pay in the U.S. for a similar meal. We've tried to avoid eating in the hotel due to the prices, but it was 7:30 pm and we were hoping to watch the men's basketball semis which started at 8:00 pm.

So that's what we did, watched basketball, and worked on catching up on photos and blogging.

Tomorrow, we have women's indoor volleyball semi-finals and the bronze and gold medal match for women's basketball. We will also be having another scalper adventure.

Beijing Day 6 — Athletics and Basketball

Our plan for today, since we again had tickets for a venue on the Olympic Green, was to go to the souvenir store first thing to hopefully beat the crowds. Neither of us was invested in the track and field events, other than being there and being in the Bird’s Nest, so if we missed a little at the beginning that would be okay.

The challenge for the morning though was the rain. The torrential, non-stop rain. If the previous days had been so humid that we felt like we were stepping into a sauna every time we went outside, today we were stepping into a water hose set on clear-out-the-protesters. We didn’t have any rain gear.

Our tour company gave us a ride to the venue, so we asked the driver to find someplace along the way where we could get a poncho or something (assuming that the no pointy stick rule for the getting into the venues would negate umbrellas). He found a small, hole-in-the-wall “supermarket” (about a quarter the size of a normal-sized US convenience store) and got us a couple ponchos. We had been seeing just about everyone on a bike wearing these big sturdy looking rain coats that covered them and their bikes. These were not them. They were basically plastic tissue paper with arms, a hood and snaps. Usable enough, except the Chinese are a very small people. Mine didn’t fit.

So we get to the Green and after running to and getting on the subway, we make it up to the Beijing Superstore.

It’s not open until 9, and it’s 8:15. It’s still raining like mad. There is about a 3 foot awning in front of the main doors and that’s it for cover.

We haven’t written much about the overall condition of the venues or city for that matter. The best two words I’ve come up with to describe the Olympic Green and all of the venues we’ve seen is hastily completed. There was clearly a get it done and screw the quality mentality involved with the construction of these places. Up to this point, the most annoying half-done feature of the parks has been the walkways. The pavers are very irregular, aren’t set flat in the ground, are loose, tend to rock when you step on them because the ground underneath them isn’t level. We’re constantly tripping or catching our shoes on them. Other things like the paint jobs on the buildings were slopped on (in lots of places, you can see tons of overspray on the sidewalk next to the buildings or find paint spills every where). One of the more disappointing things I saw was how dirty and dingy the Watercube is already. Once you get up close, it looks like the construction grime wasn’t cleaned off in places, especially inside where everything is translucent or white. None of this stuff is a deal breaker and understandable to a degree given the scope of what they tried to accomplish. But, I’ve been left asking if this is supposed to be the crown jewel in such a huge national effort why wasn’t there more attention paid to the details and quality issues?

Such as drainage. As in there is none. The area in front of the Superstore was a lake several inches deep. We pretty much had to walk through it, wet feet be damned. People started using the rope barrier stanchions as stepping stones to try and get through. It wasn’t just in that spot either. There was standing water every where. We gave up after awhile and tried to find spots that weren’t up to our ankles at least.

Anyway, we ended up standing under the little awning for 45 minutes or so waiting for the store to open. Luckily, there weren’t many people there until right before the doors opened, so we weren’t to crushed together.

We met and talked with Iris from Bristol, England. She was very excited about the day because she is good friends with one of the athletes on the Dutch Water Polo team, who were facing the US in the Gold medal match later in the afternoon. She described how the team’s goal was more to prepare for 2012 in London rather than medal here in Beijing. They were surprised to find themselves in the final and guaranteed a medal. As it turned out, we discovered when we got back to the hotel room after basketball, that the Dutch beat the US and won the Gold. While we of course would like to see the US win, after hearing Iris talk about her friend and the Dutch team, we are very happy that they were able to pull off the victory and that her friend was able to get the Gold to cap off her career. Iris, if you’re reading this, remember to send us an email if you ever come to Seattle.

The store staff were really slow in opening the doors. By the time 9:00 rolled around, there were about 50 people outside, most of whom were in the rain. People started banging or pushing on the doors. The building is temporary, so the whole wall tended to move when someone pushed on a door. Once the guy with the keys showed up and let us in, a number of Chinese went directly to the info booth and really started laying into the staff. We left that alone and went foraging.

Finally, an opportunity to spend money on stuff. We did pretty well, although the stuff we were looking for specifically didn’t seem to exist, so we found other stuff we liked. First thing, of course, was umbrellas… with the mascots on them.

After some successful shopping, we headed back to the Bird’s Nest. Once we got close, we found that the way was blocked because they had sectioned off part of the street to serve as the track for the Women’s 20K Walk final. I can’t imagine a more miserable day to have this kind of event. We had no way to know who was in the lead or even in most cases which country the athletes were from. Not all of their uniforms were very clear. What was clear was when the Chinese walker came by. The “Cha Yo” chant would start as soon as the crowd saw the red tights and yellow shoes.

We found our way around the track and around the Bird’s Nest (of course our entry was on the opposite side of where we were — we hit almost 10,000 steps this morning by 10 am). Our seats were in the top level so we climbed — no escalators — up and up and up.

Inside the superstructure, it feels very open while at the same time closed off to the rain. The cross-hatch design you see in the building’s shell is continued as a graphic element pretty much everywhere. Any place there are tiles or pavers, they are set in a that same random-like angular pattern. There are large panes of thick plastic panels set in the handrails along the edge of the walkways printed with the pattern, in red. There is red everywhere. The underside of the seating is painted red. The concourse is red. Everything, red, red, red. Even in the dim, overcast light, we could see that when this is lit up, the red really glows.

Inside the stadium, the superstructure covers most of the seating so we weren’t in any danger of getting rained on. The only people who were getting wet were in the expensive seats or in the press area. Half of the lower bowl was marked off for press. We could imagine, from the sight lines, that the Opening Ceremonies would have been great to watch from just about any seat. Our only problem was that we near the bottom of the top tier and there was a line of equipment ringing the arena, covered up with grey tarps. They must have been used for the Opening Ceremony or perhaps will be for the Closing. Today, they mostly obscured what was going on directly beneath us — the Decathlon long jump.

At the same time, we were watching the last of the 20K walkers enter the stadium, the prelims for the women’s high jump (groups A and B going at the same time on side-by-side high jumps, the men’s javelin throw and the decathlon long jump). Not having been to a track meet since high school, it took a little while to get the flow of things and make sense of it all.

I tried to sit back and take it in.

We were too far away to really see the individual athletes when they were doing their thing and had to rely on the big screens to see the reactions when an athlete succeeded or failed. The screens themselves were incredibly massive, maybe 50 feet tall and a hundred feet wide. There are similar screens on buildings around the city playing Olympic coverage during the day.

Because it was raining, the entire infield and track were wet with standing water in places. There were towel crews who attempted to dry off the spots that the athletes used to plant their feet — at the end of the javelin throw track for example. They also had this push machine that had a towel around a big drum. It looked like the towel would pick up water and deposit it somehow into a catch basin in the back. It took two people to push it and they were mostly using it on the long jump track.

The crew taking care of the javelin competition had a couple of remote controlled cars to retrieve the javelins and carry them back to the throwing area.

There are lots of birds in the Bird’s Nest.

The seat numbering seems to change venue to venue. We’ve seats that start low on the left and get higher going right and visa versa. The seats in the Bird’s Nest seemed to do both, with the high numbers meeting in the center of a section. It was a little confusing to come up the stairs to two rows on either side that started with seat 1.

The Chinese are sending a lot of school groups to the games. We’ve several at any of the day events we’ve gone to and there were a lot at this event today.

After watching the action for about an hour, I started getting the hang of keeping up with the separate events and how they were being displayed on the big screen and on the smaller displays on the field. Each apparatus or track had it’s own display that showed who the current athlete was, what their standing was, what attempt this was and how they did on previous attempts. Like the diving competition we saw earlier, the pace at which the rounds happened was fairly quick with little pause in between. The only time things tended to bog down was when someone had to go two or three attempts.

There are a lot of distractions that the athletes have to deal with. There is often music being played on the PA. The announcers were covering the action in English and Chinese (and I’m sure because so much was going on, the two announcers kept stepping on each other’s time). Along each track or approach to an apparatus, there are staff, cameras, signs, equipment for other events and a host of other things. I never really got a sense of how much crap there was littering the field by watching this kind of thing on TV.

We left before a little earlier than the when the session ended to try and get a jump on the taxi competition. It’s been getting harder and harder to get a taxi outside the venues after an event. Today, we tried spot after spot and had no luck. We finally gave up and decided to walk out a few blocks to find another main street and try there. We ended up having lunch before finally being able to get a cab.

We got back to the hotel room and took a nap in preparation for the late night of basketball. We got to the venue about an hour before the doors opened so we would have enough time to work the scalpers and try to get better seats. The tickets we had were for the upper deck and we would have been about half way up that section. It took us about a block or so before we started seeing scalpers. At first, most of them were holding baseball tickets. The baseball fields are right next to the basketball arena and closest to the subway we just used.

Once we got up to the basketball scalpers, capitalism started to happen.

Now, the two of us were a little nervous about doing this. As I wrote earlier, there are signs everywhere forbidding it and there are police and army soldiers patrolling the streets often. No matter. As soon as it became clear that we were looking at the tickets the scalpers were holding up, we became the center of ring of people want to make a deal.

At first, we kept seeing tickets that were just as bad as ours. It took a couple times before the scalpers understood we were looking for the good stuff. Soon, this one bald Chinese guy took over the negotiations and made it known to the other scalpers that we were his to deal with. Any time someone new would come up to us, he or his helper would shoo them away. He would go out to his crew and come back with tickets to which we would say yes or no. We were having a hard time getting him to understand that we wanted two tickets together in the A level.

While he was out trying to round up suitable tickets, a Chinese couple came up to us, speaking pretty good English and dressed a little too much like tourists wanting to know if we wanted to buy tickets. I got a bad vibe off them and said no. Before our bald friend came back, they left so I never found out if they were cops or not. But if even I could sense they weren’t right, I’m pretty sure they were fakes.

He kept trying and we kept saying no. Meanwhile, another guy showed with exactly the tickets we wanted and seemingly for a price we were willing to pay. That made bald guy pretty mad and after some quick Chinese, the new guy wouldn’t talk to us.

Then a Korean guy showed up and said that he had friends willing to sell tickets if we could wait. I told him to hurry since baldy was really working his contacts. The Korean’s friends showed up and their tickets were as bad as ours, again. Sheesh.

After standing there for a good 10 minutes waiting, trying to communicate what we wanted and feeling like we were about to get screwed, negotiations got underway and it was a non-starter. Once we got down to business, they wanted 2500 Yuan for each ticket, which is five times the face value. No freakin’ way. As we walked off, another guy came up with two tickets that seemed legit. I asked how much. He said 2000 each. We said 1500 each. He said yes.

As Angie was counting out the money, I saw baldy making a bee line for us. I told her to hurry, hurry. I wanted to get this transaction completed before baldy could butt in. Just before he got there, the money was exchanged, the new guy counted it and we had our A level tickets in hand.

All we had to do was get past the ticket check and we were good. Sure enough, the scalped tickets scanned and we were in the plaza. Success! Our first attempt to buy scalped tickets. We ended up paying three times face value, but when you break it down we paid about $200US for each ticket. That’s it for the semi-finals at the Olympics. Hopefully, we can repeat this again for the finals.

Once we got inside the arena, we discovered that the seats were really good. They were on the end which had the US and Australian bench. We were just about on line with the benches, maybe a little behind them, so the basket really wasn’t a visual distraction. And, I was in great position to yell brick at the Russians.

Game 1 — USA vs Russia



The crowd was not on our side.

There were a ton of Russians in the stands. They were congregated in a couple groups with the main on at the top of the lower bowl behind the US bench. There was another smaller ground down in front of us and then numerous small groups around the arena. The main group pretty much made noise the whole game. They were a mixed group, but their combined voices were big, deep and booming. I’m sure you all heard them on the broadcast.



Along with them, the Chinese crowd was definitely pro-Russian. The US was getting no love beyond the indiscriminate golf claps the Chinese give everyone. That was not so surprising as the Aussies who were also pulling for Russia. I can understand the Communists banding together, but come on now. The Aussies and the Americans are like half-brothers. Family. Blood. Give it up, at least a little bit.

No, it was left to the smattering of Americans to cheer for Team USA. There were, finally, some “U S A” chants, but they really didn’t start until the Russians had gotten rolling and were dominating the air with their incessant “Rus Si Ah” chant. As I’ve written previously, the Americans have been conspicuously quiet and reserved when it comes to supporting their team, at least compared to the rampant nationalism we’ve seen from every other group. Tonight, it was almost a defensive measure and because they Americans stayed in their assigned seats (funny that we’re the ones following the rules in a police state), we couldn’t get any real volume. Well, “we” being the whole group. I had some volume.

After listening to the non-stop heckling coming from the Russians and boos from the Chinese, I felt no hesitation in going after the Russians during their free throws. Like a road game in the WNBA, the arena tended to get very quiet for the home team. In this case, for the Russians. I was 50 feet or less away from the foul line on our side.

On the first Russian free throws, I cut loose and scared the crap out of every Chinese, Aussie and Russian sitting in front of us. And oh yeah, the Russian player missed both free throws. I can’t claim credit for the Russians’ 50% free throw shooting, but their percentage has been in the 60s or 70s for the rest of their games at the Olympics. I’m confident in saying I got those first two and maybe one other miss later on.

The Chinese around us thought it was funny and applauded when it seemed to work. I actually got dirty looks from the Aussies and down right evil looks from the Russians. I actually had one Russian stand up and tell me to be quiet. My irony meter exploded since at the time he was saying that, 50 Russians were chanting a section away from us. I told him that as soon as they were quiet, I’d be quiet.

The game was frustrating to watch, at least early on. The US was playing very tight and hesitant while the Russians seemed to be getting the ball into the middle at will. Lisa Leslie was really stinking up the joint. She was being dominated by Stepanova at both ends of the court. Finally, Coach Donovan brought in Sylvia Fowles and things calmed down. The US kept the Russians within reach with rebounding and second chance shots and three-pointers.



During the second half, the Americans clamped down on defense and started to hit the bunny shots they had been missing in the first half. On the Russian side, Becky Hammon got decent playing time, but was taken out of the game by the US guards. Becky was able to work over her opponents from the other countries, but the US players know all her tricks and I bet they wanted to put a little something extra on this one.



The result? US beats Russia and fairly handily at the end.

Game 2 — Australia vs China

We came ready to cheer for Australia. We even bought an Aussie flag to wave, but to be honest we were a little disinclined to do so after the cold shoulder we got from the Aussie fans in our section. We decided that we were there to support our players, current and past and would do so now regardless.

It’s a good thing we decided to not be pouty about it because as the tip-off loomed closer, the rows in front of us filled with the big Aussie group we’ve seen at the other games.

The first thing we noticed about the Aussies, being this close, was how much beer they drank. There were maybe 30 Aussies sitting in front of us, maybe a few more. They were ordering so much beer, that the arena staff started bringing it down to their seats by the tray load, 20 at a time. There was literally a non-stop rotation of 20 beer trays coming down to our section the whole game. With what individual Aussies brought down themselves, we figured that nearly 300 beers were consumed by 30 or so people. I thought for sure they would get cut off, but nope. The beer continued to flow.

At least they didn’t stand the whole time like the Russians were. The Aussies stood at appropriate times and stayed seated during game play.

This game was much more one-sided that the US and Russia. The Aussies took out the Chinese pretty easily. It really wasn’t much of a contest. I’m not sure if that is good or bad for the US in the Gold medal match. Russia was a tougher opponent than the Chinese and I think it might have been a good wake-up call for the US. The Aussies really haven’t been tested yet. They look extremely focused and if the US makes too many mistakes, like the 20+ turnovers they had against Russia (Leslie, I’m looking at you), Australia is going to have a field day.

I talked to Penny Taylor’s husband a bit and he said she was doing really well and should play in the final. He said she probably could have gone in this game but wanted to rest the ankle and “let the other girls pick up for her.” He also said something that made my blood run cold.

He said LJ isn’t coming back to the US. I said that sure, she needs to take care of herself first and get her ankle taken care of, but she might be able to make it back for the playoffs if the Storm makes it out of the first round. He kind of did an “Um, yeah, maybe.”

I don’t want to read anything into what he said, but I kind of can’t help it. He seemed like he was backpedaling a bit when I acted like it was just a matter of time for her to come back after the surgery healed. I could be wrong and he was pretty drunk. I don’t want to start anything, but I felt what I felt. I’ve been worrying for the last year or so that if Australia wins the Gold in Beijing, LJ would retire from the WNBA. This surgery and his reaction did nothing to dissuade me from that worry.

One way or another, we’re set for the final game. Angie and I need to work the scalpers once again to avoid sitting in the nosebleeds. We now have a Chinese flag to wave during the China/Russia Bronze medal match and I plan to enlist as many Chinese as a I can in doing brick for the Russians.

At the end of this game, the Aussie fans started chanting, “We want USA, we want USA.” Be careful what you ask for. I hope.

Beijing - Day 5 Great Wall and Forbidden City

We were both very excited about our day long tour today. We were going to see the Great Wall and then on to Tianamen Square and the Forbidden City. I had some concerns that with an hour and half drive to the Wall each way and the tour only being from 9 am to 5 pm that we would be able to spend enough time at the sight to actually see everything. It was actually worse than I expected. Our tour guide, Shall, meet us at the hotel at 8:30 am. She used to be a teacher and her English is quite good. She's also a very chatty person. She spent the day asking us what we knew about the various sites and then lecturing us on what we didn't know.

I had read that tour guide often make side trips to "factories" where you can basically buy direct from the factory. You have a little tour and then dump you into a massive store. Who knows if the stuff is actually made there are not. I had assumed that our tour company would screen their tour guides and at least ask if we wanted to go shopping. No such luck. In fact, we didn't even make it to the Wall without stopping at a factory.

The first one, the Jade Factory, wasn't so bad and I had wanted to get some jade jewelry, so I didn't mind so much. We had a short tour about where jade came from, the types of jade and how they carve it as well as viewing some extremely awesome carvings. Scott has some pictures. The store was massive and we did buy some jade. This stop cost us approximately an hour out of our day.



We then headed to the Great Wall. We were going to the section at Badalang. I had read in the tourist guides that this section got fairly heavy tourist traffic, but the reality was hard to envision. The drive up was quite nice with some amazingly beautiful scenery. Once there, it was a bit like an theme park from the 70s that hadn't been maintained very well. Lots of souvenir shops (and I do mean lots - like wall to wall from the entrance of the place to where you started walking up to the Wall. And some zoo-like pens with black bears. The funny thing was that there were a ton of signs that said don't feed the bears or throw things at them. However, everyone was doing so and in fact the bears were standing with their mouths open to encourage people to throw food at them. There were no park workers to stop them.



We elected to take what we thought was a trolley/tram to the top. It wasn't a trolley, more of carts on a conveyor system. Think kiddie roller coaster up a very steep hill. They don't actually stop the cars, you just have to jump in really quick. Not so easy when you have a backpack on. When we got to the top, again the things didn't slow down and the guy just reachs in and jerks you out. I'm going to have a bruise the size of my "rollergirl" bruise on my thigh tomorrow. Once off the carts we still had a decent climb to get to standing on the Wall. The stairs weren't that well maintained and it was more like hiking on a rocky hill that walking on stairs. However, you are also surrounded shoulder to shoulder with about 200 people all trying to get to the same narrow walkway. My favorite is having someone put their hand in the middle of my back and just start pushing. Like I wouldn't be moving forward if I could! My other favorite is those people that just stop dead in the middle of traffic to take a picture, get in their bag, whatever. They can't pull over and get out of traffic, they just stop right in the way and then give you a dirty look when you run into them because they stopped without warning. Cheesh.



We climbed some very steep stairs and made it up to a guard house. Very close quarters with people trying to go both directions in a walkway that was wide enough for about one person. Typical. Once through, we were actually standing on the Great Wall. That was pretty awesome. It was very foggy due to humidity and being up in the mountains, so I'm not sure how well Scott's pictures turned out. We continued hiking towards the next guard house. The stairs are all very uneven. You will have a couple of steps that are about 3-6 inches high and then the next one will be nearly 24 inches high. Man, I was thankful of all the squats and lunges that our trainer has been making us do. Additionally, it was very steep, I would guess about 30 degrees and still packed with people. The shoving and pushing at this point just becomes dangerous.

The sad thing was that we noticed a lot of graffiti carved into the wall. It didn't look terrible to us because it was all in Chinese and their characters are just pretty, however the defacing of such a national treasure is just sad. Another sad thing was there were several spot where it looked and smelled like someone had peed on the Great Wall. I've never been to Wasington, D.C. to see any of our national monuments, but I have to hope we treat them better than this.



The tour guide had only given us about an hour and twenty minutes before we were to meet her back at the entrance. Unfortunately, with all the people, we barely made it to the first high spot in the Wall before we needed to turn around and head back. We were delayed because the line for the pulley cars was quite long. I took some video of coming back down, if it turned out. You could smell the brakes on the front car all the way down. Did I mention it was very steep? Fortunately, on this ride, they did actually stop the car and allow you a second to climb out without injuring yourself. We were late in meeting back up with Shall and then had to walk down passed all the pushy vendors one more time to get back to the van. As it was about noon, we drove off to get some food.

Imagine our surprise when the restaurant was connected to another factory. We ended up touring the factory before we got to eat. It was a cloissene (sp?) factory which was interesting I suppose, but none of these items were on our shopping list and I doubt any of them would make it back to the States in our luggage.

Lunch was good. I have no idea what Shall ordered except that there was no fish. She was gone when the food started coming and we were hungry, so we just started eating. It turns out, the first dish was eggplant. I did fine eating it until I found out what it was. Then I started having a gag reflex. Go figure. I passed on the bean curd this time, but I tried everything else and it was tasty. Again, there was too much even for the three of us to finish. It seems very wasteful, but Shall says it is expected that you leave food or they will think they weren't good hosts.

By now, it was nearly 2:30 and we headed out to Tianamen Square. However, Shall had been spending a bit of time on the phone while we were driving and we ended up stopping and waiting for someone to meet us for about 15 minutes. He was dropping something off. Did I mention the hard sells? Shall gave us a talk about the Olympic running man logo and Chinese stamps on our way to the Wall. She then said she knewn a guy who carved name stamps and asked if we'd like one. Scott said sure and so she had him write our names and the year we were born on a piece of paper. It turns out that we were waiting for this guy to bring our stamps and to take another order. Shall had gotten a call from a previous tour participant who wanted additional stamps. They were pretty cool - watch for your next postcard. However, Scott didn't ask how much and they were more expensive than I think they are worth given how much we will probably actually use them.

We were finally dropped off at the Square at about 3:30. Shall mentioned that we needed to hurry so that we could get to the Forbidden City before the ticket office closed. We essentially ran through the Square and the Forbidden City and "finished" both in an hour. Every time Scott tried to take pictures, Shall would hurry him along. Not at all satisfying, especially given that we had no time due to shopping excursions we hadn't wanted to take. I'm definitely saying no shopping for our tour on the 25th. Scott and I also agreed that we are going to use one of our free days to come back and actually look around the Square and City at our leisure.

Neither of us were that impressed with the service on our tour. To top it off, I could remember the standard tip amount and we massively over tipped for a tour we weren't at all happy with. On the plus side, we will be with Shall again on the 25th, so I'm not tipping again.

We had about 15 minutes left to our tour and Shall wanted to rush us off to a silk factory. We lied and said we had arranged to meet people at the Night Market (mmmmm, scorpion) and needed to be there at 5:00 and asked that they drop us off at the market so they, Shall and the driver, did. It was kind of a relief to get away from the non-stop talking and selling.

We had actually wanted to stop over at the Night Market and the intersecting shopping street because Scott wanted to visit the Nike store and see if he could find a Yau Ming jersey. They had them, but nothing of a size that would fit Scott. They also had some nice country related wear, but it was very expensive in comparison to the Olympic swag we had seen so we passed. Next, we spotted a store that had a ton of Olympic stuff. We braved the massive crowds and purchased a chunk of Olympic history.

Ladden with bags, we headed over to the Night Market and had some dinner. Scott had more pot stickers, a beef mixture wrapped in a thin pancake, a stuffed pork sandwich and supposedly a ball of fried banana. I had a pancake wrap, an ear of corn (which I thought would be spiced up some but it wasn't) and the fried banana. At which point, we were full and just grabbed a taxi back to the hotel. It was about 6:30 pm, one of our earliest nights yet so we'll take the opportunity to post to the blog, download pictures and get a good night's rest. Tomorrow we have the women's basketball semi-finals: China vs. Australia, USA vs. Russa. It ought to be good (if we can buy some better seats!)

Beijing — Day 4 Diving and Basketball

Today was another full day of Olympic action. We've settled into a good routine in the mornings and are able to get ready and get out pretty quickly. Our first event today was the Men's 3M Springboard semifinal at the National Aquatics Center, aka the Watercube, on the Olympic Green.

Finally the Olympic Green!

I've been dying to get in there since we got here, but as I wrote previously access is restricted to people who have an event ticket for one of the venues on the green. No ticket, no entry.

We got a shuttle from the hotel and got there really fast, so we had a little more time to walk around before the diving began at 10 am. No cars or buses are allowed on the Green, so we had to get out a good half mile away or so at the main entrance. Yes, the main entrance is a half mile from any of the venues. The park itself is maybe 2 miles long or so. It has it's own subway line with 4 stops. We decided to good ahead and catch the subway and go farther up than the arenas and walk back so that we could look around.

The complex has a total of 9 sport venues, pavilions for the broadcast companies including the huge broadcast pagoda next to the Bird’s Nest, pavilions for all the major Olympic sponsors, concert areas, fountains and tons of sculpture. We didn’t have a lot of time, so we didn’t do much more than walk back from the subway stop to the Bird’s Nest and Watercube. One other piece of information you need to fully paint the picture is how hot it was this morning.

It was jungle hot, as in watch out for the anacondas and poison blow darts Amazon hot. And if it were any more humid, we would have needed snorkels. A walk that took us about an hour ended up leaving both of us… moist.

Anyway, the center of the Green is a wide median with streets on either sides and then additional walkways outside the street lanes. Many of the sponsor pavilions are on this median. We crossed over to the side with the Bird Cage and started walking towards it. We noticed that this side had an sunken area that was about 2 stories deep that ran parallel to the main median and streets. There are more sculptures down there — we saw one that caught our eye that looked like drips of liquid mercury with one drip caught just as it was landing. When we got down there to take a closer look, the vertical drip was actually a rabbit. I have no idea why it is a rabbit. There were no explanatory plaques or info anywhere. There was also a McDonald’s down there, a performance area and additional large art installations.

Back up to the main level, we found a cross street that gave some great angles on the Bird Cage and Pagoda broadcast building. We did some tourist poses. Pretty much any time we stop to take pictures, people ask me to help them with their cameras and/or to use their camera to take pictures of them and whichever landmark they are interested in. As I wrote before, the Chinese people seem to love getting their photo taken in front of stuff. With the Bird Cage, I can understand since I did it to. They tend to take it to crazy town level though. There are wall posters in most venues that show a group of people having fun at the events. I think it is meant to encourage people to be courteous to others — one of those Chinese mass behavior modification efforts. Chinese people are constantly getting their photo taken in front of those posters. They do it in front of pretty much anything that has any possible tie to the Olympics. I chalk it up to them being totally new to this whole big event thing and to being honestly proud to have the Olympics in their city. It’s still pretty comical at times.

Once we got to the base of the broadcast Pagoda, I was finding it hard to get a good angle to shoot it. There is a lot of crap around it and it’s heavily guarded. We thought we’d try to find the NBC booth since the Today Show has been broadcasting live. We found it, and even though we were there during normal show hours, nothing was going on. Of course, 8 am in the morning Beijing time is not really normal broadcast hours in the US. We are 12 hours ahead of NYC. Duh.

On final approach to the Bird Cage, I noticed a large walled off area right outside the plaza around the stadium. On tip toes, I was able to see that it was the warm up track and field. I’m not sure why they would wall it off. All it did was make people come over to look and half climb the fence.

The Bird Cage itself is a huge building. It basically is a full-size stadium with an exposed superstructure. You’ve all seen it on TV, I’m sure. Up close and personal, the beams are truly massive and seem to twist and roll in ways that don’t seem architecturally sound. One of the really cool things about it is how the sunlight bounces around. I hope the photos I took accurately show what I mean. There’s almost a facetted look to it. We came in on the side in shadow. I took a few shots and decided to walk around to the sunlit side to get some shots over there. Did I say this building was huge? It took almost 15 minutes to walk around. Since we’re going to be back here for at least one more day (we have track and field one morning), I didn’t get too crazy with the Bird Cage photos. We did decide that on one of our remaining free days we would come down to the Green and see if we could buy some scalped tickets so we could get in for a night event and see how it all looks at night. We almost don’t care what the event is and may not go to it. I just want to get in at night.

On to the Watercube. This has to be one of the most unique buildings in the world and is certainly one of the most amazing Olympic venues. It certainly puts the basketball arena to shame. By now, everyone has seen what it looks like from the outside — a grid of interlocking, irregular bubbles. Inside, that theme is continued. There is a main wall next to the entry way leading into the seating area that uses the same bubble shapes, but is made up of flexible plastic and has to be inflated with air.

There are also interior water walls and reflecting pools that keep the interior much cooler than other air conditioned buildings we been into. Everything is designed around the bubble theme. There are bubbles in the counters at the info booths. The walkway is configured to undulate like a wave. The seating includes blue seats at the bottom with white seats at the top. In between the white seats start from the bottom in a random pattern increasing in frequency as they go up, like rising bubbles in water. It is by far the most thoroughly thought out building we’ve seen so far.

Men’s 3M Springboard semifinal

The seating area inside the Watercube is really relatively small. I would put it at 7500 or so max. One side of the seating is set aside for media, photographers, TV cameras and all the other specialized sections for dignitaries and athletes (that rarely get used except for final rounds). For the diving competition, only one end of the building was being used, so I estimate a quarter of the seats were being used. The seating is very steep and Angie and I found ourselves 3 rows from the top. You can’t get much more nose bleed than that. For the most part, the building was very cool due as I said. Unfortunately, none of that refreshing coolness reached the top of the stands. The seats were small, full of people and it was stifling… for an hour and a half. More of the moist.

While we weren’t surrounded by Americans like we have been previously, we were surrounded by other English speaking nationalities — Canada and Australia. The Canadian group was fairly large and all related in some way to one of the Canadian divers, Reuben Ross. They all had t-shirts that had their relation to him on the back — Reuben’s Cousin, Reuben’s Brother, etc. Unfortunately, he did fairly badly. He didn’t come in last of the 18 divers, so they had that going for them. He came in 17th.

The competition itself was fairly straightforward. There were 6 rounds of dives with 18 divers. There wasn’t much of a pause between each round, so the competition continued at a fairly even pace. Not ever having been to a diving competition and only having seen it briefly on TV, I was a little underwhelmed. Most of the dives looked the same. I get that a back 3.5 somersault is harder than a front one, or doing a twist one way might be harder than doing it the other way, but when you have 18 divers all doing some slight variation of 3 somersaults with a pike thrown in, it gets a little repetitive.

That repetition did help us in spotting the good dives in later rounds. It started to become more obvious when the dive was good or not after having seen 60 versions of them.

Since we had a late night at soccer last night and mixed in with the hot, close quarters, I started to nod off a bit. I know, how can you fall asleep at the freakin’ Olympics? I fought it, I really did.

Things started to perk up in the last couple rounds. One of the Chinese divers was so far out in front that the lower placed divers weren’t even besting his score after they completed an additional dive. His place in the final was set early on. Others’ positions were more up from grabs. If I remember correctly, the 4-12 spots changed sometimes fairly dramatically round to round. One of the American divers, Troy Dumais, had a lock on the top 4 spot through most of the competition. He had a couple bad dives at the end and fell almost out for qualifying for the final. The other American diver, Chris Colwell, did the reverse. He nailed his last two for some big scores and pulled himself out of the basement and into the final round.

All of the divers tried to pull out the stops for their last dives and a couple really nailed it. The leader, He Chong, went last and popped the highest score for any dive of the day. He could have fallen backward off the springboard and lost his speedo on the way down and would have still gotten first place. Instead, he let the other divers know he was boss. He wasn’t the only one who really uncorked one, which left me wondering why some of these divers couldn’t have performed better on their earlier, easier dives. If you can pull of a 90-100 score on your final dive, why are you hitting 70 point dives early on?

The one thing that I need to mention was the music played at the end of each dive. Right as the diver’s feet passed through the surface, the music would start blaring over the speakers. At first, it seemed like the person manning the iPod was trying to find music related to the nationality of the diver. That ended pretty quickly since there are only so many pop music songs which evoke Finland or Ukraine in some way. Unfortunately, the next playlist on the iPod was disco. Apparently, Dmitry Sautin is a Dancing Queen in his spare time. Angie, who was also nodding off, mused that they do the music that way to keep people awake.

So our grand plan was to leave the Watercube, catch the subway to the final stop on the other end of the Green, check out the main souvenir store that is supposed to have everything in one place (the arena-based souvenir selections SUCK), and then try the massive McDonalds for lunch.

Right.

First off, the line for the subway extended all the way up and out of the station, which meant there were several thousand people ahead of us. We decided to walk. Did I say the place was 2 miles or so long, maybe longer? Did I mention how hot and humid it was?

Once we got to the store and McDonalds, our normally people-loving attitudes were right out the damn window. Then we find out that the line for the store is being measured in hours. Forget that. So we head to the McDonalds. The ordering counter was maybe 50 feet long with a register every couple feet. The mob of people was 10 deep. After standing there, being pushed, jostled, getting cut in front of and sweating like Nixon in a televised debate, I was ready to initiate an international incident. And on top of that, the menu was limited to just a few items, none of which were localized in any way. Feh.

We ate outside and needed to find a cab to get us over to the basketball arena on the other side of town. Of course, we discover that no cabs are allowed at the back entrance to the Green and we have to all the way back to the main entrance. Since the last subway stop was nearby, we went down there hoping that the crowds weren’t too bad. We were able to get a seat before the masses got on, so that was decent. We’re getting pretty used to the subway here, so we were able to navigate around and get to our cab in about a half hour.

Now, as I wrote previously, our tickets for the night’s games included one session of two games with us sitting behind a metal bar and glass panels. Unacceptable. We had talked about finding some better seats via the scalpers and did a quick walkthrough of them before going in. They all had tickets for the first session and not the second, so we went to plan B — seat hopping.

I’ve described the process before. The Chinese seem to have no regard for what their tickets mean. An open seat in a better location is on open invitation. At times, upwards of a third of the people in a given section don’t have tickets for the seats they are sitting in. We decided to give it a try for the second session, which included the US/Korea game. Before that, we had Belarus vs China and Australia vs Czech Republic.

Game 1 — China vs Belarus

Again, the Chinese crowd was really into the game. The flags were everywhere and the Cha Yo cheer was almost non-stop. The Chinese women did really well, although they had some rough spots that I think a more skilled and talented team will do better at exploiting than Belarus did. The Belarus team looked out of their depth a bit. They were fouling like crazy and could not keep the ball under control. Add to that inconsistent shooting and they never really had a chance.

The interesting thing about this game was that Donna Orender was sitting just a few seats away from us. Someone with a USA Basketball shirt came down and got her after awhile and I didn’t see her come back.

Game 2 — Australia vs Czech Republic

Damn. Talk about a statement game. The Aussies dominated the Czech. The Czech team only had 27 points after three quarters. Truly amazing defense against a mediocre offense.

The bigger story is, of course, Penny Taylor going down with what looked like an ankle injury. I don’t know if the broadcast picked up her scream, but man did we ever hear it.

She got fouled under the basket and let out a little yelp with the foul — the Aussies were already up pretty big and about half the Chinese fans left after the first game so it was fairly quiet — and then let out a scream when she came down and suffered the injury. They don’t show any kind of replays on the big screen (in any venue we are discovering), so it wasn’t clear to us what happened. All I know is that she was down for a long time and had to be helped off.

A couple of the Czech players were standing over Penny while the trainers worked on her. One reached down to either pat her or offer a hand. LJ came over and really bitched the Czechs out, telling them to leave her alone and back off. She was pretty steamed the rest of the way and took it to the Czech team. Don’t piss her off, even if it seemed like they were trying to be nice.
Even without Penny, the Aussies easily handled the Czechs. In the stands, the Aussie contingent was still large, but a lot more subdued. Even before Penny’s injury, they weren’t nearly as loud as they were during the last game. Maybe they are saving it up for the next rounds.

Game 3 — USA vs Korea

Ok, so we got back into the arena (they kick us out between sessions), and went to our ticketed seats. As we sat there strategizing where we might go — we were thinking about moving back a couple rows and offering our seats to anyone who we had taken seats from — and spotted that the mid-section usher was gone from his post. We looked around and though to go for it. We kicked it down into the cush seats at about row 10 or so. Just to be extra bold, we went for the aisle seats at mid-court. We sat there nervously for about a half hour. Our plan in case we were challenged by the actual ticket holders was to play dumb like we misread our own tickets and move to nearby seats. We decided on where we’d move to ahead of time so it didn’t look like we were searching for open seats, not that the Chinese who do this really care about that.

The game got underway and so far, no problems. We actually made it to the half before the two people with tickets showed up. Luckily for us, there were still 4 empties right next to us in that row, so we just moved down. We made it the whole game with no problems. It wasn’t until the period between games that the rest of the actual ticket holders showed up. By that time, most of the people in the seats in our immediate area were seat hoppers. We ended up moving sections, but still in the lower area. We made it through the second game as well. The next round of games has us up in the nosebleeds. There won’t be any easy seat hopping for that situation. We’ll have to go the scalping route and plan on getting to the arena earlier than normal so we can work the line.

The game itself was a lot of fun to watch. The US was rolling and was able to do what I thought might happen once Korea got to play a really good team — slow down their shooters. Korea has some great shooters, but not much else. Their defense isn’t all that strong and they don’t have anyone who can really play center or power forward. Given that, Fowles had a monster night. Leslie was on the verge of doing so, but got into foul trouble. The US as a team put on a solid show and easily won the game.

A couple of in-the-stands items.

For a short time, Candace Parker’s mom was sitting in front of us. She had to move because she was in the wrong section. We tried to get her to take the seats next to us, but she didn’t and moved over with a group of Americans on one side who included a lot of coaches, including former Storm assistant coach Heidi VanDerveer, and other players’ families.

The trend I was watching concerning how demonstrative US fans are at the games continued. There were many more US fans at this game, but still no where near the rabid support we saw from the Aussies. A few flags were waving, but no organized chants. Are we so afraid of being seen as rude or arrogant? Angie and were yelling like we normally do — at the refs, for some of the players, normal stuff — and we were getting looks. I’ll keep watching how this plays out as the games get bigger leading up to the Gold medal match (if the US gets there).

Speaking of yelling things, I kept having to stop myself from yelling stuff about the Storm. I also had to stop myself from heckling Leslie and Milton-Jones when they were complaining about calls or imagined calls to the refs. The uniforms are different, but the anti-Spark conditioning is strong in this one.

The US men’s team came to watch, although I didn’t see Kobe. He might have been there since my view was partially blocked. A crowd of Chinese came down to take photos, but there were only half or less than how many came down with the Chinese men’s team showed up the other night.

Game 4 — Russia vs Spain

Finally, a close game… well most of the way.

Spain really came out hot, but Russia outlasted them and was able to dig themselves out of the whole in the second half and win handily. Unlike the last game we saw, the Russians played Becky Hammon as a starter instead of an off-the-bench shooter and gave her tons of playing time. She was really the difference in the game overall. The looming US vs Russia game will be very interesting indeed. I don’t think the Russians have the bench to hang with the US and they are very inconsistent. I think the US will find a way of capitalizing on the Russian’s rough shooting spots.

In the stands, I think we may have found a group who could give the Aussie fans a run for their money — Russian fans. They were out in force and making a ton of noise, all game long. It’s too bad these two teams won’t be facing each other in the next round. Seeing the Aussie fans go mano y mano with the Russians would have been a lot of fun (when the game means something, the final pool play game wasn’t really in doubt).

Well, tomorrow is our first day off from Olympic events, so we’re heading up to the Great Wall.

Beijing – Day 3 continued

Back from football. USA v. Japan, Women's semi-finals and ...
USA WINS! 4 to 2.

The Workers Stadium is huge. It hold 60,000 and I believe it was full to near capacity. We had meant to pick up something to eat before heading in, but by the time we reached the arena, it was 7:30 and the match started at 9:00 pm. While the security and ticket takers have been amazingly efficient so far, we had concerns so we skipped dinner and decided to have arena food (hoping they'd have different arena food) instead. That was a mistake. Not only was it the same arena food, but they didn't have anything available that was substantial. I don't think bread, popcorn and a Snickers bar constitutes a well rounded meal. The other bummer was that they were pouring all the drinks into cup without lid. Apparently, they had concerns that we'd all throw our plastic bottles at each other and on the field.

We had relatively good seats. 3 rows up behind the USA bench. The shelters for the teams were blocking part of our view of the opposite end of the field, but they were showing the game up on big screens at either end, so we just watched up there when we were blocked.

It was looking pretty grim at the beginning. Japan drew first blood and USA just wasn't getting past their defense. I don't know if you all are aware of this, but every time I leave my seat during a Storm game, the Storm go on a run. Sometimes a little run, sometimes a big run. Apparently, this works in soccer too. USA was down 1-0 and I decided to go to the bathroom with a few minutes left in the half. Before I made it up to the stairs, USA scored. With 5 minutes, they scored again. Our seatmates were prepared to send me back to the bathroom if Japan scored and tied up the game. Fortunately, USA scored again twice in rapid succession in the second half. During the extra 3 minutes (for stoppage), Japan scored one more time, but it wasn't enough.



After the game, Scott and I tried to walk about the Stadium to a McDonalds, but miscalculated the distance and got turned around. We ended up catching a cab back to the hotel instead. We had fun riding the subways, but have learned that it's a minimum of an hour to get to anywhere and you can ride in a taxi for about $5.00 US clear across town. When we are in a hurry or it's late, it just makes more sense to take a taxi. None of the drivers speak English, so we try to have someone at the hotel write out the name of our destinations for the day before we leave and of course we always take something with the name and address of the hotel with us.

A couple of additional notes. We were surrounded by Americans again. A couple from San Francisco doing their 6th Olympics, a couple from Chicago, and a family from Sammamish. Scott had someone take a picture of all of us and I'm sure he'll post it soon. The couple from San Francisco had plenty of good insights on how to afford going to the Olympics without it costing so much. Ann and Mack, we need to talk. There were several large American flags and we ended up on the big screen more than once. That seems to be becoming a trend.

The bathroom was not fun. There were western style toilets, but they were icky and muddy for some reason. There was no toilet paper (for which I was prepared), but there also were no towels for drying your hands and there weren't even the hand blowers. I don't think they thought that one through!

It is also interesting to note that the crowd at the Stadium definitely seemed to be favoring USA. While they would cheer regardless of who scored, they continually started chants of USA and there was some booing of the Japanese team in spots. We also had several Chinese people come up and want their pictures taken with us, even more so when the other Americans showed up with the flags. They seem to love having their pictures taken with foreigners.

Lastly, we say a building marked Beijing Lawyers Association. I mention this because the acronym would be BLA and I think that's funny.

Tomorrow we have diving and more basketball.

Beijing – Day 3

Since we didn't get back to the hotel until 12:30 am this morning, we decided to take it easy this morning. The only things on the agenda were a hutong bike tour and a soccer match tonight.

We woke up and showered about 6:30 am and then hit the buffet. Then we just hung around the hotel taking care of stuff. Scott worked on downloading the photos and I went back to sleep.

Around 11:30 we went out and got some food. The Beijing Olympic Committee printed up several restaurant guides and a shopping guide. We selected a restaurant that wasn't too far from our hotel. It was really nice. The server offered to help us pick out food and we took her up on her offer. Scott got Kung Pao chicken. I got a Spicy Chicken dish which was more or less chicken skin deep fried with lots of sesame seeds. Doesn't sound that appetizing, but it was actually pretty good. The server also added a tofu dish and some vegetables. It turned out to be way more than we could eat, but we did our best to eat enough to show we enjoyed the food.

The funniest part was after watching us eat for a few minutes, the server offered to bring us forks. We thought we were doing pretty good with the chopsticks but apparently no so much. We toughed it out for a while longer, but then Scott accepted a fork. They also brought us a purple ice cream for dessert. I have no idea what flavor it was, but it was tasty enough.

Then with very fully stomachs, we headed over for our bike tour. Our group turned out to be fairly large, 18 people, I think. There were people from Germany (but now living in Belgium and Shanghai), an American family that was currently living in Tokyo, a family from Holland and a couple from Hawaii. It was set to be a 3 hour tour through the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, through several hutongs, past the canal and the Bell and Drum Towers and then back to Jingshan Park where we started.



First off, it's freakin' crazy trying to ride a bike here. Yes, there are bike lanes, but they are used by bikes, motor scooters, pedestrians and occassionally cars and in the hutongs, the streets are so narrow that sometimes it is hard to pass two abreast. There is no clear right of way except on really busy streets and everyone just goes when they want and tries not to hit anyone. There is no 3 foot rule like it Seattle. It was a bit nerve-wracking. I was nearly creamed several times and I just missed hitting pedestrians and other bikes multiple times. You really couldn't sightsee while riding too much or you'd hit someone. Because the group was so large, it was often hard to hear the tour guide sometimes.

The hutongs are fascinating looks into the old way of life for the Chinese. Many of the houses don't have bathrooms, so they share a public restroom. Lots of shops and people hanging out in the street. We were closely watched, but many people said hello or waved. There were even so dogs. Mostly small pug like dogs. One thought about chasing the bikes but was called back by its owner.

We had to stop in one of the hutongs because Scott ended up with a flat tire. Our guide took us to a road side shop where the man replaced the tube and tire in about 10 minutes and then we were back on our way.

There was at least one fascinating area we will probably go back and visit on our own. It was called Antiques Street and was full of shops selling handcrafted items, paper products, art supplies and I suppose some antiques but I wouldn't bank on it. It looked like an interesting place to do some shopping.

We also biked on a street next to a canal that runs through the city. It was very pleasant, but very busy. It was interesting to note that it mostly had cafes and restaurants alone the street with couches and tables for sitting out and enjoying the evening. Since it was the afternoon, they were mostly empty. One of our fellow tourist said that up until about 3 years ago it had been a "bar" street that people loved to come to and sit out in the evening. Now, it's been turned into mostly an overpiced tourist trap. Go figure.

At the end of our tour, we caught a taxi back to the hotel so we could freshen up and pick up Wendy before heading to the soccer game. More later.