Time for a Chinese Mea Culpa?

According to several sources, the IOC has opened an investigation into the age of one of the Chinese gymnasts. I kind of doubt if anything will come of this, and I don't really care about the gymnastics competition. But, this is the appropriate time for someone in BOCOG or the Chinese government to issue a mea culpa so this thing is put to rest once and for all.

First, the young girl doesn't deserve to lose her medals, and neither does the Chinese team. If the age-fixing allegations are true, they were used by their coaches and sporting officials, and are too young to understand the repercussions. Second, someone highly positioned in the government or BOCOG (the organizing committee) should reprimand, or even dismiss the sporting and government officials responsible for the ostensibly faked passports.

The Olympic games have been a rousing success thus far, and China is safely ahead in the all-important (over here) gold medal count. Why let this stupid little controversy snowball into something bigger or sully the reputation of the games. Taking the people responsible (for the alleged cheating) to task would show that the highest levels of government had no connection to this matter (though their push for golds probably inspired the coaches and officials). This, I think, is the only surefire way to prevent any further loss of face from this embarrassing issue.

On an unrelated note, anyone interested in the recent events in the Caucasus or Russian relations in general should see Gorbachev's Op-Ed from the NYtimes.

Who Will Win the Medal Count?

The unfortunate news of Liu Xiang's injury and withdrawal from the 110m hurdles not withstanding, China has a lot to be proud of in this Olympics. According to the most current listing on beijing2008.com, China leads the US in gold medals by a huge margin, 43-26. It would appear that the battle for most golds is safely in China's hands, barring some unfathomable dominance in the remaining events on the part of the US.

Locals Watching an Individual Gymnastics Competition on Changshou Road

However, in the overall medal count, the US still holds a slim lead, 79-76 (the remaining sports would seem to favor the US holding on to its lead). In previous Olympics, I had always thought overall medal count to be of more importance than the gold count. But most Chinese people that I have spoken with regarding this topic have said something to the effect of "of course gold is the most important", and the Chinese media list the medal count accordingly; meanwhile most US sources list the medal count as an overall ranking. Really, I don't think either is as important as people make them out to be, but my personal opinion is that overall medal count is a better barometer of a country's overall athletic culture. But, surely gold medals are still worth more than silver or bronze, right?

Well, some columnists have recently suggested a sort of weighted point system should be used to determine an unofficial overall ranking (ie. Gold = 3 pts, Silver = 2, and Bronze = 1). Well if that were the case, the current ranking would be as follows:
1. China, 176 pts
2. USA, 157 pts
3. Russia, 76 pts
4. Great Britain, 74 pts
5. Australia, 69 pts
And so on down the list. But the problem here for a freedom-loving, sushi-eating American such as myself, is that the Red, White, and Blue still doesn't come out on top.

So, purely for laughs, I've decided to devise my own medal count, which will take into account only sports which I (and my football and baseball loving friends) care about, or ordinarily consider sports. So, with that in mind, the following adjustments will be made: men's diving is out, but women's diving is in (for more, see Guo Jingjing); women's (children's?) gymnastics are definitely out (I don't care whether it's a good rule or bad, but it's pretty clear the Chinese team cheated on the age rule. Also, the Karolyis are a little creepy to me, don't know why.); arbitrarily, badminton is out, and table tennis is in; all shooting is out, (I saw pot-bellies on some of the competitors, and when I see pot-bellies in sports, I expect them to be quickly offset by a crushing tackle, a 400 ft. home-run, or a 97 mph fastball.), though archery remains; goodbye trampoline, your sport is a joke (to me); and finally, women's weightlifting* is out.

So where does that leave us? According to my calculations for the first ever for-entertainment-purposes-only-sports-that-actually-count Medal Count, the rankings now look like this:
Overall:
#1: USA, with 64 medals
#2: China, with 43 medals

Gold medal count:
#1: China, with 24 golds, 10 silvers, and 9 bronzes
#2: USA, 22 golds, 19 silvers, and 23 bronzes
(OH NO! Well, this one should change if basketball comes through, women's beach volleyball continues to roll, and the Track & Field athletes pull their weight.)

Point system:
#1: USA 127 touchdowns (points shall be known as touchdowns if the US is leading)
#2: China 101 TDs

So what's the point of all this? First, medal counts are probably not a good gauge of any country’s collective athletic prowess (if it were so, the Republic of Michael Phelps would be more athletic than approximately 60 medal-winning countries, including a billion plus Indians), or its sporting culture. Second, any medal count should be looked at with a grain-of-salt, and when I make the rules, the US always wins!!

*On women's weightlifting: If the US women had won any medals, I would absolutely be counting them, as there is a thriving amateur culture of US lifters. However, as far as I can tell, women's weightlifting in China goes against many Chinese cultural norms regarding the expectations of a woman's behavior. I could see a young American girl taking up weight-lifting for a love of the sport, and having the support and even encouragement of her parents; however, I would generally say that exactly the opposite would happen were a young Chinese girl to decide that weightlifting was her sport. Basically, I have seen many women in weight-rooms at health-clubs and my schools in the US, but can't remember one instance of the same in China.

The Chinese women that dominated this year's weightlifting competition came from a government athletic program, and for the most part come from peasant, country backgrounds. They were hand-picked by officials at a young age after showing physical promise of some kind, and then their parents signed them up for the elite sporting schools that offered one of the few roads out of their villages. This may not be true for every single competitor, but it is for the majority. This system goes against everything that I see as good about sport in the US (ie. spirit of competition and love of the game). There have been a few different articles about this system lately, but one of the best comes from the Wall Street Journal and can be seen here.

The Most Popular American Team in China??

One of my favorite things about the Olympics is cheering for my country in sports I normally pay little or no attention to. In fact, it seems that once every four years is a perfect amount for me when it comes to the majority of Olympic sports. During my quadrennial obscure sports binge, I'll often just turn the TV on to whatever sport is live and see if it piques my interest: judo, a little; swimming prelims, ehhhh; air pistol, no thank you.

Anyway, tonight I found myself watching the tail end of an early round women's volleyball game between Team USA and Team Japan. I had heard from a few friends that women's volleyball is a pretty popular event over here, but I was still a bit surprised by the sheer volume of the chants of "USA! USA!". I didn't expect there to be that large an American contingent present at such an early match, and the camera shots of the crowd didn't seem to show a whole bunch of Americans (usually quite easy to spot, even in massive crowds). And I definitely didn't think the crowd was anti-Japan enough to be that pro-US. So why the positively Mark Rowswell -ian cheers? (The man know in China as 大山，or Da Shan, is a subject for an entirely different post).

My unasked question was answered soon enough, during the end-of-day wrap-up on CCTV-2. The anchor said that they were going to a brief interview with the US coach, and to my surprise she was a native Chinese speaker (please remember that news regarding this sport does not make it into my normal reading material). In fact, the US coach is none other than "Jenny" "The Iron Hammer" Lang Ping (郎平). Lang Ping, I soon found out, is an iconic athlete in China, nearly as famous as Liu Xiang or Li Ning (the athlete/ entrepreneur who lit the torch). She led the Chinese volleyball squad to a gold medal at the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984.

I cannot express how great I think it is that the US team has this person coaching for them. For one, the team members' Olympic trip to China is assuredly a different experience entirely from the run-of-the-mill (from my standpoint) trips that most teams will be having. Also, I think anything that gets the home crowd waving the red, white, and blue is very cool.

Still, it may be a stretch to say that they are more popular with the locals than the USA basketball squad.

Update: I was just perusing my usual China related media, and saw that the Wall Street Journal's China Journal just published a similar post entitled "Return of the 'Iron Hammer'". Apparently somebody over there was watching tonight's match as well. While I assume that none of the readers of the aforementioned blog would deign to read this one, for pride's sake I must mention that according to Google Reader, mine was published 2 minutes earlier. If you have time, compare the two entries, and let me know what you think (and remember that they are paid to blog).

It's Go Time!!

After 8 long years of preparation and 30 years of economic reform and opening up, China will begin its coming out party tonight with a Zhang Yimou directed extravaganza of an opening ceremony. Some preliminary events have already started. Word out of Beijing this morning on the air quality is not good, to say the least. The official air pollution index, however, refuses to inch past 100, which is slightly suspect. This is really a shame, as I was hoping for nice clear skies for the opening ceremony, but I don't think it will cut down on the majesty of the event itself. Too bad we can't transport Shanghai's weather to Beijing for one day, as the sky is blue, and the humidity is mercifully low. I for one, will be watching the ceremony at a party thrown on the rooftop of a friend of mine. After all this time and build up, it's still hard to believe that the games are actually here.

For the past few weeks, the security presence in the city has noticeably increased. This has been especially so in areas such as the subway stations, landmark buildings, and sporting venues. Today in the Century Avenue subway station, in addition to the security guard wanding bags for metal objects that has been present the past two weeks, there were also police officers with sniffer dogs (friendly black labs by the way). I also saw a group of volunteer security guards, ostensibly local residents, sporting red armbands, ala present-day parking attendants and the red guards of yesteryear. I'd heard of a similar 'posse' in Beijing, but didn't know they were organizing these guys as lookouts in Shanghai as well. I guess the more the merrier when it comes to safety though.

I seem to once again be able to easily post new photos, so there are some new ones from the last few months here.

DVD Speakeasies of Shanghai

When I first arrived in Shanghai for study abroad in 2006, I was, as a movie-buff and cheapskate, impressed by the ubiquity of illicit DVD stores around the city. It seemed that wherever one went in the city, there was a bootleg DVD store at every corner, or at the very least a few 3-wheel bicycle cart vendors selling 5-kuai (yuan) discs. During my semester I amassed a rather large collection of these DVDs.

Beijing, however, was different. I was there last summer for around 7 weeks, and I may have bought 2 DVDs during that time. The lack of friendly and disreputable DVD dealers there is due, one assumes, to stricter enforcement of the law and higher police presence in the Capital.

This time around in Shanghai, I happily discovered that many DVD stores were still around, albeit with slightly higher prices. However, I noticed that first runs from the states were taking longer to arrive on the shelves, and some didn't come at all (e.g. Hancock was spotted for the first time today, and still no Indiana Jones).

A few weeks ago my entertainment world came crashing down around me as every known store in my neighborhood, and hundreds throughout the city were hit by systematic raids. The stocks of stores that were unlucky enough not to receive advance word through the grapevine were confiscated, and the operators were told not to reopen, in the words of one local owner, "for a long time". Why this brash and affronting observation of laws that have been on the books for years? According to the owner of one of my favorite local haunts, he was simply told “For the Olympics.”

But a few intrepid DVD stores that I occasionally visit are holding the torch (pun intended) for the Shanghai knockoff DVD scene, although in a slightly different format. The first store I visited, which I walk past regularly, had cleaned their shelves of all stock, but their doors were still open daily. I was a bit confused by this, so I went to ask the owner, who sits surfing the web in the front of the shop all day, what was going on. He was the first to explain the Olympic connection to me, and he directed me to the back of the shop, where after crossing between a row of shelves and a wall, I climbed the stairs to his living area. Next to the bathroom, in a small storage room, he had set up his stock, TV shows on one shelf, and movies according to genre. The newest were on a table in the center, and thousands of DVDs in sleeves were in boxes arrayed on the floor. When I left he said he’d be getting a new shipment the next day, which indicated he wasn’t just getting rid of old stock.

About a week later, I passed another shop, which had appeared previously to have shut down under the financial strain of the raid. However, as I walked past, the proprietor, who recognized me from past trips, pointed to the back of the store. There, past renovation work and concealed behind a sliding door that matches the adjacent wall, was his store. Except that his store had a better selection than before, was better organized, and even had a brand new cash register. This week the construction at that particular store was finished, and the front end has been converted to a shiny new stationary and school supplies store. On a recent visit, as I was ushered to the back, the worker calmly but intently looked out front for strolling cops as he opened the sliding door.

I should also mentioned that one of the more expensive stores that I know from my study abroad time was seemingly never raided and has gone on doing business as usual. When asked about the reason for their luck, a worker there only said that yes, the other stores had shut down because of the Olympics, though he would not divulge how they had been able to avoid a similar fate.

为奥运会。 (For the Olympics)

As the Olympics fire up this week, it is interesting to look at the steps that China’s leadership has taken to present their best face to the world. From ordering migrant junk collectors off the streets of Beijing to shutting copyright infringing DVD stores in Shanghai, all sorts of measures have been put in place to avoid any type of embarrassment during the games.

Interesting Olympic News

First: I'm kicking off the Olympic season in style tomorrow, as I'll be taking in the USA-Russia game of the USA Basketball International Challenge. I am very pumped for this one, as it has got to be the greatest collection of sporting talent I'll ever see in one place (being a Bulls fan, I could make the argument that any of the Bulls games from the nineties that I attended beat this one out by having Jordan on the court, but I'll try to restrain my hyperbole). I've never seen any of the following players live before: Chris Paul, Deron Williams, Lebron, Kobe, or Dwight Howard, so I am, I think, understandably excited. The game will be held at the Qizhong Forest Sports City Arena, home of the Shanghai Tennis Masters Cup.

Next, a couple of interesting Olympic related articles. The first is from the New York Times Sports magazine, and it profiles Chinese hurdler Liu Xiang. Liu is not especially well known in the US outside of track and field fans, but he is a gold medalist and world champion, and an unequaled sporting celebrity in China. In my unscientific analysis, Liu has more pressure on him than any other athlete in the world this year. Personally, I just think it's cool that he went to the same university in Shanghai that I attended for study abroad.

The Second comes from MinnPost.com and detailed an interesting interaction that a journalist had upon his recent arrival in Beijing. Apparently the journalist in question was politely told to "Write only good news", and "No politics". I found this one via the Shanghai Scrap blog, and I echo their sentiments in saying that the police officer's family background and high level English indicate he is only working the airport under the extraordinary circumstances of the Olympic season.