The Olympics!!!!

Before I get into the details of the Opening Ceremonies, here is a brief update:

My girl is back. She's got the new citizenship; she's got the visa; and she's got a job. We're finally set for a year without bureaucratic interruption. Hurray for that!

My good friend Sarah came to visit me (with her friend Jamie) several weeks ago. It was, of course, wonderful to have them in town. I only wish that I wouldn't have been so busy at work so that I could have spent more time with them.

I was recently offered a managerial position at work. Though the increase in responsibility and span of influence is nice, having subordinates and being responsible for their work proves to be extremely stressful. Each day is a constant struggle to discover each individual's strengths and weaknesses and then to arrange people to accomplish the maximum amount of high quality work. I haven't decided yet if the output is worth the effort to me personally. In September, I and the top managers will have to make the decision about whether or not I remain a manager, so I'll need to clarify my feelings and desires pretty soon.

Now on to the big news (and a long post): the 2008 Beijing Olympics, starting with the Opening Ceremony.

I watched the ceremonies on the rooftop of my friend's apartment building, which is located near the central north-south axis of Beijing. He had rigged up a projector to project the television broadcast onto a 8' by 6' piece of wall. In ascending order, the best places to watch the ceremonies would have been:

1. At the National Stadium itself,
   
2. In an airplane flying over the city (though this was, and always will be, illegal),
   
3. On a rooftop overlooking the Olympic Green,
   
4. Overlooking Tiananmen Square or the Forbidden City, and
5. At our location.

The event, for those who did not see it, truly was stunning. Sabine, my friend Etienne, and I arrived in the middle of the opening drum performance. "Wow" was the first thought that came into my head as I watched thousands of drummers beating away in unison. They were actually frighteningly synchronized.

Sabine said, "It's beautiful."

My response: "It's terrifying."

The following performance was a series of firework blasts resembling footsteps that began in Tiananmen Square and continued up the north-south axis of the city finishing with a spectacular mini-finale at the National Stadium. My rating of our location as the 5th best in the world for viewing is due mostly to the fact that we were able to see the entire fireworks display from the southernmost starting point to the National Stadium in real-time.

What followed was a seeming attempt to give "the best performance in history" 7 times in a row. I'm not sure if the performers succeeded, but they may have come close.

Since most people probably already saw the ceremonies and because the event was 2 weeks ago, my description will end here. But here are my comments.

Why it was terrifying - Talking to my dad the weekend after the event, he summed up nicely the feeling that 10,000 people performing in unison expresses: "The power of China is her people." The power of China is indeed her people, and thousands of people moving together in perfect harmony is a beautiful sight. However, it was also eerily military in its style, enough so that it made me feel . . . unsettled (here is a nice summary that mirrors my trepidation from an Asia Society scholar).

What I thought of the content - My mother thought that the event was very creative. I respectfully disagree because it's been 2 weeks since the opening, and I can still name the key performance content.

Don't believe me? Watch:

Drumming, tai chi, ancient Chinese painting, calligraphy (of ancient Chinese characters), Peking Opera, puppets, weird percussion that sounds like pots and pans, the world, and the lighting of the torch (okay, 3 others were moderately original . . . the human pin-sculpture, the oars and the weird LED suits performance). In case you're wondering: No, I did not look at an online recount of the event.

I may have missed one or two, but the reason that I can recite so many of the performances from memory is because the first 5 that I mentioned are the first 5 things that every (yes EVERY EVERY EVERY) Beijinger will recite to you as the key elements of Chinese culture (along with the regional foods and Chinese architecture). After 2 years of living here, I've heard about each of those things more times than I care to count. The remaining two, "The World" and "the lighting of the torch," are Olympic necessities. The other three, as I mentioned, were alright.

Summary: Beautiful but lacking true inspiration.

Relevance to China today? - I'm not going to belabor this point, but while the performance did showcase a few of the remnants of ancient Chinese culture, the content and presentation scores a D-minus in the "relevance to day-to-day life in China in the year 2008."

Notice I did not give an "F," and with good reason. There is one notable exception that makes the performance relevant to today, but one needs to read between the lines to see it. Here is the one redeeming factor (keep in mind that I am generalizing): China and the Chinese, in general, will put on a perfect face when somebody else who they consider to be important is watching.

Read into that what you will. I don't want to go into it further.

The highlight of the whole Olympic period, though, was actually attending the games. I was fortunate enough to have received two tickets to track and field finals during the first round of the ticket lottery. In retrospect, I should have put in a bid for all the tickets that I could get my hands on, but thinking at the time that I would be forever a poor recently graduated college student, I bid for too few.

First, the broad overview of the “Olympic experience.” The only way to get to the main Olympic Green is to take the new subway. And in order to get onto the new subway, you have to pass through security. This means that the security checkpoint is located nearly a half-mile away from the Olympic venues. I will say two things about this fact:

1. It is a massively confusing experience when there thousands of individuals from numerous worldwide countries all trying to make their way through a checkpoint when they are nowhere near their final destination (it would be the ideal location to learn how to say “What the hell?” in 169 languages), and
2. When one gets over the confusion, one comes to the comforting realization that a checkpoint located 1/2 a mile from the Olympic Green renders the Green one of the safest places on earth, so I guess it’s worth it.
   

As a so-called marketer, the first thing I noticed after getting off the subway is that the Olympic sponsors have a massively wonderful opportunity to expose an Olympic attendee to their brands. The first building that you see is . . . The Coca-Cola experience center. Followed by the Samsung concert venue, followed by Lenovo, Bank of China, etc. Basically, there is no way to avoid the sponsors' beautiful showcases. Moreover, all of the soft-drinks sold are Coke products, all of the beer Budweiser (or its subsidiaries'), and the line outside of the single McDonald’s was (no lie) probably 500 people long. But enough about that; a few advertisements seem a fair price to pay for an international celebration of human physical achievement every 4 years.

After spending an hour or so in the advertising area looking for good ideas, it was off to the National Stadium (picture above and movie below) for some competitions. And the competitions (both days) were simply amazing.

Clearly it was fun for me to watch the USA winning events (and I saw 2 USA victories at the stadium – more on those in a minute), but what was truly amazing was watching athletes who were vying for Olympic and world records.

Let me set the stage for you: Prior to each event, all of the athletes are introduced then the world record and Olympic for the event is introduced. So we know if our own country is competing, and we know the current known limits of worldwide achievement. In a normal competition, each country cheers lightly for the overall field and cheers extra hard for their own country’s athlete. Fair enough. However, when any athlete is within reach of a world record, the geographic and political boundaries don’t matter anymore. Everybody is on their feet, screaming, cheering, and yelling (the shot at the right is me right before the men's 1500 meter race).

I’m not sure of the exact motivation for each individual that makes them temporarily disregard their nationality and cheer, but I assume that it is some combination of the pride that comes with the ability to say “I was there,” and the amazement that you feel knowing you may actually witness one person proving that he (or she) is the fastest, strongest, or best in history. I prefer to think that most people were excited for the latter reason.

But anyway, I am sad to say that I did not witness any world records. However, I did witness 3 Olympic records, one in the men’s javelin throw, one in the men’s 5000m race, and one in the men’s 4x400m race. Each was as amazing as the last (though the 4x400 was probably the sweetest since the American team set it and simultaneously won gold), and each drew deafening cheers from the whole crowd, regardless of nationality.

Despite the wonder of seeing an Olympic record in progress, I am still partial to America . . . and to a close finish. The Men’s 4x400m was awesome because the USA set an Olympic record and won gold, but my favorite event was, in fact, the Women’s 4x400m race.

Why?

Russia (our Cold War nemesis, of all countries – is it weird that I think of that fact during races?), took the lead for the first 3 laps. They were dominating. But in the last 30 meters, in front of thousands of cheering fans who are all on their feet, our anchor leg overtook the Russian and won by less than 3/10th of a second.

Wow.

The Olympics rock.

Chinese New Year Video (I know, it's been too long)

Hello all! I've finally gotten around to getting the videos from Chinese New Year. Here's the good one . . .




Pretty cool huh?

Freaking China

I'm back, and it's been less than a month since my last post! I'm as amazed as you may (or may not) be.

The driving force behind this post was an experience that I had last Thursday that was quintessentially Chinese. I have talked at length with my parents (and others) about the astoundingly counterproductive competitiveness of the average Chinese. In general (and yes, this is a broad generalization), we're not talking regular "I want to beat you in a race" competitiveness. Rather, we're talking "I would kill my own mother to be first in the line at McDonald's right now" competitiveness. It's crazy.

Now with the vivid picture of a Chinese man stabbing his mother in the back to save five minutes ordering a Big Mac (not a quarter pounder, for some reason those don't exist in China . . . maybe because it would have to be called a 0.113398093 kilo burger due to the use of the metric system. Not nearly as catchy, but I digress . . . ), we move on to my Thursday predicament.

So here is the plain layout of the situation: Ultra-competitiveness + broken traffic lights at a major intersection = ?

That's right. Mayhem. But more descriptively, a really time consuming and irritating jigsaw puzzle of cars.

You see, rather than taking turns yielding right-of-way (as I assume would be the proper course of action in a small midwestern city), Chinese drivers make this situation into a race. A race to the center of the intersection. It does not matter if they can actually pass through the entire intersection or if there is an unmoving line of cars blocking their forward progress. They just go. The inevitable result is a situation where nobody is moving.

For example, when my cab passed into the intersection, I realized that our path was blocked by a bus whose path was blocked by a line of cars who were blocked by a van turning left whose path was blocked by a line of cars whose path was blocked by the same line of cars that was blocking the bus that was blocking my path. Confusing, yes, but it suffices to say that we were not going anywhere unless a number of people went into reverse . . . and that tends not to happen.

My solution: pay the cab driver, get out, and walk.

Worked like a charm.

Chinese New Year!

Well it's been quite some time since my last post. I could say that it's because nothing interesting has happened, but I'd be lying. I've just been busy and lazy; a bad combination if you want to get some blog posts done.

Anywhoo, here's the abridged version of the past several months:

I went home for Christmas. If you were in the Madison or Milwaukee areas, you know that, and you saw me, so I don't know why I'm talking to you about it. If you weren't, now you know. It was delightful to see everybody, and I wish that I could come home more often, but it's 太贵了！

Sabine (that would be my girlfriend in case it's been so long since you've heard from me that this knowledge has shriveled up and passed away with your other memories of me) is in France getting her citizenship. We're still not sure when she'll be back here in Beijing, but it shouldn't be too much longer.

Got a promotion at work. No new title, but I'm a strategic adviser to the CEO. Been doing a little bit of everything at work. Proposal writing, HR policy writing, interviews, reading, creating, recruiting, etc. Funny that none of these things involve math . . . maybe they should throw some accounting and finance at me as well, just to round things out.

Got a guitar. This is actually a big deal for me because I rarely buy things for myself, but seeing as today is my birthday, I decided to treat myself. Turns out that I should've made the purchase much earlier because a guitar, stand, carrying case, picks, capo, and strings together only set me back about $95 . . . I was kinda expecting to spend somewhere in the $200-$400 range, so you can imagine my delight.

Now onto the feature of the post. Chinese New Year. Last year I was in Thailand with Mike during this holiday, so I had no idea what it was like. But here's the background: Chinese New Year is based on the lunar calendar, so the dates change every year. This year the new year happened to fall on my birthday exactly, which is completely awesome because it means that I don't have to work. This holiday also happens to be the most important and widely celebrated holiday in China. This fact should've tipped me off that it is pretty cool to be in China during the event, but for some reason (mostly because my friends just talk about how terrifying this week is, rather than saying how cool it is) I didn't really expect that it would be very interesting.

Wow was I wrong. Chinese New Year in Beijing is, without a doubt, one of the top 5 experiences that I've had in my life.

(Aside: Currently the plan is for me to stay until August of 2009, so if you are looking for a vacation in January or February of 2009 - I'm not sure of the dates for next year's celebration - consider making a trip to Beijing during the New Year. It will be slightly more expensive, but very worth it.)

So, here is my Chinese New Year story: I left my apartment at about 7:30pm to meet my friend Erica and find a restaurant for our friends on Ghost Street - a very popular dining area in Beijing's Northeast. I walk downstairs, step outside and see that the ground is covered with wrappers and remnants of firecrackers. Not too surprising because I've been hearing sounds of explosions all day.

I hail a cab and tell him where I'm headed, and the driver takes off and makes a right onto Chunxiu lu, a medium-sized city street. The street looks like a gauntlet of fireworks that we must pass through in order to reach the prize of food at the end, but the cab driver doesn't take any time to assess the situation. He just plunges on ahead as roman candles, firecrackers and huge fourth-of-July style fireworks shoot off all around us.

Since nobody has a yard, all of the fireworks are lit in the center of the street. Thus, my cab driver just swerves around the fountains and firecrackers that are exploding and burning. He doesn't even bat an eye when firecrackers are flung at my passenger door and explode close enough that I can hear the casing hitting the cab. All he says to me is "在北京过春节是最好! (Celebrating Chinese New Year in Beijing is the best!)"

He takes me to where I'm going to meet my friend, and the madness continues. The roads are scary enough that a Beijinger riding his bike stops next to me to ask my opinion on whether it is safe for him to try and ride on the street or not. I tell him I think it's ok and he takes off trying to avoid being burned.

Soon after Erica arrives and explains that she just avoided a very close encounter with flaming balls coming from a roman candle thanks to a kind man who warned her not to wait for a moment before crossing into the fireworks' trajectory. As this is her 3rd year in Beijing for the New Year, the "awe factor" has worn off for her and she's just hoping that she can avoid burning or explosions for another 14 days.

So we walk on to our restaurant, trying to notice and avoid the firecrackers that have been placed in our paths (since the Chinese don't do a good job of warning you when you're walking into an area that's about to explode - I think that they just find it funny when foreigners freak out as things explode under their feet). We finally arrive, meet our friends, sit down and eat.

After dinner (in a room where the still drying wall-paper glue got most of us a little high, I think), we went to Houhai, and chilled at a bar until about 11:30. Then the cool stuff happened.

Beijing is a big city. About 14 million people big. Fireworks are not regulated during Chinese New Year, so I conservatively estimate that 2 million people buy fireworks (one in 7 sounds reasonable right?). And the vast majority of the fireworks set off by these 2 million people are set off the one hour between 11:30 pm and 12:30 am.

Hence, at 11:30 my friends and I walked out into the middle of Houhai lake which is surrounded by the City of Beijing, and we just watched. Imagine the largest fireworks display that you have ever seen. Now imagine that that same display is going on in front of you, behind you, to your left, to your right, basically 360 degrees around you. If you can imagine it, you have an idea of what the fireworks on Chinese New Year are like. I wish that the little video that my friend Fleur took would do it justice, but I know it won't. I'll still try to post it though, so you can get a feeling for it.

After an hour of standing and watching, the frequency of explosions finally began to slow, and we went back inside and relaxed for the rest of the evening until my eventual return home.

I hear that the fireworks will continue tonight, so we'll have to see. Either way, I'm excited. This was cool. If you ever get the chance to be in Beijing for Chinese New Year, don't pass it up.