My First Olympic Event and Other Observations
This morning marked my first Olympic event event ever, beach volleyball. Other than a a bit of rain, which China seems to think is a huge embarrassment (but none of the people in attendance seemed to believe), things went extremely well. We took a cab to Chaoyang Park East Gate #4, and were dropped off right at the entrance. Security took about 15 minutes, which was reasonable all things considered.
Within five minutes of the start, the rain began coming down pretty hard, which sent everyone running outside the stadium to where volunteers were giving out ponchos. This was the one moment where things did not go smoothly. The line devolved into a mob and people started pushing and fighting. I became concerned a mini-riot might break out. Apparently Chinese people really don’t like to get wet. Anyway, things got ever-so-close-to a disaster, but they never quite turned scary. I was able to get out of there with a couple of yellow ponchos to hide under.
From a wider perspective, one thing that was noticeable at the event (it’s been a clear trend during the Games): the foreigners were conspicuously few. In fact, of the foreigners I saw in the stands, about half were reporters taking the morning off. Another appeared to be a Cuban player. In other words, there aren’t too many foreigners in town just for the Games. I’ve had two reporters tell me they had problems finding foreigners to comment on different stories. (One reporter was at Houhai, where there is always an abundance of foreigners.) It seems the restrictive visa policies have helped make this an overwhelmingly Chinese Olympics.
Another interesting thing I noticed is that Chinese media are ranking countries’ medal counts by gold only, whereas the American outlets are ranking by total medals. One could argue that China is doing this because, as of this writing, they have won the most gold medals, but second most overall. However, I suspect it demonstrates more about cultural attitudes: in America a bronze or silver is still considered pretty darn good, whereas in China it’s all or nothing.
That’s all for now. Tonight is the big US-China basketball game. The Chinese team is pretty bad aside from Yao Ming, so don’t expect it to be close. If it is, that spells big trouble for America’s chances.
And by the way, it’s raining really hard now. Hopefully that won’t be seen as a national disgrace.
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Nick responds:
Posted: August 10th, 2008 at 6:10 pm →
Rain’s gotta be clearing some of that Beijing mist which has to be the better of the two evils.
Turtlewind responds:
Posted: August 10th, 2008 at 10:06 pm →
I think this is a case of America being different rather than China - the British media have always ranked countries by the number of gold medals, and I just checked the IOC site which seems to do the same for both Beijing and Athens.
revi responds:
Posted: August 11th, 2008 at 7:22 am →
Actually over in UK, the Brits too are also ranking the medal count based on gold medal won as well, check out BBC. I wonder how other European countries do it.
John Ryland responds:
Posted: August 11th, 2008 at 11:58 am →
My impression is in Australia we tend to place much greater value on gold medals than the others. Gold medal count is what counts. But the medal count I see published be the official Chinese Olympics website here lists both the rank by gold medals on the left and on the far right is the rank by total medals: http://results.beijing2008.cn/WRM/ENG/INF/GL/95A/GL0000000.shtml
John Ryland responds:
Posted: August 11th, 2008 at 12:02 pm →
BTW right now Australia would be ranked equal 3rd if by medal count but 4th if by gold medal count which shows my previous comment isn’t biased by what would show Australia in the best light. I have a feeling that the previously mentioned website would have been coded to rank the countries in the format it uses before the games began.
Commenter responds:
Posted: August 21st, 2008 at 10:30 am →
Even the US use to rank the medals by gold, and only this year since they were so thoroughly dominated by China in the gold category, that the US media somehow decided to change to rank by total medals…
That might soon be overtaken by China anyway
Josh responds:
Posted: August 21st, 2008 at 12:14 pm →
@Commenter,
We no longer count by total medals for the Games. We count by All-Time total medals.
USA-USA!