Chinese education typically does not involve sports education. There are no high school or collegiate sports like in the United States, and organized sports take a distant second to extra math or English classes. The closest approximation is the 军训 (junxun), or military training, that many students undergo several times in their career—the lucky ones only once when they enter university, the unlucky ones when they enter middle and high school as well. Junxun is a two-week to one-month long phenomenon in China that occurs at the beginning of the school year, where students put on camo, practice wheeling in formation, and climb up and down mountains. They are sometimes even given the opportunity to fire a gun. Other than that, there is no real organized sports program for them to participate in.

The Asia Times article, however, misses a few details. It would be incorrect to think that the Chinese are fat and inactive. A simple walk through the park will assure you that outdoor activities are popular with the old and young alike. I find myself consistently amazed by how active the older generation are—one of the favorite activities among the middle-aged is to kick around a feathered shuttlecock in a game that greatly resembles hacky-sack. Many of them look like pros, juggling the shuttlecock with their feet, knees, and elbows. I’ve seen badminton being played in the most unlikely of places, not just parks and street corners, but even inside a museum. Weekends will see places like the Fragrant Hills, a popular mountain outside Beijing, crowded with people out for leisurely hikes.

What the public sector fails to provide, the private sector is making up for. A decade ago, the idea of paying money to go lift heavy things and run was preposterous to most Chinese. Nowadays, private gyms are opening everywhere. Memberships go for as little as $100 for a year’s membership; others, like Bally’s Total Fitness, can cost ten times that. Come 7PM, these places are packed with people frantically exercising, to the point where not a single aerobic machine is available and there’s not a single spot to lay out a yoga mat.

China has its fair share of people who do slight amounts of exercise on a semi-regular basis. And, as we can see from the Olympics, it has world-class athletes. What it lacks, however, is that core of people in-between: semi-professionals and dedicated amateurs. The Chinese athletic system focuses on selecting children when they are young and training them up—the Western ideal is more of self-selection, the people who have the talent and the drive rise naturally to the top. The Western ideal tends to produce more of a bell curve—a number of fairly decent athletes, with a few high-scoring athletes and a few pudgy couch potatoes. The Chinese system produces a large number of high-scoring athletes, but very few casual enthusiasts. It could be argued that for overall balance of fitness in a population, the Western model has its advantages.

I see few obese people in China. Standards for body-norms here are much stricter than in the West—girls who would be considered slim in the West are thought of as “average” or “a little fat.” I do, however, see an increasingly number of obese children.

The lack of sports facilities and organized sports has a deeper impact on society, a much more invidious impact: Chinese do not learn how to be team players. Chinese people do not play a lot of team sports that involve cooperation. Even basketball tends to be ad hoc pickup games where teamwork is more of a byproduct than anything else. Sports are a unique way of learning more about one’s own strengths and weaknesses and, more importantly, how those strengths and weaknesses fit into an overall team structure, where one person’s strength can balance out another’s weakness. Chinese education has no real room for this kind of learning, both in their education system (which is highly competitive rather than cooperative) and in their sports activities (mostly solitary or one-on-one).

Now, it may be difficult to draw a broader thesis of Chinese society as lacking social teamwork norms; and even more difficult to link that back to lack of organized sports. I would like, however, for all of us to take a step back and think on our childhood and the games we played. The word “team” for us has special meanings and connotations that come from sports. English is a language filled with sports metaphors. While we may not explicitly remember life lessons we’ve learned from sports, they most certainly exist. Sports are about a group of people working together to accomplish a larger goal, without being explicitly ordered to do so. Even watching a local community sports team in action is a marvelous example of a heterogeneous group mind in action—we see group decision making, fluid reactions to change, and spontaneous pockets of cooperation emerging out of what should rightfully be chaos. It’s beautiful to see because all of this happens during the game without anyone stopping to discuss it.

Anyone who has worked in a Chinese company will have noticed that the Chinese business model is anything but what we’ve just described. Everything is centrally directed and centrally run, with each person assigned their own piece of the puzzle. Rarely do they have a good understanding of how their part of the puzzle fits into the overall scheme, what Marx called alienation. Managers give explicit instructions to employees, who carry them out as ordered. While this may sound like American bureaucracy, most American companies allow a certain amount flexibility. This hive mind that works towards a common goal is a feature of the most successful and innovative companies that we see out there—Gore-tex, Google, etc. It is not typically a feature of a Chinese company.

A greater investment into sports in China would have payoffs beyond simply the health of its citizens. It would foster a greater atmosphere of community and cooperation, friendliness instead of competition, and a greater camaraderie between strangers. In the wake of these once-in-a-lifetime Olympic Games, it is difficult to predict how things will change. But it is certain that China’s athletics program will have to be altered in order to fit better into this post-Olympian world that China now inhabits.

Liu Xiang was set to compete in heat 6 of round 1 of the men’s 110 meter hurdles and before the competition itself, there was extensive vapid pregame coverage which included a search for Liu Xiang who, the commentators concluded, after cutting to aerial shots and shots from inside the Bird’s Nest, had not yet entered the stadium. Eventually Liu did enter the stadium and was set to race, but after taking a few steps after a false start, he ripped off the numbers taped onto his legs and withdrew himself from the race without a word.

Everyone knew that the hurdler had been inflicted with a hamstring injury and an inflamed Achilles tendon but they still expected to see him run, and some expected to see him win. Indeed, the finals competitions on the 22nd are colloquially referred to as “the Liu Xiang finals.” Liu himself said of the Olympics: “I will try my best…. I hope it will be the second birthplace of my dreams.”

After broadcasting the heat with an empty lane 2 where the hurdler stood just moments before, the video feed cut back to the commentators who immediately began explaining, or perhaps apologizing for, the situation. Although they pleaded for tolerance and understanding, they were unable to hide their surprise. Here are a few quotes, roughly translated:

We thought we had considered all the possibilities—that Liu Xiang would win, that Liu Xiang would lose—but we never thought that he wouldn’t compete.

Injuries happen to everyone. Your spirit can be solid as iron but your body cannot.

We hope that no one will interrupt Liu Xiang’s rest in the following days. I am sure he needs it and he must be feeling a little shaken right now.

CCTV 1 then concluded the broadcast and went to recaps. But about twenty minutes later it aired a press conference where Liu’s coach explained that “if it were not absolutely necessary, Liu Xiang would not have withdrawn from the competition” and said that the injury was at the back part of the Achilles’ tendon, where the tendon meets the bone.

Pain is invisible, known only to the sufferer. I can only imagine what it must be like and take the words of his coach at face value. But for 1.3 billion people, this result, which could easily albeit incorrectly interpreted as ignominy, could be a bitter pill to swallow.

In the coming days, this athlete’s foot will be the topic of many discussions. Indeed the media is already dressing this decision up as a heroic one. One reporter at the Bird’s Nest said, while holding back tears, “His decision was brave and he has already surpassed himself and will continue to surpass himself.” Commentators back in the studio added, “I just want to say one thing to Liu Xiang: we will always be with you.” The program ended with a montage of Liu Xiang training videos accompanied by somber string music.

The Chinese people might always be with Liu Xiang, but will his sponsors? Liu Xiang peeks out at Beijingers from behind hundreds of advertisements. But what will the face that was once associated with miracles and Olympic gold stand for now? Unless the media can fully shape Liu’s withdrawal into an act of martyrdom, and get the public to buy it, it could be a long and lonely fall from the top for the Olympic hurdler.

I changed the channel after CCTV 1’s anticlimactic denouement to CCTV 3, which showed a commercial that featured Liu Xiang soaring over the hurdles in Athens. Perhaps the Chinese people will have to settle for those reruns for another four years.

Even before the Olympics began, the protests had begun.  However, the perpetrators should be congratulated for defeating their own cause.

The merits of their Tibet argument aside, such tactics as shown the other day are highly ineffectual. China is currently at a high point for nationalism and patriotism. A high percentage of Chinese are reported to feel comfortable with their government, perhaps despite the low level of political freedom or perhaps because of their increasing prosperity. Since the Olympics is viewed by many as a way to show China’s development to an international player, events that would cause the Chinese to lose face will be magnified.

There seems to be an ill-defined goal behind such brash actions. Perhaps it is “awareness.” Young Westerners seem to love awareness campaigns—if only more people knew, the thinking goes, something would change. Of course, the problem with this attitude is within this very line of thought: nothing is getting done. Some people wave banners and signs, and go home feeling proud of having “done something.” Meanwhile, the status quo continues because nobody is actually attacking the problem.

In the States, when you want to show your support for a person or a cause, many people will put a sign in their yard or a bumper sticker on their car. However, when you go to someone else’s yard and start slapping on bumper stickers and putting down yard signs, the people who live there are going to get upset. And because it’s not your property, you legally have no right to do so. Such is the case here. Such ill-tempered protests will serve to harden the population, not change minds, by causing the Chinese to lose face.

The Olympics serves as a time for cultures to come together and share ideas. Perhaps the young, self-righteous protestors can take some time to learn about Chinese culture—what Chinese think about Tibet and Taiwan, why they have those opinions, and how to best change a Chinese person’s mind. My guess is, in the police station and on the flight home, they’ll have a lot of time to think about it.

Normally I am utterly apathetic towards sports; I don’t seriously follow or watch any major professional or college sports. But every four years (and to a lesser extent, every two years in between) you’ll find me glued to the television screen. And not just for the big ticket events, like China versus the United States in basketball, or the thrilling races at the Water Cube. No, tell me that Hungary is facing off against Brazil in women’s handball, or that Colombia is contesting China for the men’s 62kg weightlifting gold, and I’ll tune in. By the closing ceremonies, I’ll probably have watched more than 150 hours of Olympic coverage.

So why do I love the Olympics? Because I love stories. The “human interest stories” that networks like NBC use to tie the Games together are often derided as overblown, self-promoting fluff; and on one level, they are. But we need them, too: without the people, the sports are nothing but motion and numbers. You need a narrative.

The Olympics is a perfect example of a complex narrative. Simple narratives contain very little substance beyond what’s on the surface; everything intrinsic to them can be grasped and apprehended almost immediately. Like a snow globe, the entire narrative is contained inside a tiny space, and once you process it fully, that thing holds very little allure or staying power.

Complex narratives are the opposite—take that snow globe, shatter it on the floor, and have a guy whisper, “Rosebud,” in your ear. Now we’re talking. Complex narratives refuse to be fully appreciated with a cursory glance; rather than laying everything out and revealing everything at once, they hint at the infinite possibilities that lie outside their boundaries. They are not encapsulated, but are directly connected to a living, breathing world. This condition is what makes shows such as The Wire and Mad Men compelling as narratives, and it is this condition that makes the Olympics scintillating as a narrative.

The Olympics is like a fractal: there’s always a finer pattern to appreciate the deeper you look. At the highest level, the Olympics is “about” hundreds of nations coming together to celebrate the ideals of athleticism and international harmony; the tension comes from very real political concerns within and between nations that filter into this atmosphere of supposedly-pure sporting competition. US-China relations are the most obvious talking point, and of the most interest to this blog; I’ll discuss in detail a bit later. But also of interest is Russian and Georgian competition on the field while a state of war exists between the two nations; the two Koreas failing to march together in the opening ceremonies; and the troubled journey of the Iraqi delegation to these games. The list goes on.

Zoom in closer, past the level of national concerns and the sports being contested, all the way down to level of the athletes themselves. There are a multiplicity of stories here too. Take, for example, Kateřina Emmons, who won the first gold medal of the Beijing games for the Czechs. In 2004, her name was Kateřina Kůrková, and during the Athens Olympics she was invited to be a commentator for the men’s 50m rifle competition after winning her own bronze medal earlier in the week. In that event, the favorite was American Matthew Emmons, who had a commanding lead by the very end; even a mediocre final shot would be enough for his second gold. He had an excellent shot — on the wrong target — and plummeted to eighth place.

Afterwards, Matthew gave Kateřina a post-event interview; they met later at a beer garden. They hit it off almost immediately, and married in 2007. Now the husband and wife are competing (for different countries) at the 2008 Games — that’s an international meet-cute that Hollywood screenwriters would kill for. (Another wrinkle to her story: the women’s 10m air rifle was scheduled as the very first event of the Beijing Games because it was perceived to be an easy win for the Chinese defending champion, Du Li. Instead, she placed fifth and Kateřina took the gold.)

These kinds of stories are endemic to the Olympics not only because of the sheer number of competitors, but because of the intermingling of those competitors from almost every country and every walk of life. Sure, there are the stories of the professional sportsmen (The “Redeem Team” and Federer-Nadal come to mind), but as some of NBC’s $1 billion worth of ads remind me, a fair number of these world-class athletes will be flying back home to their jobs at Home Depot and the like. The somewhat-condescending ideal of amateurism espoused by IOC founder Pierre de Coubertin may be dead, but the story of the everyman/everywoman striving for the pinnacle of athletic achievement is still an appealing one. And even with the deluge of Olympic coverage, it’s impossible to fully see all the stories.

So you have to pick and choose the best of them. For the narrative to work, the pieces have to be there in the first place; then you put them together. And one of the key pieces is often nationalism — the pride and honor of your country is at stake, after all! Sporting events like these are the last places where it is socially acceptable to hope and fervently pray that your country utterly destroys the rest of the world. And international competition makes for a great narrative… sometimes.

An example of an abortive “story” is in swimming, with the 400m women’s freestyle. NBC Sports even had a flashy pre-event video package explaining the gravity of the situation: French swimmer Laure Manaudou was defending her world record against Italian favorite Federica Pellegrini — and Pellgrini was the current girlfriend of Manaudou’s ex, who had posted nude photos of Manaudou on the internet! Truly soap-operatic stuff; unfortunately the story floundered when Pellegrini finished a disappointing fifth and Manaudou posted even worse at eighth. There might have been a story there if American Katie Hoff, who was not predicted to win the event, had snagged the gold. However, after a strong surge she barely lost to British swimmer Rebecca Adlington. Great story for the Brits; not so much for the US.

No, the real story was in the men’s 4×100m freestyle relay, an event which has made plenty of American newspapers and has been replayed, commented, and analyzed more than a dozen times in the past 24 hours by NBC’s Olympic coverage. Really, all the pieces are there:

• Scrappy underdog heroes: This event was dominated by the Americans since its introduction in 1964 — until they placed 2nd in the 2000 Sydney Olympics. They fared even worse in 2004, getting the bronze.
• Dastardly villains: It is very easy for Americans to deride the French. Alain Bernard’s offhand comment that they would smash the Americans only added fuel to the flames.
• High stakes: This event was tied to another of the big American stories of the Games — Michael Phelps’s quest for eight gold medals. A loss here could have easily derailed those ambitions.
• Escalation: This event showed every swimmer giving it their all. Even the fifth-place finishers from Sweden broke the pre-Beijing world record in this event.
• Come-from-behind victory: As expected, the French seemed poised to win the event. Then Jason Lezak closed at the gap, and at the last second… America got their story.

These kinds of events crystallize the Games into a compelling narrative. But something as big and expansive as the 29th Olympiad needs more than this one story; it needs many more. So what’s the next story?

All signs point to women’s gymnastics between the US and China, at least the way NBC and the media are shaping the story. Between covering synchronized diving and the qualifiers for women’s gymnastics, NBC Sports showed a couple of interesting pieces. The first of these was a package investigating the Chinese tradition of acrobatics and acrobatics training. While ostensibly the piece was designed to give American viewers a greater understanding of Chinese culture, it’s easy to see how this can feed the nationalistic fire: either it can be used as an excuse for why America loses at events like gymnastics and diving (”They’ve been doing this for a thousand years!”) or as something to make the victory sweeter (”They’ve been doing this for a thousand years — and we still beat them!”).

The second piece of note was an interview between Bob Costas and President George W. Bush. For an interview during sports-related programming, Costas’ questions were unusually aggressive and political, including such gems of questions as: “…This remains an authoritarian state… with an abysmal human rights record. In the long run, is China’s rise irreconcilable with America’s interest?” and “If these Olympics are as successful as they are shaping up to be, most people believe this only further legitimizes the ruling party in the minds of most Chinese citizens…” The placement of such hard-hitting political content before showing the Chinese and US qualifiers in gymnastics could not have been accidental.

For a number of reasons, this gymnastics event could prove to be a powder keg. Journalists and commentators, including Bela Karolyi, coach of the gold-winning 1996 American woman gymnasts, are already hammering on issues such as the uncertain age of the Chinese gymnasts and complications with the new judging and scoring system. This, coupled with the flubs and injuries plaguing the American team, are at least setting up for a dramatic story…

I pose a question to those on the other side of the Pacific: How is the narrative of these games shaping up over there? What stories are crystallizing with the Chinese coverage of these games? The contrasts — and similarities — could prove to be illuminating.

The coverage of sporting events tends to have different priorities than other entertainment media; aesthetic concerns often take a backseat to clarity (Leni Reifenstahl and NFL Films notwithstanding). So like a genre television show, the emphasis is on form, not content. And what can we say about the form of Olympic coverage?

One of the main themes of this column is that as media technology continues to change, the viewer is given increasingly more and more control over what he or she watches. When the first modern Olympiad took place in 1896, the only way to experience the games was to physically be present, or to read accounts after-the-fact in newspapers. Since then, coverage of sports, including the Games, has continued to expand both in terms of the size of its audience and the breadth of its content. Radio gave the first taste of live coverage to a mass audience, while newsreels and films preserved and disseminated indelible images of the Games. And yet these tools seem rudimentary compared to what we have now—how can a few hours of footage capture the full experience of hundreds of events and thousands of athletes in competition?

The coverage of the 2008 Beijing Olympics is a highly controlled and extremely lucrative business involving hundreds of television networks around the world and extensive internet coverage. In the United States, the NBC network has sold over $1 billion worth of ad time during its Olympic coverage both on the air and online. This package is the most comprehensive yet, encompassing rolling coverage across nine different television channels and a website offering live streaming video of almost every single event. So if you, like me, are a fan of esoteric sports that rarely get television coverage, you are in luck: you can watch online Kateřina Emmon’s impressive win at Women’s 10m Air Rifle (the first medal of the Beijing Games), or the South Koreans dominating Women’s Archery (maintaining deadly accuracy in the face of both hecklers and pouring rain, all the while accessorizing with Hello Kitty chest and arm guards).

Another point of interest comes to the fore when watching the Olympics online, because the streaming coverage lacks commentators talking over the events; instead, there is live written commentary that appears below the screen. This wrinkle calls into question the relative usefulness of spoken commentators, something utterly ubiquitous in television sports coverage. They are normally accepted because they work to add value to sports coverage on two levels: they provide context and information for those who need it, and they attempt to inject some of the emotional presence that’s lost when watching a sporting event from your living room rather than in the arena.

However, watching the Games online again highlights the increasing sophistication of audience members when dealing with the internet and new media. Hearing the commentator on television explain what are legal target areas in sabre fencing is useful; hearing him repeat it every fifteen minutes for those just tuning in is not. Television needs to maintain a mass audience, the lowest common denominator; the internet as a collection of specialized niches doesn’t need to do the same. Information is just a click away; in a few minutes of reading I can find out what it means to be a man up in water polo, or the new scoring system used in gymnastics, all the while keeping the video feed on-screen.

This is because traditional mass media needs to splice together all its information streams into one; you either take it all or leave it. Newer media is all about increased options for the viewer—you pick and choose what works for you. This is especially interesting when it comes to spoken commentary because of the different ways a person processes the audio and video components of media. Video is discrete in that you can put information in one portion of the screen without substantially disrupting the experience in another part of the screen. This is the principle behind banner ads and pop-ups online which have also found their way to the television screen.

However, audio doesn’t operate in the same way; there’s only one frequency range that we can hear. To add new sound into the mix, you have to crowd out others. When discussing commentary, the question becomes: does the commentary add more than it takes away by drowning out the live audio of the actual participants, crowd, and environment? This was especially an important question during the opening ceremonies of the games; the $300 million production was one of the most dazzling spectacles ever shown on television. (I would, however, chastise Zhang Yimou for perpetuating the stereotype that the Chinese can fly.) But if you watched it on NBC, the musical and audio components of the ceremonies were often buried under a continuous stream of talking from the studio. After hearing Bob Costas and Matt Lauer’s intrusive and sometimes vaguely racist commentary during the opening ceremonies, access to an unmediated audio feed proves to be a godsend. Watching a live, uncommentated HD feed of the Olympics can create that often sought-after feeling of immersion: the illusion that you are really there. This, with the benefit of having the best camera angles and views that you could never get from a seat in the stands; and with the ability to instantly switch from a swimming race in the Water Cube to a cycling race in the outskirts of Beijing—it’s almost better than being there.

The crux of all this media development is that we’ve come a long way from 1896; we’ve reached near-total saturation of media coverage of the Olympic Games. With the multiplicity of channels and outlets for sports coverage, we’re entered into some Baudrillardesque hyperreality where it is possible, in a sense, to have a fuller experience of the Olympics sitting in your living room than if were actually in Beijing.

Faster, higher, stronger, indeed.

In the next article I’ll discuss a bit why everyone really watches the Olympic Games: pure, unabashed nationalism. (Suck it, France!)

As I sit here and look through the smog-ridden haze outside my window, I am becoming increasingly nervous. I’m nervous because I want to Games to go well, and anyone with an interest in China, human rights, or international politics should want the Games to go well too. After seven years of constant attention, the Chinese people have come to see the Games as an international coming out party—just as many in the West have done. This creates a situation in which the Chinese people want to be proud of their country and the steps it has made in the last 30 years, during which 500 million people have been raised out of poverty and China has reemerged as an international actor of consequence. Both of these have been great and historic accomplishments.

Although many in the West point fingers at China because of pollution, it is important to remember that a primary cause of pollution in China is the insatiable thirst of American and European consumers for cheap products. We want cheap products, China has an educated and massive population willing to work for pittance, and the Chinese government can’t enforce all of its labor and environmental regulations, hence corners are cut and toxins are emitted. If we want to continue purchasing cheap goods at Wal-Mart, pollution in China will continue to be a problem. It is self-righteous to condemn China for its pollution problems when we are the beneficiaries and the people who live and work here are the ones sacrificing their health and environment. When China runs out of fresh water in the future and goes abroad to get it, a contributing factor will have been Western consumers who apathetically purchased cheap “made in China” goods even after the ramifications for China’s environment were well known. That the Communist Party has tethered its legitimacy to economic development is, of course, the larger culprit, but America must accept its role as an enabler.

If Western athletes or media “embarrass” China and comment on the pollution or other negative aspects of China or the Games, I am concerned that the backlash, nationalism and rallying around the flag unleashed will scare the rest of the world. The Chinese don’t necessarily love the government, but they have conflated the nation with the state and the populace cannot brook any negative comments about the country. Thus, any attack on China does not increase the freedom of political dissidents; it stokes public outrage that serves as a pretext for clamping down on further dissidence. So before attacking China, realize that people here see it as an affront to 1.3 billion people that will not be countenanced.

China is a great country with a rich history and a tremendously talented and amiable population. Embittering the Chinese people and pushing them into the arms of a government they don’t necessarily love is the last thing we want to do. For this reason and more, I am hoping that the Olympics is a smashing success—the best ever.

We met at Xitucheng, the subway interchange between Line 10 and the Olympic Spur Line, ie. the most crowded place in Beijing starting tomorrow afternoon.  Coming out of the station we entered the flow of people like tributaries into a river.  Apparently the subway lines aren’t going to be connected underground during the Olympics so everyone has to leave the station in order to pass a security screening before they get on the Olympic Line.

The inspection took place under large white tents, and the lines were shorter and moved faster than I expected.  There was one section for people without bags and one for people with them.  The bag line was set up like an airport safety inspection: metal detectors, X-ray machines, a guy poring over technicolor images on a monitor.

An enthusiastic young man wearing a red Olympic jersey and a Beijing 2008 temporary tattoo on his cheek approached us as we entered the line.  He was selling miniature flags with China’s emblem on the front and the Olympic flag on the back.  My cousin bought two for five yuan.  She waved them around for about ten seconds before an Olympic volunteer approached her and said that miniature flags were not allowed in the stadium because the plastic mast could potentially be used to stab someone.  My cousin asked what to do; the volunteer told her to throw them away.  My cousin went to find a trash can.  I asked the volunteer why no one had stopped my cousin from buying the flags and why peddlers were allowed near the line.  The volunteer apologized and said that she saw the young man but was not quick enough to stop him.  As we passed through the metal detector I noticed a trash can under the X-ray machines filled with half-empty water bottles, soda cans, and plastic sticks that looked like they came from miniature Olympic flags.

We got onto the subway with no more hassle but for some reason it bypassed the Olympic Sports Center stop and dropped us at Olympic Green, from which we walked nearly one stop backward to get to the Bird’s Nest.  During the long trek people posed and took snapshots of the new buildings which stood like monuments to a purpose history would eventually forget.  To my right was a snack bar operating from a tent surrounded by twenty or so red Coca-Cola umbrellas.  I tried to buy something but was pushed away and told to purchase refreshments in the stadium.

Above us a helicopter circled like a lone bird.  I mistook it for a police helicopter but in fact it was providing aerial shots of the ceremonies.  We entered the stadium, purchased 2 bottles of orange juice, one bottle of spring water, an ice cream cone and a bag of potato chips (¥26), and went to our seats.

If this were a basketball game our seats would have been great, but for a performance in a place of this magnitude, it was like sitting in the nosebleeds.  Being on the ground floor, we couldn’t understand the overall action, and the place was so huge everyone on the field looked like a collection of dots.  The only choice was to watch the television screens at either end, but one was partially obscured by the second tier and the other was really far away.  A man behind me was smart enough to bring binoculars.

As eight o’clock drew near the crowd’s restlessness became audible.  Ten thousand conversations melded into a susurrus of anticipation.  From somewhere “the wave” began.  Then, the volunteers in the aisles began a countdown.  Some of them had headsets and were receiving directions from an unseen hand.

Three, two, one, boom.  Lights.  Shouts.  Flashbulbs.  The crowd exploded.  The roar of 90,000 people was like the roar of life itself.  And it was then, jumping up and down with my fists in the air, that I forgave the Olympics.  Everyone’s been so hard on them, and I take my share of the blame.  It’s easy being cynical with the facts and the criticism and the foreign policy mistakes and the “objective” point of view.  But when you’re there, in the thick of it, amongst the throng of screaming fans, sitting in the humid open air, watching a show that’s not even for real, it’s hard to think of all that.  When the flags marched out, the crowd cheered for Chinese Taipei; it cheered for Hong Kong; I jumped up and screamed for the United States, to the bewilderment of everyone around me; and the people who were left (many had exited the stadium during the long precession) shouted their lungs out for China.

And then, after the usual Olympic formalities—speeches by Hu Jintao and Jacques Rogge (delivered by stand-ins), the running of the torch (which didn’t get lit because they are keeping that a secret), and the Olympic anthem—came the big finish.  The night before the stadium was alight with fireworks but tonight they had rolled out the red carpet, literally, for a concert ostensibly to keep people in their seats while the athletes left.  (It didn’t work.)  I didn’t know everyone, but there were some pretty big stars, who lip-synched their way through several songs writen for the glory of the Games.  I hope on Friday they will sing for real.

Finally it was time to go home.  I had been checking my watch since the first hour.  I will say this about the opening ceremonies: they seem like they are never going to end, and there are still some kinks to be worked out—missed lighting cues, malfunctioning screens, unsynchronized cheerleading.

The worst part of the night was getting home.  It was eleven and my cousin and I decided to take the bus and not compete with the thousands of people trudging toward the subway.  We asked a policeman on the way out who directed us to the wrong bus stop.  Apparently the west exit only has Olympic buses that go south, and the normal buses had stopped running by then.  So we again joined the flow of pedestrians, many thousands of them, and walked south to the fourth ring road where hundreds of people competed with each other to hail a cab while policemen directed traffic.  The cabbies, seeing the policemen, refused to stop, so people walked into the middle of fourth ring to try and snag one.  The traffic slowed to a halt.

My cousin and I decided to take a bus.  By now we were regretting not just taking our chances on the subway.  People swarmed on each bus that came in like crazed fans asking for an autograph.  Each bus was packed to the brim and yet it did nothing to staunch the flow of people from the stadium.  In the end I took a bus two stops, got out, failed to hail a cab (there were ten or so other people who had the same idea), then walked half a bus stop, then took an illegal cab home.

—

The Olympics are going to be hell, in terms of planning, organization, and the sheer number of people in one place at one time that brings to mind descriptions in The Inferno.

But who cares?  Embrace the chaos.  That’s what I learned last night.  Somewhere on that crowded bus, getting nudged by octogenarians while sweat dampened the remaining dry parts of my shirt, I relinquished my expectations.

We have all been too lofty in our idealization of the Olympics, sports, and of China.  The Olympics should be about peace and harmony, but they aren’t and never will be.  Sports should be about friendly competition and pushing the boundaries of human achievement, but most people will settle for a couple of guys beating the shit out of each other.  And China… China, despite all its cosmetic changes—the potted plants along the sidewalks, the factories that have been shut down, the nightclubs that have closed—is the same old place and no one can change its mind or hurry its calculated pace of development.  I’m not saying China hasn’t improved, but seven years was never enough time and we all should have known better.

Humans should always strive to improve themselves; maybe we should even strive for ideals.  But sometimes it’s enough to appreciate the world for what it is and revel in its ugliness and imperfection and be moved by the absurd acts of kindness that sporadically illuminate our lives.  What I’m saying is, maybe we’re treating the Olympics like a serious relationship rather than a fortnight stand.  Maybe the Olympics are all about politics and corporate sponsorship, maybe they can’t be about peace or harmony or understanding, but there is still something about them we can all enjoy: gratutious, guilt-free spectacle.

It’s not that we don’t like the Olympics and what they stand for. On the contrary, we love pushing the limits of human ability. Athleticism is an egalitarian language that speaks to us all. The pursuit of peace and the universal brotherhood of man/universal sisterhood of women is a wonderful thing.

I look forward to watching Liu Xiang attempt to repeat his Athens performance. I intend to watch Yao Ming dominate the basketball court by being absurdly tall. I may even wander into the street to watch the cyclists go by much, much faster than your average Beijinger.

I promise to be suitably impressed with the engineering of the Bird’s Nest; to be appropriately awed by the self-cleaning, environmentally-friendly panels on the Water Cube. I am most certainly grateful for the renovation of public toilets leading up to the Games. It’s not these Olympics that I have an objection to.

I lodge this complaint on behalf of my fellow man against the other Olympics: the one that is bringing millions of visitors to an already crowded city. The one that has police cracking down on visas and raiding popular clubs. The Olympic Games that are crippling athletes by making them play with injuries and endure grueling training regimens. The Games that have inspired new visa rules that make it impossible to get a long-term multiple-entry visa without returning to your country of origin. The Games that have tourism companies and hotels despairing of a lack of guests. My complaint extends even to the irritatingly cute (and cursed) fuwa mascot dolls, which I see almost everywhere. These Olympics are a complete hassle.  But I do applaud the efforts in sensitivity training for Olympic volunteers: “Some physically disabled are isolated, unsocial and introspective; they usually do not volunteer to contact people. They can be stubborn and controlling; they may be sensitive and struggle with trust issues.”

We’re not looking forward to the restrictions on driving that are supposed to reduce congestion. We’re not looking forward to the Public Security Bureau officers scanning crowds for signs of anything other than benign tourist faces. We’re not looking forward to the inevitable difficulty of getting a taxi; nor to tourists complaining about people pushing onto subways (face it, it’s going to continue) and “that bathroom smell.” Most of all, we’re not looking forward to the self-congratulatory braying of the media about how successful and happy the Beijing Olympic Games are.

So we welcome the spirit of the Olympic Games, where there is one world and one dream. We welcome the athletes seeking merely to compete and be a part of history. We welcome the modernization of Beijing’s facilities and the widespread volunteerism. But to that other side of the Olympics—the crackdowns, restrictions, paranoia, and inconvenience—I say, on behalf of athletes, businessmen, and people who don’t like fuzzy dolls everywhere, “Go home!”

Let’s say, hypothetically, we run all these stories in a serious international magazine, what should our lead be? The editors at The Economist, faced with that question, chose a story about Chinese nationalism. But what to put on the cover? I know! What says “Chinese nationalism” better than an angry cartoon dragon? But don’t make him too angry, that would be demeaning.

I wrote at the beginning of the year about antagonistic rhetoric in Western media and pointed toward another Economist cover featuring Mao wearing a Christmas cap. I didn’t expect things to end up like this. A lot of things have happened since my last post, and I’ve been largely reticent, partly because my colleagues have done such a great job summarizing the issues and putting forth suggestions, but also partly because I’ve just been too upset to write about it.

As a bystander, I feel saddened by the whole debacle. But as a Chinese-American, I just feel confused. Am I angry at American protesters because of my Chinese heritage? Am I angry at Chinese protesters because of my American upbringing? Is my anger based on actual principles, or does it is stem from ethnic or cultural pride? The former is forgivable; the latter is nationalism.

Nationalism is the word of the week. The Grace Wang episode shows that we, on both sides of the Pacific, have moved past discussion and into the dangerous territory of choosing sides, where clear battle lines on blurry issues, and where ostracism is the price of equivocation.

In times like these, appeals to reason fall largely on deaf ears. The shift in rhetoric and media coverage right now in China and the West could be best characterized as polarization, the tendency for people to become more extreme in their thinking after deliberating with other like-minded individuals. It is a form of escalation that leads inevitably to radicalism, extremism, and nationalism.

For example (for those following the headlines, consider this review): the Chinese government seals off Tibet and its media refuses to acknowledge Tibetan casualties in the ensuing melee. Protesters in Paris then try to extinguish the Olympic flame. Chinese protesters boycott Carrefour in response. CNN, desperate for ratings, in turn calls Chinese leaders goons and thugs. China, desperate for compliments, turns to North Korea for a pat on the back at the end of the contentious torch relay. And in the Western media? An angry cartoon dragon.

The result of all this is a complete distrust of all media on both sides. Western journalists have to qualify when their source is Xinhua or state-controlled media (not that Xinhua was a paragon of reportage to begin with); Chinese that usually look Westward now disavow foreign publications, throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The Economist article is right about a few things, among them nationalism: that it could turn on the Chinese government as quickly as it turned against the West. It is also correct when it says:

Western policymakers also face a difficult balancing act. They need to recognise that China has come a long way very quickly, and offers its citizens new opportunities and even new freedoms, though these are still far short of what would constitute democracy. Yet that does not mean they should pander to China’s pride.

But it is making a biased judgment when it proclaims (emphasis added for later clarification):

Chinese rage has focused on the alleged “anti-China” bias of the Western press, which is accused of ignoring violence by Tibetans in the unrest in March. From this starting-point China’s defenders have gone on to denounce the entire edifice of Western liberal democracy as a sham. Using its tenets to criticise China is, they claim, sheer hypocrisy. They cite further evidence of double standards: having exported its dirtiest industries to China, the West wants the country to curb its carbon emissions, potentially impeding its growth and depriving newly well-off Chinese of their right to a motor car….

China’s rage is out of all proportion to the alleged offences.

I think it is exactly in proportion to the alleged offenses. What did you think was going to happen when you accuse a country of things that are just plain untrue? It is true that the latest numbers show China as the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases but it is also true that based on per capita emissions, China ranks ninth, much lower than America and developed countries in Western Europe. In a piece for the New York Times, Jared Diamond pointed out that “Per capita consumption rates in China are still about 11 times below [the United States]….” That means each American consumes as much as 11 Chinese, and even with 4 times the population, China still uses (and almost certainly wastes) less than America. So when Bush says something like, “Countries like China and India are experiencing rapid economic growth—and that’s good for their people and it’s good for the world. This also means that they are emitting increasingly large quantities of greenhouse gases—which has consequences for the entire global climate,” (Source) it could be taken the wrong way. All that coming from the leader of one of the only countries on Earth to have not ratified the Kyoto Protocol? Yeah, I’d say that’s hypocritical, with a hint of double standard.

What’s worse than being antagonistic and false, the ticker tape of populist headlines eclipses the fact that there are indeed cautious steps being taken to mediate the Tibet issue. (I hesitate to say solve because I’m not an optimist.) China has met with Tibetan envoys, and, though they did not resolve any pressing issues, they have agreed to meet again. We must remember that progress is slow and fragile.

On the Chinese front, the monomaniacal debate over Tibet draws our attention away from more pressing matters like the safety of the Olympics. If questions about Barack Obama’s refusal to wear a flag pin can be called a “distraction,” then, in the grand scheme of things, being worried about whether or not athletes will reveal pro-Tibet paraphernalia on the award podium falls neatly into that category.

Terrorism is the largest threat to the Olympics, which is something both Western and Chinese media can agree on. Because the Olympics has been built to represent so much, a terrorist attack could be devastating not only to the people in China, but also to China’s international image, Chinese pride, Chinese economy, and ultimately Chinese stability.

The Olympics has a complicated history with politics (’36, ‘56) and terrorism (’72, ‘96), but the Beijing Olympics, due to the endless hype, must seem like a two-for-one coupon to those wanting to proclaim a message. Whether or not you believe the reports about China’s discovery and investigation of a terrorist plot planned to take place during the Olympics, the possibility of terrorism is on the minds of every athletic delegation, and remains a startling possibility.

Right now, we are at a crossroads. We can continue to allow ignorance and extremism to dictate our actions and attitudes toward the Olympics, China, and Tibet, or we can attempt to salvage something from this discussion by educating ourselves and inviting debate. Joining a Facebook group called “Free Tibet” won’t help pass any pro-Tibet legislation. Appending “♥ China” to your MSN description means nothing if you love China out of a distrust for the West. Some students at USC, my alma mater, seem intent on driving the debate backward (or at least keeping it going nowhere), but there are those, most notably Grace Wang, who seem bent on fostering debate, even if it is to her own massive disadvantage.

H.L. Mencken wrote in 1920, “Man’s natural instinct, in fact, is never toward what is sound and true; it is toward what is specious and false. Let any great nation of modern times be confronted with two conflicting propositions, the one grounded upon the utmost probability and reasonableness and the other upon the most glaring error, and it will almost invariably embrace the latter.”

It’s an old quote but ask yourself this: Why do people keep quoting someone like Mencken in modern times? That’s easy. Because we keep proving him right.

Western Left: the Tibetans are peaceful, god-loving people who are being brutally oppressed by an authoritarian regime.
Western Right: the West must expose the human rights violations in China and the threat these violations (and a rising China) pose to the West and world stability.
Chinese Left: the Tibetans should be thanking China for eradicating the feudal slave society that existed, not attacking their Han brothers.
Chinese Right: the “splittists” led by the Dalai Clique need to be forcefully suppressed for undermining harmony in the Motherland.

I do not wish to write another article pointing out the inconsistencies and logical flaws in each of the narratives, nor do I wish the moralize about what the West should do. (I’ve tried to address some of these issues in a previous post) Rather, I want to point out that the recent protests are an effect, not a cause.

Ever since communism lost its resonance in China, economic development and nationalism have been the twin pillars keeping the Party in power. In its most strident form, nationalism is manifest in street protests and rallies. Yet because ardent nationalist outbursts can quickly spiral out of control and scare outside observers, the Party has sought to emphasize China’s “peaceful rise” in recent years. The ostensibly apolitical Olympics made it a perfect vessel to enhance Chinese national pride as it rises peacefully.

The propaganda campaign for the Olympics is on a scale that has not been seen in China since the Cultural Revolution. Indeed, walking down the street in Beijing obliterates any notion that it was the West that politicized the Olympic Games. Nearly every street in the capital boasts a banner welcoming the Olympics, a newspaper running a feature on the Olympics, a clock counting down to the Olympics, or a sign imploring citizens to prepare for the Olympics. Some of the best scientists in the country are genetically engineering flowers to bloom in August. The Party has wed its nationalist credential to its staging of the best Olympic Games the world has ever seen.

Thus, the Chinese government caused the politicization of the Olympics. The pride the Chinese feel about hosting the Games is, at its core, genuine—but this pride was artificially inflated to an extreme by a constant barrage of propaganda. Australians and Greeks took pride in hosting the Olympics, but the governments in those nations did not conflate their domestic appeal, grip on power, and nationalistic credential on hosting the Olympics. Since the Party twisted the Games for its own political ends, it seems only natural that those who oppose the regime and its actions—regardless of the merit of the attacks—will use the Olympics as a opportunity to make their voices heard.