Game Over

They’re over.

My friend David was here over the weekend, and I went with him to the men’s football final at the Bird’s Nest on Saturday (photos here). It was Argentina versus Nigeria, which eliminated the U.S. team on August 12. It was interesting to see how other countries have assimilated China’s “jia you” cheer, as in “Argentina, jia you!” The literal meaning, I think, is “add oil,” but it basically means something like, “Come on!” or “Let’s go!” It’s been a constant refrain for the last three weeks.

On Sunday we planned to watch the closing ceremony on a screen outside the Bird’s Nest so we could see the fireworks, but by the time we got there the crowd was overwhelming and police prevented us from getting any closer than a mile from the stadium. So I went back to my apartment with David, Brian and his girlfriend to watch it on TV with my roommate. We could hear the fireworks from my living room but buildings blocked our view.

China Fun Fact: This was the first time an American president attended an Olympics on foreign soil (and boy did he do us proud).

Bird's Nest

Okay, so after all that, I went out and bought an Olympic ticket. It was an impulse buy. I was walking outside Beitucheng subway station, which has become a kind of scalper's bazaar, when I heard this Western guy shouting, "Athletics tickets! Athletics!" I thought he was trying to buy some, so I doubled back to tell him there were more people around the corner. It turned out he was selling. He was a Canadian guy from Fredericton - he's even going to McGill in the fall for a master's in law, small world - and some of his friends couldn't make it. I paid him RMB 1300 (US$189): 800 for the face value and 500 he said was a service charge from CoSport. This seemed like a reasonable purchase because a) I felt like I was buying from someone who hadn't deliberately bought extra tickets to flip them, and b) if his own ticket was a few seats away and we entered the stadium together, I could be sure he hadn't sold me a fake. On the train on the way to the stadium, he told me he had met an American girl at the women's gymnastics all-around the day before who had put a ticket for the same event on eBay and sold it to Donovan Bailey for $1,000.

I have to say, the seats were worth it - in Tier 1 next to the starting line for the men's 100 meters. It was also worth it to get close to the Bird's Nest and neighboring venues, especially lit up at night (photos here). I don't know what Beijing is going to do with these buildings once the Olympics are over, but they sure look spectacular now. From there I was able to walk home.

China Fun Fact: There are 21,600 journalists (at least!) in town to cover the Games. Canwest News Service has 28 reporters here, four for each medal Canada has won so far.

Olympic Notes

They're here.

I watched the opening ceremony with my roommate and her colleagues/friends in a bar at a foreigner-friendly shopping mall. It was fun watching the Parade of Nations with people from all over the world - Venezuela, Colombia, Russia and Germany all got big shout-outs as they entered the stadium.

Since then, though, all this patriotism has become a little tiresome. The women's gymnastics final happened to be on in the lunch hall at work on Wednesday, and everyone was watching, oohing and aahing as the Chinese team wrapped up the balance beam rotation. Then it was on to the floor. When the USA's Alicia Sacramone fell during her performance, many people in the room clapped and laughed. I know they wanted their country to win and Sacramone's slip-up all but guaranteed China its first women's team gold, but I still thought it was incredibly mean-spirited.

Maybe that's why I started to think about buying Olympic tickets. They're all sold out, of course, though you wouldn't know it from all the empty seats on TV. But there are always the scalpers. Olympic entrepreneurs stand outside venues and post classified ads, selling official tickets and occasional fakes for exorbitant prices. As I scrolled through the online ads, however, it occurred to me that there really isn't anything I'd pay (especially overpay) to see. I mean, gymnastics or diving would be fun and I wouldn't mind seeing the Bird's Nest, but why do I have to watch these events in person? It's not like I pay attention to them outside the Olympics. If I really cared, I would have made an effort to buy tickets earlier.

In other news, I'm almost finished jumping through the various bureaucratic hoops the Chinese have put in place to beat the spirit out of any foreigner who tries to live here. To recap:

1) Spending several hours the day I arrived looking for my local police station so I could apply for a temporary residence permit, only to find out I should have brought my lease;
2) Returning to the police station the next day with my lease, only to find out my apartment is not registered with the city and thus I would be ineligible for a temporary residence permit if I stayed at that apartment;
3) Being told by my company that I had to move;
4) Trotting out after work every day for a week to look at other apartments, all of which paled in comparison to my current one;
5) Giving up on the apartment hunt in despair;
6) Spending about an hour looking for the Beijing International Travel Health Care Center so I could hand in my medical records from home and receive my health certificate, only to realize once I arrived that I had left several key documents at home;
7) Going home to get them;
8) Returning to the health care center with complete documentation, only to find out I needed the original lab report, not a copy, and would have to pay RMB 600 to redo everything onsite;
9) Going to the police station with my roommate's friend, who very kindly agreed to say I live with her so I could get my temporary residence permit and stay in my current apartment (thank God);
10) With health certificate and temporary residence permit in hand, going to the Exit/Entry Administration to apply for my year-long visa, only to find out there were no more blank pages in my passport;
11) Going to the U.S. embassy to fix that;
12) Returning to the Exit/Entry Administration, where hopefully I'll pick up my visa next week.

What really irks me about these rules is that people just bypass them when they become inconvenient. It's actually quite common for both foreigners and Chinese to say they're living somewhere else. Foreigners are supposed to apply for their temporary residence permit within 24 hours after arrival, and I was worried that I would be fined for showing up at the police station two weeks past that. My roommate's friend explained to the police officer that she had burned her feet with scalding water, and that's why we hadn't been able to come earlier. It seemed to me a risky excuse, although she did actually burn her feet. But he accepted it and waived the fine, either believing she had told the truth or, more likely, not caring. That's the way things go here.

China Fun Fact: China spent about $42 billion on these Olympic Games, mostly on public transportation and other infrastructure projects.

Tea

One week to go.

Thursday night my company (I have a new job) took foreign staff to a performance at the new National Center for the Performing Arts, an ellipsoid known locally as the Egg. Tea, an English-language opera by composer Tan Dun (he won the Best Original Score Oscar for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), uses multimedia and experimental music to tell a story blending Chinese and Japanese legends. Although the opera is set in China and has been performed all over the world, this is the first time it's been on a Chinese stage. All I can say is English should not be an operatic language.


The only way to enter the Egg is through an underwater tunnel, so as not to disturb the building's integrity. Ticketholders have to pass through an X-ray screening and hand over their cameras at security (not that that stops camera phones, or even all cameras, from getting in). Interestingly, an exhibition inside displays the winning design alongside photos and scale models of the submissions that did not succeed. I wonder how the architectural firms behind those bids feel about that.


Officials are ramping up security and trying to contain pollution in the lead-up to the opening ceremony next Friday. Baggage screenings have been set up at subway stations, though strangely not all of them. About 400,000 security volunteers will be on the streets during the Olympic Games. During the "Olympic Period," July 20-September 20, drivers must observe strict traffic regulations that include special Olympic lanes and designated driving days for even and odd-numbered license plates.

The city has also provided locals with "Eight don't asks" to help them avoid offending foreign sensibilities. I had dinner with my Chinese teacher last night and she told me most students receive a similar education upon entering university. Hers was expanded, though, to remind students that Taiwan is part of China no matter what their foreign classmates say.

And of course, there are the visa issues. China has put a halt to all business visas through September, except for contract signings. Many students have had to return to their home countries to renew their visas and won't be allowed to return until September. My roommate and I were discussing this the other night. While the Olympics are great for China, she said, they've seriously disrupted people's lives. After all, the Olympics and Paralympics are not the only things happening in China for the next two months.

China Fun Fact: The National Center for the Performing Arts seats 6,500 people in three halls and covers almost 200,000 square meters.