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Archive for August, 2008

Monday Morning Blues

Monday, August 25th, 2008

While I was up on my balcony this morning watching the storm and thinking deep thoughts about the Olympics, folks in the lane were dealing with their own deep matters.

The morning commute required new wading skills.

and for some, emergency roof repairs were in order.

Outside my kitchen door, everything was awash,

and interesting items were floating by.

Since the storm had knocked out our power, I decided to go for a stroll to check things out.

Our lane’s gatekeeper had tried to dam up the entry to his hut,

but the water got in anyhow.

All the neighbors out walking were checking with each other, “You okay?”

As I turned out of the lane to the street, the water just got deeper.

but, surprisingly, business was going on somewhat as usual.

although the streetsweeper seemed a bit out of his league.

“Pre-washed” vegetables took on a new meaning.

Boots were a good idea.

but sometimes weren’t quite tall enough.

Still, no swimming, please!

The fish at the seafood stall often flop right out of their containers; today, they’d be home free.

Oh no, the five-and-dime owner is using her plastic bowls to scoop out water from her shop!

And the watermelons on sale at the office supplies shop are afloat!

But seeing my grimace, the owner just called out to me “Okay, okay!”and kept up sales.

I never thought that I would be walking, literally, in the wake of a BMW on my own street.

while others traveled in style.

I went back home, grateful for my doorstep, to try to read in the dark. The lane was strangely quiet most of the day, without the usual sounds of power saws and televisions. Across the way, someone played the piano beautifully, off and on. By 2:00, when I went out for another stroll, the water had drained and the flooded shops were dry.

Our power came back on around 4:00.

And to think I had wondered what the day after the Olympics would bring.

Posted in Around and About Shanghai | 4 Comments »

Sound and Light

Monday, August 25th, 2008

The Olympics are over, the Olympics are over. This may take a while to sink in, since the anticipation began soon after we arrived here in 2004. Last night we watched the closing ceremony on a big screen in one of Shanghai’s swankiest bars, in an old colonial building on the edge of the river. Through the window just to the left of the huge screen showing fireworks, we also had a fantastic view of the city’s famous futuristic skyline.

But this morning we awoke around 7:00 to a more astonishing display. Thunder rolled back and forth across the city, exploding frighteningly close behind sky-shattering lightning. I have never seen such a storm. It seemed that at the end of the Olympics, the true Olympian gods were offering their reaction. And what was Zeus saying, while he was hurling thunderbolts? And what are Chinese people thinking?

Like other westerners, I have read the accounts in the western press of the rounding-up of potential “troublemakers” out in Xinjiang during the lead-up and the arrests of citizens who applied for permits to protest in accordance with official procedures in Beijing. Chinese citizens have access to this information, too, by the way, if they want it. The New York Times and The Washington Post websites are not blocked, and anyone who has a satellite dish (they are illegal but nonetheless very widely and publicly installed) can get CNN here. But going into the Olympics, many Chinese were frustrated with western coverage, wondering why there was so much focus on China’s shortcomings and not on the successes. And certainly among the throngs of fans in Beijing, there was enormous pride in their athletes and in the show. Those Free T banners that we saw briefly unfurled on CNN? There was no sign that ordinary people at the Games noticed, if they were even aware.

Some friends here in Shanghai have suggested that, now that citizens have seen clean air in Beijing, they won’t accept going back to the old pollution. Maybe. But that’s not so easily accomplished. One friend here, an owner of a small retail business with family in Beijing, said a few weeks ago that many people were disgruntled because their lives and livelihoods were so disrupted by the limits on driving and other preparations that resulted in the clean air, lack of traffic, etc. They had expected an increase in business with an influx of visitors, but because of visa restrictions and other reasons that resulted in a relatively small turnout, they weren’t even seeing that. So how to keep the air cleaned up?

In the weeks before the Games, security tightened up on us foreigners, too. As the stories piled up of official stops to check passports and visas, we started carrying them with us. I have not been stopped, but heard of a “roadblock” one early morning at the entrance to my gym, which has many foreign members. When one friend, a citizen of India, told me that one afternoon police had combed through the papers of all the foreigners in her husband’s office building, I asked whether the officials were satisfied with copies. She began her answer with “On the first two times, yes, but the third time I was stopped….” Yikes, three stops. Technically, foreigners who live in China are required to register with their local police after they return from every single overseas trip and resume residence; I only began to hear that this is seriously being enforced in the months leading up to August. Now we are hoping that, with the Games over, the anxiety will calm down.

I’ll keep you posted.

Posted in Around and About Shanghai, Olympics Coverage | No Comments »

Bread and Circus

Wednesday, August 20th, 2008

After four days in Beijing at the Olympics, I can now answer all those questions that you can’t find answers to from the sports coverage. Here goes.

How was Beijing’s air quality?

What a difference a day makes. Here’s the view from our apartment when we arrived.

That’s right, the usual smog (or fog, as the Chinese insist). Then we had an afternoon of pouring rain – unfortunately, the very afternoon when we had tickets to men’s and women’s tennis quarterfinals. This is all we saw of center court.

After waiting three hours for our once-in-a-lifetime chance to see Federer, Nadal, Venus Williams and others play, we left to see the U.S. men’s basketball team play Greece. (Ok, not a bad consolation prize.)
The next day, the skies were sparkling and stayed that way. People who have lived in Beijing for several years said that they have never seen the Fragrant Hills from the city before. Here’s the view of them from the same balcony.

What was security like?

Omnipresent, who knows how effective. Here are the SAMs protecting the Olympic Green, and the guards protecting the SAMs.

At every venue, there were long security lines with smiling volunteers enforcing the rules in a completely random fashion. At one venue, I had to apply some of my sunscreen to my own skin before they would let it pass. At another checkpoint, my husband’s chewing gum was taken! On the day of the downpour, non-folding umbrellas were taken away – although free ponchos were handed out.

Did you eat any weird food?

Absoutely! The strangest of all was when we joined massive crowds at McDonald’s – the Olympics’ “official restaurant,” and the only restaurant in the Olympic Green — to chow down on burgers. I watched the elderly Chinese couple next to me lift their chicken nuggets out of the box, inspect them carefully, and then place them back in. I bet they were wishing for a familiar noodle stand. Is this China?

What a relief to find that breakfast at our way-out subway stop was the same as always – buns, dumplings, egg pancakes with chives made on the spot.

So how were the bathrooms?

Clean, lines a little long, sometimes lacking soap.

I overheard one European woman who was upset because when she squatted to use a toilet (there were both kinds, clearly marked), her camera fell out of her pocket and in. I didn’t stick around to find out the outcome, if any.

What was happening at Tiananmen Square?

Nothing at all. Admittedly, we were there late at night. Mao beamed down as always and the square itself was closed off. Though I didn’t go myself, I hear that even the locations where protests were allowed were empty – possibly because those who applied for permits (as required) were arrested.

So what were those little remote control cars doing running around the field inside the Bird’s Nest?

It took us a while to figure that one out – every time the discus was hurled, an official would pick it up and send it back by way of a car.

Are there, in fact, birds in the Bird’s Nest?

You bet! Swallows, diving and swooping as if they were thrilled to be there, too. Sometimes they even got near the PA system and called out a bit. Too fast for a photo.

How do you say Phelps in Chinese?

Simple. Four syllables/characters. Fay-ar-pu-suh. The Chinese love him, but maybe not as much as his friends from home.

So what were the fans like?

Enthusiastic and well-behaved since they had lots of guidance.

but often confused about how you do the Wave. And how about those Italians – chanting in Chitalian Italia gia you! The Brits in front of us at the velodrome didn’t laugh in a race between American and British cyclists when my son yelled out 1776! and Remember Yorktown! Their team won anyhow.

My overall impressions?

The show Beijing is putting on is living up to its expectations. It was absolutely spectacular in so many respects, from the constant greetings by friendly volunteers in blue-and-white shirts to the fabulous architecture of the venues to the clear skies. It’s hard to imagine how any Chinese who saw those extraordinary buildings, the opening ceremony, and the whole turned-out city might feel anything but proud and, for that matter, pleased with the government that provided it all. As for us, given that in our apartment the wireless internet failed on the second day, a toilet clogged irretrievably on the third, and there was no electricity at all on the day we left, we knew it was time to go home to Shanghai.

For those who aren’t too tired to continue on, I leave you with some of my phavorite shots of the phantastic Chinese phans.

Posted in Beyond the Huangpu, Olympics Coverage | 3 Comments »

Aolimpike Adventure

Thursday, August 14th, 2008

Go ahead, sound it out. Got it? O-lym-pic! That’s what we see on many signs giving directions to Olympics venues.

My husband and I left Canada and arrived here in Beijing on Tuesday evening, where we met son Christopher. Yesterday, Wednesday, we attended our first events, men’s and women’s rowing semi-finals.

We are staying in an apartment we found offered on a website before we left Shanghai a couple of weeks ago. Back in the fall, when we tried to find a hotel, they were all requiring minimum stays of a couple of weeks at ridiculously inflated prices, so we decided that this was definitely a trip to forego luxury – after all, we aren’t going to spend much time in the room. Still….

As everybody probably knows, for the last several years, Beijing has been on a destroy-and-build tear (much like Shanghai), demolishing the old lanes and courtyard housing and moving the residents to modern high-rise housing in far-out suburbs. We now have first-hand knowledge of what an apartment in such a building is like. Dingy, peeling paint, mildewed ceilings, wheezing room air conditioners, crawling smelly elevators. Still, the residents are incredibly friendly and seem pleased to have Olympics visitors in their building. One elderly gentleman jumped up to drag my suitcase up the steps to the door. A neighbor spent half an hour helping to get the solar heater working so we could have hot water, and then returned with towels from his home when he realized we didn’t have any. In the morning, another neighbor knocked on the door to offer us a pot to boil water for tea.

Not surprisingly, all Beijing seems equally welcoming and turned out. We took public transportation (a bus and two subway rides) in the morning down to the Olympic Green, where we caught a bus out (about 30 kilometers or so) to the rowing site. Everywhere there are blue and white suited volunteers eagerly falling over us reciting “May I help you?” and wanting to show us how to insert our subway tickets (free, as are bus rides, for holders of tickets to the Olympics events) or direct us. Even when there are lines for buses, they are orderly, with organizers barking out a swift “pai dui” (line up) to late arrivals who are inclined to follow the common practice of just pushing ahead and seem startled to realize that there is a line. Red lanterns and freshly planted flowers are everywhere – including many poinsettias that seem out of place – and the whole city is draped in banners well-wishing One World, One Dream. As we passed one demolished area of rubble, we noted that netting had been draped over it as if to prettify it and Olympics posters had been plastered up on the remaining walls, nearly covering the “demolish” characters that earlier marked the site.

The crowd at the races was polite and largely quiet, except when the Chinese woman rower Zhang Xiu Yun pulled ahead of the American woman Michelle Guerette; then everybody jumped up and screamed “Jia you, jia you! (literally “add fuel,” i.e., pour it on!) while we waved our American flag in vain. People everywhere are eagerly watching the events – including in city buses, which carry live coverage on a screen behind the driver. The best spot in town, if you don’t have a ticket, turns out to be the Walmart Supercenter bank of TVs. (We had stopped there for toilet paper and other basics in short supply in the apartment.)

Today, after I post this and get going, we will see the American men’s basketball team play Greece and men’s and women’s tennis quarterfinals. We are hoping that includes Federer or Nadal and/or the Williams sisters. I’ll leave the sports analysis to others, but will write what’s it like in the Green. I hope everybody is having a great time watching!