Getting By

This post is a few days late, but I’ve been unable to decide on the best means of relating the events of my last Olympic Beijing Day. I toyed with the idea of a mini-series-esque approach, several different episodes spanning a week or so of posts, relating backstory and perhaps an intricate sub-plot or two, but that would require far too much fictionalizing on my part. And I’m obviously not that creative. Nor am I lazy.

In the end I decided on the following, a vaguely serialized story that should, I hope, be humorous in its high drama, excitement, and human interest:

After watching the Redeem Team beat Spain for the Gold Medal in what turned out to be a fairly competitive game, I raced home, dragged out a massive chunk of cardboard, and made the biggest, “Student Needs Tickets Please,” sign ever. Well, that I’ve ever seen at any rate. I went to the entrance of the Olympic subway line, the one that runs into the Olympic complex, and posted up, being sure to ask a volunteer if it was cool that I stand there. Two things happened in quick succession: people started laughing and taking pictures, and my arms immediately started to hurt. The former I am accustomed to, but the latter was a surprise; in retrospect, my sign was too big, and made the wrong way – I had put the flaps on top and bottom, so that my arms had to stretch even further so as to be grabbing onto a piece that wouldn’t flop around. On top of all this, it was rather windy which, given the size of this piece of cardboard, and its daunting size, created a large amount of drag.

Soon a small group of Russian-Chinese girls walked up to, and started talking with, me. They too were looking for tickets, and started to help me hold up my sign. Now, ordinarily this is something to be avoided – people coming to give you a ticket, are instead enticed to sell one to the people actually interested in paying, and, really, you can’t blame them. But, despite the fact that these girls weren’t exactly cute, Russian is, in my estimation, a sexy language, and so I let it slide.

Weakness, your name is man.

And so as to avoid tears of bitter sorrow, disappointment, impotent rage, and, well, comedy, I’ll put it bluntly: one of the Russian girls got a free ticket from someone who saw my goddamned sign, and made a beeline for us. He even did a cute little bow when he gave it to her. !@#$% wasn’t even that good looking.

Of course, after that one, small bit of luck (for that cherry picking wench) things started to sour.

Sunday, August 10th

After watching a preliminary round of Women’s Artistic Gymnastics (which I got into for free because a nice Chinese woman, whose husband couldn’t make it, gave me a free ticket), I wandered around the Olympic Greens trying to trade pins. Success was relative. What I did gain from those aimless wanderings was knowledge of the USA vs. China basketball game commencing later that night. So off I went, trusty chunk of cardboard in tow.

Sequence of Events

• I get to the venue’s main entrance, and find a good spot to hold up my sign (read: area through which a large volume of pedestrian traffic would be passing
• I hold up my sign
• I hold back outrageous amounts of laughter in the form of embarrassed grins as a semi-circle of people, near 50 or so, immediately forms around me
• Plural people want to take their picture with the token white guy and his goofy sign (still lacking the Chinese characters of 学生需要票)
• I try to move directly in front of the entrance; volunteers yell at me and I yell back good-naturedly until I realize they aren’t joking, and move back to where I was. About 50 feet away.
• It starts to drizzle, people are laughing at my sign
• Volunteers offer me rain jackets, I politely refuse
• It starts to drizzle harder, people still laughing at my sign
• Volunteers offer me rain jackets, I politely refuse…but keep one for my backpack
• People continue to take pictures with me, holding up peace signs and acting Asian
• First news crew comes by, interviews me, goes away
• Rain becomes a steady, but still somewhat light, downpour
• Volunteers offer me rain jackets, I politely accept one and put it on
• I discover that the rain jacket is accomplishing almost nothing
• Friendly old woman starts talking to me and, in my broken Chinese, I communicate that I have no money whatsoever
• I exchange small talk with other foreigners trying to get tickets, no one seems quite as at ease as me with my sign
• More news crews come by, interviewing me; mostly Chinese, but at least one Italian and a Russian mixed in for flavor
• Various people offer to sell me their tickets, but I politely decline
• I realize that the rumor of over $1,000 per ticket is true
• My hopes fall
• People continue to take their picture with me
• My hopes rise
• Crowd slowly disperses
• My hopes fall
• Rain increases into a steady, medium-strength downpour
• My sign begins to disintegrate, cardboard peeling away from cardboard
• I get interviewed for sportsbusinessjournal.com (interview still not up), trade pins with the guy
• Meet cute girl; shame she went to Stanford
• Try to look forlorn as rain becomes harder - and that meant in the sense that the pollution was, quite literally, actually making the rain pellet-like. Volume was unchanged.
• Game not for another hour and fifteen minutes
• I’ve got no chance of making it to my favorite dumpling place to watch the game unless I leave now
• My sign falls over, limp and dejected, like something…well…like something limp and dejected
• Go find cute Stanford girl
• Tear up sign, with love
• See someone get a free ticket
• Shrug my shoulders
• Rain becomes a torrential downpour, redefining the phrase, “Really, really, ridiculously wet-looking”
• Realize that that’s a rip-off of Zoolander
• Go to dinner with cute Stanford girl
• Enjoy the game, the dumplings, and, despite expectations, the company

Life is hard, when you’re begging for tickets.

Prerequisites:
• Cardboard box
• Dark, preferably black Marker
• Pencil (Necessity dependant on Artistic Integrity)
• Approximately 30min (Dependant on Artistic Integrity)
• Absolutely no shame, a pitiable smile, and strong, or at least durable, arms

Preparation:
• Tear off a sizable chunk of cardboard, bigger the better (but heavier!)
• For neatness in the next step, sketch out the words, “Student Needs Tickets Please” on the cardboard (Dependant on Artistic Integrity)
• Color/black in the sketched out words (or just guesstimate and skip the previous step – not something I’ve been able to do successfully)
• Add local language (Optional)
• Bus/Taxi/Subway to desired venue
• Find entrance
• Find place to stand
• Unfold sign
• Raise sign up in the air
• Look miserable, maybe laugh self consciously now and again, ignore the growing ache in your arms
• Ponder the meaning of life
• Continue holding the sign high up in the air, despite increasingly painful burn in your shoulder region, and possibly the part of your brain that holds Pride
• Ponder the meaning of life further
• Repeatedly tell people that, as you are a student, you. Have. No. Money.
• Get a ticket for free from someone who has an extra, see event, party like a rockstar
o Alternative: if no ticket was obtained, do something else. Like go shopping. Or whatever.
• Wrap funny stories of people you met while holding up your sign like a blanket to ward off the shame of begging
• Realize that it’s actually fun to do it, and try again tomorrow

Opening Ceremonies were, I’m told, a rousing success. Granted it took a couple of hours to get home for most, that’s to be expected with a stadium crowd of 90,000 or so, and who knows how many people on the streets just watching the fireworks and lights. I spent the night in the Austrian House with some friends getting pleasurably drunk on free wine and eating free catering. Danke, meinen freunden.

And, apparently, the road race is always the first day of the Olympics. Fortunately for me, I did not have a massive briefcase sans wheels to lug up a hill like I did in Athens, and our apartment inaccessible by taxi. In fact, I was able to just stroll down the street, munching on an apple.

Pin trading remains slightly elusive. Few people on the streets have pins, which is aggravating, but plenty of volunteers around the venues sport lanyards with the small pieces of metal judiciously applied. And, in the discount markets of Yashow and Silk Market, workers go ga-ga at the sight of a tie full of pins. They practically assault you in their desire to see the pins up close. In fact, I’m pretty sure I had a few stolen by some of the overzealous workers who simply neglected to ask when taking a pin off of my tie. Alas.

The Chinese, as it turns out, are a curious bunch. In Athens I was responsible for garnering tickets by holding up a sign that said, “Student Needs Tickets Please,” and looking miserable. The number of tickets I had just handed to me was, and remains, astounding. I’ve managed it once here, getting into Artistic Gymnastics because a Chinese woman’s husband couldn’t make it, so she brought me along with her and her daughter. Unfortunately, standing for two and a half hours in the drizzling, or pouring, rain, did not generate enough pity to get me a free ticket to the USA vs. China basketball game that same night. I was, however, interviewed no less than 6 times, offered 4 or 5 rain jackets, one of which I finally accepted, and brought under the maternal wing of a grandmotherly old Chinese woman who, presumably, was telling the crowd that came and went what my story was. She didn’t really get it that I didn’t want to stand under her umbrella. She definitely wasn’t Rhianna.

Overall, the Olympics seem to be genuinely working. I mean, there is still horrendous pollution, people vacillate between nice and stiffly informal, depending, and authorities either interpret the rules to the letter or ignore them completely. For instance, I was allowed to stand about 50 feet away from the entrance to the basketball venue, but not 5. I guess that makes sense; I mean, they just don’t want any “Free Tibet,” or signs of similar persuasion floating around.

Hey, maybe China can pull this off. Too bad the pollution is still bad.

Screening for the 2008 Olympic Opening Ceremonies is projected to take four hours. The placement of anti-aircraft batteries around the Nest is no secret, while miles of fencing (paradoxically plastered with the “One World, One Dream” slogan), and pervasive security forces make casual strolling through the Olympic Greens impossible without accreditation. Staring up at the hodgepodge combination of steel beams making up the main Olympic stadium, more net than Birds Nest, Yalcin only sighed, whispering, “This isn’t the Olympics. Das ist scheisse, this is shit…This is Alcatraz!”

A Gymnastics competitor in the 1960 Olympics in Rome, Yalcin Özer has been to every Olympics hence, excepting the 1980 Olympiad in Moscow. Fourty-eight years, twelve Olympics (and that’s assuming he meant just the summer Games), and who knows how many events attended later, he has traveled 15,000 kilometers on a motorcycle to be in Beijing for the Games. And all he can say is, “Das ist scheisse.”

This kind of reaction makes me wonder how successful the Olympics could possibly be. With security measures that stringent, there is little to encourage a Western presence. Indeed, while Yalcin and I where meandering about the outskirts of the Bird’s Nest, not a single Westerner could be seen. Everywhere we looked it was Chinese. Now, is this a bad thing? Well, honestly, yes.

This is China’s opportunity to present itself to the world, something they haven’t really been able to do in the past. And while everyone knows China is a rising superpower, with a burgeoning industry and groundbreaking economy, this is the first chance the Middle Kingdom has had to show the world that they have, to put it in terms of a debutante, arrived. If there is no western presence, or a confined one, what sort of pronouncement can China possibly make?

Let’s just cross our fingers and hope they don’t step on any feet. Or rather, they avoid the important ones.

Articles of Interest:

China’s Agony of Defeat
The Most Politicized Games Since Berlin
Calling China’s Human Rights Bluff

A little over a year ago I was studying Mandarin in Beijing.  There were days I would walk out of my apartment complex in the student district and, thanks to the dense smog, not be able to see across the street.  In fact, I did not realize that there were mountains around Beijing until almost three months after I landed.  Blue-sky days were not something to be celebrated: the sun scorched the air, creating a furnace that was trapped by the still-present layer of pollution.

If you’ve ever been to Beijing, or are here now, you know what it’s like.  As early as a month ago, China had yet to pass its air quality control tests for the 2008 Olympics.  But really, why does that matter?  What, really, can the IOC do if China fails?  Cancel the Olympics?  Tell the athletes, who have trained for years, their entire lives, for these two weeks, to pack up and go home, that sorry there won’t be an Olympiad?  Hardly.  And with China’s stringent security measures, the absurd visa situation, and censored information, how successful can the 2008 Olympics really be?

I came with the intention of trading and selling Olympic pins, a vaguely entrepreneurial activity my brother first started doing in 1996 and that I joined him and my sister for in 2004, in Athens.  Will I get in trouble for it?  Possibly.  The Chinese could view it as stealing business from the officially licensed vendors, even though I’m pretty sure none of them have Athens, Salt Lake, Sydney, and even older pins for sale.  Either way, I’ll be on the ground, and talking.  So…this blog has a new purpose.  Olympic reporting.  That’s a sport, right?