Beijing announced on Tuesday that the fourth phase of Olympic ticket sales would begin on Friday, July 25th at 9am. Tickets for the 5 main venues would be sold at the main box office, and all other tickets would be sold at their respective venues. The beijinger, a really popular ex-pat blog about Beijing said that anyone wishing to buy tickets should get there really early, and that some people would even be camping out. The remaining 820,000 tickets were being sold, 250,000 of which were for events in Beijing proper (as opposed to the co-hose cities). I did a bunch of research online into whether I was actually allowed to buy tickets, as the website states:
"Any natural person who has established domicile in the territory of People's Republic of China (except Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, Macao Special Administrative Region and Taiwan Province) and possesses a valid ID is eligible to order Olympic tickets"
We had a long group discussion about said issue Thursday night, and decided it was worth giving it a shot. Four people from our program including my roommate Callie (and not myself) skipped class and went to try to get soccer tickets at 8am. I wasn't there, but I'm told the line was absurd and very organized up until the end, where it turned into a huge mob. Callie left to go to the second part of class, and then went back with another guy from our group. They'd moved "less than a city block" since 8am according to Callie (it was now noon), but they stuck it out. Here's Callie's description of what they went through:
"waiting in line for 6 hours, dodging policemen, and sprinting in a free-for-all race against the citizens of Beijing across a parking lot and standing entirely pressed up against 4 other people for 15 minutes within a ring of guards who were holding hands to keep us in. Basically no other way to describe it really..."
In the mean time, being as each person was allowed to purchase two tickets and there were five of them there, Risa, Kristyn, Stephanie, and I went over to Chaoyang park to try to purchase beach volleyball tickets. We stood outside the gate to get in from about 1:30-2:30, but there were people who'd been standing there since 11am. We also got a call from the other group that they'd successfully gotten women's soccer tickets for 150 kuai each (that's about $22). They apparently hadn't let anyone in since 9am. At about 2:30, the guard informed us they'd be opening the gate in a few minutes, and everyone formed into the most packed crowd I've been in...every man for himself...Risa and I managed to get towards the front and were in the first couple of groups into the gate. Once inside the gate, they put us all in a single-file line and started letting small groups in at a time. I was in the first group in and Risa in the second. The other two were a bit behind us. The lines at the box office were separated by date, so I got online for the 13, 14, 15th tickets and about half hour later (about 4:30) had tickets in my hand for beach volleyball on the 13th at night. They cost 50 kuai each, i.e. $7...isn't that absurd?! I still can't believe that I have tickets...
This is what one woman's shoes looked like after running for tickets:
And here's a good picture of the crowd:
2 comments:
great post!!!
I agree with dad - WOW!!
Loved the woman's shoes - wonder how much she spent on those!!
Love, MOM
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