I got to attend two different Olympic events: women’s soccer and beach volleyball. The soccer games we saw were Brazil v. Nigeria and Canada v. Sweden, and the beach volleyball was six different games, four men’s and two women’s. We got to see the second women’s US team, but unfortunately not Walsh and May. The security getting into the Olympic venues was extremely tight. There was this ticket reader with a webcam that scanned each ticket and took a picture of the ticket holder so that each ticket matched a face, then the security was similar to that at most airports: putting all your belongings through a scanner, walking through the detector, and getting searched with the handheld one. I purposely didn’t bring a purse to the soccer game, and as such had to empty my pockets and explain what my extra battery for my camera was used for (couldn’t really do that in Chinese). What was extremely surprising at both venues was the number of empty seats. Any of you who’ve been watching on TV can see that the stands aren’t too full, and it’s really unfortunate that all these corporations buy a ton of tickets and then don’t use them when there are people everywhere scrounging for tickets. Also interesting though is how available it seems many tickets have become. I’ve probably gotten at least 5-10 e-mails sent out to the Beijing Ultimate list of people with extra tickets.
Inside the soccer stadium, there were sections of Chinese people all wearing the same yellow shirt and red hat, waving those inflatable cheering sticks together; it seemed these people were assigned to be in cheering sections. There were also of course the people cheering for the countries playing randomly in crowds wearing their country’s colors and waving their country’s flag. Our seats ended up in the right above a Canada cheering group, which made the second game a lot of fun. At half time, the fuwa (characters) came out with some cheerleaders and danced around the stadium. I could not believe that they were dancing to “We’re All in This Together” from High School Musical! All of the music they played in general was American, and all of the announcements were in the three official languages of the Olympics: English, French, and Chinese, so it almost made me forget that we were in Beijing.
The beach volleyball stadium was just built for the Olympics, ad it is very clean and new looking inside. The entire thing was open air, which made me very happy our tickets were in the evening (6pm-12am). I enjoyed watching beach volleyball a lot better for a number of reasons, the most obvious of which being that I played volleyball for six years and actually know all the rules and calls. What made it so much more fun, however, was how they entertained the crowd. Between every point, they played about seven seconds of some hit song from the 80s or 90s. It was extremely fun to sit there singing along and especially exciting when they played “My Sharona” twice. As the night went on, and more people left, we kept moving closer and closer to the front rows, and by the last game, we were in the second row, which was just AWESOME. It was like watching from the bench, and I was so enthralled with it that I was on the edge of my seat the entire time.
Concession Stand: The food available at all the Olympic venues was horrible. You can read the names yourselves, but does it look appetizing to you? The names don’t really give you a great idea, so here are a few descriptions: The sausages come in vacuum sealed packages and were basically like American hotdogs, but slightly smaller. The ‘Presidents Snack Noodles’ are actually a package of instant noodles WITH the spice packet, but with no bowl or water, so you just eat them hard. The biggest issue with the lack of decent food is that many Olympic tickets run the course of several hours; my friends had beach volleyball tickets from 9am until 10:30pm, and it’s kinda hard to survive all day on ‘Presidents Snack Noodles’ and sausages. The beer, however, was great and extremely cheap for beer at a sporting event. Unfortunately, most Chinese volunteers don’t know how to pour beer into a cup, so it usually came with a decent amount of foam. It seemed strange to me that China wouldn’t take advantage of selling snack food at higher prices and more of it to gain back some of their debt from preparing for these Olympics, but hey, I won’t complain about 5 kuai Budweiser!
Besides the Olympics, I spent my last week here doing some last-minute souvenir shopping and sightseeing. I finally went to the silk market, which is a huge building full of people trying to sell you things. Depending on how much of a foreigner you look like and what stores you are walking past, they grab you (literally) and try to sell you things. The silk market is all about bargaining, and the people who work there know how to bargain in most common languages. I’m told they go to a special school for this. My first purchase was two ‘disco attire’ dresses, which I ended up paying 350 kuai for, which I guess isn’t too bad since the original price was about 2000 kuai each. I bargained with this woman for about 30 minutes, and she was way too nice for me to not buy them at that point. After that, I was totally worn out, and I only purchased one other small souvenir the rest of the time we were there. I don’t know how people can go there all the time, but I guess some people are just not as nice as I am with bargaining.
On a similar note, I also made it to the zoo market this week. The zoo market is quite the opposite of the silk market. Everything there is already really cheap, no one pulls you into his or her store, and only slight bargaining is necessary. The following day, I also went to the zoo, which as you could guess is right across the street from the zoo market. The pandas there were adorable, and I did the best I could at getting a good picture.
The rest of the zoo was similar to most other zoos, though the animals are in much smaller cages than in most zoos in the states.
And now my final thoughts on my trip…
This is the first time I have actually lived someplace away from home (besides college) for longer than three weeks. Over the course of my two months here, I felt very free and in control of everything I was doing. I also felt like I really had my own life here, unlike anyone else, mainly due to the awesome Ultimate community. I’m really glad I found them before I left because they became some of my best friends over the past two months. Last night it finally hit me that I’m leaving, and as many of you could guess, I got really upset. I couldn’t really be going much further away from the people who live here. Even now, as I sit in the airport terminal waiting to board my plane home, I’m holding back my tears. It’s not only the people though, it’s the city itself and the ability to wander around and see new, interesting things every day and learn new words. Especially during the Olympics, it became really interesting to meet people on the streets or in a bar because everyone had some interesting story as to why they were in Beijing.
As far as my Chinese language skills go, they’ve improved drastically, probably even more so than I realize. When I went to return my bicycle two days ago, I actually managed to have an argument with the woman about my deposit in complete Chinese, and I won! Also walking out of the subway earlier that week, a Chinese woman graciously shared her umbrella with me, as it had started pouring while I was underground. I started talking to her in Chinese and actually managed to get through the entire conversation without misunderstanding or having to say things in English. I know for certain that my Chinese would be almost inexistent had I stayed in the states this summer, and I’m expecting to experience other people feeling that way in the second-year class this fall.
I hope you’ve all enjoyed reading about my adventures this summer. After living here for two months, I am positive I will be back within the next couple of years, and I’ve definitely met some amazing people who I’ll be keeping in touch with: Skype is my new best friend.
That’s all for this adventure!
~Chirona
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