First Annual Tianjin Beach Ultimate Tournament

About two weeks before arriving here in Binhai (in Tianjin province), I received an e-mail sent to the Beijing Big Brother listserv about a beach tournament in Tianjin happening the second weekend I'd be living in Tianjin...what luck!  For those of you who don't know, Big Brother/大哥 is the mostly expat Ultimate team in Beijing.  There are also a few other local teams in Beijing, and I recently found out that China Nationals, which is in May, actually enacted a rule a few years back that participating teams must be 70% Chinese nationals (there's also a foreign team pool).

As it turns out, the tournament that I thought would be quite close by was actually in Beidaihe, which is a 3-hour slow train (as opposed to a speed train) ride north of Tianjin, and a 4-hour train ride north of Tanggu (the closest train station to me in Binhai).  The Beijing players got to take a speed train, which only takes 2 hours.  Here'a a map to give you a better understanding:

Map showing (left to right) Beijing, Tianjin City, Binhai (where I am), and Beidaihe (tournament)

I mentioned in my previous post meeting Ed, the tournament director, and I met up with him again Friday evening when he picked me up on his way to the metro station.  For some strange reason, there are trains directly from Beidaihe to Tanggu station, but there are not trains in the opposite direction, so we had to go into Tianjin to take the train up.  Tianjin is a 1-hour ride on the metro from here, but the metro stop is just a 10-minute walk down the street from me.  This was my first time taking it, so I was glad to have Ed to show me the way.  The line is still under construction, but Ed said as of October Holiday (first week in October), the line will be open all the way to the Tianjin train station.  For now, we had to take get off two stops before then and take a taxi over to the train station.

At the train station, we met up with Jeff and Kevin, two other players on the Tianjin Ultimate team, which is called Tianjin Speed.  Jeff is known to most people as "Drunk Bus," or "DB," for somewhat obvious reasons, and the first time I met him back in 2010, he was in fact drunk and on a bus!  He is the only foreign player on Tianjin's team, and he didn't speak any Mandarin before arriving here about 5 years ago...now his Mandarin is quite functional.  Most of the players on Tianjin Speed are university students at the Tianjin University of Sports (note: I tried to put in the link to the English version of their website, but it appeared exactly the same as the Chinese version, so this will work).

Ed had purchased all of our tickets online, but we still needed to wait in line to pick them up, and there was only one window for pre-purchased online tickets, which had quite a long line.  There are actually machines that you can use, but unfortunately not with foreign passports.  Upon reaching the front, we were told that DB's passport number was not showing any tickets, and he realized that Ed must have used his old passport number (he recently got a new one due to running out of pages in the old one).  At this point, we had about 15 minutes until the train departed, so we went through security, and Ed managed to talk DB's way onto the train despite not having a ticket (one of those things only locals seem to be able to do).

We made it onto the train with about 1 minute to spare after having climbed over a bunch of people sitting in seats near the ticket check, and I spent most of the next 3 hours chatting with Kevin in Mandarin about Ultimate, what he's studying (sports media), what I do, and music (both Chinese and American).  Did you know that Linkin Park does a cover of "Someone Like You?"  It's rather good!

View outside the train station in Beidaihe

In Beidaihe, we first got our return tickets and then hung out outside the train station throwing a disc for awhile until the other Tianjin players showed up.  We drew quite a few spectators as most people in China have never seen a Frisbee.

From left to right: Ed, Kevin, Drunk Bus

We piled I think 9 people into an 8-person minivan.  I'll try to take a picture one of these days of the one I take to work every day, but generally speaking, the minivans that they drive people around in here pretty much fit as many seats with as little space as possible.  All the Tianjin players gave me the front seat, which was nice because I got to chat with the driver and view the sights around me as we drove, not that I could see too far as you can probably tell in the picture above (sorry about the run-on sentence!)

Seafood outside the restaurant/hotel 

Upon arrival at the hotel/restaurant, which I am pretty sure is not really a legitimate hotel (they didn't ask for my passport), the woman who runs/owns the place (I think) and another guy were drunkenly playing guitar and signing songs at a table covered in mostly-eaten food and empty beer bottles.  We stood around for quite awhile (I'm still not really sure why) before they told us to sit down outside and allowed us to order some food.

Singing outside the hotel (in front is Kevin also taking pictures and singing)

After dinner, I was shown to my room, which I'd be sharing with two female Tianjin Speed players.  The room had three twin size beds and a small table with a tv in pretty much about as little space as those four things can fit.  There was a small bathroom maybe three times my size with a toilet, shower that you had to plug in to get hot water, and a sink.  The water coming out of the sink was extremely salty as I'm told was the shower water, though I intentionally did not try it.  The "pillow" was a bean bag, which turned out to be surprisingly comfortable.

After I put my stuff down in the room, my travel buddies and I grabbed a beer and went for a walk on the beach.  We walked as far down as this section of beach went and then sat in the sand chatting for awhile.  DB and Ed went for a swim, but I wasn't quite ready for that at midnight.  It was definitely great practice for my language skills to spend the entire evening hanging out with local Chinese ultimate players.

Saturday morning, I was woken up at 6:30am and proceeded to wine about getting up and lie in bed for awhile (the tournament didn't start until 10, and it was about a 10-minute walk down the beach from us).  I walked down the beach with two other players, who told me we were going to get breakfast.  I realized once we arrived that I had misunderstood them, and they had actually said we were going to eat bread for breakfast, which was part of the tournament food.  Later on, the local guy who organized most of the tournament went and bought baozi (delicious pork buns that I could eat every day for the rest of my life) for us, though they were also quite salty (noticing a theme?)

View down the boardwalk next to where we were playing

The tournament consisted of 5 teams playing in a 4:1 format (4 men, 1 woman at a time).  Three teams were Big Brother (theoretically equal in skill), and two teams were Tianjin Speed (an "A" and "B" team noted on the banner as "Speed Big" and "Speed Bittle").

All five teams together at the end of the tournament

The rest of Big Brother showed up around 10, and we got started a little late.  Unfortunately, there were a few people who dropped out last minute, AND Jared (on my team) missed his train, so my team started with only 3 guys and 2 girls.  Luckily, we had a first round bye, and one of our teammates had brought a friend along to watch who we convinced to play with us.

Edit from Jared: But once he showed up, he proceeded to score 4 straight points and propel our team to victory (or the Big Brother 1 team to giving up).

During our bye, we watched Big Brother 1 play Speed Big.  The field was much larger than a usual beach field, and the sand was pretty coarse.  Everyone who came off the field was exhausted and complained of sore feet.  This lead to many people putting socks on, resulting in torn up socks after just one or two points.

The result of playing in socks

My team was Big Brother 3, and we won our first game (second round) against Big Brother 1, but they were pretty exhausted from their first game.  I totally understood after just one or two points, and I ended up deciding to play in my sandals since my arches were hurting so badly.

Anyone who decided to layout in the sand got pretty much covered in sand stuck to the sweat on their skin, and it was also really hot out, particularly after putting in effort to run in that sand.

Sheehan with sand on his face

After round two was lunch, which pretty much immediately resulted in everyone running into the ocean.  The ocean was pleasantly cool, and we all hung out there for quite awhile before deciding our hunger outweighed our desire to stay in the water.

Lunch consisted of lunch boxes with a few different chinese dishes and a second box with white rice.  I was pleasantly surprised by the taste (not salty!), as were most of the other Big Brother players.

After lunch, there was a consensus among pretty much all of the teams that nobody really wanted to play very competitively anymore.  The Tianjin Speed players had decent numbers, but they all claimed they were out of shape from doing nothing over summer vacation, and the Big Brother teams had very small numbers and little desire to keep putting in a ton of effort for a fun, low-key beach tournament.

A random guy riding a tank down the beach

My team decided that we wanted to play one more competitive game since we had only played one, so we played a game against Tianjin Bittle while the other teams mixed up and scrimmaged. We won the first half  7-1, and then decided to mix up our teams as well before eventually joining the other teams.  At this point, I was playing the game of "avoid the sun," since my arms and face had turned red by lunch despite my numerous applications of sunscreen (damn you Polish skin!)

The skies cleared up in the afternoon, and the sunset was absolutely gorgeous!  We all found it rather amusing that there was a pegasus statue on the boardwalk, but it looks pretty nice in this picture!

After hanging out for awhile and playing some beer-in-hand Ultimate, Ed gathered us up to have the awards ceremony.  The following awards were given out:

• Individual Spirit Awards- one per team
• Team Spirit Award
• Champions

My team was somehow deemed the champions despite having not really finished the tournament as planned.  I was happy to accept the prize I was given, and I look forward to hanging it on my wall back in Portland.  The disc is not an official Discraft disc, but it has two awesome phrases on it: "I Love Disc Game," and "No Disc No Life."

Individual Spirit Award Winners

Team Spirit Award Winners: Tianjin Bittle

Champions: Big Brother 3
Left to Right: Helen, Me, Sheehan, Sam, Jared, Baby Girl

Following the award ceremony, I relocated to the (much nicer) hotel with Big Brother, and we showered and headed over to dinner (at the same restaurant/hotel as the night before).  The one downside to this hotel was that it was FULL of mosquitoes. We each kept track of how many we killed, and I think I got up to about 20.  Luckily the hotel had some electric mosquito repellant things in the room that did a decent job (I only ended up with about 6 bites).

Ginny after he put his face in the cake

Dinner was full of shenanigans as most Ultimate events are, though I must admit I have not seen or participated in such a large cake fight in a long, long time...what was Drunk Bus thinking bringing a cake to celebrate his girlfriend's birthday with Ultimate players around.  I guess sometimes it's fun to revert back to our elementary/middle school selves.

Kevin after being caked

The daughter of the restaurant owners was quite adorable (7 years old).  I kept trying to chat with her in Chinese, but she wasn't particularly talkative.  She was however very responsive to any sort of waiter-esque requests, such as asking for napkins, additional plates of food, etc...

Leigh quite unhappy to have cake in her hair

I kind of felt bad asking her, but she always very excitedly ran to her mom to transfer the requests.  I ended up caking her after she did so to me, and once we both cleaned off our faces, I asked her for a picture.  I didn't even look at the picture until I got back to my hotel in Binhai.

Me (note the red face) with the sassy little daughter of the restaurant owners

Boys "serenading" people, from left to right: Alex/Bambi, Bill, Baby Girl (BG), and Ginny

Late night bumper cars and Chinese men massaging each other

You've gotta love the things you see on the street in China. Maddy (Alex's girlfriend) and I were watching 8 other Big Brother players play bumper cars, and these two men just started massaging each other with this wooden roller thing in the middle of the bumper car course.  On the plus side, their presence provided enough additional light to photograph more than just the reflective lights on the cars.

A tent blowing away on the beach being held down by two little kids

Sunday morning, we all got to sleep in, though my body apparently refuses to do that since I got here.  I was up at about 8am, but I spent the morning reading in bed.  I am so glad that I purchased a kindle touch before I traveled out here.  I find myself reading all the time now, and I'm on pace to finish about a book every 1.5-2 weeks.

Once we finally got up, we went out to breakfast, and then a bunch of people decided to change their train tickets to earlier trains (3:30pm instead of 5:30pm).  We were all rather exhausted, and it was overcast, windy, and forecasted to rain.

I was on a 4:50pm train, and my only earlier option was to take a standing ticket on a 2:30pm train; I was not willing to commit to standing for 4 hours, so I kept my previous ticket.  We spent the afternoon relaxing on the beach.  I finished the book I was reading and had a really great chat about living in hotels with Helen, my teammate on Big Brother 3; she works in event planning and has spent similarly long stints in hotels.

Helen and I draw in fruit ninja

We convinced the hotel to allow us to keep one room to leave our stuff in, and when we returned there to shower and change, we had an impromptu fruit ninja competition.  I was so impressed when Helen and I tied, that I had to take a picture and end my post with it; I guess I have to admit that ipads are entertaining.

It started down-pouring while we ate late lunch/early dinner, and then I hopped in a three-wheeled enclosed motor bike to the train station and was on my "home;" I guess that is how I now refer to the Sheraton Binhai :)

These posts always seem to take much longer to write than I plan, so I hope you enjoy reading them!  Stay tuned for a much shorter post on some entertaining events from earlier this week.