中国加油! 奥运加油!

I know most of you can't read that title, but what it says is "Zhongguo Jiayou! Aoyun Jiayou!" which is China's Olympic cheer; it translates to approximately "Let's go China! Let's go Olympics!" The opening ceremony is tomorrow night, and I realized that I haven't actually written anything about the Olympics and how it's changing Beijing.

Construction: When I first arrived here, there was contruction almost everywhere and at almost every hour. The street I live off of, which is constructed of cement blocks, was constantly being torn up and put back together, and everywhere else in the city, you could probably not walk more than a block at any time of day without seeing construction. One of the most impressive parts of all this construction was how quickly it all happened. Near my office just over the course of a couple of weeks, the roads we take to work completely changed paths. For weeks I was frustrated as to why every single map of Beijing is wrong in some capacity, but I understand now...it's because Beijing's map literally changes every week. A couple of weeks ago, construction stopped on my street, which now seems a lot wider than it ever was and where it is now actually possible to ride your bike without crashing into people every ten seconds. The rest of the construction going on is either done or halted for the games now, and it makes things seem slightly quieter.

Weather/Pollution: As many of you know from reading my earlier posts, the weather when I first got here was very rainy and hazy almost every day. The government was making it rain in an attempt to clear the pollution from the air. About three or four weeks after I got here, I saw my first Beijing blue sky, and it was extremely exciting, in fact I never though I'd get so excited over seeing a blue sky. This occurred occasionally over the next couple weeks, and recently it has been much more frequent. There was even one day that had a gorgous blue sky with white fluffy clouds. My friend Tao got some great pictures of it, which you can see in this blog entry of his. Currently, however, looking out my office window (a little over 24 hours before the opening ceremony), it is relatively hazy.

Traffic: As a means of both getting rid of pollution and reducing traffic, starting July 20th, half the cars in Beijing were taken off the road. This was implemented by allowing alternating odd and even days depending on the last number of your license plate. I know a bunch of you immediately thought this, so yes, zero counts as even. Beijing has 5 concentric ring roads within the city, and I believe this rule is in affect within the 5 rings. There are also some addtional laws about larger vehicles, but I'm not exactly sure what they are. There have been some interesting changes in transit since this rule went into affect. The first thing almost everyone noticed was that it became nearly impossible in many locations to get taxis. All taxis are allowed on the roads at all times, but since so many people can't drive, they're all taking taxis. This was especially the case after 11pm when all public transit (except the newly added olympic bus lines) stopped running. The week before Avril left, she and I ended up walking 40 minutes back to our hotel because we couldn't find an empty cab along the entire route, and later that night, it took a group of us over an hour to hail a cab just to take us 15 minutes down to the street to a popular bar district. As far as traffic itself was concerned, it was a lot lighter, and it made riding my bike places a bit easier since there were less cars to possibly run me over. Public transit I'm told also got a lot more crowded, though I've only taken it a couple of times since. The past couple of days, however, as olympic athletes and spectators started rolling into town, traffic has been worse than ever. What's normally a 50-minute bus ride home from work for my friend Mike took him about an hour and a half on Tuesday night, and many other of my friends told me they were gonna start riding their bikes to work, which I've been glad I already do. It'll be interesting to see how traffic continues during the games.

Buses/Subways: Since I've been here, three new subway lines have opened up, giving much more access to the city. One of these lines is a straight shot to the airport in 16 minutes, which is a nice trade-off from the 3o-45 minute drive, depending on traffic. There are also a bunch of Olympic bus lines that have been added to the system and all run 24 hours. The generally run between Olympic venues, but have become convenient for a lot of people's work commutes. Additionally, the subways and many bus lines are supposed to start running 24 hours, which will be awesome, though I'm not sure when that goes into affect.

Security: Security has been noticably stepped up everywhere. There are cops almost every block just standing guard, as well as sidewalk security cameras and mandatory bag checks in every subway station. In addition to the normal traffic security standing on the corners of intersections, I've seen cops standing there, as well as right in the center of the intersection at many locations. I haven't made it over to the Olympic Village yet, but my friends who have said they couldn't get within a couple blocks of the Bird's Nest because security was so tight.

Olympic Paraphernalia: In addition to not being able to go a block without seeing a cop, you can't make more than ten feet without seeing some sort of Olympic paraphernalia. The contruction fences, sides of buildings, cars, buses, subways, and stores are covered in advertisements for the games. There are flags all along all the ring roads and some of the other major roads, and almost all the street signs have the olympic logo somewhere on them. The new subway lines have moving advertisements in the tunnels with the Fuwa (Olympic mascots), and on the inside, there are TVs explaining a random sport, usually one of the less common ones. Last week, lit up visa (official sponsor of the Olympics) signs were put up outside of all the small stores as well, which I think totally takes away from the feel of things. I literally watched vans full of these signs stop and drop two off along with people to hang them at every store in the area.

In general, it's really exciting to be here during this time, and I'm really curious to see how things change in the next week and a half. I have plans to watch the opening ceremony on one of the huge outdoor screens being set up, and I'm really excited for it as well as the events I'm attending next week. I'll probably post again before I leave, but this is my last day of work, and I might be really busy doing everything I still haven't done in this city. Enjoy the Olympics!

Olympics Tickets

I have to start this entry with: OMG I'M GOING TO THE OLYMPICS!!!!!! That's right...aren't you all jealous...

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: