The Election in Beijing

Here is a little piece a filmmaker put together about a somewhat crazed Obama supporter during the lead up to the election.

(If you're having trouble viewing, you can go here.)

I wish I could have been in the U.S. during the run-up to the election—I would have liked to have canvassed, talked to neighbors, etc.—but I have to say that living in China during this time has given me an interesting vantage point. I hope my blog does not get censored for saying this, but Chinese people don’t have a clue about how democracy works. They’re not even cynical about it—imagine that. I was showing a Chinese roommate a video of an earlier Obama speech, and she became awestruck: you mean a politician who doesn’t bore you to tears with officious speech giving? Things work differently here. I won't go into details...

The events of the last couple weeks, indeed the last year or so, brings to mind for me a certain Leonard Cohen lyric:

"It's coming to America first / The cradle of the best and of the worst / It's here they got the range and the machinery for change / It's here they got the spiritual thirst. / It's here the family's broken and it's here the lonely say / That the heart has got to open in a fundamental way. / Democracy is coming to the USA."

Scenes From a Village South of Beijing

New Neighborhood, New View

I recently moved to a new house, in one of the older parts of town, a neighborhood of rambling alleyways and vestiges of an older, pre-modern community life. It lies just north of the Drum Tower, a gorgeous edifice and the scene of an unfortunate incident during the Olympics. Back in days of yore, before wristwatches, the Drum Tower was the city’s grandfather clock. First utilizing mechanized water clocks which would beat a gong every quarter hour, it eventually moved onto, you guessed it, drums.

[North side of the Drum Tower (no, not my new house)]

The traditional courtyard houses populate this neighborhood. It just so happens that, directly in front of my bedroom window sprouting out of one of these courtyards, stands a 300-year-old (oak?) tree, whose life has spanned two dynasties and has survived into the modern era. Wouldn’t you like to ask her about all that she has seen?

[View from my window]

Chaoyang Park and Beach Volleyball

[artificial wetlands in Chaoyang park with the city looking on]

Chaoyang Park has been a safe haven for me, a natural playground, a little piece of countryside, and a savior from the grit, grime, and concrete of the rest of the city. It’s a massive chunk of land, nearly the size of Central Park. Fortunately, too, it’s across the street from my neighborhood. Its very planned landscape is quite varied. I ignore the poor man’s Disneyland section, and usually hang around the lakes on the west and north side.

Beijing, in fact, has an amazing collection of parks. With over 1000 years of history, these places have witnessed many a ritual sacrifice from the emperors, the meeting of Kublai Kahn and Marco Polo, and Emperor Chongzhen’s hanging that ended the Ming Dynasty. Today, they play host to fan dances, gongfu and taijichuan practitioners, the foxtrot and waltz, sidewalk calligraphy, checkers, card games, and belt-busting opera choruses. In short, they are places of magic.

[taijichuan in the afternoon sunlight]

The problem with most of these parks, however, is you can’t walk in the grass! Perhaps I have simple tastes, but when I go to a park, I want old-fashioned dirt underneath my feet, not more concrete. Whereas everyone – not just staff people but everyone - seems to enforce the no grass rule in other parks, Chaoyang Park is a blessed exception. So, it is here I go for running, picnicking, the occasional soccer game, watching the birds and hearing the crickets in the summer, and sleeping. Yes, sleeping - as someone who used to live in a tree house, I often get the itch to sleep outside, and I’ve found a convenient fence to jump over at night.

So, I was kind of surprised, and delighted, to find that the Olympics Beach Volleyball would be playing in the park. I was dismayed, though, when I heard from someone who watched the Olympics in the U.S. that NBC showed beach volleyball during prime time every day. Kind of a cheap ratings ploy, no? As if there were not other Olympic sports...

On a clear day, you can see the lay of the park and its new stadium.

Poor George

A night before the Olympic games officially opened, the new American embassy officially opened, with our fearless leader George doing the honors. A friend of mine has a student who attended this ceremony. From an embassy family, he is in high school and, because of a mild form of autism, his social awareness is different than most.

As luck would have it, he was standing near the door when George entered the room. The president spotted this guy, who was dressed in a boy scout uniform, and cheerfully said, “Ah, we have a boy scout here.”

“Yes, I am. Were you in the boy scouts?”

“I was, but I stayed for just a year.”

“Just one year? Mr. President, you should be ashamed of yourself!”

At this point, George moved on, glad-handing with the more polite, if less spunkier, adults in the room.

[Nighttime shot of the new American embassy]

If you didn’t see his interview with Bob Costas, here is a person clearly beleaguered, ready to be out of office. He’s also fielding these questions about China, and pretends to be authoritative, but is as clueless about the China situation as most people (including me).

Best Fans of the Day

Kimono-clad baseball fans hold up a homerun target in the outfield bleachers during today's Japan-Korea semifinal baseball game.

Women's Gymnastics

I was fortunate enough to see the women’s all-around final in gymnastics yesterday. I love that gymnastics is more than a sport – though there’s plenty of athleticism – and it’s more than a competition – though there’s plenty of that too. It’s an art form, a dance, and it’s very mental. One of the things that TV viewers have a difficult time appreciating is that the event, in fact, resembles a four-ring circus. While one competitor is on, say, the balance beam, three others are simultaneously performing their event, the PA announcer is blabbing in three languages, and, most distracting of all, the gal doing the floor routine has her music of choice blaring on the speakers.

Most of my focus was on the lead group of the two Americans, Nastia Liukin and Shawn Johnson, the Chinese favorite, Yang Yilin, a couple of Russians as well, and also another Chinese girl (one of the alleged 14 year-olds I think – I suppose she has the next Olympics to look forward to).

It was a beautiful competition to watch and the drama climaxed with the last floor routine. Going into it, Liukin was first, Yang was second, and Johnson was third. Under pressure, all three did beautiful routines, no out-of-bounds or falls, and Johnson managed to edge Yang out for the silver. Later in the day, we got an unexpected surprise and were able to congratulate the Americans in person on NBC’s Today show.

Gold and Silver During a Commercial Break on the Today Show

Scenes From the Olympic Green at Night

Opening Night

My friends and I decided to go watch the Olympic Opening Ceremony in the Temple of the Earth, where two big screens had been placed on top of the altar. This setup struck me as somewhat sacrilegious, but, I don’t know, perhaps the ancestors would have found it fitting. After all, the run-up to the Olympic Games here in China had taken on a kind of religious fervor.

Along with thousands of other Olympic fans, who chose to sweat it out in the crowds rather than stay in the air conditioned confines of their home, we watched the ceremony on the big screen and were not disappointed. The finale I found particularly gorgeous: a man was lifted up and ran in the air, torch in hand, almost as if he were on the moon. He ran like this around the entirety of the rim of the stadium and, when he reached the final resting place for the flame, touched his fire to it in dramatic fashion.

When the Chinese delegation entered the stadium, the crowd erupted in cheers.

They are chanting the ubiquitous “Jia You Zhongguo!” which means “Let’s go, China!” This certainly won’t be the last time we’ll hear this.

The order in which the various delegations entered the parade of nations I found quite interesting. Initially, I thought that the Olympic ethos of world peace and harmony dictated the order when Turkey followed Greece into the stadium, and I half-expected Israel to follow Palestine, and Japan to follow China later on. But, as it turned out, with the exceptions of Greece, who came first, and China, who arrived last, the countries entered according to the number of strokes in the first Chinese character in each of their names. As we’ve come to expect, all things come with a bit of “Chinese characteristics…”

This was the first and—now that I know these occasions last for four plus hours—probably the last time for me to watch the entire event from beginning to end. It was a wonderful evening, though. Click here to see a photo a New York Times photographer took of some of us.

Today Is The Big Day

Today is the big day, a lucky date filled with 8’s, and, at 8:08pm, years of grandiose preparations will finally be on display. Everyone is looking forward to tonight’s Olympics Opening Ceremony. As a culture, the Chinese love ceremony, and tonight’s will be – in the form of dance, music, fireworks, and pageantry—China’s signal to the world that they have arrived on the global scene. Prepare to be wowed.

The Facelift is Complete

Beijing’s citywide facelift is complete, and she’s ready for the big dance. The shiny new signs have replaced dingy old ones. Potted plants have suddenly appeared in street medians. Restaurants have eliminated some of the more, let’s say, exotic dishes from their menus. The traffic is actually tolerable, and, the air, well, the air doesn’t seem to have changed much.

[photo of the air on opening ceremony day. by the way, you probably won't see my loveable yet modest neighborhood on tv]

The most disappointing feature of the “new Beijing,” in my opinion: the wonderful cringlish signs that used to dot the city are now grammatically correct. What a pity!

[courtesy of engrish.com]

Also, the myriad of construction projects have finished. Even if the buildings are not yet functional, they have managed to complete the exteriors. Besides the Olympic venues, a couple of the more noteworthy projects, which happen to be in the neighborhood I work in, include the new China World Trade Tower and the China Central Television Towers.

China World Trade Tower 3 has been fully erected and has the flashing Christmas-like lights up at night to prove it. It is now the tallest building in Beijing and, on non-smoggy days (unlike today), I can see it from my bedroom window miles away. Then, there is the architecturally more interesting CCTV Towers. One doesn’t have to be an expert to appreciate the feat of engineering and imagination that went into this structure. I get shivers every time I come near the overhang.

[taken this spring, you can see the China World Trade Center through the opening in the CCTV tower]

[also taken this spring, lunchtime is funtime for a number of people in our corporate plaza]

On the Way To Work…

I see the most beautiful/quirkiest things in the streets of Beijing on the way to work, or wherever I’m going.

For instance, I noticed what seemed like a bonfire in a parking lot. I suppose a fun way to spend one’s Tuesday morning…

Tai Qi is not only an ancient martial art, it can also be a staff team-building exercise…

I wish I had this guy’s dress code at work…

Back on the Blog

My blogging hiatus has come to an end. For all you fans of my blog out there (hi, Mom and Dad), sorry it lasted so long. I took almost half a year of Chinese lessons, which were quite intense: lots of memorization and also, because the teaching was one-on-one, lots of talking, sheer blabbing in Chinese, about traffic conditions in Beijing, and other such topics, for an average of 12 hours of study per day.

Since finishing that program, I began work on a project called the Green Long March. With obvious echoes of the historical Red Long March—a long and arduous journey for Mao’s communist troops, a retreat really, that allowed them eventually to claim victory—the Green Long March, similarly, is a call for another long journey to rise above the ecological challenges of our time. Beyond the somewhat grandiose name, there are some pretty interesting individual projects that occur. More on this later…