Olympic Size Frustration -----> Joy

I have have to get something off my chest. I was not allowed to receive tickets to the 2008 Olympiad. Before I get into this, I must say that writing about this renews my frustration over the events that have transpired over the last five weeks of my life. I have been unbearable whilst trying to sort out this insane bureaucratic nightmare from the 5th dimension.

Lets start one and a half years ago:
A fresh faced chap from the mean streets of Tongzhou sat in his 12ft. x 12ft. cell of a dorm room scouring the internet for English instructions regarding the purchasing of Olympic tickets by foreigners. After hours of searching our young hero plowed his way through red tape and ID confirmation to secure eight tickets to four Olympic events: Swimming, Track and Field, Boxing, and Handball.

Sidebar:
I have always found handball to be an intriguing sport ever since being exposed to it in gym class at Parkway North High School. It combines the tactics of soccer with the athleticism of basketball with more contact than both. During the last Olympics I scheduled my days around watching Handball. I am Olympic crazy.

Lets fast forward six months:
We rejoin our hero as he has triumphantly, if privately, returns to China. Within days of his return he received an email from the BOC (Beijing Olympic Committee) confirming his purchase of eight Olympic tickets.

Eight months later:
He waits patiently for a notice, a notice that will tell him where and when to pick up his tickets. He receives the notice. There is much rejoicing.

I headed down to the bank where my tickets were being held humming a triumphant little tune that is familiar to all those who enjoy NBC's Olympic broadcast. I arrived at the bank and waited patiently for my number to be called. I walked to the window and gave my passport. The attendant checked my passport against the information in her computer. She turned as if in slow motion and said a long, heavily accented 'Noooooooo'. I shook it off and asked for my tickets. She told me that the information on in my passport did not match the information submitted online. I quested: "WHAT information?" She said that the visa I used to purchase the tickets was currently invalid. I calmly, if loudly, told her that visas expire every year. She said that if I had a question I would have to take it up with the BOC on their help hotline. I refused to leave until justice had been metered out. They called the complaint department for me and put me on the phone with a lady who told me that I must submit a change of information form and a copy of my passport for the information to be changed. I protested loudly, both verbally and non. Curses filled my head and sharp motions with my elbows and shoulders were their manifestation. I was asked to leave and took exception to the force of their request. I hesitated and turned back to the counter when a security guard armed with a taser baton held it over me. I walked out briskly muttering under my breath. I was beside myself with anger and thought about going home and just calling in sick to work.

Two days later, after I had calmed down sufficiently, I proceeded with my formal request for a change of my information. I submitted my information as requested and an emailed automatic response told me to wait five days for confirmation of receipt and then I would receive another email. I waited five days. Giving them the benefit of the doubt I even waited a sixth. I then called. I was told my information had been received and my request would be carried out, "pay close attention to your email", the voice said. That I did. It was inevitable that I would. I have been waiting for this day since 1988 when I watched Shannon Briggs box at the Seoul Olympics while staying on South Padre Island with my family. I had been waiting since the Winter Olympics in Albertville when my sister and I pretended to be downhill ski champions as we raced through the living room of our home in McAllen Texas with Crayola markers in our hands doubling as ski poles. I had waited since then so what was a couple more days I thought.

I waited a couple of days (three days ago) and called back, this time the girl remembered me. "You're the guy from before, aren't you?" she asked, "I am guessing I am." I replied. I knew I had made an impression on the last girl I talked to and banked on the fact that she doesn't get too many white people alternately beg and demand over the phone. She felt sorry for me and told me to call the ticket agents directly (I thought that is what I had been doing.) She gave me a name. I called the number and demanded to speak to the lady whose name I had at my disposal. I calmly explained my situation and she told me she would call me back in four hours and tell me what she could find out. She called me when I was between classes and told me that no one at her office had ever received any email from me. I went red hot. After I regained consciousness I told her that I would send her my information again and she then told me that I should write a letter to her office about the entire situation. I told her, "never". I could NEVER do that. They had me jumping thought hoops for over a month and they expected me to do another trick? I flatly refused and told her to get me my tickets before it became an international incident. The next day, today, I got confirmation that my information had been changed and I rushed to the bank a second time. Remembering my excitement the first time around I made sure to assume nothing was coming to me.

In 1993 I thought it was my cocksure attitude that prevented the Houston Oilers from beating the Kansas City Chiefs in the playoffs and I wasn't about to let it happen again.

I entered humbly hoping the guard would not recognize me. I approached the window and handed my passport to the lady behind the glass. She took it and smiled, I was looking for good signs and this was the first one. She punched a few numbers and then went to a big box. She pulled out an envelope and asked me to make sure everything was in order. I opened it and saw... They must have been doing some construction in there because it got real dusty for a moment and my eyes started watering. I thanked the lady politely and left in a hurry before they could find some sort of mistake. They are mine.

I have three days of work ahead of me before I can board a plane and head to Shanghai to see Team USA take out the uppity Australian basketball team. The three days of work will go by a little easier because I have to work a Wall Street English 'roadshow'. This is an event done in a public place with the intention of attracting more students. This one is called The BJ Carnival. There are several jobs for the foreign teachers to do one of which is play poker for eight hours. I am not that lucky. I was assigned to be the oral examiner at the BJ Carnival. I could have been playing poker for eight hours but instead I will be the oral examiner at the BJ Carnival. I hope I at least get a souvenier t-shirt identifying the event and my role.

Olympic Insanity

As the Olympics approach I will be blogging a little more regularly. Things have been moving quickly here and it is hard to believe the games are almost upon us. It is hard to believe because people here are as excited as they were two years ago. The anticipation and excitement probably peaked this past fall. Since then a series of events have caused concern, fear, and disappointment, all helping to take a bit of the shine off of these Olympics. Between the riots in Tibet, the trade wars with the US, and the Beichuan earthquake, people are saying that the games are 'cursed'. The really funny thing about that is people are blaming the 'Fuwa', the Olympic mascots. Some say the five of them represent five ills that have befallen/will befall China.
People say the yellow one named Yingying, whose form is meant to symbolize the deer that inhabit the Tibetan plateau, is responsible for the unrest in that area. Jingjing, the panda looking one, brought the earthquake in Sichuan province, home of the panda. Beibei, the blue one, planted all that algae in the water in Qingdao, the city that will host the sailing events. This leaves us Huanhuan and Nini, whose nefarious plots have yet to be exposed. And you thought they were cute. If you take their names and put them together it reads Beijing Huan Ying Ni, which means Beijing Welcomes You. If you read it backwards it means Paul is dead.
The newest subway lines opened last weekend. I am super excited about them because the subway is a great way to get to new places around the city and the new lines are really nice and clean. With the opening of these two new lines the grand total of subway lines in Beijing stands at six. The mini line that runs to the Olympic venues is numbered eight. Only six lines but one is called line eight? That is because eight is a lucky number, hence the opening ceremonies beginning at 8pm on August 8th 2008. Soooooo lucky. There is a huge run on weddings that day as well. I spoke with a student of mine who planned to get married at the moment that the opening ceremonies start. Speaking of the opening ceremonies, they had the rehearsal last week and wowy were the fireworks spectacular. What else would you expect from the home of black powder?

Back to the subway lines for a second. When I moved to Beijing only two years ago, there were three lines in Beijing. In the last eight months three more have opened. There are plans for six more lines to open by 2012. It is just amazing how quickly Beijing is skipping over the 20th century entirely.

Old Subway Line

New Subway Line

One thing that has changed in Beijing in recent days has been the installation of banners, art, signage, volunteer booths, and designated lanes for the Olympics. The city is certainly getting dressed up. The volunteer program was a huge success here. Two years ago, in an event here in Beijing, Jackie Chan kicked off the volunteer registration. Millions of people submitted their names to do everything from working the aforementioned booths where visitors can have their questions answered to carrying the medals and delivering them to the athletes. Word on the street is that volunteerism has is advantages when applying for membership in the party. Now all over the city volunteers are manning question booths in street corners and subway stops all over the city. All the volunteers got very cool shirts. Based on the number of shirts I have seen there must be nearly 80,000 volunteers. They are everywhere.



In Olympic related news, I bought tickets to see the US Olympic Basketball Team play against Australia in Shanghai in a pre-Olympic tournament on August 5th. I am incredibly excited. Bryne will be in Shanghai by then so I will go there for a quick visit as I need to work the next day. I can't stop smiling, I am just thrilled. On July 25th the remaining Olympic tickets went on sale at the venue's box offices. It was insane. Thousands of people camped out and waited for those tickets to go on sale. It was a madhouse and people were angry when (surprise) many of them tried to run to the front of the line as tickets went on sale. Basketball, diving, ping pong, and gymnastics were the first to go. Badminton tickets were sold out long ago. It should be noted that, for the first time in Olympic history, a stadium entirely devoted to ping pong was constructed. Today I am headed up to the Olympic area via the two newest subway lines (with camera in tow) to see if I can get my hands on some baseball tickets. I can't decide if it would be cooler to see USA vs. Japan or USA vs. Cuba. Why not both?

I plan on posting more pictures, thoughts, and observations as they come in. Until then make sure you keep the Fuwa out of your life.

Summertime in the City

I have been quite busy here in the last couple of weeks. Lots of news stories and mindless drivel in store so lets get started.

The biggest bit of news is that my roommate Bryne has moved out. He left at the end of June and is visiting his girlfriend in Korea before heading to Shanghai to start a new job at a school there. It is the end of an era. Bryne and I came to Beijing and worked the same job last year and decided to room together this year. He is a very good friend and will be missed. Before I start weeping uncontrollably I should let you all know that I will be visiting Bryne in Shanghai in September to relive the helsian days gone by.

Since his departure two things have changed in the apartment: There is more food in the fridge and more dirty dishes in the sink. I am terrible at doing dishes. Call me spoiled, call me a child of the modern age, call me domestically challenged, or just call me lazy but this is the first time I have lived without a dishwasher and my lack of talent in that field has been exposed. And since improving myself is a big hobby of mine, it is something I am working on.

A quick update on a topic I raised in my last post. I solicited ideas for movies to show to my students and received many suggestions. Thanks to all who shared their ideas with me. Two weeks ago I showed what is one of my top 50 movies to the students. I was very excited when I saw it in the video store and purchased it immediately giggling to myself all the way home. Groundhog Day. What a fantastic movie that is. I had been looking for it for a long time because of its obvious appeal to my students. It has broad comedy, a tinge of romance, and repetition, three things they love. It was well received and students were lining up afterwards to borrow the movie. Success.

The glory days of DVD buying seem to be over in Beijing and I have the Olympics to blame. Last week I struggled to find an open DVD shop. My old standby was open but had changed format seemingly overnight. The only DVDs they had for sale were Chinese ones, all the foreign DVDs had been removed from the shelves. I recognized the truth instantly but denied it and headed to another DVD shop. There too I found the same sad situation. I realized instantly that the famed Olympic crackdown was in effect. For months the media in the west has been reporting on Chinese efforts to curtail pirating and enforce international copyright laws. This was the first time I had seen evidence of such efforts and though I knew these tactics would eventually be employed I was saddened by their implementation. I traveled to an area near a local market that caters to Western tourists. Stationed outside the front doors of this market are men who quietly whisper 'CD,?DVD?'. Those men were gone. I walked around the market because I figured that, while I never went down the proverbial rabbit hole and followed these men, some unwitting tourist had. I assumed that they would not have to walk far so I patrolled the perimeter of the market. Soon enough I found a small DVD shop. Within one second I realized the same scourge that had wiped out the Western DVD's at the last two shops I had visited was in effect at this shop as well. As I tuned to walk out a voice called out to me, "Looking for Western DVD sir?", I replied in the affirmative, "Come with me", she whispered. I followed her into a back room with a smaller than normal door. We went through the door and into a hallway for service staff that was attached to the larger market. Down the hall we went and through an unmarked door through the door we made a left, then a right, and finally came to our final door. She knocked three times, slowly. The door opened and a choir of angels sang a beautiful song of celebration as I entered what looked like my dreams. DVD's everywhere. It was great, but is this what Beijing has come to? Secret hallways and knocks now required to procure Western DVDs?

This crackdown on the DVD's is just part of a larger effort to prepare for the Olympics. With the games just more than three weeks away efforts to create a 'safe and secure Olympics' are in full effect. Measures to reach that goal have included beefing up security on the subway. Me looking like a member of a particularly feared and despised ethnic minority in China has led to me being called out for bag inspection a little more than most although such inspections never occur at the stations near my home or near my work. Sporadically well armed police can be seen patrolling major intersections throughout the city center. They are decked out in body armor and carrying serious heat. Surface-to-Air missile installations protect the Bird's Nest and Water Cube as well, just in case they need to shoot down a plane over the center of the city. I've talked with my students about the amped up security and most of them hope that the bag checks in the subway continue after the Olympics. I was a bit surprised by that and hope to engage one of them in a more in depth conversation on the subject in the days to come.

I have plenty of other stories regarding this topic but none I should write down here.

On a lighter note, my office had a party last weekend at a cafe in a rather ritzy shopping area in Beijing. The biggest hit at the party wasn't the food or drink but Jenga. Jenga is a hell of a game that I was introduced to in the early 1990's. A stack of wooden planks are weaved together to form a tower and players take turns pulling the planks out and placing them on top of the structure. If you knock down the tower you lose. Since it can be played with any number of players there is no real winner, only losers. It is a game to identify a loser, which makes it unique in the realm of indoor family entertainment. At work one of the teachers is creating a class based on board games and Jenga was included, that is how it found it's way to the party. Jenga is unknown outside of the US. I didn't know this. Everyone was Jenga crazy including Maggie, my Chiense boss. There was a group of about seven people playing and she was the ringleader. She would call on people who were not even playing the game to come over and take a piece. I think she saw it as some sort of test of mental ability. The entire staff was all over Jenga. After the staff party broke up a contingent of us headed to a bar. There we set up Jenga and resumed play, this time drawing the attention of passers by. We even drew a bit of a crowd once the tower got really high. The Chinese wait staff was also involved in the game. Jenga brings people together.

The day after the party I was invited by a student of mine to join him and several other students in dining at his family's restaurant. I was happy to go on an eating expedition and joined them for lunch on Monday. My students are all adults, between twenty and sixty years old with the average age around twenty-nine. The students I dined with were David, Kiko, and T-Bag. That day we were visiting T-Bag's family at their restaurant. The four of us headed to the south part of Beijing. It had been told that the southside is the stabby side of Beijing, with most of the violent crime in the city happening on its southside. Violent crime is rare in Beijing and even more rarely reported. No one I know in Beijing has had a friend or acquaintance who has been a victim of a violent crime which is amazing. Think about your own life and friends? Amazing, isn't it? I headed to the southside with phone books tucked into my pants ready for a stabbing or a delicious meal. I got the latter, thankfully. T-Bag's family restaurant is located on the fifth floor of a market. It is a small place that specializes in Sichuan food. I had a bowl of spicy noodles and boiled vegetables in a spicy sesame sauce. It was great. We stayed there for about two hours talking and enjoying ourselves. T-Bag's mom, (Mrs. Bag?) thanked me for teaching her son. She was a very nice lady and thanked me profusely. It was great and I plan on getting back there sometime soon.

This weekend I organized basketball on Saturday at Beijing's premier street basketball venue. We had great attendance and I put up some monster stats in limited action (5 points, 1 3-pointer, 5 rebounds, 3 assists in 7 minutes of play), so all was well. Before, during, and after basketball I was being hounded by a clutch of coworkers and students to join them for a hike northeast of Beijing near Mutianyu, a section of The Great Wall. I was on the fence as they would be leaving at 7:30 a.m. and I am unaccustomed to such a time as I don't begin work until 1pm. After much cajoling I agreed to join them. I went to bed early and joined them the next morning at the apartment of one of my coworkers. From there we piled into two cars and made for the mountains. It was a three hour drive full of singing along with Chinese pop songs (not by me of course) and questions about curse words in English. Once we made it to the mountains we emerged from our vehicles to find that it was quite warm, 93 degrees. We began our ascent at 11 a.m. the scenery was beautiful mostly due to the abundant rain we have received in Beijing recently. The trees were incredibly green and the streams were flowing quite rapidly. From the trail you could see unrestored portions of The Great Wall. It seemed as if most of the hike was spent going up up up. Portions were quite steep but the trail was well maintained and clearly marked. We finished the hike around 2 p.m. covered in sweat. It was a fun if exhausting. After we finished the hike we were quite hungry. The area we visited is famed for a special dish that uses some kind of river fish that is found in the area. We went to a local restaurant and enjoyed this delicacy among others. One of the best dished was one I had never had before. It was fried pumpkin in but the batter used salt and sugar and it was dredged in goose egg. It was quite delicious and a great mix of savory and sweet. After the meal we headed back to Beijing, this time the pop songs were not so entertaining. For some reason it was decided that the party could not stop and we had to go out shopping. I was...exhausted. We parted ways after a couple of shops and I headed back home for a long overdue shower around 8:30 p.m.

This morning I have some housekeepers in my apartment cleaning around me as I type this. I hate this. It is awkward. They refuse to come when I am not here so I they have to clean around me while I look like a lazy slob. This could be a way to reform their customers but that would just be hurting their own business which relies on people like me.

Soon I'll be off to find another DVD joint and maybe get some more of that fried pumpkin, soooo good.