All Posts Tagged With: "Beijing"

A view from Ritan Park

Another absolutely beautiful day today. What would you have done with it?

This article, from BBC’s James Reynolds, is so incredibly bad that I’m going to give it its own post in the hopes that five days later, or whatever, I can revisit this and make sense of it. Why anyone would start a post-Closing Ceremony post like this –

It’s over.

In a state which has no God, the Olympics has been a religion - together with its own cathedrals, rituals, and sacred flames. Everyone in China was meant to be a worshipper. If you didn’t believe in the Games, you were dismissed as a heretic.

– is utterly beyond me. Only someone who has absolutely no idea what’s happening in Beijing — who hasn’t bothered talking to locals, many of whom say the Olympics are a hassle and are in fact not burned at any stake — can write something like that. If a blogger off the block said that, no one would bother. Reynolds, on the other hand, works for BBC, which makes this article utterly appalling.

It gets stranger from there… a cataloging of national leaders (”The King and Queen of Sweden sat a bit further back - democratically wearing their official Olympic accreditation round their necks”) followed by this observation:

The biggest cheer of the entire night came when David Beckham rose up from the 2012 bus (if ever China decides to hold elections, Beckham might have a reasonable chance of getting a seat on the Chinese Politburo).

Uh… really, James Reynolds, were you actually there? Or did you catch it on the tube from your favorite English pub?

And then this: “Then came the final moment of a decade of work. The Olympic flame (always known here as the ’sacred flame’) was put out.”

“Sacred flame” is a Chinese thing, huh? It’s not called the sacred flame because, say, that’s what it’s always been called, from the days it was lit by a High Priestess in Athens?

The reaction to the post has been, well… invisible. As of 9:18 p.m. Beijing time, there have been 67 comments — this is over a two-day period — and all of them look like this:

• 67. At 1:39pm on 25 Aug 2008, daisylan2008

  This comment is awaiting moderation. Explain.

Xujun Eberlein, a notable blogger and author, linked to Reynolds’s abomination from her blog, Inside-Out China, with four words: “This one is hilarious.”

One way of putting it, I guess.

How does Reynolds’s blog post end? Oh but with a bang! Never mind ridiculous and ill-conceived…

A billion people will now have to find something else to believe in.

Today was hot by any standards but felt even more so because we just had two nights of rain and uncannily cool weather for August. This, of all days, was the day I chose to wear jeans and boots, partly because I wore shorts and flip-flops through rain yesterday and was not very comfortable. To make things worse: I was at Bird’s Nest through the morning going on two hours of sleep. Let’s just say I’m glad I’m in the comfort of an air-conditioned home right now.

I want to sleep. I want to read. I want to write about the Bird’s Nest and women’s volleyball. I want to find out what exactly happened with the U.S. track relay teams. I want to catch replays for U.S.-Japan softball and U.S.-Brazil women’s soccer, which I missed, or U.S.-Cuba in baseball later this evening, and definitely the basketball games. I want these Olympics to not be ending this Sunday .

Anyway, I was at Capital Gymnasium yesterday — as I mentioned before — watching China take on Brazil, the world’s No. 1 women’s volleyball team. Afterwards I wrote a piece for ESPN The Magazine’s website.

Game photos:

The U.S.A.-China men’s basketball write-up, earlier this week that is. The lead:

BEIJING (AP) — In one heart pounding minute in the first half, LeBron James dunked off a nifty underhanded feed from Dwyane Wade. Then Kobe Bryant flew in and jammed. Then it was Chris Bosh’s turn to rattle the rim.

As the backboard swayed, some might have recalled the fabled Dream Team. The final score — U.S. 101, China 70 — might also draw comparisons.

Who’s worried about the 7-for-29 shooting from beyond the arc? Just toss it up and throw it down.

And because two people have quoted this excerpt back to me, I figure it’s worth sharing:

China has more than a billion people, but there’s not an elite point guard among them.

Nice job, AP.

ESPN The Magazine’s Beijing Bureau rolls along. Here’s Monday’s entry.

Also, I’d meant to post this picture with yesterday’s soccer post but forgot. Cheerleaders!

From Danwei:

It was a fitting finish for an opening ceremony that may have not been to everyone’s liking, but carried one strong message from beginning to end: We are China, we’ve been around for ages, and we do things our way.

I wouldn’t call the article Tom Miller wrote journalism at its worst, but it’s certainly reckless and it’s certainly terrible.

If I talk too much about this I’ll become enraged and lose out on sleep. Also, Beijing Boyce has completely circled the wagon and far out-reported the original author of the article. That said, allow me just two thoughts:

1. If you publish an inflammatory story, you should at least have the decency to not use a headline as ludicrous as “Authorities order bars not to serve black people.” No one would even need to read the article to jump to a website like MediaTakeOut and start tossing out “chink,” “well i stop eat chinese food from now on!!!!!” and “DAMN! I JUST HOPE JAPAN IZ A LOT MORE CIVIL TOWARDS ANY AND ALL BLACK PEOPLE”.

I hope you’re happy with what you’ve incited, Tom Miller and SCMP editors, this in a country that’s been friendlier to African nations than most others.

2. Co-Ed Magazine is a piece of shit, and this is the most moronic thing I’ve ever read. If I ever meet Andrew from Hunter College, I would have a difficult time — so help me somebody — holding back punches.

Also, I know sports blogs like Deadspin and With Leather are just for humor, but do the writers there have to make asses of themselves? I now sort of — and I can’t believe I’m saying this, considering — see why Buzz Bissinger was so mad at them. (Will Leitch, come back to Deadspin, please.)

3. Okay, I’m worked up… might as well throw in another penny…

From Beijing Boyce:

- Most interesting, two people working at one bar had different perspectives on the terminology used by the police. One said the police used “black” in reference to skin color; while the other said it was used in terms of bad elements (the Chinese character for “black” is part of a phrase used to describe criminals).

I believe it takes a 2nd grader’s command of the Chinese language to understand that 黑 can refer to “criminal.”

Other reactions:

• Time: “The paper also suggested that ‘not all bars in the [area] had been ordered to refuse black customers,’ contrary to the original claim that all bars had been asked to discriminate against black people.’”
• The Humanaught: “…a number of others have jumped to the call and found no evidence that supports the SCMP article.”
• Granite Studio, via Peking Duck: “YJ checked out the rumor with some people “in the know,” looks like the SCMP pulled this at random off of some BBS. Rumor: BUSTED.”
• Blogging for China: “For this post, I just want to point out an interesting quote Tom Miller managed to extract from an unnamed black British national: ‘Chinese people are prejudiced, but I would have hoped that the government would set a better example as it debuts on the world stage.’” (And a longer post here.)
• Beijing Olympic Games 2008: “This report in the South Morning China Post is probably one of the less researched stories and paints Beijing and China in a particularly bad light.”
• World Affairs Board: “But to believe a report like that, you must be borderline retard or a hater, or both”
• GeoExPat: “Not entirely accurate it seems.”
• Because we have to complete the circle… Beijing Boyce: “Apparently the policy is so secret that the police are keeping it from all but a few bar owners who can be trusted to reveal it to foreign journalists.”

Leave it to a publication that knows the country to give us an informed view. Austin Ramzy:

What I was hopping to convey was that it’s a bit silly (and yes, I’ve been guilty of it, too) to look out the window with a month to go before the Games, see the Beijing haze and declare that the Games are in peril. The short-term measures that are being put in place, like taking close to half the cars off Beijing streets nearly three weeks before the events start, will have a significant effect on air quality.

This seems like the right opportunity to reproduce part of a pitch I sent Slate on June 24, asking them to let me write about the overblown concerns over Beijing’s air. I outlined for them six reasons for optimism:

1. Cars pulled off the road, gas prices raised: ozone reduction. The main cause of air pollution is vehicle emissions, and according to a paper published by Harvard researchers (who should be accessible), 70 percent of the nitrogen oxides in the atmosphere come from car emissions, which react with particles in the air and petroleum to form ozone (O3). During the Sino-Africa summit in November 2006, Beijing experimented with their odd-even license plate plan that effectively eliminates half the city’s cars from the roads, and the Harvard researchers found that over a three-day span there was a 40% reduction in NOx. I’d love to find out more, ask about implications, etc.

2. Construction moratorium and factory shutdown: particles reduction. Beijing’s treated these last few months like an 11th hour cram session to finish up projects like subway lines and condos. We’re about to go from that extreme to the other of no construction at all. The large dust particles that construction projects throw into the atmosphere will disappear, helping clear the air.

3. Geography and seasonal winds. Hills to the north and northwest block the southern winds that blow through during the summer, which means Beijing needs to shut down the big plants just south of the city lest they want the smog to settle over the metropolis. They know about this, and they will. Winds blow from the north during the spring, bringing down lots of dust from Mongolian sandstorms. This contributes to the pollution we see these days, but they won’t be a factor come August.

4. Because national Olympic Committees aren’t worried, and aren’t they the ones that should be? Darryl Seibel, USOC spokesperson: “Given the fact that the appropriate bodies are aware of this, are making it a priority and have a plan to do something about it, we’re comfortable.”

[Need to talk to the Australian Olympic Committee... I suspect one of their official's "concerns" over air pollution got twisted horribly out of context, as somehow this story transformed into this, which uses loaded words like "ban" and "boycott." Interview with Canadian Olympic Committee, UK Sport and IOC spokesperson TK.]

5. A quote from David Streets, senior scientist at Argonne National Laboratory, who I interviewed for the ESPN piece: “They also may of course do more things — they have the ability to reduce emissions more if it looks like things are really bad; they may say, Okay, all factories shut down and stop driving your car unless you absolutely have to the next few days. It’s the advantage of centrally controlled countries: they can do this and hope for the best.”

6. A little bit of luck. Mention of how six is a lucky number. As is eight, as in the Opening Ceremonies date, 8-8-08. Talk about how the best thing that could happen for Beijing is rain and wind in the week before the Opening Ceremony to clear up the air (this would have a tremendous effect, and I may be able to find a meteorologist to talk about it). Talk to the Italian forecast team that was recently selected to be the official weather team for these Games.

FOLLOW-UP EMAIL:

I’d take a much more aggressive approach in defending China’s anti-pollution initiatives. There’s been so much pessimism about Beijing’s air that I’d like to pull the discussion back towards the middle. It may seem bad now, but there are short-term solutions that really can (because they’ve proven to) work.

Long-term sustainability is a different beast, but when you’re talking about whether the air will be clear during the weeks of the Olympic and Paralymic Games, then I must reiterate my initial feeling that things will be just fine. Take a deep breath, people.

My Slate pitch was politely declined.