The Olympics came, bringing color, joy, sound, culture. People arrived with drums, face paint, flags, chants. For two and a half weeks, they helped transform the city into a place befitting the center of the world, giving us something to smile about and take pictures of (or with) every step of the way.

And now it’s gone, all gone. Only a few reminders of the big party are left, regular tourists who have stayed to watch the city’s post-Olympic depression manifest itself in the empty streets, the folded-up volunteer kiosks, the subway tunnels where once again the only faces are those of the Chinese. The clamor has been turned down. Life returned to normal. I can’t bear to even turn on the TV because all I’d see are reruns — reminders of what was.

Sigh.

Final entry here.

Bureau archive here.

Here’s how good it was: afterwards I was walking on the concourse checking out pictures on my camera when I went smack into a wall.

I can still hear the awful splat sound from my forehead and right knee banging into concrete. My teeth hurt a bit, too. There’s a welt on my head and a bruise on my leg.

But… it was worth it. I guess.

Someone went to me and asked to exchange tickets because he wanted to sit with his wife. I said my aunt would exchange, since she had an L section ticket. He gave her his B-category ticket for her D, and let’s just say the difference was stunning. The above photo is about the place my aunt watched the Closing Ceremony. Contrast that to my view.

My fascination with Zou Shiming, China’s great hope for boxing gold, continues. I can’t believe I just found this New Yorker profile of him written by Evan Osnos, who earlier this summer penned the best China article I’ve read all year, “Angry Youth .”

Excerpt from “The Boxing Rebellion”:

Teacher Zhang stood close to Zou’s face, spoke softly, and tipped a trickle of bottled water into his mouth. When the bell signalled the start of Round 2, Zou sprang forward and buried a left-right combination to even the score. He set his stance farther apart than before and bounced lightly on the balls of his feet. He scissored his legs, an homage to his idol, Muhammad Ali. His first round, it seemed, had been a warmup. He glided around Paraschiv, pausing only to flick a combination into the Romanian’s padded brow. Every time Paraschiv slung his fist, Zou eased out of the way and counterpunched. Paraschiv, pivoting and swinging in vain, did not score another point in the round. Or, for that matter, in either of the two rounds that followed.

Zou rarely knocks his opponents out. He batters them and darts out of reach, like an angry sparrow. Sometimes he holds his fists so low that they drop below his waist, a caricature of Ali. Zou is a light flyweight, the lightest weight class in the Olympics. But, even among boxers his size, Zou is known for exceptional speed. After he beat the Irish fighter Paddy Barnes, I asked Barnes what had happened. Zou’s left hand, he replied. “It’s that fast. I could hardly see it coming.” When the American Rau’shee Warren was on his way to losing to Zou in the 2004 Olympics, in Athens, Warren told his corner that he couldn’t keep up: “I’m telling the coach, ‘Dang, he can move, and I can’t catch him!’ ”

Recommended read, to say the least.

One more excerpt:

Zou is unfailingly soft-spoken and polite, which, in a sport of swaggerers, can be mistaken for lack of confidence. It shouldn’t be. After routing a European amateur champion recently, Zou conceded, “He is good. Outstanding. But I am better.” I asked him how he pictures himself when he fights. “I think I’ve combined martial arts and boxing,” he said. “Martial arts have a soft and flexible side, and boxing is more direct. Putting them together is a specialty of Chinese boxing.” He prides himself on distinguishing China in a way that it has never enjoyed. “Opponents looked down upon Chinese players before,” he has said. “They were happy to take on a Chinese boxer, because we were too weak.

“Now they come and shake hands with you. The stronger you become, the more respect you get.”

I can’t help but think of the Frenchman who, after losing to Zou in the pre-quarters, refused to shake his hands.

UPDATE: Zou won the gold medal today, adding to China’s preposterously high count (51; next best: U.S., with 36, though the U.S. beat China 110-100 in total medals). Most countries win more silvers and bronzes than golds. For the Chinese, the complete opposite is true. They have 49 TOTAL silvers and bronzes.

It seems a new blog called Stryde Hax has blown the cover off the Chinese gymnast age controversy. A brief summary to bring you up to date, in case you haven’t been following:

The New York Times first reported that members of China’s girls’ gymnastics team — the one that won Olympic gold — may have been underage, two years below the legal limit. Documents were uncovered. They were deleted. Passports were reissued. Hullaballoo created. Cries of Western media bias. Jokes. The IOC didn’t care.

Enter Stryde, who hacked into Baidu, which is Chinese Google, and found a cached spreadsheet showing gymnast He Kexin’s real birthdate — before it was changed and the documents made unavailable — as 01/01/04, making her 14 years old. Check out Stryde’s discovery (and screenshots) here .

In a second post, Stryde writes :

What is this post really about? I don’t really feel that it’s about the gymnastics age limit, or even really about whether fraud occurred. At this point, I believe that any reasonable observer already understands that age records have been forged. This story now is really about Internet censorship, the act of removing evidence while at the same time claiming that the evidence is wrong. For the first time I watched search records shift under my feet like sand, facts draining down a hole in the Internet. Will this stand?

An excellent point, if you ask me.

As for whether this is sufficient evidence for the IOC to take away the girls’ medals, I’m not sure. It would be an absolute shame, but if it really is true that the Chinese team cheated, they deserve to get punished, especially since we’re not just talking about the team but the Politburo, which had railed against cheating while imploring its athletes to “stay clean.” This would be an embarrassment of monumental proportions.

I suspect, however, this story will fizzle in the coming days. The West always assumed the girls were underage anyway, and the Chinese… well, they’re not going to find out about this. Not officially, anyway.

UPDATE, 8/22: From ESPN News Services .

The shiny new basketball arena is a glittering achievement, more so when you step inside and realize they’ve imported everything you know about the West’s basketball product — including dancers and stunt teams — to Beijing. I elaborate in ESPN The Blog.

I was there for two sets of doubleheaders: Spain-China and South Korea-Brazil in the afternoon with Wang Kexue (which means “science”), U.S.-Czech Republic and Russia-Latvia for the nightcap with Zhang Peng.

Two thoughts that weren’t used in my ESPN entry:

1. Have you seen Brazil’s uniform? Let’s just say that when that team took on Australia a couple days later, it was a sight that could’ve made fashion designers blind.

2. For all the talk of this being a “sold out” Olympics, there were lots of empty seats for the opening of this basketball tournament. Granted, it’s women’s basketball, but still — I was surprised to see so many seats, especially for the Spain-China game, which turned out to be a thriller. In fact, three of our games were close — Brazil-South Korea went into overtime, and Latvia-Russia had several momentum shifts — and the other game, U.S.-Czech, was great for the way the Americans dominated.

Here was our view in the evening from our box seats:

Via CS Monitor, this story of Zhang Juanjuan got my attention:

Zhang came in ranked No. 27 in the world, less a machine than a mercenary. She might not always be the most consistent of performers (gasp!), but in knockout competitions – like the Olympics – she is deadly.

Just ask the Koreans. They had not lost this event since 1984.

Joo Hyun-Jung entered the competition ranked No. 3 in the world. Zhang dispatched her tidily in the quarterfinal.

Yun Ok-Hee entered the competition ranked No. 2 in the world. She also held the record for firing the best recorded round of archery of any woman in the history of the sport. In May of this year, she fired 12 arrows at a target at an event in Turkey. Eleven hit the bulls-eye – 119 of 120 possible points. Zhang dispatched her, too, tying the Olympic record of 115 in the process.

Park Sung-Hyun entered the competition ranked No. 1 in the world. She was the defending Olympic champion and had set the Olympic record of 115 earlier in the day.

…With [Zhang's] nation watching, she was slowly turning the screw – no question of age or piling up medals in weak events. Just her nerve against the best in the world.

When her final arrow hit the target – a 9 – she had won by a single point.

The magnitude of this upset cannot be understated. Last month, the New York Times did an article on the South Korean archery dynasty, quoting one of the competitors as saying, “Our sensitive fingertips, descended from our ancestors, and our spiritual strength and willingness to fight until the very end — they are the secrets.” In other words, the success of South Korean archers is written in their DNA. How do you beat that?

Zhang, in taking the crown, took out South Korea — and the world’s — No. 3, No. 2 and No. 1 archers, in succession. Don’t know your opinions, but to me that’s mind-boggling.

Here’s another article about this. I’m still in shock.

I mentioned Chinese shooter Du Li in my ESPN The Blog article this week, saying how she could barely express herself through her tears after placing fifth in the 10-meter air rifle, an event she was expected to win. Well, she was in tears again Thursday after the 50-meter three-position rifle event, but under different circumstances: as a winner. She defeated Katerina Emmons, who won gold in the 10-meter event.

“The five days between my loss and this event were harder and longer than the four years between the Olympics,” Du said something to that effect in her post-event TV interview. “I didn’t want to leave the house. Everyone was so supportive, every time I heard their words I wanted to cry.”

She was in tears again. That was expression enough.

MORE LINKS

• Beach volleyball: cheerleaders! [Olympics or Bust]
• Opening Ceremonies images and links [TBJ]
• Liu Yan, injured opening ceremony dancer [Danwei]
• A poorly conceived Spanish ad [NY Times] … and the follow-up
• An article that makes me happy because the comments section lambastes the French [NY Times]
• Olympic medal designs since 1896 [Shanghaiist]

From a U.S.-Venezuela softball game on Tuesday. More on ESPN The Blog. (The early game was Taipei vs. Canada, in which the Canadian pitcher had a no-hitter through five.)

More pictures:

And… hey, look, it’s Jennie Finch!

I’d just like to say that I can completely understand why Finch is popular. She doesn’t always come off as the most articulate on TV — thus knocking her down a couple notches in my book — but she has an aura on the field that’s hard to capture, even on magazine covers. You just always know where she is on the field, who she is. It’s her long legs, the American blond hair, the way she struts on the field, claps her hand, winds up her hips — it’s all of that put together. I can imagine the first journalist to peer upon her and think, Hey, she would be great posing in a swimsuit. Then it happened, and that’s how a personality got launched. Now she’s the face of softball.

Is it better that she and not, say, Crystl Bustos, the Babe Ruth of softball, is the face of the sport? Well, it sure doesn’t hurt that Finch is darn good: she struck out five in four innings and didn’t allow a hit.

More photos and videos:

Chinese Taipei’s Chiu-Ching Li homers in the bottom of the 7th for her team’s only run in a 6-1 loss to Canada. How ’bout props to me for catching this — a home run, for crying out loud — live.

UPDATE: Because NBC said so…

U.S.A.’s Crystl Bustos circling the bases after a home run:

Bustos’s hard single in her next at-bat:

I’ll have more thoughts on the Opening Ceremonies later, but first… my story for ESPN The Blog.

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.

ESPN The Blog, the link-heavy story.