boxing!
the olympic spirit is quite infectious, especially when you land tickets. going to see olympic events is a huge amount of fun, regardless of whether you have any interest in the sport. as i'm sure you've seen in durrell's previous posts, we've seen beach volleyball, boxing, and handball, and i've also seen baseball and one more night of handball. his descriptions of beach volleyball and boxing were fairly comprehensive, so i'll just leave those be. but handball definitely deserves some elaboration.
usa vs. cuba beach volleyball!i saw four six different teams play, but both games with denmark were easily the most exciting. in the first, which is in durrell's post above, they beat russia, scoring an indirect penalty shot after time had expired. as i would learn on saturday night, this was actually quite significant, because there is no overtime and games do end in ties, one of the downsides of the sport. the game on saturday night actually did end in a tie, the highly anticipated (by me) iceland vs. denmark game. i think every dane in east asia was in the stadium, but that didn't stop iceland from making a major comeback in the end of the second half and scoring a penalty shot to tie the game with two seconds left. it was extraordinarily exciting.
the beach girls, "cheerleaders" at beach volleyball!baseball was also great fun, but didn't quite carry the tension of the handball games, as japan summarily crushed the netherlands. japanese fans were out in full force, and cheered wildly the entire game. however, the team scored four runs in the bottom of the first and then shut out the netherlands for the rest of the game, scoring two more runs later on. the netherlands had one chance to score but lost it due to some questionable baserunning decisions. but it was great to watch some baseball on surprising cool and clear summer night.
denmark vs. russia handball action!
croatia scores on france in handball penalty shot!
a lot of cynical foreigners here have been working themselves into a frenzy over things like the lyp-synching girl and the fake fireworks and whatnot, which i think is largely bullshit, but there is one thing that has been disappointing. durrell already mentioned the favoritism shown to the cuban team by the chinese announcer (!) during the cuba vs. usa volleyball game, but i think even the exhortations for the chinese team were out of line. i can't imagine that the announcers at the 1996 atlanta olympics egged on the crowd to cheer on the american team at the expense of whoever they were playing. this isn't professional sports. but what i think was worse was the enormous support the entire chinese crowd threw behind the netherlands team at the baseball game, because they were playing japan. this wasn't even an underdog situation, as the netherlands team was generally crap, not even scrappy. i find the whole anti-japanese thing very regressive and irritating.
baseball!
sitting at the handball game on saturday night, i realized how impressive it is that china has pulled off the organizational aspects of these games. the logistics necessary to carry this all out is mind-boggling, and i think in most people's conception of china, this would seem impossible. but they've done it, and everything is going quite smoothly. i don't want to downplay all the problems--the pollution, abuse of the press, splurging on venues, crackdowns on tibetans, uighurs and dissidents--because i think these are important and the government will need to be held accountable on these issues going forward.
japanese cheering squad!
so from here on out i'm even more of a spectator. i only have tickets to boxing semifinals on friday afternoon, so otherwise i'm just another beijinger trying to live my life as the olympics go on about me. while it's fun and there's a good crowd of people here to see the games, i really can't wait for them to be over. hopefully the paraolympics will be lower key, though i'm quite excited for those since durrell, clark (!) and i scored some sweet tickets to wheelchair rugby aka quad rugby aka murderball, particularly the usa vs. canada match. canada is going down.
durrell enjoying the fuwa!though somewhat of an aside, today i went to the national arts museum of china, which, despite being largely closed as they install the cai guoqiang exhibit that i saw in the guggenheim in march, was quite good. of particular note: a 19th century ink painter named renyi (任颐) and a contemporary painter called deng pingxiang (邓平祥, below). this is the kinda stuff i hope to do more of when beijing returns to normal in a couple weeks.
yours truly with gorky and lu xun
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