August 2008

As I leave China tomorrow, I'd like to post a final note on all of the things I've learned here in China. (Click here to view the first and second installment of What I've Learned.) Enjoy, after the jump:

Jason Kidd won a gold medal here in Beijing. But before he went back to the States, he made an unusual move: he decided to leave Nike -- his longtime sponsor, and the sponsor of the U.S. men's Olympic team -- and signed with a Chinese shoe company, Peak.

He'll join Shane Battier as a Peak endorser, and he'll be just the third non-Houston Rockets player -- Shaq and Damon Jones are the others -- to sign with a Chinese shoe company.

Kidd shot his new Chinese ad before heading back to the U.S., and if it's as widely run as Battier's ad, he'll be as well known as Kobe and Carmelo before the year is out.

I haven't been keeping track of all of the weird things I've seen in Beijing, and that's probably a good thing. I don't know if the Internet has room for all of them.

Here is one strange moment that I did manage to capture on video, though. I was walking through Sanlitun this week when a car drove past with an obvious horn problem. No one even really seemed to notice the noise.

I'm Jewish, and when I was a kid, my family used to have Friday night Shabbat dinners. There was one staple of every Shabbat dinner at the Oshinsky house: at the end of the meal, we'd go around the table and give thanks for something that had happened that week. We'd seen a few family friends do it at dinner one time, and my parents liked the tradition.

Particularly, they enjoyed the response that our friends' eldest child provided when asked to speak. I'm thankful for the toilet, he'd say. That always got big laughs.

Here in China, though, I do want to give thanks for a number of things, and weirdly enough, the toilet is on that list. Trust me when I say: compared to the holes in the ground that pass as public facilities here, the "Western-style" toilet in my hotel room is a post-gastronomic sanctuary.

In two months on this blog, we've posted nearly 250 entries and north of 50,000 words. We've received more than 125 comments, and if we hadn't accidentally blocked the commenting feature for the first six weeks of the blog, we might have even heard a bit more from readers.

The people who've made this blog possible are almost too numerous to list. So, briefly:

Thanks to The General, Julie at the visa office, Evander Holyfield, Mike and Dan at Club Bud, Abe for the Sanlitun adventures, Sam for showing me the best meatball sub in town, Becca for finding me that pop-a-shot machine, whoever the tailor at CCTV is, the Nigerian cheering section, Dan Steinberg of The Washington Post for the pop-a-shot contest, the Brazilian swim and dive team, Tim Hilbert, Cameltoe and the rest of the Hashers, Jim Boyce, Paul Astephen, Steve Schwankert, Will Smith and Flight of the Conchords, the entire nations of Holland and New Zealand, Grandmaster Qi, Matt Schrader for lunch, the Chicago and Washington, D.C., consulates, John at the BIMC, the entire Fitzgerald family, Lisa the Jamaican roommate, Ken Tremendous, Allen at the English Corner, the marvelous tailors at Beijing Ya Xiu Silk at the YaShow Market, the kind salespeople at Li Ning and Anta, George Wang over at Silk Street, whoever makes the dumplings at the Renmin University Foreign Students Canteen and anyone and everyone who offered me assistance on the street when I was lost and confused.

To all at the Rocky who've helped make this possible: thank you.

And to China, for all of the hurdles you put me through, let me say this: Liu Xiang didn't make it over all of them, either. I guess that's consolation.

Seen at the Temple of Heaven today: this woman, wearing that unusual hat.

Yes, Beijingers do like to refer to the city as "BJ," but there's still something strange about seeing a Chinese woman who does not speak English walking around at a 15th century Taoist temple with a hat that makes merchandise from the University of South Carolina seem tame. Not sure what that something is.

Please do not overrun our commenting section with "That's What She Said" jokes.

I've been trying to find this one particular sign for the last two months. I've seen some weird signs so far, but nothing nearly as strange as this.

But today, riding in a taxi back from the Forbidden City, I noticed the sign up ahead on the road, and my cab driver was going slow enough for me to snap a photo of it. At right, you're looking at the least sensical sign in all of Beijing.

What could that sign possibly be saying? No flaming vehicles in this lane? No bonfires on the roof of your car when driving? I'm just not sure.

Weirdly enough, my journalism degree doesn't cover road signs that don't make any sense. I'm starting to think that maybe it should.

I've been trying to figure out a proper American equivalent for Liu Xiang for a few weeks now, and it's been tough. He's one of the most marketable athletes in the world. He won China's first track & field gold medal. In the process, Chinese feel that he shattered the stereotype that they cannot compete in any sprint-type event. Chinese regard him as a symbol of progress here, perhaps even a symbol of China's future as a superpower in many new, diverse regions of economics and politics.

There is a team in America's past that I do feel brings out a similar sense of nationalism among Americans: the 1980 Miracle on Ice squad. Had that team lived in today's world, Nike would have had them in "Just Do It" ads immediately. They'd have sold commemorative skates and star spangled jerseys in their stores.

But Nike wasn't advertising like that back in 1980. Still, there is one team that -- if they won a major international competition -- could be the Chinese equivalent of Liu Xiang.

I'm talking about the U.S. men's soccer team.

If -- and, yes, this is a big if -- the U.S. men's team was to win the World Cup, it would be an enormous triumph for Americans. The U.S. team has never been regarded as a powerhouse; the sport isn't among the top four most popular in the States. So a championship would certainly shatter the notion that Americans are only good at team sports like basketball or football. It would bring instant credibility to the sport, which is already played by millions of youths around the country. It would be a historic moment in U.S. sport.

Liu Xiang faced similar conditions. The Chinese had never won gold in any track event. The sport is behind other Chinese favorites, like basketball, badminton, gymnastics or soccer. Now, it's growing in popularity, and the Chinese consider Liu Xiang to be a legend, despite his decision not to run in these Olympics.

A U.S. win would be seen by millions both domestically and abroad. Soccer doesn't get great ratings in the States, but the World Cup draws big numbers. So did the the 2004 Olympics, where Liu Xiang won gold.

In terms of marketing, the opportunity would be practically unprecedented in the States. Nike's the sponsor of the men's team, and the players would become instant celebrities. Soccer TV ads are already visually stunning; insert Americans instead of European stars into those ads, and imagine the potential for Nike.

After he won gold, Liu Xiang started endorsing everything, and his commercials inspired new track programs all across China.

It's not an exact comparison, though. Liu Xiang's victory was viewed here as a major triumph for an entire race of Chinese people. But the U.S. team is racially and culturally diverse. There is no such stereotype that Americans -- due to our genetic makeup as Americans -- are unable to play soccer at a high level.

That aside, there's still one major obstacle for the U.S. soccer team to becoming the American version of Liu Xiang: they still have to win a major competition first.

[photo by Vincent Yu/Associated Press]

A month ago, as I was fighting with the Chinese over my press credential, I told a friend here that I was looking forward to August 28 at about 4:11 p.m. That's when my flight back to the States is scheduled to take off.

At the moment when the wheels lift off from the ground, I told him, I feel like I might just turn to the person next to me on the plane and start ranting about all of the strange things that have happened here to me. It's a 14 hour flight to Chicago. I'm not sure that I'll have enough time to go through everything.

I mean, last week, I saw a man run out into the middle of a six lane highway and catch a pigeon with his bare hands, and that wasn't among the top five strangest things that I've seen happen this week.

Here's a good way to sum up the way I feel about my return to the U.S.: check out the last few seconds of this "Daily Show" report from Rob Riggle. I empathize.

The Games are over, which means it's time for sponsors to find new ways to ride the Olympics' coattails. Coca Cola -- or, as it's known here, Delicious Happiness -- is coming out with a new bottle to celebrate the Olympics and China's decisive victory in the gold medal count.

Here's their TV ad for the new bottle:

Beijingers, as a whole, do not speak very good English. If you've been following the blog, this should not come as a surprise to you.

There are some here who do speak English, and when they do, they tend to sound out words with unusual confidence, even if the words they're saying don't make sense.

An example: today, I went to make a phone call. Unlike the States, where most people have a cell phone plan, the Chinese use a pay-as-you-go system. I'm almost out of yuan on my phone, though, and when I dialed the number, I received a greeting in English.

"Your balance is latent," a voice said. "Please recharge."

Latent, as in "potentially existing but not presently evident or realized." It's possibly the most literal translation available to describe my cell phone balance, and I imagine that it seems perfectly logical to the people at China Mobile who decided to use that phrase.

I just wonder whether they ever focus group test this stuff on English speakers before using it.

The Olympics may be over, but Beijing still has one event left to host this summer: the Paralympics, which start Sept. 6.

Those Games will be hosted at many of the same venues here in Beijing, but some aspects, like the logos and promoters, are different from the Olympics. The Paralympics' theme song is also different.

The music video for the song -- titled "Everyone is Number One" -- is bit painful to watch. It feels a little like a Disney flick crammed into nine minutes. It starts out with a kid being hit by a car and losing his leg. Four minutes in, a man throws his prosthetic leg at the telephone in angst. There's also a strange scene of two characters playing catch, which I haven't seen anyone in China do.

Here's the full music video:

A few days ago, I made special note of two gymnasts -- China's Dong Dong and Canada's Karen Cockburn -- due to their unusual names. But I think that the award for the most difficult-to-say name has to go to a sextet of judges in last night's middle 75kg men's boxing match.

Strangely enough, head referee Kim Jae Bong may have the easiest name to pronounce on that list.

This is not going to seem like a very big deal, but today, something incredibly strange happened to me in a cab:

The driver spoke English.

Okay, well, it wasn't that much English. Actually, all he said was "No problem" when I told him where I wanted to go.

But in two months here, I'd yet to hear any cab driver say more than "okay" or "bye bye." The fact that this cabbie knew an additional phrase was shocking.

To put it in a larger context: yes, I'm expecting a significant culture shock when I return to the States and find out that most everyone speaks the same language as me.

It was an interesting night to be a tall, gawky guy in Beijing as two often-ignored journalists are given celebrity treatment following the Closing Ceremonies of the Olympics.

Tonight, the Olympic delegations from Ethiopia and Nauru will not be wearing Adidas as they parade through the Bird's Nest for the last time. They will not be wearing Nike. Or Reebok, or Roots, or Polo Ralph Lauren.

They'll be wearing Silkstreet.

If you've never heard of that brand, there's a good reason: it's only sold in one place in the entire world.

Silkstreet is an offshoot of the Silk Market, one of Beijing's famous shopping centers that's renowned as the place to haggle for fake DVDs, purses, watches or any number of items. It's a place that's famous not just for plagiarizing brand name goods but for flaunting their forgeries at prices that make Wal Mart seem elitist.

But George Wang (pictured above), general manager of the Silk Market, wanted to change his store's image. He tired of the hassles from the brand names, tired of watching his vendors ignore international property rights.

The answer, as he saw it, was to create a new brand of clothing for the market. In January of this year, Silkstreet was born.

"I think it is very important," he told me in his sixth-floor office last week. "Old Silk Street has a bad name, not a good name. It impressed many foreign friends with its fakes. New Silk Street has an important mission to protect intellectual rights, especially in the Western world."

The new brand includes a line of shoes, ties and even porcelain, all made at factories near Beijing. Wang raves that goods can go from the factory to the Silk Market floor in less than 18 hours.

Wang also believes that the Olympics have given the Silk Market an opportunity to showcase their new product through a partnership with two unlikely countries.

The tiny nation of Nauru -- an island in the South Pacific with a total area of just over eight square miles and a population of less than 14,000 -- has only one Olympian, weightlifter Itte Detenamo.

But before leaving for Beijing, one of the members of the Nauru delegation was told that the Silk Market could make tailored suits quickly. So on August 4, Detenamo showed up and asked for a suit for the Opening Ceremonies. The suit was fitted and ready by the next day.

Word got around to Ethiopia, which ordered 60 of the Silk Market's suits for the Closing Ceremonies.

Wang said he's thrilled that Olympians are wearing his merchandise at such a visible event. He believes it will go a long way toward proving that the Silk Market is becoming a place to buy legitimate goods.

Some brand names pay vast sums to sponsor an Olympic team. Wang says that the Ethiopia and Nauru delegations received no such "special action" and even went through the traditional Silk Market process of paying for their merchandise.

"No discounts," he said.

Li Ning scored a major victory today when the Spanish national team -- wearing that quasi-Swoosh -- went up against the U.S. men's team (wearing the real Swoosh). CCTV's ratings were likely in the hundreds of millions here in China for the gold medal game.

But while Li Ning has done well during these Games -- that Opening Ceremony spectacle didn't hurt -- they haven't always been so successful with their endorsers.

Here's an ad from Li Ning featuring Ambesse Tolossa, an Ethiopian marathoner who was scheduled to run this year in Beijing. But this June, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency reported that Tolossa had tested positive for an opiate in a drug test taken before the 2007 Hawaii Marathon, which Tolossa won.

Tolossa has been since been banned from international competition until 2010, and the ad did not run on Beijing TV during the Games.

I saw a Malaysian boxer last night bow to all four corners of the Worker's Gymnasium as hundreds of Malaysians sang out their national anthem, and I wondered what it was that they loved about their country.

I saw Ukrainians raise their flag, screaming out "OOH-CRY-EEE-NAH!" again and again as their gold medalist took the podium, and I wondered what it was that they loved about their country.

I saw a Dominican boxer take a victory lap of the stadium, a Chinese flag draped across his back, as a pack of Dominican fans roared his name, and I wondered what it was that they loved about their country.

Then the canvas went blank. The volunteers wiped down the ring. A Cuban boxer and a British boxer stood in the tunnel, about to enter the stadium. The stadium was quiet; the ring, nothing more than a blank slate.

That's when I remembered what it is I love about my country.

For the last eight months, I have lived outside of the United States, first enjoying six months studying abroad in Spain, and then coming to Beijing for the final two. I've spent a little less than two full weeks in the U.S. this year.

Never before have I attempted something so absurd and so stupid. For a kid who's just turned 21 and who'd never been outside the U.S. for more than three consecutive weeks at one time, eight months spent studying and traveling to three different continents -- if you include a weekend in Morocco -- is a wildly ambitious trip.

But when you throw in a good four months of fighting the Chinese while trying to land press credentials, the whole thing only becomes more absurd.

As the Olympics close today, I'm facing this weird realization that this week, I have to reboot my life. I'm 21 years old. I'm going to be a senior in college. I'm young, optimistic and mostly clueless. This is a dangerous combination.

But what I was reminded of on Saturday night at the boxing venue was just how extraordinary the journey to Beijing has been. As I waited last night for a Cuban and a Brit to leave their mark on the Olympics, the crowd went quiet with anticipation. In a few minutes, each of these men was going to get their stage, to get that opportunity that so few of us really have not just to be great but to become great.

For these athletes, getting to Beijing has required talent, perseverance and a whole lot of luck. I'd like to think my journey here has been similar, minus the whole "talent" thing.

I do not know why I have been so lucky, and I do not know if I deserve it. But I have been given infinite opportunities the last eight months, not least among them the opportunity to write for you here on this blog. By no means would I call this blog great. But it's certainly been fun to create, and that's not a bad start.

So to you, the readers, for listening, for reading, for commenting: thank you for allowing me this stage.

Still, there's one more great thing about being 21 and soon-to-returning to a country that -- among Chinese, Spaniards and just about everyone else I've met during these eight months -- has this reputation as opportunity personified:

It's that even when I've come this far, it still all feels like I'm just getting started.

It's 7 p.m. in Beijing, and 5 a.m. in Denver. The Olympics are over, aside from the Closing Ceremonies, so here are your final Olympic headlines from this Sunday evening/morning, after the jump:

The USA-Spain men's basketball final will actually air live in Denver at 12:30 am Mountain time. Forget about the TiVo; you might want to watch this one live.

Three notes before the Game starts: here's the new Nike spot for Team USA that's airing here in China. Aside from the LeBron-Yao Coke ad, it's the only TV ad airing in China right now that features non-Chinese athletes:



>Now, to briefly put this game in perspective, consider the cover of Spanish sports daily Marca today. "If we win or we lose, we do it for you all," it says. It's referring to Spain's greatest men's basketball achievement: the team's silver medal in the 1984 Olympics.

They've played in 10 Games, and that's their only medal. Meanwhile, the U.S. has played in 16 Olympics and won 15 medals.

>As for the Chinese: you can be sure that they'll be tuning into this game. Baseball may be our national pastime, but in two months here, I've learned that there is nothing the Chinese consider more American than basketball. They're the current leaders in total gold medals, but this is the one that every Jordan-wearing Beijinger really wanted to win.

There are certain phrases that make getting around in Beijing a little easier. The blog documented several of the most important phrases already. Here a few more in the Rocky's second Beijing Dictionary:

>Ahh!: The sound made by anyone leaving the cramped trains on non-air conditioned subway line 1 during rush hour.

>Chinese: the written form of Mandarin.

>Dong: could be just about anything.

>Do Not Disturb: words not understood by hotel maid staff, even if written in Chinese and taped to your door.

>Joking me: a common Beijing substitute for "kidding me"; often used in sentences like, "That's joking me price!"

>Mandarin: the spoken form of Chinese.

>Mèngjìng (梦境): a dreamland, filled with kung pao and information restricted on a need-to-know basis; see: Beijing.

>Qūzhú chūjìng (驱逐出境): a request by the Beijing government for reassignment to your home country, effectively immediately.

>Wèichéngnián de (未成年的): underage; may not be investigated if the accusations involve gold medalists.

>Yānwù (烟雾): smog, though the terms is not officially recognized by the Chinese government or the IOC; see: overcast or sunny.

>Your application to protest has been approved: does not appear in the Beijing dictionary.

One final story from the U.S.-Cuba game:

Dexter Fowler, one of the Rockies' farmhands, started in center field on Thursday for Team USA. He didn't do much, failing to reach base and getting little activity in the outfield, though you can hardly blame him for the fact that Cuban batters kept hitting the ball over the fence instead of in play.

He was involved in the most unusual play of the night, though. In his first at bat, Fowler chopped a slow grounder up the first base line. Cuban pitcher Norge Luis Vera got to the ball easily and managed to beat Fowler to first. As Vera applied the tag, he gave Fowler a little extra nudge with his shoulder.

Fowler was knocked completely off the base path and ended up sliding headfirst into the first base coaches box.

It was that kind of night for Team USA.

I've gotten my hands on a copy of the "Beijing Olympic Games Training Series: A Conversational English Reader." BOCOG -- the Beijing Olympic governing body -- is using it as a manual to teach volunteers how to react to any situation that may arise during the Games. Some of those situations just happen to be a bit unusual.

Today's text is reproduced in its entirety and is not edited. All non-sequiturs and grammatical errors are theirs. The text is titled "In the movie theatre of the Exhibition Centre" from the "At the Exhibition Centre" section of the reader. The text is a fine example of how the Chinese take credit for inventing just about everything. Enjoy, after the jump:

You know the list of the must-see attractions in Beijing already: Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, the Great Wall and the Temple of Heaven. The city has its famous markets and its old-world hutong neighborhoods. It even has up-and-coming districts, like Wangfujing and Sanlitun.

After these Games end, visitors will be adding two more sights to the must-see list here: the Bird's Nest and the Water Cube. They've both received nearly unanimous acclaim for their imaginative design and environmental sensibility. If you visit Beijing in a decade, they'll still be here.

But most of the other stadiums will not even be around when the calendar turns to 2009. Some could be gone -- deconstructed, if you will -- by month's end if the Chinese choose to.

The north zone cluster -- including the archery and field hockey venue -- was built as a temporary site. So was the Wukesong Baseball Field.

From the outside, Wukesong Field looks a bit like a seventh-grade toothpick creation. The stadium rises from above a blacktop, a vast network of metal piping holding up an oversized set of bleachers. It looks, at best, unstable. If fans started jumping or pounding on their seats -- as their soccer counterparts often do -- I'm not sure that the bleachers could withstand the shaking.

Other temporary stadiums do not seem as haphazardly built. The field hockey venue, for example, has wide concourses and no such erector set feel.

Now, I'm sure that the IOC and BOCOG have conducted thorough safety tests on Wukesong Field. But having felt the bleachers do more than rattle from the stomping of few solitary fans last night, I just wonder what kind of safety test it was.

But by tomorrow, it won't matter. The stadium will start coming down. The sport it hosted won't be back in London in 2012. Here one day; forgotten the next. So it goes.

They don't sell peanuts or Cracker Jacks at the Wukesong Baseball Field. They do sing about them, though.

When the middle of the seventh came around last night, Cuba was leading the U.S. men's baseball team by two runs. The crowd had settled in, grabbing a final beer or one of those hot dogs on a stick for the final innings. The PA announcer came on with a long introduction, maybe a minute of straight Mandarin in which I didn't understand a word.

I do not know if the Wukesong PA announcer speaks English, but last night, he managed to sound out six familiar words at the end of his introduction. "Take Me Out to the Ballgame!" he called out excitedly. The Americans cheered. The Chinese went silent. Only a third of the stadium bothered to stand for the seventh inning stretch.

A few -- in particular, the Japanese fans -- started singing along to the pre-recorded version of the song. The Chinese fans mostly clapped off-beat. The Cubans stood in silence, except for one fan, beer in her left and Cuban flag in her right, trying to keep pace with the song. Consider it a Tsingtao-enhanced version.

Here's the two-verse version of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" from last night's game:


run time: 1:53

After the final main day of track and field, a Rocky Mountain News journalist takes to the Olympic track for a victory lap. What the victory was, one isn't sure.

Officially, the winner of today's men's soccer gold medal match was Argentina. But Adidas didn't do too badly either.

Both Argentina and silver-medalist Nigeria wear Adidas clothing, and Argentine star forward Lionel Messi is one of the brand's signature endorsers.

Still, none of the players will be appearing in Adidas ads here in China until after the Games end. Right now, the Adidas campaign is focused solely on Team China. Here's Adidas' signature ad in Beijing, featuring the country's women's basketball, men's soccer and women's volleyball teams. Only the volleyball team is in contention for a gold medal.

One summer, I sat and listened as the Washington Nationals' PA announcer refused to play any song that wasn't "Dani California" or Daddy Yankee's "Gasolina." So when a few friends warned me that the the music choices at the Olympic baseball venue were a bit odd, I didn't give their comments much thought.

Then I walked into the Wukesong Baseball Stadium to the tune of "Frère Jacques" being played on an organ.

The music selection went beyond anything I could have rationally expected. Until last night, I'd never seen hundreds of Cubans rock out to the Stones or the Kinks or the Black Eyed Peas. I'd never seen Chinese fans sing along to Pink or Ricky Martin. I'd never even considered the idea that "Play That Funky Music White Boy" could be popular in a place where the people sometimes identify themselves as "yellow."

But last night, I experienced all of that, plus inter-inning music by the Bee Gees, Guns N' Roses and Rob Thomas. And the theme to "Beverly Hills Cop" on the organ. And the sound of glass shattering whenever a ball was hit out of play.

So here's a compilation of a few sounds of the game, including an organ-led rendition of "Hava Nagila" and a U.S.A. chant in Mandarin -- or, as they know it here, měilìjiān hézhòngguó, or 美利坚合众国. Enjoy:


runtime: :54 seconds

I have never been an official mascot before, partly because I'm too tall to fit into most mascot costumes, and partly because if I'm going to humiliate myself, I should be at least able to get credit for it. But I'd say that I've been to enough sporting events to qualify as an amateur mascot expert. To go Nick Hornby on you right now, my top five favorite mascots of all time, in no particular order: that blob at Western Kentucky, Youppi!, Truman the Tiger, the Capital City Goofball and James Carville.

There's one widely-accepted rule that mascots stick to: once you're in costume, you stay in costume. If the Oriole Bird starts walking around sans-beak at Camden Yards, kids might start crying, and then they're less inclined to buy lemonade or popcorn or Dippin' Dots, and that's not good for anyone.

But don't just take my word for it. In the wise words of Vince Vaughn -- spotted Thursday night at Club Bud -- from "Old School":

Beanie: Spanish what the hell are you doing?

Spanish: I'm just going to get some water. This suit is crazy hot, yo.

Beanie: Put your head back on. That can be very traumatic for the kids.

Spanish: You're right, I'm sorry, sir.

Beanie: Don't sorry me, babe. And shake the tail when you walk. You're better than that.

Which brings me to my next point: if this "keep your head on" rule is widely-known in the States, then why hasn't it caught on in China?

During games, the Beijing Olympics' mascots -- the Fuwas -- come out to entertain the crowd. That the Chinese are entertaining crowds with a quintet of mascots that many in this country actually think are cursed is weird enough. But then the mascots go and take their heads off.

I'll refer you exhibit A above. Last night at the U.S.-Cuba men's baseball semifinal, the Fuwas came out mid-game for their regularly scheduled dance number. Three of them were prancing near first base. Then the Fuwa theme song started fading out. The BOCOG handlers started waving at the Fuwas to get off the field. They needed to run past the U.S. dugout, but simultaneously, the players were running back onto the field.

So the kids inside the Fuwas did what any sensible person wearing an oversized panda suit while attempting to avoid trampling semi-professional baseball players would do: they took off their heads.

Which, naturally, caused even more chaos around the stadium and a likely drop in the sale of Yili ice cream at the concession stands.

So keep your heads on, Fuwas. Don't scare the children.

It's 7 p.m. in Beijing, and 5 a.m. in Denver. Here are the stories that are making Olympic headlines on this Saturday evening/morning, after the jump:

Coming tomorrow on the blog: a full recap of tonight's U.S.-Cuba men's baseball game, including headless Fuwas, Rockies farmhand Dexter Fowler going butts up, how the Chinese sing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" and why the hora is a staple for Chinese organ players.

In the meantime, here's an image of Chinese volunteers attempting to rake the infield. You missed a spot there, boys.

Tim Hilbert was home last night, relaxing from a long day of work, when he received a call from one of his restaurant's managers.

Yao's here, the manager said. You might want to come back to work.

So Hilbert did what any sensible Beijing-barbecue-restaurant-owning Texan would do: he headed back to his store to say hello to one of the most famous athletes on the planet.

Let's put this in perspective: the biggest Chinese basketball player in the world, who happens to play for an NBA team in Texas, ate dinner last night at Beijing's only authentic Texas barbecue restaurant, which is owned by a Texan and located in a city that's hosting China's Olympic Games.

"Yeah, that was pretty cool," Hilbert said of Yao's visit to Tim's Texas Bar-B-Q.

Yao -- who came with an American and a Chinese friend -- ordered the pork ribs and chicken.

"He scarfed it all down, so he must have loved it," Hilbert said.

Hilbert said he was unable to convince Yao to send him a new jersey to hang on his wall, though he did take a few photos with him. He added that Yao made a quick entrance and exit last night to avoid a crowd that had gathered to see the Chinese star eat.

The Beijing Olympics are almost over; only Three More Days for these Games. Yes, journalists here have experienced a serious Clampdown. You could even call these the Dead Quote Olympics. What's a reporter to do? I suppose All I Can Do is Write About It.

Some will say that they Couldn't Stand the Weather. Others will argue about China's legacy, about whether or not China is Going in the Right Direction. I'm not sure if they are, but I do know it's been fun to watch all that's Golden here at the Beijing Games.

Less than seventy two hours left in these Olympics. It's almost Closing Time. I think London's Calling.

Just a quick follow up to an earlier post: on Monday, I was wondering how soon Nike would pull the ads featuring Liu Xiang from CCTV. The Swoosh did respond quickly with a series of print ads on Tuesday trying to save face, but on TV, they've taken a different tack. The Nike ads with Liu Xiang are already off the air, and they've been replaced with an ad featuring the U.S. men's basketball team. The ad airing over here features a Chinese youth holding a basketball while watching Olympic highlights of LeBron James. I haven't found the new ad online yet, but I'll post it if/when I do.

I do not entirely understand what is going on in the ad below. I do not know what is being advertised. But I do know that this spot for China Merchant's Bank is getting a lot of air time here in Beijing.

I can say this in response to the second scene in the ad: seat belts really aren't that popular here. Many taxis -- the majority of which Hyundais and Volkswagens -- don't even offer them.

Here's your ad:

My two favorite metal detector stories:

On the Beijing subway, with security here at a premium, they're asking all passengers to pass their bags through a metal detector. I was down at the Wangfujing station, just minutes from Tiananamen Square, and as asked, I placed by bag on the belt. The man just behind me placed his bag -- a considerably larger one -- on the belt as well.

My bag came through the machine, but I was intrigued by this oversized bag that the man behind me was carrying. Oversized really doesn't do it justice; this thing would come out at the skis, snowboards and misshapen luggage section at DIA.

I wasn't sure what it was until I heard him pick it up. The stuff inside the bag made a familiar rustling noise that gave it away.

I took my bag and headed one way. This Chinese man took his 40 pound sack of rice and headed another.

Fast forward to last night. I'm walking into Club Bud at about 12:30. Before entering, guests have to pass through a metal detector.

The couple in front of me is waiting in line. The girl puts her purse on the table next to detector and walks through. The guy reaches into his pocket and puts his cell phone on the table. Then he takes off the thing around his neck.

Even during the Olympics, gold medals don't pass through metal detectors.

It's 7 p.m. in Beijing, and 5 a.m. in Denver. Here are the stories that are making Olympic headlines on this Friday evening/morning, after the jump:

On the subway today, a Chinese student asked me if I'd like to trade pins with her. Pin-trading is an Olympic hobby dating back to -- and please, correct me if I'm wrong -- ancient Greece, when Hephaestus would sculpt tiny pieces of flair and attempt to trade them for lightning bolts or ambrosia. Little has changed today.

I agreed to her offer and pulled out one of my pins -- a University of Missouri centennial piece. She went into her bag to find one to trade. But she didn't have a pin on hand, so she asked if she could trade me a wrist bracelet instead. I agreed to swap my pin for a red Chinastrong bracelet.

She excitedly put on my pin and then handed the bracelet to me. "Look," she said, pointing to a number on the inside of the bracelet. "It is a limited edition."

I squinted at the number imprinted inside. "#0372270" it read.

In a country of 1.3 billion people, one-in-a-million is still considered pretty exclusive.

Last night, as Usain Bolt cruised to a world record in the 200m dash, I heard two words yelled out over and over throughout the city. I cannot print those two words.

Instead, I'll give you this: the audio from CCTV's broadcast of the 200m. Yes, they're excited, but CCTV's announcers aren't even close to going off the charts. On a scale of one to Yao Ming Just Hit a Three-Pointer, they're rating about a 5:

A few questions that I've been wondering for the last couple of weeks:

>Do the Chinese call censored movies "silent films"?

>If you fly across the international date line, does your 5 o'clock shadow adjust to the correct time zone?

>Why does Tianchen East Road actually go north?

>To enter the Olympic Green, your pass must have the letters "OCD" on it. When nearing the Green, 30 to 40 Chinese volunteers will swarm you, searching for this OCD sticker. Do any of them notice the irony?

>Why do 12 ounces of beer and 24 ounces of beer cost exactly the same amount of money at most stores?

>When did "why can't we be friends?" become a legitimate method of international diplomacy?

>If a Chinese speaker asks you an awkward question like "Do you know what eunuchs is?", is it wrong to answer "no" so you can hear them attempt to explain it in broken English?

>With an end-to-end subway ride taking upwards of an hour, how long will it be until the Beijing subway offers sleeper cars?

>Why is Jackie Chan on the cover of this months Cosmo?

>Is Evander Holyfield's ear more famous than David Beckham's right foot?

>Why are the Chinese unable to line up for anything except photos with me?

>What's a blue sky really look like, again?

What you're about to see is, I would assume, a first in advertising history. I'm talking about the unusual pairing of nationalism and ramen noodles.

The ad is from Uni-President, an official Olympic sponsor. Also of note: they're the sponsor of the Uni-President 7-Eleven Lions, a Taiwanese baseball team that José Canó -- father of Yankees second baseman Robinson -- used to play for.

Here's your "Go China! Eat Ramen!" ad:

Right now, the U.S. women are playing Brazil for a gold medal in women's soccer. But aside from those inside the Workers Stadium, Beijingers are not seeing the game.

In fact, CCTV -- the state-owned conglomerate that has the TV rights to the Olympics here in China -- is not televising either the men's or women's soccer finals.

Right now on CCTV-1, they're showing track & field. CCTV-2 is showing the women's 10m diving final; later tonight, they'll have the Chinese women's basketball team against Australia. CCTV-Olympics is showing the China-Brazil women's volleyball semifinal, before moving on to the quarterfinals of men's table tennis.

But as for America's big games tonight -- the U.S.-Japan gold medal softball game, the U.S.-Russia women's basketball semifinal or, yes, that U.S.-Brazil soccer final -- none of them are on any of CCTV's 16 channels.

The much-anticipated men's soccer final between Argentina and Nigeria also won't air on CCTV. The game is at noon on Saturday, and CCTV has not scheduled any Olympics programming on any of its channels at that hour. But the game still won't be on TV in China.

Canoeing, synchronized swimming and taekwondo will all air Saturday morning or late afternoon on the CCTV family of networks, however.

After a month of monitoring CCTV, it's clear to me that the state has gone to great lengths to promote Chinese nationalism through its TV programming, but at the expense of showing some of this country's most popular sports -- including basketball and soccer. There's a good reason why sports that China's medaling in -- like archery or judo -- have gotten significant coverage on CCTV, while many men's basketball games haven't even aired.

One more thing: when I see CCTV's anchors wearing shirts actually promoting the Chinese National Team on air -- re: above -- I wonder whether the Chinese people even notice the subliminal messages that their news media is feeding them.

Team USA won't have representation in either the men's or women's 4 x 100m finals after both teams botched the handoff on the last leg of tonight's qualifying races. That's what you'll be reading about tomorrow.

But here's what I want to know: the rest of the runners wore bibs with bold, printed letters. So why were the Americans wearing what appears to be a handwritten "USA" on their chests?

Two more images, including a side-by-side comparison, after the jump:

I am 6'5''. I am uncoordinated. I am gangly. I have the wingspan of someone who is 6'9''. I don't fit into clothes or cars or beds. My mother occasionally lends me to friends to dust hard-to-reach places.

In America, I'm tall. In China, I've become oversized.

The stereotype is true: the Chinese are short. Everything's built for people seemingly half my size. On the subway, I only kind-of fit. I sleep diagonally in my bed. I walk into low hanging objects all the time.

I find it strange that everything's been scaled down to their size. Even clothes fit differently here. In the States, I wear a size large. Here, I wear a 2XL or a 3XL, and sometimes, even those sizes aren't large enough. Forget about finding a pair of size 13 shoes.

To me, the Chinese are tiny. But for most Americans, they're just a bit shorter than average.

The average 17 year old male in this country stands 5'7''. The average 17 year old female is 5'1''.

So they're short, but they're not that short.

Still, I get my fair share of awkward stares. Everyone wants to take photos with me; that woman in the photo above is standing on a ledge that's some 20 inches high, and she's still barely my height.

Many want to know if I play basketball. By now, I've started saying yes, and telling them that I play for a Canadian team. Sometimes, I'm the star center for the Quebec Nordiques or the Winnipeg Jets. This seems to please them enormously.

But there is one question that I'm asked frequently in the States that I've yet to get in Beijing. No one, it seems, wants to know how the weather is up here. I suppose they can figure that out for themselves.

It's 7 p.m. in Beijing, and 5 a.m. in Denver. Here are the stories that are making Olympic headlines on this Thursday evening/morning, after the jump:

I thought it was an isolated incident. A rogue anchor, choosing to wear a suit that featured what appeared to be an oil slick on his right shoulder.

But the Chinese Craig Sager is not alone.

Two more CCTV anchors were spotted wearing this suit tonight during CCTV's basketball coverage. Also worth noting in the above photo: this anchor's basketball tie -- a bad Father's Day gift, I hope -- and that Silk Market-approved bracelet on his left wrist.

I think the blog is ready to declare CCTV's tailor as the biggest winner during these Games. Nonsensical right shoulder designs, Jetsons-inspired shirts and even the consistent pairing of an outfit with a similarly-colored Fuwa: he's done it all.

At this point, I wouldn't be surprised to see one anchor wear jungle green camouflage.

I was talking last night about the news that China had denied every application to hold a protest here in Beijing when a friend posed an unusual question: was the fact that the Chinese were even allowing people to apply to protest a sign of progress?

I said no. Allowing foreigners to fill out a form requesting freedom of speech when it's clear that the application will be -- no matter what the circumstances -- denied isn't progress. Hypothetical freedom of speech isn't worth anything.

Technically, China's constitution does allow for freedom of speech, but it conflicts with a law here known as Article 105:

What it says: Criminalizes "organizing, scheming or acting to subvert the political power of the state and overthrow the socialist system" and "incitement to subvert the political power of the state and overthrow the socialist system by spreading rumors, slander or other means."

What it does: Although China's constitution ostensibly guarantees the right to free speech and expression, statutes such as this one allow the state to suppress all criticism. Subversion charges are a common fate for China's activist bloggers and journalists.

So here's where this country stands: China has freedom of speech and the freedom to protest. However, those rights can be restricted based on government policy.

In this system, could an application form to protest -- even if the applications have not and will not be approved -- actually be a step forward for China?

I'll open up the question to you in the comments.

In my continued pursuit of journalistic excellence, I've been forced to make sacrifices. Late nights. Long hours. Bad press box food.

I've taken my lumps in the past, and here in Beijing, I'm willing to make sacrifices for you, the readers. With that in mind, in search of the great story, I did as any responsible reporter would and headed back to Club Bud.

And yes, I did uncover one story that's getting seriously underplayed in the news media: the Chinese do not use tongs.

Last night, a friend ordered a Corona at the bar. When the bartender needed to put that signature lime in the bottle, he reached into a large bucket and pulled out two chopsticks, before deftly snaring a lime and somehow maneuvering it into the beer.

It was an impressive effort. It's only a matter of time before this catches on in the States.

Also seen at Club Bud:

Evander Holyfield -- who may or may not be living at the club -- was there again. At least two major cable TV reporters were there. Some swimmer, along with two Jews and a black guy, also showed up. Not sure who they were.

The majority of the medalists, though, remained anonymous. I don't mean to say that they went unbothered, because they were busy all night. What I mean is that no one seemed to know who they were.

Example: inside, one American was taking photos with fans. He had a gold medal around his neck. I asked one kid with a camera who the medalist was.

"How should I know?" he said. "He's wearing a gold medal." He didn't seem to understand the non-sequitur.

It's worth noting that Angelo Taylor, the two-time gold medalist who no one seemed to recognize, used to work as an electrician. Anonymous then; semi-anonymous still to those without CCTV here in China.

Yili is the official milk sponsor of the Games and the one with endorsement from Liu Xiang, Yi Jianlian and the Chinese badminton team. But China's other milk giant -- Mengniu -- is trying to keep its market share despite Yili's overwhelming presence during the Olympics.

Mengniu doesn't have the athletic sponsors, though if you believe their Wikipedia page, they are the official sponsor of the Chinese space program. (They're also, according to their own website, based in Inner Mongolia.) Without big name sponsors, they're settling for the next best thing: overwhelming amounts of nationalism.

Here's one short ad that's running during these Games. They also have a second ad that I've seen but have yet to find online featuring pandas and a milk version of the Michelin man toasting to the company. I am not making this up.



I should note: the company's CEO, Niu Gensheng, did get to carry the Olympic torch on Aug. 7. This is the same man who, according to a CCTV report, "is a cow, but has running at the speed of a rocket."

One more of their non-Olympic ads after the jump:

I met karaoke superstar and Beijing City Weekend dining editor Matt Schrader for lunch this afternoon. Strangely enough for a guy who writes about food, Schrader claims to be a picky eater. I'll excuse that, though; lunch was impressive.

Schrader had asked me to meet him at the subway stop near his office. I knew the stop was on the west side of line 2. I knew the subway station started with the letter F and ended with the phrase "men."

Then I got onto line 2 and realized that -- of course -- there are two such stations that fit that description. They're right next to each other.

One is called Fuchengmen. The other is Fuxingmen.

I did end up picking the right stop -- Fuchengmen -- but the experience was a reminder that, as always, nothing here is ever easy for a non-Mandarin speaker. Not even finding subway stops that start with F and end in "men."

There's a new word that's been bothering me here in Beijing. On the subway, there are a number of stops that feature the prefix/suffix -- or whatever it's called in Mandarin -- "dong."

As in Tiananmen Dong, Dongzhimen, Dongsishitiao, Dongsi or, my personal favorite, Dongdan.

东, pronounced dōng, means east. All of those subway stations are on the east side of town.

But if not for that glaringly obvious fact, it'd be much harder to figure out exactly what all those dongs mean. Typing "dong" into the Chinese-English dictionary, two dozen results come up. Due to the four Mandarin tones, dong can actually mean a lot of things.

Pronounced identically to east, the word 冬 (dōng) means winter. The word for the boom of a drum -- 冬 -- is also dōng. As is 氡, which means radon, and 蝀, which means rainbow, and 苳, a Japanese rhubarb plant.

But that's just the pronunciation dōng. Change it up to dòng -- a seemingly minor yet important alteration -- and you might be talking about 冻 (to freeze), 洞 (cave), 胴 (large intestine) or 栋 (roof beam). A slight switch to dǒng can refer to either 懂, which means to understand, or 董, which means supervisor or landlord.

Then there's the Olympics' own -- and please, do not read these words too quickly -- double Dong. I'm talking about Dong Dong, the male trampolinist (pictured above) who won bronze on Tuesday. (I should mention here that Canada's Karen Cockburn took the silver in the women's competition.)

His name likely stems from a lineage dating back 2,000 years. An emperor needed to tame some dragons -- accidental humor, I swear --  and asked a man named Dong Fu to do it. Dong Fu managed to tame both the dragons and teach them to dance, though I don't know how.

Also, it's possible that the dragons were actually crocodiles, and that Dong Dong's name stems from the Jin Dian lineage, which means that his name translates as "title of official" or "leader."

Unless his name actually means Radon Radon.

Did I mention that this language is confusing?

It's 7 p.m. in Beijing, and 5 a.m. in Denver. Here are the stories that are making Olympic headlines on this Wednesday evening/morning, after the jump:

In China's Liu Xiang and American Terrence Tremmell, two top competitors are out of the 110-meter hurdles but Denver East High School graduate David Oliver is taking nothing for granted as Thursday's final approaches.

If you're old enough to be reading this blog, you've probably figured out by now that China makes at least 90% of the things you own. The other 10% is made in Taiwan, which, technically, is still part of China, or Mexico, which China would probably buy if it had the chance.

The great thing about having these things made here in China is that they also sell here for absurdly cheap. Many of the products sold in markets aren't fakes; they're just got some sort of tiny malfunction. The red dot on the cashmere sweater, if you will.

DVDs are no exception. Here's how one DVD store owner explained it to me: the Chinese factories tend to occasionally produce defective products. But the problem isn't usually with the DVD itself; it's typically with the packaging. When that happens, the DVD won't be sent back to the States. Instead, managers at the factories leave the DVDs in boxes for workers to take home.

So a few workers got smart and started selling DVDs to small stores for major profits. Then, those stores resell to consumers for even larger profits.

What's most amazing about this is that in the end, a single DVD disc still only costs 7.5 or 8 yuan (slightly more than a dollar).

One DVD store I visited -- which is both unmarked and accessible only by a hidden elevator -- had a few fine typos on their products. Their "Curb Your Enthusiasm" one is the best bootlegs I've seen. I'm sure Larry Dvid would be so proud.

I saw them immediately. There were five or six of them today, dressed in red, standing in the entrance to the YaShow Market. On the back of their jackets was one word: Sudan.

The Sudanese track & field team is one of the squads that will certainly draw attention during these Olympics. There's the conflict in Darfur. The Chinese hand in their country. Plus, as the quasi-swoosh on their jackets indicated, they're sponsored by China's Li Ning.

There's plenty I'd like to sit down and talk to the Sudanese about. But there's also an ethical dilemma I've been facing here at the Games.

Athletes are everywhere in Beijing. They're on the streets, in the bars and, most especially, at the markets.

Naturally, when I see an athlete, I have this tendency to want to pull out my tape recorder and start the Q&A. But so far, I haven't. At the venues, there are infinite opportunities for media to ask questions. Outside of them, I feel like the athletes should be given the freedom and the space to actually enjoy the city without having to worry about yet another reporter. Privacy, at least here in Beijing, is fleeting.

As that Sudanese runner is reaching into his pocket to buy some faux-pearls, is it really the best time to start asking him anything, from his pre-race preparations to his reaction to Liu Xiang's decision not to run?

So I just walked past those Sudanese athletes today, questions unasked. Somebody else will have the chance for that Q&A, I guess.

[Photo at top of Mustafa Abbadi, president of the Sudanese Athletic Association, by CRIENGLISH.com.]

"I'm against protesting, but I just don't know how to show it." -- Mitch Hedberg

Ready for media overload? Here goes:

BEIJING - Chinese authorities have not approved any of the 77 applications they received from people who wanted to hold protests during the Beijing Olympics, state media reported Monday.

The state-run Xinhua News Agency said the applications received since Aug. 1, a week before the games opened, were submitted by 149 people, including three from overseas. The complaints ranged from labor and medical disputes to inadequate welfare, it said.

But 74 of the applications were withdrawn because the problems "were properly addressed by relevant authorities or departments through consultations," Xinhua said.

As John Pomfret of The Washington Post so elegantly puts it: "Talk about efficiency!"

Also: anyone else find it strange that Xinhua, which is state-owned, broke the story? Personally, I think the Chinese see this as a positive story. The red tape is working!

Less than 24 hours after Liu Xiang decided not to run in the 110m hurdles, Nike's already trying to spin the situation.

CNBC's Darren Rovell is reporting that Nike's new ad campaign will center around a print ad with this text (translated from Mandarin):

Love competition.

Love risking your pride.

Love winning it back.

Love giving it everything you've got.

Love the glory. Love the pain.

Love sport even when it breaks your heart.

Just Do It.

Sure enough, the ad's already in today's papers. The image above is taken from the Beijing Youth Daily, a Chinese-language newspaper.

Two more thoughts about Liu Xiang, after the jump:

On Saturday, the blog brought you the story of Elephant Man, the Jamaican dancehall king who supported Usain Bolt in the 100m dash with some -- at least from my perspective -- difficult to decipher quotes.

A Jamaican friend who's familiar with Elephant Man's local dialect has translated his quotes for me:

>"Dem will put stone inna di road fi wi drop but wi ago run ova it. Right now it tight. Mi money deh pon di two a dem: Bolt and Asafa. But mi a put a extra energy pon Bolt. Mi know him from him a run a primary school and a mi fren like dat so mi just a bring him and give him mi support."

Means: "They will put gravel on the road for us to fall, but we will run over it without stumbling. Right now, it is a close call between Asafa and Bolt, but I think it will be the two of them. However, I will be putting more emphasis on Bolt taking it. I have known him since he was in elementary school, and we have been friends for a long time, so I am going to give him more of my support."

>"Mi nuh like how dem a draw out the whole a di runner dem blood. By the time dem fi run dem ago drop down. Two bottle! Weh dem ago run pon den?"

Means: " I don't like how they are taking so much blood from our athletes. By the time they are ready to run, they will be too weak and will faint. They have taken two containers of blood! What will they have left for the race?"

Thanks to Lisa for the translation.

The match had ended two hours earlier. Rafael Nadal had won the gold medal in the men's tennis singles final; he'd long since left the building.

From the stands, I had sat and watched as the volunteers at center court said their final goodbyes. Their role in the Games was already over.

But two hours after the match ended, as I was about to head home, I noticed one last volunteer. He'd snuck out onto center court to take a final picture. At first, he tried to set up his camera on the umpire's chair and use the self-timer, but the flash wouldn't go off. So he handed his camera off to the last security guard and struck a pose, his shadow cast across the court.

I'm not sure that the international media or the athletes would agree to it, but watching that volunteer take that last photo, I was reminded of the fact that if China had their way, they'd probably never want these Games to end. They're loving the attention so far.

A few more images and words below in this audio postcard from the hours after it all ended at center court:

 

The best party at the Beijing Olympics isn't by the lake at Hohai or in the popular Sanlitun District.

It's actually at something called the Agricultural Exhibition Center.

You wouldn't guess it by the name, but Beijing's two biggest parties -- the Holland Heineken House and Club Bud -- are both there. Since the Games started, they've both been packed, too.

The former, as you can guess by its title, is sponsored by the Netherlands. It's awash in orange, and on some nights, access is limited to those with a Dutch passport. Beers cost 30 yuan. On Friday, I talked volleyball with the Angolan team and met a ninth-degree black belt from Flushing, N.Y. It draws an eccentric crowd, I suppose.

Down the street, there's the even more exclusive Club Bud. Entrance is limited to athletes and those with tickets, and no, I have no idea how you procure a ticket. But somehow Sunday night, I managed to get my way in. Let me say this: they might be owned by Belgians now, but the King of Beers still throws a great party.

It's the Olympic party of choice, as the athletes are literally walking around with their medals on. They're even ordering beer -- well, asking for it, technically, since all drinks inside Club Bud are free -- with their medals.

Among the events I've been able to recreate from Sunday: a 10-minute discussion with Team New Zealand about "Flight of the Conchords" and a chat with some American Olympians about the relative merits of Vail's China Bowl.

Also spotted: a kangaroo, plus Evander Holyfield.

As for the "no fun Olympics" theory? So much for that.

It's 7 p.m. in Beijing, and 5 a.m. in Denver. Here are the stories that are making Olympic headlines on this Tuesday evening/morning, after the jump:

A few weeks ago, I had dinner with a few American students here who are studying Mandarin. We were swapping lost in translation stories when one of the students pulled out the best one I've heard yet.

He said that early in the semester, a professor assigned a new textbook for his class. When he went to pick it up, he found that the book had an unusual title.

The book, written in Mandarin, was a guide for students trying to navigate the Chinese-to-English transition. It was supposed to have the same title as that Bill Murray movie from a few years back.

Instead, the book had accidentally been titled "Found in Translation."

So perhaps you can understand how strange it is to watch the BOCOG translators in action here. They move -- how shall I put this? -- deliberately when forming their translations. Journalists haven't been too pleased with the process.

But the coaches aren't thrilled with it either. Today, during the Liu Xiang press conference, one journalist asked in English about the extend of the hurdler's injury. The translator started to speak, but the coach cut her off.

The coach then -- to my amazement -- answered in perfect English.

I don't have the text or footage of the scene, but I'll do you one better. That moment at the press conference felt almost identical to this scene from "The West Wing":



That's what just about every day here in Beijing feels like. You do find the people who speak English... eventually.

I've gotten my hands on a copy of the "Beijing Olympic Games Training Series: A Conversational English Reader." BOCOG -- the Beijing Olympic governing body -- is using it as a manual to teach volunteers how to react to any situation that may arise during the Games. Some of those situations just happen to be a bit unusual.

Today's text is reproduced in its entirety and is not edited. All non-sequiturs and grammatical errors are theirs. The text is titled "Near the Long Corridor" from the "At the Summer Palace" section of the reader. I am not sure whether or not the text is an endorsement by BOCOG for buddhism. Enjoy, after the jump:

My favorite part of CCTV's broadcasts: the network's amazing ability to pull from a wardrobe unlike any I've ever seen on American TV. Matching purple suits for the 100m dash? Yeah, they went there. And a few more, after the jump:

Perhaps only at the Beijing Olympics could a beer cost as much as a Snickers bar (5 yuan, or $.73). Maybe that's why the beer sponsors have been getting so much attention here, while a mere "Exclusive Supplier" of the Games like Snickers hasn't. Or maybe it's that Snickers' ads just show regular Chinese people who move at robot-like speed while flying, and not Kobe Bryant.

That being said, check out two of the Snickers ads playing in China right now:

The big news here in Beijing today was Liu Xiang's decision to pull out of the 110m hurdles competition. It's an incredible blow to the Chinese delegation. Here's the best way I can explain China's reaction so far: a journalist on CCTV nearly started crying on camera while reporting the news.

CCTV 1 cut away from the US-China softball game to show the press conference with Liu Xiang's coaches live. One of the coaches started crying while responding to a question. Some reporters started crying afterward as well.

Afterward, CCTV played a strange montage of Liu Xiang's warm ups today, set to an instrumental version of the Olympic theme song:



To put it in perspective: can you imagine if LeBron James tore his Achilles tendon and NBC played a three-minute long montage of James attempting to limp off the court? That's what CCTV did today for Liu Xiang.

There's another group that's affected by Liu Xiang's decision: the advertisers. If you're Cadillac, Coca Cola, Lenovo, Nike, Nutrilite, Visa, Yili or any of the other companies that the former gold medalist endorses, this news is tough to swallow.

It won't happen in public, but I'd be surprised if the bigger sponsors -- Coke and Nike in particular -- don't have a few questions for Liu Xiang's coaches. I'm sure they'd like to know why they weren't informed of the seriousness of the hurdler's injuries beforehand.

How soon will the ads featuring Liu Xiang get pulled from CCTV? Or does today's news reflect more poorly on the Chinese track & field coaches and not the sponsors? I don't have answers to either of those questions just yet.

A definite sign that I've been in this country too long:

As Usain Bolt was making his victory lap of the Bird's Nest on Saturday, he pulled his shirt halfway up.

I misinterpreted the gesture, though. See, there's a popular practice among men here in Beijing. When it gets really hot, they tend to roll up their shirts up to about nipple height, exposing their bellies.

So when Bolt rolled his shirt up to a similar height, I first thought that he was doing it as some sort of weird gesture to the Chinese people.

And then I realized that he was just showing off his abs.

I'm an idiot.

[Photo by Getty Images.]

The Olympic Green in Beijing is an advertiser's dream. Each of the official Olympic sponsors -- Coke, China Mobile (pictured at right), Omega, et al -- has a small convention center set up on the Green, and spectators walking to or from their ticketed events can stop by for some direct marketing. At night, these buildings are packed, as spectators stop by to see sanctimonious tributes to the glories of a Chinese-made laptop (Lenovo) or a good snapshot (Kodak).

But if you're just walking through the village, it feels more Super Bowl ad-ish. It takes about 30 seconds to move past a building. In those 30 seconds, you're walking through a focus group-tested swirl of sound and light, trying to draw you into the product/building. And if you're not interested in that product, there's another sponsor's building just beyond it.

So maybe that Johnson & Johnson building with the plants on the roof didn't catch your eye? There's always the animatronic-gymnasts-pirouetting-over-VW-Jettas-show next door.

I managed to escape the strip last night, though, heading north towards the field hockey and tennis venues. Past the lights and the marketing glitz, I reached an intersection.

The light was red, so I took a look around. To my right, a golf cart was waiting for the light.

There are thousands of these golf carts around Beijing, but this one caught my eye. In the back seat, two men were basically hanging off the cart. They were way too tall for the thing, and I watched as they tried to figure out exactly where to put their heads.

It was obvious that they were basketball players; NBA-types just don't look like ordinary people. They were also wearing suits, unlike most Olympians who wear their team colors around Beijing. So these guys were American basketball players.

The light turned green, but I was still waiting on the corner. The golf cart hung a U-turn and headed back toward the Green, taking Kobe Bryant and LeBron James with it.

They were still trying to figure out how to fit themselves into the cart as they faded out of view.
 
It's 7 p.m. in Beijing, and 5 a.m. in Denver. Here are the stories that are making Olympic headlines on this Monday evening/morning, after the jump:

Want to know how much the Chinese love basketball? In a great panda pen at the Beijing, the dwellers have a basketball they can play with.

I wrote a few weeks ago about the "Impossible is Nothing" art gallery that Adidas has up in Beijing. Now I'd like to pass along how two of the ads played in China. A few in the series of Adidas spots -- like David Beckham's -- were subtitled not translated into Mandarin. But Washington Wizards guard Gilbert Arenas' was. Here's how Agent Zero sounded in Beijing:

When Abhinav Bindra won India's first individual gold medal in the 10m air rifle competition last Monday, he became a instant national hero.

"More than the joy, elation, euphoria my strongest feeling is a release from a thousand kilo weight that has been daunting me for the last 12 years," Bindra wrote on his blog the day after in a post titled "Monkey off my back!!!!!!!!"

Now, Bindra -- a University of Colorado graduate -- has returned home to India. He has hordes of media outside his home hoping to talk to him and well-wishers all throughout the country.

But the Indian government seems more worried the chance that Bindra could be shot.

Bindra's home is under what the Indian government calls "z-plus" security, which is the highest level of security available in the country. It's exclusively used for VVIPs, or "very very important person" (even the VIPs in India are under a caste system, apparently).

Now, Bindra's chimed in on the irony of the situation:

Finally got home yesterday cocooned in Z-plus security. There is supposed to be a threat to my safety. As to why anyone would be interested in killing a shooter who has spent the last 12 years of his life shooting and successfully hitting a 0.5mm bulls eye from 10m away escapes me. Possibly I could just invite these fellows over for a shooting match... be it with a bb gun ;)

As for that photo above: the woman pinching Bindra's cheeks isn't one of his aunts. She's actually the President of India.

It's 7 p.m. in Beijing, and 5 a.m. in Denver. Here are the stories that are making Olympic headlines on this Sunday evening/morning, after the jump:

Where in the world is Matt Lauer? Next to me. Or was. Other morning I looked up when I heard the familiar voice of the Today Show host. Was cruising by in Today Show cart. The rest of us are slogging through an early morning funk and Matt is annoyingly alert and perky. Must be his time of day. 

You can sense the pride the Chinese take in the Water Cube and Birds Nest and other architectural wonders. They're snapping plenty of photos of these symbols of their ascent as world superpower. The other day I noticed a family standing near Water Cube. The couple's little daughter  - must be 3 or 4 - was literally dancing in the street. They asked me to take photo of them. Sort of a kick for me. 

If you're reading this right now, you're only a click away from finding out who won the men's 100m dash. The race is already over, but NBC's opted to show the race in prime time.

I won't spoil the finish for you. But I will pass along this link from The Jamaican Gleaner, which has a preview of the race.

The Gleaner talked to the parents of both Usain Bolt and Asafa Powell about their sons. Aside from being absurdly fast, the two boys don't share many common traits. The Gleaner does make special note of one link between the two, however:

Asafa wasn't a troublemaker, his father said. "I don't remember beating him. If he was in trouble, he'd say, 'Daddy, wha me do now'?"

And later in the article:

Usain Bolt, the world's 100 metre record holder, received his share of floggings....

On one such occasion, he went to a games room although he was told not to. He was given a fine whipping.

Apparently, Jamaica has a history of spankings that I was previously unaware of.

Unrelated, but, upon reading Powell's "Wha me do now?" quote, I can't help but think of "A Mighty Wind."

Here's the thing I like most about this UPS ad, which started airing last year in China: it hearkens back to the old days of Beijing (i.e. three weeks ago), when a traffic jam might tie up your entire afternoon. Those who've only recently arrived in Beijing should be thankful to have avoided Beijing's infamous rush hour.

A whole series of Chinese athletes Photoshopped into famous movie posters went online last night. At right, you're looking at the modified Red Army of (from left to right) Yi Jianlian, Yao Ming, Wang Zhi Zhi and Sun Yu.

How exactly the Chinese believe that a man of Yao's stature could storm the beaches at Normandy, I'm not sure.

But a few other excellent posters -- Yao as "Hancock" and "Shrek," Liu Xiang as "Spiderman" and Michael Phelps as "E.T." -- can be found here. Enjoy.

At 8 p.m. last night, the opening rounds of the 100m dash were underway at the Bird's Nest. The U.S. women's basketball team was tipping off against Spain. China's Super Dan Lin was playing countryman Jin Chen in a badminton semifinal.

Meanwhile, two Beijing bloggers competed in what surely must be a record-setting attempt in Olympic irrelevance.

I'm talking, of course, about the blog-vs.-blog pop-a-shot showdown between myself and The Washington Post's Dan Steinberg, he of the fine D.C. Sports Bog.

We met last night down in the Wangfujing District, underneath the oversized statue of Yao Ming for a best-of-three competition. Details are after the jump:

Here's an audio report from Northeast Beijing, where I listened to the final minutes of China's 59-55 men's basketball victory over Germany through a boombox with the security guards at Renmin University. I recognized two words the entire time: Yao Ming.

Enjoy:


duration: 5:58

A brief story that, by no means, should be considered a journalistic effort to report here in Beijing:

Last night on line 10 of the subway, I met a group of Brits who had been to the USA-Cuba baseball game earlier in the day. After explaining to them why the U.S. doesn't feature its top baseball players in the Olympics, I decided to ask a pressing question.

See, one of the Brits was wearing a Derek Jeter t-shirt jersey. But at the same time, he didn't seem to have any idea about the general rules of baseball. This confused me.

"Do you know who the guy on your jersey is?" I asked him.

"This guy?" he said, pointing to the word "Jeter" on the back of his shirt. "No, I've never heard of him."

"So why are you wearing the shirt?"

"A friend of mine from America gave it to me."

"So you have no idea who Derek Jeter is?"

"Derek? That's news to me. I didn't know his first name. And I thought his last name was pronounced JET-her."

This enlightening baseball conversation was punctuated by one of the Brits yelling "No one cares about your bloody baseball!" in my ear every three seconds.

And for the record: no, they had no opinion on whether A-Rod is better suited for shortstop. Of course, they weren't aware which position shortstop was in the first place.

Conversations like these do remind me why the Olympics has/needs three official beer sponsors.

It's 7 p.m. in Beijing, and 5 a.m. in Denver. Here are the stories that are making Olympic headlines on this Saturday evening/morning, after the jump:

Americans will be watching U.S. sprinter Tyson Gay tonight in the 100m final, but all eyes in Jamaica are on Usain Bolt and Asafa Powell, the two men who have held the title of Fastest Man in the World this year.

Some on the island, like popular Jamaican rapper Elephant Man, have already picked their favorite for the race. Elephant Man -- whose new album includes contributions from Chris Brown, Diddy and Rihanna -- told the Jamaican Star, a daily tabloid:

"Dem will put stone inna di road fi wi drop but wi ago run ova it. Right now it tight. Mi money deh pon di two a dem: Bolt and Asafa. But mi a put a extra energy pon Bolt. Mi know him from him a run a primary school and a mi fren like dat so mi just a bring him and give him mi support."

He also spoke out against the repeated blood tests that Bolt and Powell have taken in the last week:

"Mi nuh like how dem a draw out the whole a di runner dem blood. By the time dem fi run dem ago drop down. Two bottle! Weh dem ago run pon den?

"It's one of the best times for Jamaicans to see the Olympics and we are one of the favourites: running, sprinting, a we a di favourite."

I'd be inclined to call Elephant Man's quotes gibberish, but check out this interview with him. His syntax isn't exactly Shakespearean. 

Also of note: Puma -- which Bolt endorses -- used one of Elephant Man's songs in a 2004 Olympic ad starring Bolt. Elephant Man even had a cameo in one of the ads.

[One post-script: I do remember my sister's freshman year college roommate, who was from Kingston. My sister has fond memories of reading her roommate's first essays and telling her that, yes, American professors would deduct points for sentences that started "The ting is...".]
 

Coming soon: The blog takes on The Washington Post's Beijing Sports Smog Bog in pop-a-shot. An interview with one of Beijing's premier bloggers. And possible assorted chaos.

Keep it tuned to the Rocky's Olympics coverage, and enjoy your weekend, folks.

I've gotten my hands on a copy of the "Beijing Olympic Games Training Series: A Conversational English Reader." BOCOG -- the Beijing Olympic governing body -- is using it as a manual to teach volunteers how to react to any situation that may arise during the Games. Some of those situations just happen to be a bit unusual.

Today's text is reproduced in its entirety and is not edited. All non-sequiturs and grammatical errors are theirs. The text is titled "In a bar at the International Zone" from the "At the International Zone of the Olympic Village" section of the reader. Today's text is apparently an example of how medalists will celebrate their Olympic accomplishments. Enjoy, after the jump:

Here's a special edition of Ad Watch today, featuring an old ad for Oishi chips. The chips are still around; I haven't seen this ad on TV, though. It's definitely one of the (intentionally) funnier things I've seen over here. Enjoy:

They started an Olympics tennis match at 12:41 a.m. Saturday in Beijing. That's right, started.

The next 400 words are about Azerbaijan, two positive tests for ecstasy, players becoming ill due to poison released via a hotel room's ventilation system and the Spanish women's field hockey team.

You might need to sit down for this one.

Tomorrow, Spain's women's field hockey team plays its fourth game of the Olympics against South Africa. The Spaniards are 1-2 so far in qualifying.

But members of the Azerbaijan field hockey team don't believe that Spain should even be playing in the Olympics. They believe that they were wrongly denied a spot during the games.

The dispute stems back to April, when Olympic field hockey qualifying matches were held in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. Per Reuters:

[Spanish officials] said four members of the team had collapsed in the hotel prior to their match against Kenya having inhaled gas that had escaped from the air conditioning system.

They also complained that players were unable to sleep after being bombarded by telephone calls in their hotel rooms. Others felt ill after drinking water given to them by organisers during matches.

But Spain still managed to win the tournament, including a 3-2 victory in the final over Azerbaijan, and earn a spot in Beijing.

Then in May, the International Hockey Federation ruled that two players had tested positive for ecstasy use, according to Spanish sport daily Marca.

FIH "rules state that a country must be disqualified from a tournament if more than one team member tests positive." Azerbaijan was due to take Spain's place in the Olympics.

But the federation ultimately decided to suspend only one player for the Olympics. FIH said that the second, Gloria Comerma (above right), was allowed to play because "there was no fault or negligence on her part" for her ecstasy use.

Azerbaijan filed a protest on Aug. 8, the opening night of the the Olympics, but it was denied.

So tomorrow, check out Spain's women's field hockey team as they take on South Africa. They've been poisoned and harassed. One of their active players was on ecstasy during qualifying matches, but her sport's governing body said that it wasn't her fault that she was on drugs. They've defeated repeated appeals from the Azerbaijan team.

That they're even here in Beijing is pretty incredible. That they could still medal defies explanation.

There's entirely too much to link to here, so please, follow me after the jump for a few excellent Olympic-related videos from Slate, "The Daily Show," Dwayne Wade, puppet Kanye West (pictured above), et al.

BEIJING -- The legitimacy of the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics was called into question today when one American journalist revealed that the dimensions of the famed Water Cube do not meet the geometric specifications for a cube.

The Water Cube -- the home of Beijing's swimming and diving events -- is actually a parallelepiped, commonly referred to as a hexahedron with three pairs of parallel sides. It is also known in industry circles as "a box."

Experts from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology quickly confirmed the allegations about the building, which is infrequently referred to as the National Aquatics Centre.

"Most certainly, with its right rectangular features, this so-called Water 'Cube' is nothing more than a hoax," said Clark Segal, the university's director of geometric studies. "As everyone knows, this venue could be referred to as a cuboid prism, but certainly not a cube."

Spokesmen from the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games called the assertion "a joking-me assessment."

"Your geometric knowledge is clearly slanted," BOCOG's Xiande Shui said. "We are all friends here, united under one giant cube." He then invited reporters to a noontime briefing on Adidas sneakers held next door to the Main Press Centre's McDonald's restaurant.

Credit for the discovery of the falsified cube goes to Bob Monroe of the Wauwinet Herald, a small bi-weekly based in southern New Jersey.

"You know, I was just sitting there during [Michael] Phelps' 200 meter individual gold medal swim, trying to figure out how to put this new Olympic pin on my bag, when I looked up at the roof," Monroe said. "I just knew something felt wrong with it."

Monroe initially believed that the Water Cube was a six-faced polyhedron, but he also noted afterward that he spent most of his 9th grade geometry class playing Tetris on his TI-83 Plus calculator.

The discovery does raise doubts about the legitimacy of these Olympics, skeptics said.

Mark Spitz, winner of seven gold medals at the 1972 Munich Games, will hold a press conference later today declaring that Michael Phelps' six gold medals should be disqualified due the swimming venue's illegitimate properties, a Spitz spokesperson said.

Others believe the Cube's real identity could lead to even further complications among members of China's Politburo.

"They say they're creating democracy in the Asian sphere," said Lewis Struck, a Fulbright scholar at Beijing Normal University. "But how can we be sure that they're really spreading free markets symmetrically at ratios consistent with pi?"

Many reporters said they were considering using an asterisk when referring to the Water Cube in future stories.

With Michael Phelps' latest gold medal today in the 200m individual medley, I'm starting to wonder whether Mr. Phelps is even aware that they're handing out other medals at these Olympics. Or that he doesn't need to shatter a world record each time in order to win the gold.

But moving beyond that, Phelps now has six gold medals at these Games. So let's do a ridiculous hypothetical: if Michael Phelps was a country -- Phelpsistan, perhaps? -- how would he compare to the rest of the world?

Phelpsistan: 6 gold medals.

All of South America: 1 silver, 5 bronze (Argentina, Brazil and Columbia have medaled).

Non U.S. NAFTA countries: 1 bronze (Mexico has medaled; amazingly, Canada has not).

The Actual Stans: 3 silver, 5 bronze (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan have medaled).

Countries that invented the Olympics (Greece): 0 medals.

Countries that have one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World: 1 bronze (Egypt has medaled; you're slacking, Babylonia).

Nordic countries: 1 gold, 3 silver, 5 bronze (Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden have medaled).

I don't see Phelpsistan rising as a major power just yet, though. Compared to countries who have medaled and have nuclear capabilities (China, France, India, North Korea, Russia, the U.K., the U.S.), he's still behind.

It's 7 p.m. in Beijing, and 5 a.m. in Denver. Here are the stories that are making Olympic headlines on this Friday evening/morning, after the jump:

Olympic hustle and bustle? Not much at the main venues. Spectators are staying away, and streets around Water Cube and National Indoor Stadium lack the usual dense throng of fans. Chinese officials say they can't explain the thin crowds, but the atmosphere doesn't help. Almost feels like a military base.

On the eve of the Games Michael Phelps apparently got stuck at a bus station for 20-25 minutes. So did he pull a star trip? According to people who were there,  Phelps went with the flow, chatting with fellow swimmers until the tardy bus arrived. That squares with the Phelps I've observed. He spent much of the leadup to the Games playing the card game spades with roomates - and then went out and did his super-hero thing.

Closing out today: an audio slideshow about those Nigerian soccer fans. Enjoy:

A few final notes from that Worker's Stadium doubleheader:

>The BOCOG manual says that beer will not be sold at venues. Someone at the stadium didn't get that memo. Bud, Tsingtao and Yanjing were on sale for 5 yuan ($.73). It was cold, too.

>The stadium -- where the soccer finals will be held -- has no clock. I spent much of the game squinting at the JumboTron, trying to see the same tiny clock that viewers are seeing on TV. BOCOG needs to fix this.

>While I'm on the subject: the Chinese JumboTron operator cut away whenever the official TV feed showed a replay. No replays of any of the goals or the key red card for the U.S. were shown.

>Leaving the stadium, the volunteers were lined up along the exit waving those giant orange things that they use to direct planes at the airport. Very effective.

>Chinese fans are multi-taskers. They can cheer and fan themselves at the same time. They also tend to fan in unison, so if you stand at the bottom of a section and look up, it's like watching windshield wipers move. Unusual, yes, but compared to most of what happened yesterday, it seemed fairly pedestrian.

>With the stadium lights on, the smog just got worse.

>To the halftime Fuwa and cheerleader dance (at right), I say this: uncomfortable doesn't begin to describe it.

>Toughest name of the night for the Chinese PA announcer: Sacha Kljestan. I think she accidentally ordered sweet and sour donkey when she tried to introduce him.

>Argentina's Diego Buonanotte is 5'3''. I think that may be pushing it. Heck of a free kick he hit, though.

The Chinese Craig Sager is at it again. I don't know if it's a good thing that his suit matches the Fuwa's hair in the bottom right of the screen.

If you're wondering: no, the Hamburglar was not available for comment.

One more CCTV item, after the jump:

I am going to say something right now that will trivialize my entire argument, but do stay with me on this:

Chinese fans are like Ron Burgundy.

By which I mean: they will say or do anything that is put in front of them.

In the States, sure, JumboTrons can get the crowd going. Put a "Scream if you love Nuggets basketball" graphic up, and the Pepsi Center crowd might eat it up. But not like here. When the "Let's Do the Mexican Wave" graphic appeared on the Worker's Stadium screen on Wednesday, a huge roar swept over the crowd.

Volunteers sprang into action. At one designated location, the volunteers instructed fans to stand up and start the wave. And they did, en masse.

From the fans' reaction, you'd have thought that Yao Ming was flying over the Worker's Stadium, dropping 100 yuan bills into the crowd. The only wave I've ever seen that came close was at Michigan Stadium, but even 100,000 screaming maize and blue fans couldn't touch this wave.

The wave circled the stadium until the graphic went off the JumboTron. Within seconds, the wave stopped.

It gets weirder, after the jump:

In all the Olympics hoopla, it's easy to forget that there actually are shoe companies over here not named Adidas, Li Ning or Nike. One Chinese brand, Anta, has been left almost entirely out of the Olympics picture. They're still a factor in the market, though, with endorsers like Argentina's Luis Scola and the Houston Rockets' Steve Francis wearing their shoes.

Here's one of their ads that's gotten some airtime on Beijing TV. They've even had the courtesy to add subtitles. Well done.

One point of conversation with the Nigerian contingent yesterday: how is it possible that CCTV could have so many channels but so few good events?

A random sampling from 8:08 pm Beijing time. USA basketball is playing Greece. Blake is playing Federer. Serena Williams is playing Dementieva. In the pool, there's the men's 100m butterfly. So what's on CCTV instead?

CCTV 1: China-Austria men's ping pong doubles.

CCTV 2: Women's judo, 78kg group.

CCTV 3: Taiwan-Japan men's baseball.

CCTV 4: Chinese-language news.

CCTV Olympics: Men's badminton, featuring Super Dan of China. (Note: this channel was formerly CCTV 5.)

CCTV 6: Dubbed over Bollywood movie.

CCTV 7: Replay of China-Angola men's basketball.

CCTV 8: Chinese soap opera.

CCTV 9: English-language news.

CCTV 10: A documentary on ancient statues.

CCTV 11: Chinese opera (see photo, above right, and yes, that's a real person, not a cartoon).

CCTV 12: Equestrian events from Hong Kong.

CCTV Beijing: An orchestral concert.

CCTV with Indecipherable Chinese Title: The Opening Ceremonies, specifically the part where the girl is lip-syncing because the real singer wasn't attractive enough for TV.

CCTV that, if it was in English, would probably have a title like "Live Look In": An endless reel of other CCTV channels, with the TV guide scrolling along the bottom line and no Greg Gumbel to take me to the next game.

Can't I get one CCTV channel devoted to America? I'd even let them put pro-communist announcers on, and allow them to rant about the evils of democracy. They can play the Hamster Dance music in the background during games. Or "It's a Small World" on a never-ending loop. Just let me watch the damn basketball game, please.

This is the story of courage, of patriotism, of standing up for the right to stand up.

But mostly, this is a story about a drum.

Well, actually, about four drums. And three trumpets. And a tambourine. And lime green afro wigs. And 30 men from Nigeria.

It's after the jump:

Move over Joe Theismann: we've got a new candidate for Most Painful Injury to Watch in Real Time.

Warning to viewers: the following images of Hungarian weightlifter Janos Baranyai are disturbing. You might not want to be eating or drinking anything while watching this. (And the photos aren't much better.)

Slate's Tim Wu has an article up titled "Are the media being too mean to China?" It's a worthy read, but one sentence really stands out:

"It's the dishonesty, as much as the substance of what's wrong in China, that seems to get under the skin of Western reporters."

That's it exactly. And to explain why I distrust the Chinese government so much, I'd like to take you back to my second week here in July.

That week, I went on one of the BOCOG arranged media tours, part of what a number of reporters were calling "the charm offensive." The tour started out at a Beijing water plant, which was strategically placed next to the town dump. The entire tour went downwind, er, downhill from there.

Next, they took us an hour north of a city to a stop that they had ambiguously called "Beijing Suburbs." On the way, they explained that we were going to a real Beijing country village.

The village that turned out to be as real as the cardboard version of Rock Ridge at the end of "Blazing Saddles."

So the first stop on the real Beijing village tour: a brand new, Greg Norman-designed golf course. For what it costs to be a member, you could probably feed the entire city of Beijing for a day (I'm only kind of kidding.). This golf course just so happened to be right next door to this village of theirs.

The second stop was an authentic Beijing village home. On the road up to it, we passed that sign that you're seeing at right: "Reception Village of Olympic Country Tour." The homes were as authentic as you'd expect: one woman even had a 40 inch TV. The guides explained that the government had paid for everything in her home, as long as she agreed to let media members stop by and take photos.

But the moment when everything fell apart came a few minutes later. As camera crews literally followed our every move, the guides took us to an ancient temple. It is the only one I know of in Beijing with automatic flushing toilets.

Inside, it got worse. The place was only half finished. But what was finished was a remarkable fabrication. You see the photo of flowers at the top of the page? They're fake. And the raindrops on the fake flowers? They're fake, too.

I asked the tour guide when this authentic village was built. She told me 2002.

Is it a coincidence that Beijing was awarded the Games in 2001? I asked. No, she said. This is the first part of a "step-by-step investment" in a "new China village."

Meanwhile, they encouraged us to take photos. Take photos and send them back to America. Show your friends and your readers what real China looks like.

Walking through, I kept writing down one thing over and over in my notebook: who would believe that this is real? And if BOCOG wants me to believe that this is real, then can I really trust BOCOG at all with anything?

Then I reached the end of the temple. There was a a giant golden Buddha statue. I went to take a photo. A man in a robe came running out. The tour guide looked at me.

"The monk says that you are not supposed to take photos," she said.

She pointed to a tiny sign at the base of the Buddha: "No photographing."

I looked over at the monk and wondered if he was a monk or an actor. I looked over at the tour guide, who works for the state-run tour company. I looked over at the Buddha and wondered if even he was fake.

I took the photo anyway.

It's 7 p.m. in Beijing, and 5 a.m. in Denver. Here are the stories that are making Olympic headlines on this Thursday evening/morning, after the jump:

Common sense rule #103: don't talk extemporaneously to reporters about topics you don't know and understand.

The new Oshinsky corollary to common sense rule #103: don't even think about doing it in a foreign language.

Expansion: walking to my seat for the second game of the day's doubleheader, I knew Argentina was playing. But I couldn't find anyone who knew Argentina's opponent. It wasn't on the ticket. There weren't an excessive number of flags from one random country around the stadium. They hadn't even announced the match-up over the PA after the first game ended.

I've got my five yuan ($.73) beer in one hand and a package of Chinese ho-hos in my pocket. I'm almost to my section when I see a camera crew walking toward me. It's pretty easy to figure out that they're from Argentina, and based on their faces, it looks like they're having a tough time finding anyone who speaks Spanish.

One of them catches my eye. "¿Se habla español?" he asks. I hesitate, then nod yes. I haven't really spoken Spanish at any length in the last month or so. Agreeing to an interview and just hoping that the right words will fall out of my mouth is, at best, ambitious.

Or, at worst, exactly what actually happened. I'll describe what follows as a moment-by-moment reconstruction of the interview that spawned the Oshinsky corollary. The entire thing took less than two minutes. Full text is after the jump:

After today's shocking revelation that we were accidentally, uh, censoring our readers' comments, we're trying to make good at the Rocky's Olympics blog. Normally, we'd be responding to comments on the blog in real time, but today, basically a ton of comments spanning the entirety of this blog's existence just showed up. I'm going to attempt to respond to some of them. that we really would have responded to earlier if not for the commenting mishap. Sorry about that. The responses are after the jump:

We're into the 70th minute of the US-Nigeria soccer game when I look over into the section entryway. One of the BOCOG volunteers -- a member of the stadium's designated cheer squad -- looks exhausted. She's been leading the same cheer over and over again. So I decide to intervene.

"I'm sorry, but do you know the 'Ole! Ole! Ole!' chant?" I ask.

"Yes," she says, with no obvious recognition of this chant registering on her face.

"Maybe you should try that one instead," I say.

She frowns. "I do not think I am allowed to."

The wheels are in motion before she even finishes the sentence. "Well, if you can't, can I borrow your microphone and do it?" I ask.

She looks back at one of the ushers. He nods.

She set me up in the aisle. I place the boom box-type apparatus -- which looks shockingly like George Jetson's car -- around my neck. She turns the mike on, and for a fleeting second, I consider the following:

I have a microphone. I have a captive audience that does not speak English. If there was ever a time to lead a massive cheer-a-long -- "Gimme a T! I! A! N! A!...." -- this would be it.

If there was ever a time to find myself on the next unmarked Chinese cargo plane back to the United States, this was also it.

So I opt against deportation, give the mike a quick test and -- after realizing that BOCOG's using a sound system that's not even worthy of third prize at an elementary school bingo competition -- attempt to get the crowd going.

[WARNING: the sound levels on the video below are horrific. Do not listen to this at full volume. Please, for your own safety, turn down the volume.]



Yes, some people did actually sing along: about half, probably. The rest seemed to believe that I was placing some sort of curse on their family.

It was certainly worth it for the post-chant ovation, though.

Back in March, China's Heng Yuan Xiang Group, which produces wool products, released this ad for the Olympics. Within days, the backlash from it was so strong that the company was forced to pull the ad.

Luckily/unluckily, the ad still lives on today on YouTube.

To answer the question you'll be asking afterwards: no, that video's not stuck on repeater. The company actually used the "let's annoy them until they buy our product" marketing strategy. It's the "Are we there yet?" of ads. Enjoy (kind of):

It's past midnight here in Beijing as I write this. I've just returned from an all-day men's soccer doubleheader at the Worker's Stadium, where Nigeria beat the U.S., 2-1, and Argentina beat Serbia, 2-0.

So here's the warning: the last 12 hours have produced some immensely bloggable content. I'll be scattering much of it over the next two days. If you do not like any of the following topics -- Nigerians getting defensive about their trumpets; creepy synchronized chanting; dancing blow up mascots; underpriced (not a typo) beer; poorly executed interviews in foreign languages regarding the nature of Eastern European soccer; or Rocky bloggers leading "Ole!" chants to the masses -- you might just want to come back Friday.

You've been warned.

If you've been a semi-frequent reader of the blog, you've probably noticed one unusual thing: in the six weeks we've been at it here on the blog, despite a collective effort of nearly 150 entries, we'd yet to receive a single comment.

Which, for a blog of this size and -- dare I say -- magnitude has to be some sort of blogging world record.

But thanks to the tireless work of a few faithful blog readers, we discovered that people were trying to comment, but our computers -- which, naturally, were built in China -- apparently didn't want to receive them.

So the Rocky's staff went into our wayback machine (secret access key: an ink-stained thumbprint) and found the glitch: the blog was inadvertently set to "receive trusted comments only."

Which meant none of you.

Basically, the commenting section here was accidentally set to "Revoke Joey Cheek's visa" for no apparent reason. Our sincerest apologies for this.

But on this glorious Wednesday in Beijing, the smog is thick and the commenting is open and free. With registration first, of course. (We'll keep your information stateside, though. I think.)

Enjoy.

When Michael Phelps was taking his time during a press conference, a Chinese official gave the impression he was on the clock.

Before these Games started, I was lucky enough to visit a number of the sights here in Beijing. In all, they're almost too numerous to count. So please excuse me when I tell you that I don't remember exactly where the photo at left was taken; I believe it was the Winter Palace. Or was it the Sarcophagus of Brevity? I'm not entirely sure.

The sign I remember distinctly, though. I didn't understand it at the time. No megaphones? Who brings megaphones to a temple?

A few weeks later, I understand. In general, the Chinese don't project very well when they speak. Police, especially, have trouble getting their voices heard. So as I witnessed a few weeks ago, they're using a secret weapon: megaphones.

At the time, I hoped it was a one-time incident. But that's not the case. Near the venues, on the streets or even on the subway escalators, there are police brandishing their megaphones, shouting in a language I don't understand for people to do something. When it doesn't work, they turn up the volume on the megaphone and yell even louder.

My one question: if they can get a no megaphone sign at the Temple of Serene Thought, can't BOCOG hang a few of them around town? Censor your Internet if you'd like, but would freedom from screaming gibberish be too much to ask?

It's 7 p.m. in Beijing, and 5 a.m. in Denver. Here are the stories that are making Olympic headlines on this Wednesday evening/morning, after the jump:

This sign, seen at the subway station near the famous Silk Market in Beijing, raises a lot of questions. Like: if you're trying to tell people to respect the rights of sponsors who've paid millions to endorse these Games, then why'd you break your own rule?

Yes, five days after the Opening Ceremonies, BOCOG's massive snub of Adidas still lingers. The quick background: instead of picking a non-partisan torch bearer, BOCOG chose Li Ning, the head of third biggest shoe company in China (Nike and Adidas are 1-2) to light the Olympic flame. Adidas has invested possibly $200 million or more to sponsor the Olympics, but it was Li Ning that got all the opening night headlines.

This news will hurt even more: last Saturday, I asked, "Who knows what kind of profit Li-Ning will reap from the torch lighting?" We've already got an answer, courtesy Darren Rovell at CNBC, who is reporting that Li Ning -- the man -- has made over $40 million this week due to his company's rising stock. The main reason for Li Ning's sudden stock market surge? Duh: the company's exposure at the Opening Ceremonies.

As was noted here at the blog last week: it was easily the greatest free ad in history.

I've gotten my hands on a copy of the "Beijing Olympic Games Training Series: A Conversational English Reader." BOCOG -- the Beijing Olympic governing body -- is using it as a manual to teach volunteers how to react to any situation that may arise during the Games. Some of those situations just happen to be a bit unusual.

Today's text is reproduced in its entirety and is not edited. All non-sequiturs and grammatical errors are theirs. The text is titled "The referee gives the half-time whistle" from the "At the National Stadium" section of the reader. Today's text is apparently an example of how Olympic spectators talk to each other during games. It also explains just about everything you need to know about how the Chinese are planning on discouraging drinking, smoking and general fun during games. The text makes about as much sense as the script for "K-Pax." If you'd like to see part one of this primer, click here.

In this text, England appears to be leading 2-0 at the half over an unnamed team. (Also of note: England does not have a soccer team in either the men's or women's competitions during these Olympic Games.) Enjoy:

This man is an anchor for China's state-owned CCTV. A few times a day, he shows up on CCTV to provide Olympics-related news updates. I do not know his name.

Obviously, none of that information is really pertinent anymore. What does matter is this man's suit, a suit that might even be too bold for one Craig Sager.

It's a good thing that CCTV doesn't broadcast in HD. I don't think the current technology is capable of handling such fabrics.

Additional photo proof, after the jump:

This quote from tennis' third ranked player, Novak Djokovic, stopped me cold today:

"It's true, I see people like Kipketer, LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Yao Ming, all the top athletes in the world. So, yes, I do ask them for pictures because for me this is the memory which is going to stay in my life forever."

LeBron, Kobe, Yao: I'm familiar with all of them.

But Kipketer?

I believe he's talking about Wilson Kipketer, a Danish sprinter middle-distance runner who took bronze in the 800m in the 2004 Olympics. In fact, let's assume that Kipketer, who is here in Beijing but is not running for the the Danes this year, is exactly who he's talking about.

So here's my thought:

Djokovic was 9 years old when Kipketer set the world record in the 800m (in Secretariat-like fashion, I might add). He was 13 when Kipketer took silver in Sydney. He was 17 when Kipketer won bronze in Athens.

So let's get past the "who the heck is this Kipketer fellow?" question and ask something more pertinent: when did a Serbian tennis prodigy who was busy avoiding domestic conflict in Eastern Europe while simultaneously focusing entirely on becoming really good at hitting a small yellow ball at high speeds and turning pro at age 14 have time to closely follow the progress of a Danish sprinter who's never even won an Olympic gold medal?

Any logical answer that can be provided either by email or in the comments below would be much appreciated.

When Western companies come to Asia, one of the first things they have to do is figure out exactly what to call themselves. Some -- like Adidas or Nike -- just keep their English names. Others try to reinvent their brand through the local language.

Take Coca Cola, for example. Ask for a Coke in most stores, and they'll have no idea what you're talking about. But ask for a bottle of delicious happiness, and you might have more success.

Yes, the Mandarin word for Coca Cola translates as "delicious happiness." That's marketing for you.

Moving on: here's one of Coke's many ads for the Olympics, featuring one terrifying red carpet being rolled out to the Pacific Ocean to welcome... Yao Ming? I'm not sure exactly what they're trying to say about where Yao fits on the evolutionary scale, but apparently, the big guy can breathe underwater (while staying dry and keeping a torch lit, I might add). Enjoy:

Maybe it's the thrill of haggling -- maybe it's the free boxed set of chopsticks that they're handing out to anyone with a BOCOG pass -- but the YaShow Clothing Market in Sanlitun was packed this afternoon. Among the athletes in attendance: members of the Angolan men's basketball team, who, in addition to drawing curious looks from all of the Chinese vendors, managed to find time to buy shoddily made electronics.

Of course, a few particularly striking athletes not wearing official team clothing were also spotted. Namely, me.

See, while getting measured for a new suit on the third floor, a man with an Irish accent walked over to me. Just a few feet away, a few members of the U.S. swim team were trying on new jackets. They were wearing Team USA gear. I was not. And I just happened to be taller than all of the real Olympians. This confused him.

"What's your sport, mate?" he said. With real Olympians in the room, I didn't even look up.

He said it again. I glanced up this time. He was looking right at me.

"Me?" I said. "No, I'm not an Olympian. I'm a writer."

He looked me up and down. "I think that's stretching it a bit," he replied, frowning. He then walked off, muttering something. I presume he was wondering why Michael Phelps wouldn't just fess up and admit that he was shopping at a Beijing market.

Other countries seen at YaShow, in no particular order, after the jump:

A look at the good and the bad of being an Olympics reporter in Beijing. Despite some complaining, it's mostly good.

I love Maryland Terrapins basketball. There is no objective, journalistic way to put this. I just love Maryland Terrapins basketball.

I was raised in Maryland. My father, along with his four siblings, all attended the University of Maryland. By the age of six or seven, I probably could have driven the route from my house to College Park, Md., if only I was tall enough to reach the pedals.

I've been through it all with the Terps. Joe Smith's heroics at Duke. Drew Nicholas' three over UNC-Wilmington. The '02 Championship team.

Laron Profit would make the list for my top five Terps of all time. Juan Dixon and Mike Mardesich, too. But of all my favorite Terps players, there's one who stands out.

Unless you follow the Greek pro league really closely, the name Sarunas Jasikevicius probably means nothing to you. Even Terps season ticket holders from Jasikevicius' senior season -- '97-98 -- might not remember him (or Matt Kovarik or
Rodney Elliot, the other seniors that year.)

I was just 10 years old during Jasikevicius' senior year, but even back then, he was easily my favorite Terp. I think the fact that nobody knew how to pronounce his name had something to do with it. I believe I referred to him as "yes-eh-CABBAGE-us." No one really seemed to mind.

Jasikevicius wasn't a particularly remarkable player in college. His senior year, he shot 39.7% from three point range. He wasn't a very good dribbler. He couldn't create his own shot. But he always had that strange name.

He wasn't drafted after college and headed off to play in Europe, but the Maryland faithful never forgot about him. Two years after graduating, he nearly beat the U.S. single-handedly in an Olympic semifinal for Lithuania, scoring 27 points in the game. The rest of the world was trying to figure out who he was and why he wasn't playing NBA ball. Us Terp faithful just smiled.

Four years later, he actually guided the Lithuanians to a win over the U.S. in the opening rounds. But in the bronze medal game, his 17 points weren't enough. The U.S. took the medal.

His performance was enough to get NBA notice, though. He spent two years combined with the Indiana Pacers and the Golden State Warriors, but never really caught on. So now he's back in Europe, playing for Athenian power Panathinaikos.

And yet, there he was again on Sunday, the ball in his hands as the clock wound down against Argentina. A dribble. The kick to Linus Kleiza. The game winner.

For most of the world, it didn't matter much. A favored Argentina team stocked with NBA talent lost at the buzzer on a three pointer by another NBA player. As for the player who set it up -- the player who made the pass, the player who's done it every four years on the international stage -- well, no one else really seemed to notice him.

But I love Maryland Terrapins basketball, and every four years, I love watching a Lithuanian guy with an impossible last name and a game that the NBA didn't want kick ass at the Olympics.

Yes-eh-CABBAGE-us, or something like that. Remember the name.

It's 7 p.m. in Beijing, and 5 a.m. in Denver. Here are the stories that are making Olympic headlines on this Tuesday evening/morning, after the jump:

In the six weeks I've been here, I've seen all sorts of American sporting merchandise. Carmelo Anthony and Allen Iverson jerseys are all over this city. Jordan gear is everywhere. Kids are even wearing Yankees and Red Sox hats around town. But until last night, I'd yet to see any NFL merchandise in Beijing.

So Denver, I'm disheartened to report that the first NFL clothing that the Rocky's Olympic Blog saw in Beijing was a pair of Oakland Raiders shoes.

I'm not sure how exactly to remedy this situation. Maybe a new Elway car dealership at the Great Wall?

One more image of the Raiders shoes in question, after the jump:

A man was stopped yesterday at an Olympic venue when he attempted to enter the stadium while wearing roller blades. Now, there's been nothing confirmed, but could it have been this man?

In a Rocky-wide blog redesign, the contact information for your Rocky bloggers out here in Beijing mysteriously disappeared from the page. So if you'd like to contact any of the writers in China, here's how:

Dave Krieger

Clay Latimer

Dan Oshinsky

Chris Tomasson

And of course, feel free to leave a comment on the blog. We'd love to hear what you're thinking about both our work and the Olympics.

When I wrote yesterday that any kid old enough to pick up a ping pong paddle is probably better than you already, I was serious. They love their ping pong here in Beijing. All around the city, there are ping pong gyms, with dozens of tables in use at all hours.

Or, to put it another way: China Unicom is using two groups of athletes for their ads during these Games. They've got Yao Ming, and they've got the Chinese ping pong team. Guess which one they feature more of in their ads?

Sometime around 10:05 p.m. Beijing time, Tim Hilbert went into crisis lockdown mode. A packed house was on hand at Tim's Texas Bar-B-Q for the U.S.-China basketball game. People had started gathering long before, donning their LeBron and Yao jerseys and plowing through plates of ribs. The bar had a definite buzz with the opening tip less than 10 minutes away.

There was just one problem: on the projection screen at Tim's, Hilbert couldn't find the game.

Upstairs, where the U.S. Chamber of Commerce was throwing a big party, there wasn't a problem. Those TV's were all hooked up to local Beijing channels, which meant the Chinese-language broadcast on CCTV. One of the TVs downstairs had a similar setup.

But the big screen is routed through a satellite with access to American channels. It doesn't get CCTV. So Hilbert scrolled through the on-screen guide over and over. He couldn't find the game.

People started getting restless and yelling across the bar. "Hey, you guys going to put the game on anytime soon?" more than a few patrons called out. The mood was suddenly tense. Some were talking about leaving to watch the game elsewhere.

Now, if there's one thing I love about the Olympics, it's this: it brings out the best in people. So Hilbert did the only thing sensible: he grabbed a few cables, hooked them between his computer and his projector, made a few clicks online and -- voila! -- live moving pictures appeared on the big screen. Wild applause ensued.

I'm not going to call the hook up illegal, but I should note that we were watching a Filipino TV feed of the game (but with English commentary). Strangely enough, the feed also included a "parental warning" logo in the bottom right corner of the screen the entire game (Insert obvious joke about China's half-court offense being potentially offensive to some here).

And technically, the projector was on about a three-second delay, which meant that half the patrons downstairs would start cheering at the CCTV feed, and the rest of the crowd would cheer a few moments later at the Filipino TV feed.

One thing stayed constant throughout, though: with the restaurant evenly divided between Americans and Chinese, someone was cheering just about the entire game.

So here's to you, Tim Hilbert, the man whose old-fashioned American ingenuity allowed hundreds of people to openly wear Yao Ming jerseys while eating barbecue and cheering for Dwayne Wade. You were the real American hero on this evening.

Let's say that you're still excited about last night's gold medal for the U.S. swim team in the 4x100 relay, so excited that tonight, you'd like to cook something that says both "U.S.A! U.S.A!" and "Sucks to be you, France." What's the dish that does both?

How about Garrett Weber-Gale's shrimp etouffée?

Yes, that Garrett Weber-Gale, the second leg of the winning 4x100 squad. But he's not just a gold medalist; he's also an amateur chef.

One of his specialties: the etouffée, a Creole favorite. Considering France's pre-race promise to "smash" the Americans, I think that that a nice hot plate of a dish that just happens to mean "stifled" in French might go well with your evening meal.

Here's your recipe in print form, and below, in YouTube format from Weber-Gale himself. Enjoy:

I've gotten my hands on a copy of the "Beijing Olympic Games Training Series: A Conversational English Reader." BOCOG -- the Beijing Olympic governing body -- is using it as a manual to teach volunteers how to react to any situation that may arise during the Games. Some of those situations just happen to be a bit unusual.

Today's text is reproduced in its entirety and is not edited. All non-sequiturs and grammatical errors are theirs. The text is titled "On the stand of the National Stadium" from the "At the National Stadium" section of the reader. Today's text is apparently an example of how Olympic spectators talk to each other during games. It also explains just about everything you need to know about how the Chinese are struggling to understand both western clichés and the proper use of the exclamation point. Tomorrow, we'll have part two of the "At the National Section" text, which is somehow even less sensical than today's primer. Enjoy, after the jump:

I was at the World's Largest Adidas store in the Sanlitun district last night to watch China play Belgium in men's soccer. Both teams, along with the referees, wear Adidas clothing. I figured that Adidas would have something set up for such a game.

Adidas had one big TV set up inside, a bunch of folding chairs and what I believe may have been the World's Most Unnecessarily Loud Sound System. The game didn't go exactly as planned: China conceded an early goal, had two men sent off for red cards and lost 2-0.

But the moment of the night didn't involve soccer at all. At the half, Adidas switched their big screen over to a different CCTV channel to show the men's 56kg weightlifting finals. A very strange phenomenon took place as soon they changed the channel, a phenomenon that you're surely familiar with if you've ever been to an average American sports bar: everyone in the room suddenly became an expert at analyzing the clean-and-jerk. That being said, I don't think anyone in the room had even seen a bench press in person before. The combined weight of the Chinese in the room -- some 100 people in all -- might have been less than the weight of the bar these Olympians were lifting.

It was an unusual, almost all-Asian final. China, Taiwan, Japan, Indonesia, Vietnam, North Korea and, oh yeah, Cuba were all represented. The North Korean couldn't get the bar in the air, drawing laughs from the Chinese. The Cuban weightlifter nearly had the bar fall on him. But when China's weightlifter -- 17-year-old Long Qingquan -- lifted 160kg above his head on his second attempt, the room went wild.

By the time Long Qingquan's third attempt came around, he'd basically won the gold medal already. His attempt might be my favorite moment of the Games so far:



That right there is what these Olympics are all about. A kid attempting to lifting a ridiculous amount of weight above his head, failing to do so, then celebrating anyway and taking a curtain call for the home crowd. They know he's won gold, and no one really cares that he couldn't lift the final bar. They're thrilled he had the chutzpah to even attempt that final lift.

Well done, young man.

It's 7 p.m. in Beijing, and 5 a.m. in Denver. Here are the stories that are making Olympic headlines on this Monday evening/morning, after the jump:

Businessman and wrestler T.C. Dantzler, a Colorado Springs resident, will take time out from his busy schedule to grapple for gold

Let's talk a bit about censorship. There's been quite a lot written on that subject from Beijing over the past week. Western reporters found their access to certain Internet sites blocked in the days leading up to the beginning of the Olympic Games. Because China had promised complete media freedom when it bid for the Games, this was viewed as a breach of that promise.

As I write this post, I am sitting in the Main Press Center in Beijing, my Internet access provided, for a fee, by the Beijing organizing committee. This is true for all the journalists here. Although free WiFi access is common in Internet cafes here, access at the Olympic venues is only through the organizing committee.

A little experiment:

First, I opened a Mozilla Firefox browser and Googled "Amnesty International," then clicked on the site for this well-known human rights organization. It loaded, no problem. Then I clicked on its July 28 report titled "Chinese authorities' broken promises threaten Olympic legacy." Again, it loaded, no problem. Here's the first paragraph:

"The Chinese authorities have broken their promise to improve the country's human rights situation and betrayed the core values of the Olympics, according to a new Amnesty International report."

It's sitting here on my screen in the Main Press Center.

Next, I Googled "Human Rights Watch," another well-known human rights organization, then clicked on its site. Again, it loaded immediately. Then I clicked on its Aug. 6 report critical of China, entitled "China: Olympics Harm Key Human Rights." Again, it loaded, no problem. Here are the first two paragraphs:

"(New York, August 6, 2008) - The 2008 Beijing Olympics will open tainted by a sharp increase in human rights abuses directly linked to China's preparations for the games, Human Rights Watch said today. The games open on August 8, 2008.

"The run-up to the Beijing Olympics has been marred by a well-documented surge in violations of the rights of free expression and association, as well as media freedom. In addition, abuses of migrant construction workers who were pivotal to Beijing's infrastructure improvements have increased, as have evictions of Beijing residents whose homes were demolished to make way for that infrastructure. Those abuses reflect both the Chinese government's wholesale failure to honor its Olympics-related human rights promises, as well as the negligence of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in ensuring that China fulfills its commitments."

It's sitting here on my screen in the Main Press Center.

Next, I Googled "Tibet." I got a list of related sites. But when I clicked freetibet.org, I got a Firefox screen that told me, "The connection to the server was reset while the page was loading." It offered me a chance to try again, which I did, but the same screen came up. I could not access that site.

I tried again using a Microsoft Explorer browser. This time I got a "This page cannot be displayed" screen. I cannot access freetibet.org with either browser.

Next, I Googled "Darfur" twice, once with each browser. Each time, I got a list of related sites. Each time, I clicked on savedarfur.org. Each time, the page loaded, no problem.

Finally, I Googled "Falun Gong" using both browsers. On Firefox, I got the connection reset page; on Explorer, the cannot be displayed page. I cannot access even a list of Falun Gong-related web sites here at the Main Press Center.

So I am three out of five calling up sites I presume are objectionable to the Chinese government. Chinese officials have said their aim is to provide foreign journalists access to sites reasonably related to the Olympic Games. This is the distinction I presume they are making here, although it's just a guess.

My experiment is just a snapshot in time, not a thorough or exhaustive study of Internet access and censorship here. Your mileage may vary.

But here's one more example of censorship that might surprise you:

When I was covering the Super Bowl in Phoenix last winter, I was working on a column about how the Giants could upset the Patriots -- you can look it up; it ran Saturday, Feb. 2, the day before they did -- and I wanted to review the biggest underdogs in S.B. history because the Patriots were favored by 12. When I Googled "Super Bowl odds," Google gave me a list of mostly gambling web sites. When I clicked on them, I kept getting the page cannot be displayed message from Explorer. This, I remind you, was in the good ol' USA.

Chicago real estate tycoon Sam Zell had recently bought Tribune Co. and put out a widely circulaterd memo saying he had discovered that certain Internet sites were blocked at Tribune Co. sites. He found this inappropriate in a journalism company -- one of his rare insights into a business he doesn't otherwise understand very well -- and announced he was lifting all such restrictions. So I asked my boss at the Rocky if my laptop had filtering software in it. He checked with the powers that be and replied that it did not.

So, in preparation for writing this blog post, I recently emailed NFL spokesman Greg Aiello to find out if the gambling sites were blocked by the NFL, which provided the Internet access at the Phoenix Convention Center, which housed the Super Bowl media center. Aiello said he wasn't sure about the convention center, but he confirmed that the NFL and its teams generally do block gambling sites for their employees. He called it a common business practice to keep employees from accessing "inappropriate sites." He said it was not done specifically to bar reporters from accessing these sites, but that might have been the result.

China, too, believes the sites it blocks are "inappropriate" for its citizens, although for entirely different reasons. Still, if we are going to be fair, we should probably acknowledge that censorship is censorship, and China is not alone in engaging in this practice. Those of us who believe in free and unfettered access to the Internet should believe in it all the time, lest we be fairly accused of cultural or national bias.

Just my opinion, of course.

 

In July, I wrote out a list of things I'd learned in my time in China, stuff like, "Just because there's a picture of it on the menu doesn't mean it's not donkey meat." I think I'm ready to try round two of the things I've learned in China. Enjoy, after the jump:

Check out what''s on the menu at a Beijing restaurant. There are even photos.

Li-Ning will be hoping to ride the wave of publicity from Friday's Opening Ceremonies as their highest-profile team -- Argentina men's basketball -- tipped off today against Lithuania. Here's the team's Chinese ad. One thing to remember: Argentine forward Luis Scola does a conflict of interest with Li Ning, since he's endorsed by rival Chinese brand Anta. Oh, the many complications of sponsorship.



If you're wondering about that strange salute that the team is doing at the end of the ad, here's a brief explanation: it's the Chinese gesture for "honor." At Li Ning stores around Beijing, the staff is constantly greeting shoppers with it. No word yet on how the salute's effect on sales.

For the Olympics, Nike's decided to take everything at their flagship Wangfujing store to a new level of absurdity. They've got ads looping on giant screens around the store, overpriced Team USA and Team China merchandise everywhere and even what appear to be sport kimonos on sale (approximate retail value: $85).

Strangest of all, however, are the mannequins in the store. Nike isn't using your standard faceless mannequin; instead, they've designed the mannequins to look like some of their athletes. When I first tried to snap some photos of these mannequins a few weeks back, a few Nike staff members nearly tackled me. Despite the press credential around my neck, they were convinced that I was taking photos of their merchandise so I could later sell the images to some rogue Chinese merchants, who'd produce knockoffs of the jerseys. This is actually what they told me.

But now, they've placed several of these mannequins outside the store, where you're free to photograph them (and sell the photos to whatever Chinese factory you feel like). So what you're looking at above is a mannequin version of Carmelo Anthony. Sadly, I think it's the worst reproduction of the mannequins on display. The rest of Team USA, along with a few Chinese athletes you might recognize, are after the jump:

I've gotten my hands on a copy of the "Beijing Olympic Games Training Series: A Conversational English Reader." BOCOG -- the Beijing Olympic governing body -- is using it as a manual to teach volunteers how to react to any situation that may arise during the Games. Some of those situations just happen to be a bit unusual.

Today's text is reproduced in its entirety and is not edited. All non-sequiturs and grammatical errors are theirs. The text is titled "In the General Office at the Venue Media Centre" from the "At the Venue Media Centre" section of the reader. Again: this really is a guide for how volunteers are supposed to deal with journalists in this particular situation. Today's text also explains just about everything you need to know about how BOCOG is treating journalists during these Games. Enjoy, after the jump:

I've been trying for some time now to figure out how to best explain how crazed the Chinese are for these Games. Then I remembered the photos I'd stored away of the Great Wall Roller Blade Man.

He does have a name, but in the Chinese-to-English translation, it's going to get botched. So for now, let's call him GWRBM. I met him on my visit to the Great Wall in July.

GWRBM is from a province just to the south of Beijing. His business card says that he is a member of that province's official roller blading organization. It also says that he fixes pianos in his spare time.

But when he wasn't roller blading in other cities or fixing pianos, GWRMM went out onto sections of the Great Wall, decked out in Beijing 2008 clothing and carrying a Beijing 2008 flag, and attempted to roller blade along the wall.

This really should be noted: the Great Wall is not exactly a roller blade friendly wall; it's hard enough to walk on it as it is. But these are their Olympics, and the Chinese people are so proud that they're willing to attempt crazy stunts like trying to roller blade up and down an uneven wall to glorify the country they love.

If I can actually get GWRBM on the phone in the next two weeks, you'll be first to know here at the Rocky's Summer Olympics Blog.

It's 7 p.m. in Beijing, and 5 a.m. in Denver. Here are the stories that are making Olympic headlines on this Sunday evening/morning, after the jump:

If Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal meet in the men's Olympic tennis final, it figures to be memorable.

If you're wondering whether or not there are people crazy enough to brave the smog and threats of police detention to run outside in Beijing, the answer is yes, yes there are. You can read about a group of them who've experienced both here.

The guy above is one of the general managers of the group, Dave Bjerke. Behind him is a man who is neither police nor a member of the army. Actually, he's officially "police support," or roughly the equivalent of a neighborhood-appointed watchman. There are thousands of unofficial police around this city, and many of them are wearing camouflage. Not sure why.

One more comment, after the jump, about the group, known as the Hash House Harriers:
 

To understand the enormity of last night's torch lighting ceremony, with potentially billions of eyes watching as former Chinese gymnast Li Ning flew through the Beijing night, consider this:

Imagine the year is 1996. Reebok is the official sponsor of the Games. They've spent quite a bit of money trying to convince the world to buy Reebok shoes and clothing. The Atlanta organizing committee is keeping things hush about who will light the torch. And then, imagine this: Nike CEO Phil Knight parachutes into the Opening Ceremonies, torch in hand, and lights the Olympic flame. The next day, everyone's talking about Nike, and nobody's talking about Reebok.

Sound far fetched? Not if you think about what happened last night.

Li Ning isn't just China's most famous gymnast. He's also created the most popular Chinese shoe company, Li-Ning. This year, they're outfitting tons of Olympians, like Argentina's basketball squad, Tanzania's track & field athletes and even China's ping pong players. But they're not an official Olympic sponsor, which means a diminished role for the company in terms of domestic and international advertising during the Games.

Official Olympic sponsors -- like Coca Cola, which has spent more than $70 million just for the right to be a sponsor, and Adidas, the clothing line and shoe of Beijing 2008 -- have everything riding on these Games. They're counting on visibility to boost their market share in a country of 1.3 billion.

So you can imagine how executives at Adidas must have felt when Li Ning stole the biggest moment in the entire Opening Ceremonies. A billion people in China saw him running across the rafters at the Bird's Nest and thought not just of the gymnast but also of his shoes. The exposure alone last night on CCTV, along with the picture of Li Ning that ran on the front page of every national newspaper here, easily makes it the greatest two or three minutes of free advertising in television history.

For those of you who disagree, don't forget: this entire country was tuned into the Opening Ceremonies, and worldwide, millions more saw Li Ning light the torch and learned that he owns a shoe company. Even the best Clydesdale ad at the Super Bowl doesn't reach 100 million people.

One more question people should be asking: seeing as Li Ning represents one of Adidas' biggest competitors, did the moment violate some sort of contract between Adidas and the IOC? I cant imagine so. But if I was over at Adidas, I'd be wondering how exactly one man just sold millions of sneakers without ever spending a penny (well, technically, a yuan).

Who knows what kind of profit Li-Ning will reap from the torch lighting, though I can tell you that both of the company's stores in the popular Wangfujing District (see photo, above right) were packed today. At the same hour, just down the street, Adidas and Nike weren't doing nearly as much business.

There is some irony in all of this, though: Li Ning was wearing Adidas clothing while lighting the torch. After all, they're still the official sponsor of the Games.

I've gotten my hands on a copy of the "Beijing Olympic Games Training Series: A Conversational English Reader." BOCOG -- the Beijing Olympic governing body -- is using it as a manual to teach volunteers how to react to any situation that may arise during the Games. Some of those situations just happen to be a bit unusual.

Today's text is reproduced in its entirety and is not edited. All non-sequiturs and grammatical errors are theirs. The text is titled "At the gate to the spectator stand" from the "At the National Stadium" section of the reader. Again: this really is a guide for how volunteers are supposed to deal with foreigners in this particular situation. It's a day late for this situation, but I do hope you enjoy it anyway:

The Games have only just started, but Canadian high jumper Nicole Forrester is already stirring the pot. She's taken on the issue of age and sport (and even cited what appear to be books). She's opined about drug use. Now, she's blogging about one of the most controversial issues today. The topic? It's not Darfur, Tibet or human rights.

My home page is set to aol, so before I log into my account I take a moment to see what the new stories for the day are. This evening, as the various stories flashed across the screen, one disappointingly caught my attention "Mario Bello Joins the Cougar Club." How is this among the hottest news for the day? Ironically, I just blogged on age and sport, but can't help resisting the need to discuss this irritating word Cougar.

For those of you who don't know what a "Cougar" is, it is a term referring to an older woman, (usually in her 40s, 50s or 60s) who sexually pursues younger men (usually in their 20s and 30s). Obviously, I have a huge problem with this term. It's kind of derogative, if you ask me.

I'd joke about this, but I did just write an entire post about the pornographic complications caused by Team Sweden's Puma sponsorship. So I'll just say this: blog posts like Ms. Forrester's are what happens when Olympians are given a week off before the events start.

Should be interesting to see how the Chinese attempt to suppress this controversy.

Let's say you're an executive at Adidas or Visa. You've spent roughly the combined GDP of Sub-Saharan Africa to advertise in China during these Games. Then you see this report from a media research firm about which advertisers are having the most success in growing their brand through Beijing-themed ads. They're predicting one company to have over 20 billion yuan ($2.92 billion) in sales by year's end here in China.

It's not your company, though. It's milk.

Specifically, Yili milk, which is riding the golden spikes of Liu Xiang to increased sales. Here's his ad for the company. Two more Yili ads, featuring the Chinese badminton team and other athletes, are after the jump:

Last night, I was coming back from Tiananamen Square on the subway at about 10 p.m., just as the athletes were beginning to enter the Opening Ceremonies. The subway ride back to my hotel takes about 45 minutes from the Square, and at first, I was upset that I was missing even more of the ceremonies.

But then I realized: the Beijing Subway gets live TV.

For those of you who've ever flown Frontier or JetBlue, this probably doesn't sound like that big a deal. But keep in mind that you're paying actual amounts of money to fly on those planes. By comparison, a ride anywhere on the Beijing subway costs 2 yuan ($.29).

For the last few months, they've been using these TV's -- two flat screens placed near each doors on the train -- to show instructional videos about the various Olympic sports, along with other how-to's, like how to spot a terrorist on the train (that's a particularly short video: just look for non-Chinese men with large bags, it says). But last night, they had them tuned to China's CCTV for the Opening Ceremonies.

I nearly missed my stop on the way back.

But it wasn't just the subway that had CCTV on. Everywhere in this city -- every restaurant, every hutong, practically every bum on the street -- people were watching TV. Even the guard outside my hotel was watching ... on his cell phone. It wasn't exactly HD, but still. Seeing as I can't get a signal leaving my house some days, I was impressed.

It's 7 p.m. in Beijing, and 5 a.m. in Denver. Here are the stories that are making Olympic headlines on this Saturday evening/morning, after the jump:

There is a logical question you should be asking right about now: who is this man, and why is he vacuuming out a dryer?

I'll give you a few seconds to think about it. Think you've got the answer? (Unless you're directly related to this man, you almost certainly don't.

All three of you who correctly identified Eirik Veraas Larsen, a Norwegian kayaker who won both gold and bronze in Athens in 2004, please take a bow.

As for why he's placed a vacuum cleaner in a dryer, well, I'll let him explain:

Washed my clothes today, but had to vacuum clean the tumble dryer before I could dry my clothes, the tumble dryer was full of detergent. One of the rowers tried to wash his clothes in the tumble dryer..hehe. Maybe his first time away from mom?

This is what happens when you let absent minded athletes take responsibility for their own actions.

More from the athlete blogosphere, after the jump:

I've gotten my hands on a copy of the "Beijing Olympic Games Training Series: A Conversational English Reader." BOCOG -- the Beijing Olympic governing body -- is using it as a manual to teach volunteers how to react to any situation that might arise during the Games. Some of those situations just happen to be a bit unusual.

Today's text is reproduced in its entirety and is not edited. All non-sequiturs and grammatical errors are theirs. The text is titled "At the Resident Centre" from the "At the Olympic Village" section of the reader. Again: this really is a guide for how volunteers are supposed to deal with athletes in this particular situation. Today's text also explains just about everything you need to know about how Chinese volunteers are going to deal with the morning-after celebrations tomorrow. Enjoy, after the jump:

Let's take you back to 2004, shall we? The world was in Greece, complaining about the smog and the humidity and paying for their Big Macs with Visa. Some things never change, I guess.

Speaking of which, check out these two ads from '04 campaign. One, from McDonald's, is below. Another, from Nike about soon-to-be-gold-medalist Liu Xiang, is after the jump:

Tonight, when the clock struck 08:08:08, the celebrations started all around Beijing. I was in Beijing's famed Tiananamen Square, where a crowd of thousands spent some two hours just screaming out the words "Go China Go!" 

First, some audio and images from the festivities:



Also, check out this little audio report, filed on the scene just a few hours ago:

It's been a great year for sports in Spain. No wonder the Spaniards had so much fun at Friday's Opening Ceremonies.

You've run the numbers; you've crunched the numbers. You've got lucky numbers stored away for that next Powerball jackpot. This Saturday night, you might be out hoping to get someone else's numbers.

Chances are, your favorite TV show has been cancelled because of numbers. (Unless your favorite show is "Numb3rs"; that's still on the air.)

You know the most importantly numbers already in sport: 19-0. 100. 4,256. *73. You wouldn't even hesitate when asked about #23 or #99.

But what about the numbers that matter the most this August?  205 countries. 302 events. 9.72 seconds in the 100 meter dash. 12.87 seconds for the 110m hurdles. And if you pay attention to slogans: One World. One Dream.

Then there's the one the Chinese pride above all else: eight. In Chinese, the character is 八, or bā, which sounds like the word for prosperity (发, or fā). So tonight, at 08:08:08 on 08/08/08, the Chinese will open the Olympic Games.

Numbers drove the Chinese to syncing the Opening Ceremonies down to the second. Numbers, really, can drive you to just about everything. To 21 shots. To creating fan sites trying to dissect the ultimate meaning of the numbers. To drafting potbellied catchers out of Alabama because of them. To writing merciless columns criticizing general managers for believing in potbellied Alabama catchers because of the numbers in the first place.

Or how about this: to all-day quests to glorify the lucky numbers of a language you don't speak.

Today, I will attempt something that is, quite frankly, stupid. Call it the 08 Challenge. Starting at 08:08:08 a.m. Beijing time, I will attempt to complete a full day in Beijing.

Actually, I'll do you one (well, a multiple of eight) better: 24 hours, 24 minutes and 24 seconds. Consecutively.

Starting now.

We'll still have posts going up all day here at the Rocky's Olympic Blog, thanks to the miracle of Movable Type's "scheduled to be published" button. So enjoy the Opening Ceremonies, Denver.  

See you Saturday.

After stepping outside today, I'm calling off the first annual 08 Challenge. I can't breathe outside. Sorry, folks.

In one hour and eight minutes, the 29th Olympiad will begin. Athletes will wave flags. Anthems will play. Cameras will flash. Billions will watch.

I'm just here to tell you that the Olympics are already dead.

Oh, sure, if you're Chinese, then these Olympics are very much a big deal. The Chinese alone have invested $40 billion in building stadiums and cleaning up their country for foreigners. They've built thousands of new hotel rooms and kicked out thousands of migrants around the city. The Chinese who haven't fled Beijing are thrilled to be here, thrilled to be a part of these Olympic Games.

Here's the problem, though: nobody else around the world really cares.

Maybe they lost people seven years ago, when China was selected for these Games. Maybe they lost people when China took reporters on a bogus tour of Tibet, only to have the entire thing blow up in Beijing's face. Maybe they lost people at the smog, or the censorship, or the growing police state that is downtown Beijing.

Or maybe it's simpler. Maybe it's because there's only one group of foreigners left to whom the Games still matter: the advertisers.

Remember 2008 as the Games That Sold Out, the Games that sold out to Big Cola and, seeing as the price was right, Big Dairy. It's no surprise that China's fastest rising star, Liu Xiang, once endorsed Big Tobacco.

What kind of Games are these? They're the kind of Games where the IOC sees itself suddenly in the World's Biggest market and says, maybe it's not such a bad idea to sign three different beer sponsors. They're the kind of Games that need more levels of patronage than a Republican fundraiser. You've got your Worldwide Olympic Partners, your Beijing 2008 Partners, your Sponsors, your Exclusive Suppliers and your Suppliers. The difference? Aside from font size, I can't tell.

So open up the Games, China, and get ready for your Kodak moment. And know that when it happens, you'll even be able to call it that. Kodak's a Worldwide Olympic Partner.

It's 7 p.m. in Beijing, and 5 a.m. in Denver. Here are the stories that are making Olympic headlines on this Friday evening/morning, after the jump:

I want to make this very clear before I say any more: I really do like this city. The food is good, the beer is cheap and the people are friendly. If Beijing had allowed all the things that were open when I arrived here on July 2 -- the bars, the clubs, the underground city in the south of town -- to stay open, the city would be getting even better reviews. It is, genuinely, a nice place to visit, as long as you're talking about the sights.

With that out of the way, let me add this: karma's a bitch.

Today is, without a doubt, the smoggiest day I've seen here in two months. Weather Underground is saying that visibility is .7 miles, and that might be a stretch. The heat index is at 96 degrees, and it's only 9:30 a.m. CNN.com is saying that humidity is at an absurd 88 percent.

The photo above is from just minutes ago, a few miles west of the Bird's Nest. It's certainly not the blue sky day depicted on that volunteer booth.

I have no idea what they're going to show you on TV when the Opening Ceremonies start. If conditions remain unchanged today, don't be surprised to see athletes actually pull out of the ceremonies due to health risks. The air is really that dirty today.

Even worse: the giant fireworks display for tonight's ceremonies? Forget about it. Because all you're going to see are clouds.

One more thought: sitting in McDonalds this morning, watching the Chinese watch the torch relay on CCTV while waving their "Go China Go!" flags (see left), I just felt terrible for them. These Games are really their moment. Instead, tonight could be a train wreck.

A story that I promise eventually segues back into the Opening Ceremonies:

When I was in 3rd grade, I went to the Super Bowl with my dad. It was Super Bowl XXIX, down at Joe Robbie Stadium. Niners-Chargers. Steve Young. Jerry Rice. Deion Sanders. Natrone Means.

We went down a few days early to stay with my grandparents in Boca. We did the Early Bird circuit for the first couple of days: Rascal House, Mario's, Rascal House again. Then Sunday finally came. We borrowed my grandparents' car -- an old Mercedes-turned-beater -- and headed over to the stadium for the game.

We got there about five hours beforehand, our thoughts mostly on the NFL's massive pre-game celebration. Dad found a good parking space right away, with one easily identifiable landmark next to it: a 20-foot tall inflatable Lombardi Trophy. Then we headed off for a few hours of all sorts of 8-year-old-approved activities. I think a punt, pass and kick competition was involved.

An hour before kickoff, we found our way to the seats. Two giant blow-up helmets for each team were inflated in front of the tunnels for the players to run through.  Other oversized items were also on the field. One was a giant inflatable Lombardi Trophy.

"Hey, that looks like the one by our car," I told my dad.

"It does," he said.

This story, which I swear really does have a point that's related to the Opening Ceremonies, continues after the jump:

As the Olympic torch finishes its final leg through Beijing, the Chinese government seems to be trying to give each of its 1.3 billion citizens a chance to carry the flame. Most of those carrying the torch jog for about 50 yards, before stopping for photos and passing the torch off to a new runner.

Today, however, some of those on the torch relay didn't run. To be perfectly honest, they didn't even move. When the torch was carried by boat across a lake in Beijing, more than a dozen Chinese involved in the relay simply posed for a photo, grabbed the torch, held it for about 30 seconds while waving to people on a semi-distant shore, posed for a second photo and then passed the torch to the next holder. This continued for a good five to 10 minutes.

One definite plus of CCTV's endless coverage of people-standing-on-a-boat-while-handing-an-incendiary-piece-of-metal-to-another-person-also-standing-on-a-boat-while-waving-furiously-for-less-than-thirty-seconds: the remarkably goofy high fives. As based on my daily interactions with the security staff downstairs, I can tell you that the high five is only just catching on here in Beijing.

A few other notes about China's favorite state-owned TV superglomerate, after the jump:

I've gotten my hands on a copy of the "Beijing Olympic Games Training Series: A Conversational English Reader." BOCOG -- the Beijing Olympic governing body -- is using it as a manual to teach volunteers how to react to any situation that might arise during the Games. Some of those situations just happen to be a bit unusual.

Today's text is reproduced in its entirety and is not edited. All non-sequiturs and grammatical errors are theirs. The text is titled "At the lobby of the Main Press Centre" from the "At the Media Village" section of the reader. Again: this really is a guide for how volunteers are supposed to deal with media in this particular situation. Today's text also explains just how complex the Olympic bureaucracy is. Enjoy, after the jump:

After yesterday's Paulo Nutini fiasco, I went Googling today for Puma's TV ads. Since Puma's only sponsoring three Olympic teams -- Jamaica, Morocco and Sweden -- and those first two countries aren't exactly major markets, I figured I'd check out Sweden's ads.

Here's the problem that I discovered upon Googling the phrase "Puma Sweden ad": the results don't have anything to do with sneakers. In fact, all that comes up are pages and pages of pornography (important footnote: not that I would have any prior knowledge of this).

Specifically, it's pornography of an adult film star -- is that the right phrase for it? -- named Johanna Jussinniemi, who goes by the stage nom de plume of "Puma Swede."

Seeing as porn is a multi-billion industry, while the sporting-goods industry is pulling in only a fraction of that, it doesn't seem like Team Sweden's Puma ad will be moving up on the Google algorithm anytime soon.

Of course, I'd be willing to provide a more investigative look into Ms. Jussinniemi's story, but China's Anti-Pornography and Anti-Illegal Publications office doesn't exactly approve.

Oh, and the real Sweden sneaker ad? Click here.

[What, with less than 24 hours until the Games kick off, you were expecting real Olympic news?]

The key isn't just to get a tattoo at the Olympics. It's where that tattoo goes, especially when it comes to Olympic rings.

Perhaps "Lost's" Charlie Pace put it best: "They'll find us. They have satellites in space that can take pictures of your license plate." Duly noted. So how, in an age of iPhones, fiber optics and radio-frequency tracking devices, how did one Olympic team almost lose one of their athletes?

Meet Edwin Ekiring, the 95th ranked badminton player in the world, the lone shuttler on the Ugandan national team, the top African shuttler at these Olympics and the only athlete who nearly didn't make it to Beijing because his cell phone was off.

Last Thursday, Uganda's New Vision newspaper reported that Ekiring had disappeared from Germany, where he was finishing up his training for the Games. Repeated calls and emails to Ekiring went unreturned. The paper described the team's state as "frantic."

Meanwhile, Ekiring had actually left the country and was in the Netherlands, talking with a team about his pro future, even though he signed with a German club on July 23. (He has previously played for Velo, a Dutch club.) For whatever reason, he'd turned his cell phone off in Holland and wasn't checking his email.

Three days later, he read a newspaper story that said his team was desperately searching for him, so he decided to get in touch with the Ugandan team. By Tuesday, he'd landed in Beijing.

Ekiring, who earned a wild card spot to the Games, will be a huge underdog in his first match next week. If he wins, he'll have to play China's Lin Dan, the #1 ranked player in the world.

It's 7 p.m. in Beijing, and 5 a.m. in Denver. Here are the stories that are making Olympic headlines on this Thursday evening/morning, after the jump:

Let's close out another day here in Beijing, with just hours until the Opening Ceremonies. Check out a few images from the Olympic venues at a Clapton-approved hour. That's the Water Cube above. A few more are after the jump:

Many of the ads featured here on Ad Watch have exclusively run in China, as marketers try to reach out to a market of more than a billion people. Other advertisers are simply running one international campaign and have dubbed over their ads into Mandarin for the Games.

Here's one from Omega that fits into the latter category. The Chinese version is below. The English version is after the jump.

Do excuse singer Paolo Nutini, he of that infernal "New Shoes" song that took over the pop airwaves last summer. Today, at a Puma press conference with Jamaica's Usain Bolt, when asked about a future Nutini-Usain collaboration, the Scotsman responded with a careless one-liner.

"Anything is possible," he said.

Actually, Mr. Nutini, not exactly. If you're Shaquille O'Neal, anyone on the Argentinian men's basketball team or any other athletes endorsed by China's Li-Ning brand, then yes, "Anything is possible."

And if you're endorsed by Adidas, then yes, "Impossible is nothing."

But Puma? No, their slogan for the Games is just 北京见 -- "Běijīng jiàn" -- which means "See you in Beijing."

So keep your slogans right, sir. Puma profits are already down this year.

One more suggestion, Mr. Nutini? Go put some new shoes on. Maybe everything will still be alright (assuming that Bolt runs in and wins both the 100 and 200 meter dash).

[photo by by Michael Steele/Getty Images]

I've gotten my hands on a copy of the "Beijing Olympic Games Training Series: A Conversational English Reader." BOCOG -- the Beijing Olympic governing body -- is using it as a manual to teach volunteers how to react to any situation that might arise during the Games. Some of those situations just happen to be a bit unusual.

Today's text is reproduced in its entirety and is not edited. All non-sequiturs and grammatical errors are theirs. The text is titled "After the welcoming ceremony at the Olympic Village" from the "Entering the Olympic Village" section of the reader. Again: this really is a guide for how volunteers are supposed to deal with athletes in this particular situation. Today's text also explains just about everything you need to know about China's bureaucracy. Enjoy, after the jump:

It's no secret that the Chinese are fanatical about basketball. Any country that installs basketball courts outside of one its most famous landmarks or that gives shoe deals to Chuck Hayes and Damon Jones must be pretty crazy about the sport. Here's the story today in the old-fashioned ink-edition of The Rocky about the growth of the sport in China. Fast fact: in the 1980's, there were only about 50 courts in Beijing. There are almost that many within a five minute walk of my hotel now.

In fact, here's a slideshow about a few of those courts:

A few weeks ago, the Rocky's Olympics blog was the first to tell you that the fine Fire Joe Morgan blog was blocked here in China. Soon, others were writing in to ask if their websites were blocked too.

Here's a way to see if your favorite website mysteriously "times out" over here: check out this site, which will do a quick search and tell you if your site is working in China or not.

More about how some sites are working to get around the censors, after the jump:

It's smoggy outside again, and with the heat index climbing into the upper 90s, leaving the friendly air conditioned confines of my room isn't too enticing. But I've been getting this weird sense of déjà vu lately. Haven't we gone through all of this before?

Yes, it was only four years ago that the world converged on Athens, the smoggiest city in western Europe. After the Games, one Team USA manager said that at least 20 percent of his athletes had a negative reaction to Athens' smog. Add in the average summertime temperature in Athens -- mid-90s, with humidity -- and Beijing might just be the Greece of the East.

So the biggest question I've been getting from both ex-pats and Chinese nationals here is, if Olympians have been through this before -- in Athens and Los Angeles and Mexico City -- then why is China taking so much flak from the international media? There are two main things I think you should keep in mind:

1. Western journalists are coming to China with pre-determined biases about this country. Maybe the communism -- and child labor laws, and Tibet, and censorship, and all the rest that goes with this type of government -- has something to do with it. Feel free to include me among those who came to China hoping that a trip here would change my mind about all the things I'd previously read and heard.

2. There are thousands upon thousands of journalists here in Beijing. The opportunity for original storytelling -- at least among the non-Mandarin speakers -- is increasingly limited.

So when you've got a bottleneck of potentially-biased journalists all trying to write the big story, eventually, one or two main talking points tend to slip out. The same thing's happening with the Presidential election right now, or with any other major media circus. Smog and censorship just happen to be the talking points of the week here in Beijing

I'll also say this: if you're upset about the anti-China biases, then please check out one of the pro-China media outlets. They're not much better.

Looking for true balance during these Olympics? Maybe the gymnastics events are more your type.

It's 7 p.m. in Beijing, and 5 a.m. in Denver. Here are the stories that are making Olympic headlines on this Wednesday evening/morning, after the jump:

Who says first impressions don't linger. Came off the plane in Beijing and entered a massive futuristic terminal. Passed through customs and eventually found myself walking down a roped- off corridor lined with stiff-backed soldiers, camera crews and other gawkers. Dawned on me then - a bit late - that they crowd had gathered to see incoming foreigners.

In terms of climate, Beijing is a lot like Houston in August.In fact, on the shuttle from the airport you could easily imagine being in the Lone Star State. Except we won't have to watch the Astros.

Chinese are litterally bumping into one another offering help. Need directions? No problem.Need a door opened or closed? They do it. Need an extra soft drink? They've got it covered. Service with a terminal smile. It's fantastic, but wouldn't mind running into a few grumpy Chinese at this point. They must be out there, with a populuation of 1.3 billion.

Haven't seen the sun for a couple days. A haze of pullution shrouds the capital city. Would a smoker's patch help?  So far, hasn't bothered me. I lived in Denver in the 70s, the days of the brown haze.

"This is quasi-surreal,'' I said to my colleague, Dave Krieger. 

"Quasi-surreal. It's totally surreal,'' he said.  

I've gotten my hands on a copy of the "Beijing Olympic Games Training Series: A Conversational English Reader." BOCOG -- the Beijing Olympic governing body -- is using it as a manual to teach volunteers how to react to any situation that might arise during the Games. Some of those situations just happen to be a bit unusual.

Today's text is reproduced in its entirety and is not edited. All non-sequiturs and grammatical errors are theirs. The text is titled "At the luggage reclaim hall" from the "At the Capital International Airport" section of the reader. Again: this really is a guide for how volunteers are supposed to deal with Westerners in this particular situation. Today's text also explains just about everything you need to know about how China expects foreigners to adapt to "freedom" in Beijing. Enjoy:

In a month here, I've discovered a few essential words that make getting around and understanding Beijing a bit easier. For now, here's the Rocky Olympic blog's first attempt at a Beijing Dictionary, after the jump:

There are a few moments that this entire country seems to be looking forward to -- the USA-China basketball game on Aug. 10 and the Opening Ceremonies are two such dates -- but there are also 13 highly anticipated seconds set to take place on Aug. 21. On that day, Liu Xiang is expected to defend his gold medal in the finals of the 110 meter hurdles.

Everything hasn't gone as planned, though. For one, Liu Xiang has not competed in a timed event since May, when Chinese sprinters ran in a test event at the Bird's Nest. At that race, he finished three-tenths of a second slower than his personal best time. The other bad news for Liu Xiang: Cuban hurdler Dayron Robles has since set the world record mark at 12.87 seconds.

So here's a question that some Chinese citizens are asking: what happens if Liu Xiang doesn't win gold in Beijing?

One Chinese blog's asked that exact question, taken the answers in Chinese and translated them into English. Many responded with positive comments, saying that Liu Xiang is already a national hero no matter what happens during the Games. Others weren't so supportive. Here's a brief selection of the cynics:

There is always the ParaOlympics...

If Liu Xiang loses and I am lucky enough to meet him, I will still respect him as I would respect any average person.

Lose lose lose lose lose lose lose lose lose lose. Besides, he has already earned enough.

The world will still turn, people will still eat, prices will still go up!!!!!!!!

I have a black heart, so I will feel extremely happy if he loses.

Liu's biggest competitor is Robles. If we can cause him some small problems, such as putting laxatives in his food, this way Liu's gold medal will be preserved! He he

A few more, after the jump:

In August, there won't be any Nike ads shown on Chinese TV, since Nike -- the official sponsor of the Chinese national team -- is not the official sponsor of the Olympic Games. Yes, it's all unnecessarily confusing.

Still, Nike's not going to stay out of the international Olympic ad market. Expect to see these new ads playing in the U.S. soon.

The ads feature seven Nike soccer players. One of note will be playing for his national team during the Games: Sergio "Kún" Agüero, an Argentinian player who's currently with Atlético Madrid. You'll see him paired up top in Argentina's lineup with Leo Messi.

Here's his ad from Nike's "Blood, Sweat & Tears" campaign:



One more thought, after the jump:

The story of how I spent four months getting credentialed for the Olympics -- including a trip to Hong Kong to pick up a new visa -- only to find that the credential the Chinese government approved for me does not allow me into the Olympic venues can be found at that link. 

An additional story -- which eerily parallels something that's in the aforementioned/linked op-ed -- had to be cut for space. I've reprinted it here:

A few months ago, when I applied for my press credentials, the Rocky's sports editor, Barry Forbis, faxed a letter to the Chinese consulate, explaining who I was and what I was doing for the paper. The next day, I called to check in with the consulate to make sure that everything was under control.

"We received the letter from your editor," my contact at the consulate told me. "But we need someone more important at the newspaper to sign this letter."

I was confused. I explained to them that this was the Barry Forbis, a First Amendment pioneer, a titan in the newsroom, one of the top editors at The Rocky.

"Yes, well, all the same, we need someone more important," came their reply.

One more thought on deportation, after the jump:

Adidas' slogan is "Impossible is Nothing," which apparently seems to be the motto that anyone hoping to visit the shoe giant's new Olympic-themed art exhibit needs to use to find the place. The exhibit, titled "Sport in Art," is not an easy place to get to, and certainly, you wouldn't guess from the dinosaur statue outside the museum that inside, they're housing art by U.S. Olympians like Allyson Felix, Tyson Gay and Jeremy Wariner, along with a few other names you might recognize: Gilbert Arenas (pictured above), David Beckham, Lionel Messi and Ian Thorpe. The exhibit -- which started in Shanghai and has toured five cities in China this year -- is open here in Beijing until the end of the Games.

It's our duty here at the Rocky's Olympic blog to take you inside things (un)related to these Games. So enjoy an inside access tour of "Sport in Art." The address for how to get to the exhibit is after the jump. It's a bit easier to find it if you have it.

You'd be surprised who Team USA wrestler and U.S. Army sergeant Dremiel Byers wants to meet and greet warmly. That would be Fidel Castro.

Hi, folks, Dan Oshinsky with The Rocky Mountain News here in Beijing, where we've been asking one big question all week: how exactly are the Chinese going to deal with Olympic athletes who try to mouth off to the international media about all of China's problems? Well, we at The Rocky think we've found a solution.

Let me introduce to you the Olympic Muzzle. It's a simple device. You place it snugly over your mouth and speak normally. The muzzle does the rest of the work. It won't let any derogatory comments about China be released. It's just that effective and easy to use.

Other muzzles might let a few words slip, but not our Taiwanese-made Olympic Muzzle. It's your own personal censor here in China, and better yet, it even filters out all of the nasty toxins in Beijing's air.

A two-for-one muzzle like that might cost you hundreds back in the States, but this marvelous device can be yours for just four easy payments of $2.02. If you call now, we'll even throw in a free Mandarin-subtitled bootleg of "The Dark Knight," yet to be released in China as government censors work to slice up the film into Communist-approved propaganda.

So call now to order your Olympic Muzzle. Remember, folks: this year's Olympic slogan is "One World, One Dream": a dream that no one -- not the athletes, and certainly not the media -- will say anything even remotely controversial or truthful about China this Olympic season.

Alright, off soapbox. It's 7 p.m. in Beijing, and 5 a.m. in Denver. Here are the stories that are making Olympic headlines on this Tuesday evening/morning, after the jump:

My last post about the journey to China, I promise. But the U.S. travel industry is such a mess I feel we all have a duty to point out little improvements it could make.

No. 1, over the course of the last several years, I must have been ordered to throw away several dozen bottles of perfectly good water by the Transportation Security Administration because one screwball once tried to bring a liquid explosive on board an airline. I'm convinced this has become a racket for the airport concessionaires because you have to replace your water on the concourse where, coincidentally, they sell one bottle for the same price Safeway charges for a case of 24.

Here in Beijing, if you have a bottle of water when you go through an Olympic security checkpoint, they ask you to take a drink. Problem solved.

No. 2, both Cathay Pacific Airways and Dragonair offer a revolutionary service: They serve hot meals. In economy. For free. And they're not terrible. Dragonair's dim sum is positively edible. Cathay even offers beer and wine as part of the deal. For free. Not that I'm recommending imbibing; just saying.

Meanwhile, U.S. airlines consider charging for that little bag of pretzels, hoping it will keep them out of bankruptcy.

No. 3, when Denver Post photographer Helen Richardson, Rocky writer Clay Latimer and I arrived in Hong Kong, we went to the gate for our connection to Beijing and nobody was there. I mean nobody. Not only that, there were no chairs. Pretty Spartan, we thought.

We hung out for a while, but as flight time approached, we got a little nervous. We were still alone. What with the Olympics and all, we figured there might be more than the three of us trying to get to Beijing. So we finally asked somebody.

Turns out, the same gate has separate levels for departing and arriving passengers. That way, the arriving don't have to navigate through the departing and the departing don't have to keep getting out of the way. True, they'd have to retrofit every existing U.S. airport and there's absolutely no chance of the broke airlines approving, but it's a pretty good idea if cattle prods are not part of your customer relations program.

The three of us got upstairs to the departure level just in time. Out of habit, we threw away our Starbucks before going through the security checkpoint between the two levels. See No. 1.

At last.

Three flights, four airports and one endless night later, I showed up at the Main Press Center of the Summer Games and ran into David Lassen of the Ventura County (Calif.) Star, a longtime colleague in the chain of newspapers owned by E.W. Scripps Co.

"When did you get in?" he asked.

This is what everybody asks everybody else at the start of events like this. Nobody really wants to know; it's just conversation.

But it stumped me. Which is a little embarrassing. It's like being stumped by "How you doin'?"

I knew I left Denver on Saturday. I knew I got into L.A. on Saturday night. That's about the last thing I knew for sure. Somebody said it was Monday morning when I got into Hong Kong, which I'm not sure I believe. The flight from L.A. certainly seemed to take a day and a half, but I don't think it actually did.

The Rocky loaned me a Blackberry for the trip. Why I don't know. I'm pretty much a techno-troglodyte. Maybe my bosses figured if I had more than one way to retrieve email, I might actually do it. Now it buzzes on my hip everytime I get a piece of spam. It feels like I'm being gradually electrocuted.

Anyway, when I finally turned it on in Beijing, it said it was Sunday night. Which was a little weird since it was allegedly Monday morning in Hong Kong several hours earlier. So either I got in Sunday or Sunday never happened, the week is now six days long and I got in Monday.

"When did you get in?" Lassen asked.

"I have no idea," I said. "I forgot to bring my watch."

"OK," he said, electing not to wade in any deeper. "You can probably buy a knockoff Rolex while you're here. It'll be right twice a day."

My very next move.

Paul Astephen has a booming business, a fourth restaurant opening up next month in Beijing and a cadre of Chinese chefs ready to ship out all over the world to cook his food. And to think that it's all thanks to SARS.

No, that's not a typo: Astephen, a native of Nova Scotia in Canada, wouldn't be the head chef or owner of Steak & Eggs in Beijing if not for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome.

See, in 2003, Astephen had just sold out his share of a restaurant in Daytona Beach, Fla., which was also called Steak & Eggs. He'd been working as a chef for 37 years -- dating back to his days creating pastries at Dunn's Delicatessen in Toronto -- but he wanted to travel Asia with his fiance, a Chinese woman named Yang Yang who he'd met in Canada.

So Astephen and his bride-to-be flew out to Beijing to visit Yang Yang's family in March. They arrived in the city just as SARS was sweeping through China. Officials allowed the couple into the country, but they wouldn't allow them to travel anywhere outside of Beijing.

Stuck in the city, Astephen started to crave his favorite dishes from back home. "I wanted to eat Western food," he said, "but there was nothing here. Nothing."

Read more about Astephen's Steak & Eggs restaurants, after the jump:

I've gotten my hands on a copy of the "Beijing Olympic Games Training Series: A Conversational English Reader." BOCOG -- the Beijing Olympic governing body -- is using it as a manual to teach volunteers how to react to any situation that might arise during the Games. Some of those situations just happen to be a bit unusual.

Today's text is reproduced in its entirety and is not edited. All non-sequiturs and grammatical errors are theirs. The text is titled "At the counter of a bar" from the "At Shichahai Bar Street" section of the reader. Again: this really is a guide for how Beijingers are supposed to deal with Westerners in this particular situation. Enjoy, after the jump:

Here's something that I'd never experienced before: I went to lunch today in an air conditioned restaurant, but it was still so humid inside that I started sweating. I was literally soaked by the time my meal ended; everyone else in the restaurant looked like they'd just finished a serious cardio workout too. This cannot be a good sign for the athletes who are competing outside in the coming weeks.

One more unusual phenomenon regarding the reporting of weather conditions in Beijing, after the jump:

Let's assume that Reuters has their numbers right and that there are at least 70,000 cab drivers in this city. Everyone's talking about the new uniforms that the cabbies have to wear, but I've been wondering something else: where do 70,000 guys who operate on a cab driver's salary eat?

Let me be clear about this: taxi rides in this city are cheap. I've ridden across town in a taxi at rush hour on multiple occasions, but I've yet to pay a fare of more than 55 RMB (about $8). And cab drivers in this city have actually refused to accept tips whenever I've offered them.

Gas isn't that cheap here -- though it's still below $3 a gallon -- but profit margins are slim for Beijing cab drivers. That's why they've created special cab driver restaurants around the city.

Here's how it works: in certain areas around town, there are restaurants where cab drivers can get a full meal -- either noodles or fried rice -- for the price of 8 yuan ($1.17). These restaurants will not serve you if you are not a cab driver.

And seeing one of these cabbie restaurants in action is incredible. The one pictured above is in the eastern section of Beijing, near an area called Soho. There, the cabbies park their taxi halfway onto the curb, leave the car running, stand in line for their noodles, grab them and run back to their car to continue driving. Only a few bother to take the keys out of their car or to stand around and actually eat on site.  Meanwhile, the chefs at the restaurant are churning out three to four bowls of noodles a minute, all while standing in 90 degree heat.

It certainly beats the Six Yuan Menu at McDonald's.

Over the last few months, the city of Beijing has been teaching residents about the Western concept we'd call "organization." They held special days teaching Beijingers how to do things like standing in a single file line for tickets or talking to foreigners. They also taught thousands of Chinese how to organize a proper cheer at a sporting event.

"Rock and Roll Part II" hasn't exactly caught on here, so a state-run group called the Beijing Etiquette Academy created an official, government-approved cheer called "the Olympic Four Step."  Then, companies like Pepsi -- which is not an official Olympic sponsor -- stepped in to spread the cheer via TV ads, like the one below. Expect to see a lot of it during these Olympics:

Hey, you, over there on the couch, watching ESPNEWS. What's wrong? Look, the trade deadline's past. Last night's football game featured Jim Sorgi at quarterback. And that Favre guy should be heading back to Mississippi any day now.

So what's distracting you? Shark Week? "The Dark Knight's" quest to top "Titanic" at the box office? That Presidential election? (Haven't we elected one of these guys by now?)

Come on, people. The Summer Olympics start in less than four days. So where's the excitement? Why was the infected bursa sack on Peyton Manning's knee the #2 most popular search on Google on Sunday evening, while searches for the Beijing Olympics didn't even crack the top 100? Heck, even "Garfield Gets Real," a year-old, straight-to-DVD movie made the top 75.

What's it going to take to get you excited about these Games? Topless photos of Michael Phelps? A preview of the Opening Ceremonies fireworks display? More Yao?

Okay, how about this?

It's back, people. The mighty smog has returned to town, and all seems normal here in Beijing. Please return to your computers, commence Googling "2008 Olympics" and get ready.  We're t-minus four days and counting to 08/08/08 at 08:08:08.

It's 7 p.m. in Beijing, and 5 a.m. in Denver. Here are the stories that are making Olympic headlines on this Monday evening/morning, after the jump:

I was jogging this afternoon with some ex-pats through northeast Beijing -- between the 5th and 6th Ring Roads, about a 20 minute drive north of the Workers Stadium, where many of the Olympic soccer matches will be held -- when we came across this: two men clearing the algae from a polluted river. The ex-pats with me said that in all of their years in Beijing -- a few decades of living here, combined -- they'd never seen anything like it. And you thought Jackie Chan was a real environmentalist.

More photos, after the jump:

In other cities, people play musical instruments on the street or in subways at all hours, but here in Beijing, that's not the case. Maybe it's just that the Chinese are performance shy -- unless, of course, you're talking about karaoke -- but until tonight, I'd yet to see anyone playing an instrument in public.

So I was pleasantly surprised to see a man on the subway tonight, rocking out to some song in Chinese. The others on the train were singing along, so I guessed that it was a fairly famous song. But no one was able to tell me what he was singing.

He got off at the next stop, but he'd gotten me in the mood for some light acoustic guitar. I switched to a different subway line and, subconsciously, found myself air guitaring along to a particularly precise cover of "Daytripper" by The Beatles.

A Chinese student standing across from me looked up. "You play gee-tar?" he asked. I nodded yes.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. He thumbed through a few menu items before a video started playing. It was of the exact same guitar player I'd seen minutes earlier, though based on the t-shirt he was wearing in the video, I'd say that it was shot on a different night.

So here's my question to you, loyal readers of the Rocky's Olympic blog: who is this subway-riding, guitar-playing man, and what song is he singing? I'd be shocked if it's not something related to either the Olympics or China's general prosperity.



[He's not the only one who's ever played on the Beijing subway, though.]

A few stories that aren't necessarily making headlines here in Beijing on this Sunday, after the jump:

There are a lot of strange shirts around Beijing -- I'm currently the proud owner of a Li-Ning shirt that carries the phrase "BEIJING HOST!" -- but this may be my new favorite. I just can't decide if the girl wearing it understands the irony or not. I'd vote that no, she has no idea what it says.

It's eveningtime here in Beijing, where the weather the last few days has been noticeably better.  The numbers from the Chinese government seem to back that up, as air quality is getting closer to what you'd expect in a city like Los Angeles.  It's certainly not great, but it's improving.

Here's one truly positive sign: just taking a walk around town here a few minutes ago, I saw a star in the sky.  Now, that might not sound like much, but in the month I've been here, I hadn't seen any astrological features except for the moon.  And yes, it was just a single star, but still: this is progress, people.

While I'm on the subject: Mediastorm has an excellent new video about the pollution here.  It's well worth your time.

Beijing is officially 6,486.5 square miles (16,800 square km) large, but that's a slightly misleading number. From downtown Beijing, you can drive for an hour directly out of town and still not reach the city limits of Beijing. The map at right covers nearly all of central Beijing but only a tiny portion of the entire city. (Also one note for skeptics: the same government site lists the population at 11 million; it's probably closer to 17 million).

But let's assume that Beijing actually is 6,486.5 square miles in total area. By comparison:

>The top 10 cities in America (by population: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Phoenix, Philadelphia, San Antonio, San Diego, Dallas and San Jose) only add up to an area of 3,434 square miles.

>It would take more than 10 Londons to equal the size of Beijing (keep in mind: London is hosting the Games in 2012).

>Gambia is 4,007 square miles. Swaziland is 6,704 square miles. Those countries have at least four athletes in total competing in the Games.

>The entire nation of Belgium is 11,787 square miles, or not even double the size of Beijing.

One more attempt to quantify the real size of Beijing, after the jump:

The scene inside a Chinese ad agency boardroom a few months ago:

PR guy: "Okay, we're looking to sell this new snack called Potepo. They're just a Chinese knockoff on Bugles, so we need a pretty convincing ad campaign to sell these things."

Ad guy #1: "Well, how about we dress our spokesmen in hollowed out Twinkie costumes."

Ad guy #2: "And we could have them threaten unsuspecting customers with bodily harm."

Ad guy #1: "And deportation to Tokyo too!"

PR guy: "Yes! A threatening, deportation-themed snack commercial starring men dressed as corn chips is exactly what we need! The guys at the office are going to love this idea."

At least that's how I imagine these ads for a Chinese snack named Potepo getting pitched. They're just about the strangest things I've seen on TV since I've arrived. Enjoy:



A brief translation of what these ads are about, courtesy of Google, after the jump:

A Chinese media outlet has released a few odd English-captioned caricatures of various Olympians.  Three questions: why does the U.K.'s Paula Radcliffe have no teeth, wouldn't Cuban hurdler Dayron Robles be acclimated to humidity already, and will the gymnasts be wearing pants that tight at the actual Games?

A month into my stay here in Beijing, my Mandarin has not improved much.  I'm able to order to do the essential things -- like saying hello and ordering beer -- but otherwise, I have no idea how to say anything.

I have learned to listen for a few specific words, though.  I'll teach you one right now.

One commonplace word is 那个, which means "that one" or "those."  Translated into the English alphabet, it looks like this: nèige.

Beijingers tend to talk very fast, and when they do so, it makes it much harder for me to pick up on the words and the tones they're using.  When pronounced quickly, "nèige" sounds very much like a certain racial epithet also beginning with the letter N.  So when a Chinese person gets excited and starts yelling out this word in public, my head immediately turns.

I'll note this as well: I knew this country was going to a bit strange when I started hearing the word "nèige" in the background whenever I walked by.  As a large, white, Jewish male, you can imagine my confusion at what exactly they seemed to be saying about me.

If you've been wondering what kind of stories a well-censored news media produces, you've come to the right place.  Here's your headline: "Jackie Chan fulfills concept of 'Green Olympics.'"  Did Chan plant a tree?  Visit a recycling plant?  Praise Al Gore?  No, none of the above:

BEIJING, July 25 (Xinhuanet) -- World famous movie star Jackie Chan fulfilled the concept of "Green Olympics" on Friday during his visit to an exhibition of traditional Chinese cultural heritage by picking up a cigarette butt and throwing it into the dustbin after he came out of an exhibition room.

"Every one of us should protect the environment," he said....

"I am proud of being a Chinese," he said during the visit. "I hope Chinese media enhance the report of Chinese traditional culture."

I gave a plastic bottle to a hobo on the street yesterday to recycle.  Where's my puff piece, Xinhua?

[One post-script: yes, I realize that this story is a week old at this point.  But it's not like stories about Jackie Chan extinguishing cigarette butts have a shelf life.]

Liu Xiang will make about 70 million yuan ($10.24 million) this year, making him the second highest paid athlete in China (and Forbes magazine's number two Chinese celebrity, ahead of Jet Li).  If you're wondering why a guy who only runs in one Olympic event -- the 110 meter hurdles -- can make so much money, there's an easy answer: he endorses everything.  Cadillac, Coca Cola, Lenovo, Nike, Visa -- even a Chinese milk company called Yili and an obscure Chinese clothing line: all are endorsed by Liu Xiang.  (He recently stopped endorsing Baisha, a cigarette company.)

Here's one of his ads for another sponsor, Nutrilite, in which he's paired with Jamaican 100 meter sprinter Asafa Powell, formerly the World's Fastest Man.  Starting today, the ad has been pulled from Chinese airwaves, because Nutrilite is not an official Olympic sponsor:

I wrote yesterday about the Iranian basketball team's impressive victory over Serbia and the team's star center, Hamed Hadadi.  Bad news: Iran lost by 29 points yesterday to China, and Hadadi went down with an ankle injury, though teammates said that he should be able to play during the Olympics.

[Noteworthy: FIBA also spells Hadidi's name Ehadidi. Both names have been used in the mainstream media.]

Welcome to Beijing, Olympians! Now that you've arrived, you'll have to start talking to the media, but conveniently, you've signed gag orders to prevent you from speaking on any non-sport topics. You'll have to say something, though. So take note of Spanish Basketball Federation president Jose Luis Saez, who's already perfected the art of saying nothing:

"What worries us the most is playing the first game. Once we get that one out of the way, then we can take it one game at a time and aim to go as far as possible."

Or how about an age-old one-liner? It doesn't matter if you win or lose, as long as you try:

"We are in a position where we will be giving all that we have in the hunt for a medal in both the men's and the women's competition."

Hey, why not say it again, just for good measure?

"Everyone in our side and in the Spanish team is going to give everything."

But what happens if trying really hard doesn't guarantee gold?

"Sometimes that is not enough because sometimes there are teams that can beat you. But we are going to be as competitive as we can be."

And if reporters want to know about the communists hosting these Games, just break out a little Simon and Garfunkel on them: 

"We have always had very good relationships with the Chinese Federation and they are good friends of ours."

Well done, Mr. Saez. A few things that you other Olympians might want to consider saying as well:

-No one believes in us.
-We're about to shock the world.
-Our backs are against the wall.
-We're ready to get the monkey off our back.
-Everyone on the team has really bought into the system.
-I'm always ready to give 110% out there.
-We're taking it one game at a time.

And the one-size-fits-all: I want to give credit to God.

It's 7 p.m. in Beijing, and 5 a.m. in Denver. Here are the stories that are making Olympic headlines on this Friday evening/morning, after the jump: