First Day of Olympic Events

Our first Olympic event was Beach Volleyball. We arrived at the Chaoyang Park in the northeast part of Beijing by taxi and walked a mile once inside the park to get to the stadium. Outside the stadium, Kate and I were approached by a Chinese boy and his father and asked me to be in a picture with the boy. This proved to be the first of many times we were asked to pose for a picture while in Beijing. We would get occasional stares, and Chinese would strangely ask us to be in pictures. If it weren’t for my ugly mug, this could be Coke’s new ad campaign:

After a very through security and ticket screening process that included a pat down and search of all our bags, we arrived at the stadium to see USA’s May and Walsh defeat the Japanese team. The USA team was far superior winning back to back matches with limited effort. Thanks to the planted Olympic cheerleaders, the crowd was enthusiastic dancing to songs like Shania Twain and doing “The Mexican Wave”. The next match was a men’s match and a team from China (with obvious home support) defeated a team from Austria. The stadium was beautiful and the sound system blared rock music by the Fratellis, AC/DC and The Dandy Warhols in between points. During timeouts and other official breaks, the skinny bikini-clad Chinese cheerleaders shook their booties on the volleyball count and kept the crowd going. The stadium seats were 75% filled. Considering the matches began at 9:00am, this was a pretty good turnout. We saw a few other women matches including Greece vs Austria and Mexico vs Brazil.

After the volleyball we had a free afternoon to explore Beijing. Kate was keen to visit the 798 Art District, described as the artists’ area of Beijing in our guide book. The area is filled with industrial buildings, warehouses and power plants that have been converted into art studios and galleries. We met a college student and his father outside one of the buildings. The son explained that his father used to work in the power plant 20 years ago and that they had come back for the day to visit:

There were dozens of galleries and curio shops along with western-like coffee shops and restaurants. The art was thought provoking and heavily influenced by Mao Zedong and Soviet era propaganda. There were lots of sculptures lining the sidewalk and numerous photography galleries.

Our next stop was the Olympic Green, the main area for the Olympics. It is a huge central plaza where the Bird’s Nest, Watercube, and National Indoor Gymnasium are located. There were also exhibitions from many of the corporate sponsors like Coca Cola, GE, China Mobile and Volkswagen.

Our tickets to Handball were not in this location, but we took the time to look around and took pictures of the amazingly designed buildings. The Bird’s Nest was magnificent! Far away, the beams look like twigs and the stadium gives the impression that it could blow away or even stretch like a bunch of rubber bands. Up close the construction is the opposite looking very sturdy.

After getting caught in a monsoon-like downpour near The Bird’s Nest, we finally made it to the Olympic Gymnasium for our second event, Team Handball. Team Handball is my new favorite sport! Unfortunately, I will have little chance to follow it in the U.S. For those not familiar with handball, I think it’s a hybrid of three sports commonly played in the US: basketball, ice hockey and soccer. Like basketball, handball is fast paced and scoring is frequent. Like ice hockey, handball players tackle and block each other. Like soccer, handball has a level of suspense with one on one penalty throws.

The first match pitted Poland against China. Traditionally, Europeans have been powerhouses in the sport which gave Poland a leg up; however, it was great to enjoy the atmosphere of the home crowd. With every Chinese possession, the Chinese fans would scream “China – Zhonguoren!!!”. Unfortunately, this did not help the Chinese team overcome a far superior team and they lost the game. The second match, Egypt v. Denmark, was a match up between equals. It was a back and forth affair for the entire 60 minutes. The Danish faithful were in full effect while there were only a handful of Egypt fans. The game was filled with hefty blocks, screens, bodies flying and a few injuries (some real and some suspect). The game ended in a draw which seemed like a satisfactory result for both sides as the teams really battled it out. Being a novice handball observer I would say that the Danish speed was neutralized by Egypt’s size and strength.