Reflecting on the Beijing Games
China showed us impressive facades, but the Chinese showed us humanity
BEIJING -- I went through a crazy cab ride, lost, past donkeys and little villages and people always sitting out by the street on their haunches all the way to the Great Wall, where I hiked on top, looking for it. I searched the Forbidden City, including the Hall of Preserved Harmony.
I played pingpong on the playground with some old shark, and looked through a massive, sprawling art district, where Chinese people were allowed to express themselves. I plowed through a jam-packed flea market that was a mad rush of humanity, with hawkers in front of stalls grabbing my hand and pulling me in, and three tiny Chinese women creating a blockade.
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At the Beijing Olympics, I felt I was always searching for something, but I didn’t know what. And then my guide, Crystal, and I rode in the back of a rickshaw down the tiny, narrow ancient hutongs to a small house, where a retired couple, Yu Jun Haw and Guo Shu Fang, took us into their home, sat us down at the table, poured a cup of tea and said, in Chinese, "Welcome to our family."
Three weeks in China, and that’s all I wanted to hear.
The Olympics were great, as always, starting perfectly on a Chinese lucky number, 8. The date was 08/08/2008. And then Michael Phelps won eight gold medals. And then Usain "Lightning" Bolt danced and mugged his way to becoming the world’s fastest human. The U.S. basketball team redeemed itself.
Sure, there were other things. A Cuban tae kwon do competitor kicked a judge in the face. The Chinese gymnastics team used a bunch of little kids, under the age limitations, with forged documents to beat the Americans.
One rifle shooter from Russia and one from Georgia competed as their countries entered battle. And they hugged each other. But an Iranian athlete withdrew from his event before he would have to compete against an Israeli.
And I saw Jim Lefebvre, the former Cubs manager now running the Chinese team, wait on a plastic chair out by security guards for U.S. manager Davey Johnson, planning God knows what. China’s pitcher had been throwing at U.S. players, and when the game ended, the U.S. pitcher took the ball and rolled it to the Chinese dugout. In your face.
So many people, from so many cultures playing so many games. You are bound to see the inspirational, the galling, the touching, the annoying, the thrilling, and sometimes all mixed into one Lightning Bolt.
But these Olympics were particularly hard to figure out. China let us into their country, but did they really let us in?
It seemed that for every breathtaking Opening Ceremony, we had Joey Cheek, humanitarian, prevented from coming into the country. I visited Tiananmen Square, which is massive. And I wanted to know which street it was where the kid ran out and stood board-stiff in front of the tank. Unfortunately, every time I tried to call that up on youtube, it wouldn’t come.
Two old ladies with canes applied for a license to protest in an accepted protest zone, and then were placed in a camp for re-education. Some protesters disappeared.
A cute girl lip-synched during the Opening Ceremony because she was prettier than the real girl singing. That’s awful.
But young women were trained on how to have the perfect smile -- eight top teeth only -- when carrying medals to the ceremonies. And everyone kept saying, "Welcome to Beijing."
And was any of that real? On the other hand, is there anything wrong with prettying things up and putting on a smile to greet guests? Maybe they were just good hosts.
On my tour of the hutongs, the narrow streets, Crystal showed me the four beams outside the door of Yu Jun Haw’s house. Before many of the houses were knocked down to build high rises, the number of beams represented your social standing. Eight to 12 meant you were high up. Zero meant you were a commoner. Four meant you were an official.
The first step was particularly high.
"To get rid of the evil spirits," Crystal said. "The belief is that the evil spirits are short and can’t step over high steps.
"When you go in the house, look down on the floor. It shows respect."
So I needed something real, something to hold on to, to know that the world was really welcome here. That’s the spirit of the Olympics. Otherwise, it’s just a big show to pull in corporate sponsors.
To be a real host, China needed to let the world in.
"They think Americans are extroverts," Crystal said. "You laugh easy. It’s nice. Older Chinese aren’t like that. Young Chinese are."
The retired couple has a daughter who lives in a high rise.
Four houses surround courtyards along the hutongs. Crystal says they are arranged according to Feng shui. The house on the north represents water, the south fire, the east wood and the west gold.
Yu Jun Haw’s house is one long room, though it’s separate with a moon gate, an archway, symbolizing happiness. He shows me his house. They have an old stove and color TV and dining room table with a lot of chairs, which he has, he says, so he can invite a lot of people to his home.
The paintings on the walls are his work. He has red goldfish out front, the red meaning good luck.
Well, I finished my tea, and we all took pictures together, and that was that.
The point is, the athletes here all did their thing. But don’t think they were the only ones who had the spirit. The government needed to make us feel welcome, but the people here did the job.
Two hours after the Closing Ceremony ended Sunday, the infield at the Bird’s Nest was still packed. Young men and women in costumes were laughing and taking pictures. They didn’t want it to end. Beautiful women in traditional Chinese red dresses talked to guys on some sort of shovel-shaped stilts. Volunteers were all over, too, and some athletes. It was a wild party.
So a friend and I jumped the railing, onto the field, asked four women in yellow dresses if we could take a picture with them. Then, we asked four guys in wild costumes. We walked around the track, a little slower than Lightning Bolt ran it. Up on the stage at midfield, two old Chinese people wanted to take pictures. three guys in gray uniforms, one putting his cap on my head. Six girls came up wanting a picture with me. One at a time. Two royal-looking women. Picture. Three guys, picture. A group of women approach, wanting us to sign their hats, scarves. I pick up a fake sword used in the ceremony, and a volunteer picks up another one and we fence.
This is a rush. It’s a blast.
Why did we jump the fence? We just wanted in.