China

Last night in Beijing

This is it, folks! My last night in Beijing. My bags are packed, and I have a few things to throw in them before I check out of the room, but essentially I’m ready to go.

I haven’t blogged very consistently on my trip, so I’ll post a few more stories and a lot more photos in the next few days.

A few thoughts as I look back on my trip:

• I’m grateful to say that I never had to use a squatty-potty (I don’t think that’s the official name, but it’s the one our group called them, and you get the picture of what they are)

• I wonder how it will feel to walk somewhere and not get elbowed, bumped or brushed 10 times in 10 feet

• my calf muscles are very developed from walking everywhere, and making several trips daily up and down the steps between the highest media tribune of the National Indoor Stadium and our office in the almost-basement

• I look forward to washing my face at night and not realizing that my tan is not really a tan

• I can bargain with the best of them, and I can get what I want in some incredibly diplomatic ways now

I’m sure there are things I’m forgetting, but it’s pretty hard to pen only a few general thoughts about this experience working at the Olympics and living in Beijing.

See all of you who read this blog soon!

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Day 16 - Closing Ceremonies

Everyone has a breakdown during the Olympics, one of the journalists who came to speak to our group before we left told us. Well, I had a small one on the last day of the Olympics, and it involves a police car, but it ends happily, so read on.

I worked the last two men’s handball matches, and they were really fun to watch. I thought I would need a sticker of some sort allowing me access to the Olympic green, like we needed for the opening ceremonies, but I guess I didn’t. When I asked my Chinese boss about it though, he told me I couldn’t have a sticker because no one had told him I was working for ONS. I was pretty mad, but refrained from pointing out that I had been working handball for the last four days for ONS, in his office. He had been there every day, too. Apparently he needed a memo.

After the last game, I left around 7 p.m. for dinner with a few friends. Closing ceremonies started at 8, and we were going to go to a bar ONS had rented out for all its staff and volunteers from all the Olympic venues. I planned to go to it. My friends wanted to stay on the green after dinner. I went in the direction of the subway, which was the most direct route to the bar. Security had set up more fences on the green, and wouldn’t let me through. So I decided to take the bus.

The buses weren’t running. It was past 8 p.m., so I guess that makes sense, but I was getting pretty frustrated. I walked a block, and found an information tent across from the Olympic green. It was manned by a few college-aged students. I asked to speak to someone who spoke English. A man who looked about 20 approached me, and I began to tell him how frustrated I felt that I had worked at the National Indoor Stadium earlier in the day and had not expected to have no real way of leaving the green later in the day. I probably went on for about 10 or 15 minutes. The other volunteers of course noticed my distress, so started coming into the conversation. Could I take a taxi? I really hadn’t planned on brining enough money for a taxi. Could I walk back up the block I just came down and take a bus, then transfer to another one, we’re not sure which? No, I am not familiar enough with the bus system and I’m afraid I’ll get lost and that’s not really what I want to do on the last night of the Olympics. There was constant conferral in Chinese, and someone offered me money to take a taxi. I told them I couldn’t take their money, that they were volunteers just like me. I felt guilty, really, at the thought of taking money from any of them. At this point, I know I probably seemed pretty ludicrous - I’m 25, and I stop and ask a group of 20-year-olds who are used to giving out maps, directions and water how to get off the green when there is no public transportation and I didn’t plan enough money for non-public transportation.

A police man, on his rounds, approached for a chat, and the volunteers quickly told him what was going on. He listened, then his face lit up: we’ll get the American a ride in a cop car to the nearest subway station! You could feel the tension in the group of volunteers over not being able to find a solution dissipate. Someone brought out a stool for me to sit on, another brought a bottle of water, and several got out their cameras and asked for a picture.

Two police cars pulled up, and our group migrated to the cars. The policeman who helped us told me to get in the car. I almost touched the handle of the door when the driver of the other car began to run toward me, waving and yelling, so I stepped back. The four policemen there had a quick conversation, and I was told to get in the car again. I must have looked hesitant, because one of the volunteers got in the front seat of the car, seemingly to show me it was indeed OK to get in.

We pulled away, the volunteer in front with a map in hand and a smile. After 100 feet I knew we were in trouble. I’ve taken the bus between the subway and the green every day, and I know we’re supposed to take the road straight over the bridge, not veer off to the right and take a different highway. I didn’t say anything because I was just grateful I was moving in the direction of the subway.

The policeman stopped for directions, then turned around, stopped for directions again, then zipped off to a subway station. Halfway there, the volunteer with the map turned to me and said we’d be there in another 5 minutes. We finally got there, I thanked them profusely (well, as profusely as you can with one word in Chinese for “thank you”) and got on the subway.

It probably would have been faster to walk the entire route from the green to the subway stop, if I hadn’t stopped to make a fuss on the way. Instead, I arrived at the bar in time to hear the fireworks overhead stop. It was 10:02 p.m. My boyfriend TiVO’d the ceremony, just as he had the opening ceremony. Thank you, Brett. Somehow I manage to have adventures when I don’t think you’re supposed to. And certainly not involving a police car. Hey, at least I have a closing ceremony story in Beijing no one else has!

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Day 15 - handball and more

For those of you who read my blog, I apologize for being so absent. I’ve been busy - since the gymnastics gala I’ve been working at handball games, which are now being held at the National Indoor Stadium (which is where gymnastics was held and handball was played at a different venue). I had never seen a handball match before three days ago. I am by no means an expert, but the joy of being a flash quotes reporter at the Olympics is that the target audience for reading those quotes is not sports experts, so I have not had to become an expert. Especially today, since it was the last day of games for women’s handball, so our questions focused on how the overall Olympic experience was. Originally I wasn’t supposed to work handball, because there are already flash quotes reporters for handball who have been working at every game, but I was asked if I could come in to help interview in French when the French played their games. I’m so glad I have, because I am getting four additional days of Olympic games and I am experiencing reporting at a new sport.

Tomorrow I cover the gold/silver medal match between France and Iceland. Can you believe this is the first year Iceland has fielded an Olympic handball team, and the team makes it to the final? Iceland has a population of about 300,000 people. I think you can fit that many people on less than one block in Beijing. And the French haven’t been to a gold-medal match in several decades (I don’t have my statistics in front of me). This article by the BBC says Iceland has never won a gold medal, and the last silver one was won in 1956. (A side note: if you read the article I’m pointing you to, I am pleasantly surprised to say the quote by France’s Luc Abalo at the end of the article is one I took during my work for the France-Croatia game! I realize the whole point of our work has been so that journalists can use our quotes, but I haven’t tried seeing before if any have, in fact, used them. Pretty cool.) And this will be only the fourth medal ever won by Iceland. I can’t quickly find the last time France won the gold in handball at the Olympics, or if they ever did. However, Iceland beat France in 2007 in handball. This is going to be a very interesting game.

It’s storming tonight, so I wonder how that will affect closing ceremonies, since they are outdoors at the National Stadium (better known as the Bird’s Nest). I’m hoping for more fireworks.

Since my plane out of Beijing is not until August 28, I suspect I will have a little time to catch up on blogging. There is lots to talk about still, including the pin-trading I’ve been doing and the last visits I’ll make around Beijing.

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Day 12 - gymnastics gala

I really hope everyone gets to see the gymnastics gala. It was a fantastic show. I said I would be in it, and I was, but you can’t see me unless you look really hard for me. I led out individuals and groups for four of the numbers during the gala. I thought that I was clearly visible to the crowd at the National Indoor Stadium because green, yellow and orange lights lined the floor, but my friends told me later that you couldn’t see me or the athletes unless you looked hard. It was not my goal to be seen clearly, so that is good. It does seem odd thought that the perception on the floor and from the seats was different. If you do get to see the gala, you most likely won’t see me because I often stood by cameramen (yes they were all men, no women) and it is not typical to see a cameraman appear on tv. Then again, a cameraman did come up very close to the Romanian gold medalist for the floor exercise, and she kept leaning in to talk to me before her performance, so I could very well be in one of those shots.

The atmosphere was intense. A few of the gymnasts just plain didn’t show up to participate in the gala, which was OK because it ran 20 minutes behind schedule - even after intermission was cut out of the program. I really didn’t know much of what was going on, because of the language barrier and because no one really seemed to know what was going on. At one point, I was told that the three Chinese women, my friend and myself had to lead only the gymnasts to the apparatus that were farthest from us. Then I was told we had to lead every gymnast to every apparatus, even the two that were 10 feet away from us. The non-gymnasts participating in the gala would find their own way in both those cases. Then we were told we had to lead everyone to every apparatus except the ones closest to us. It wasn’t until the first number that we discovered we only had to lead the gymnasts to the apparatus farthest from us. Somewhere in there we were also told we would have to ensure that the gymnasts were out 5 minutes before their performances, ready to be taken to their apparatus (or sent to them, if they were close). That’s a lot of work, since I don’t know every single gymnast by sight, even after a week of seeing them all. In the end, that, too, turned out not to be our jobs. I did have to help a few people, including answering questions from Nastia Liukin’s father about a stray piece of equipment near the balance beam, and from Shawn Johnson, whom the Chinese kept rushing out to the waiting area too early. I suspect they were just excited to have her there. She finally found my friend and I could speak English (we were the only white people out on the floor around the waiting area) and would check in with us from time to time before she had to go up. The whole affair gave me a taste for wanting to go into event management. I was really glad when, by the end of the gala, it turned out we had pulled off our jobs well - every athlete was at their apparatus in ample time to perform. What was too bad was that the athletes were mobbed by volunteers asking for autographs and photographs. I saw Fabian Hambuechen alone get stopped some 25 times on the 10-yard walk between the practice room and the waiting area of the gala floor. He answered every request, but I can tell you, (even though I am in no danger of becoming a world-class athlete) I would not enjoy that kind of treatment. Maybe I just like to enjoy things, like walking from one place to another, in peace.

When the gala ended, volunteers and staff rushed the apparatus, posing for pictures on the balance beam and floor. The men’s and women’s Chinese teams came out, too, and eventually had to be helped off by a human cordon. I had a friend take a picture of me posing on the balance beam. That was before we were all scolded when one of the men in our group decided standing on the balance beam for a picture would be a good idea, and three other men followed his example. The four of them were trying to keep their balance on the beam, windmilling their arms occasionally when they started losing their balance. I half expected them to start pushing each other off the beam for the fun of it.

All told, the gala is a highlight of this wonderful experience of working at the Olympics.

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Day 11 - final day of interviewing

Today was the last day of gymnastics. I was assigned to cover the French gymnast if he medaled. He did not. However, I feel very familiar with the Chinese national anthem, and I have the theme music of the Olympic Games that plays in between events firmly stuck in my head. It will likely take weeks to dislodge, or longer if my friend insists on humming it for me whenever she thinks I might be forgetting it.

Tomorrow is the gymnastics gala. I had said earlier I was going to be sitting at the announcer’s table. There’s been a change of plans; there isn’t enough room at the announcer’s table. Instead, Julia and I will be arriving at the National Indoor Stadium tomorrow at 9 a.m. to rehearse how to lead the gymnasts into the stadium to perform. What an amazing opportunity! It means I will likely meet a lot of the medalists from this year’s Olympics, and I will get a fantastic view of the Gala. I’m excited!

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Day 10 - Interviewing a medalist

It’s day 10 of covering the Olympic Games. I waited for the Olympics to start for almost six weeks, and now I’m on the second-to-last day of interviewing athletes. It’s gone by so fast. Granted, there are more days left in the Olympics, but my job as a reporter will be over tomorrow.

My second-to-last day was everything I’ve been training for. I interviewed a silver medalist. It’s funny, though - I’m at the Olympics, and I expected it to feel more significant. But I’ve interviewed the gymnast before, and it didn’t seem that much different, except that he was a little overwhelmed by winning the medal, since he wasn’t exactly favored to win. And there were a lot more journalists than the other times I interviewed him, so I was concentrating more on trying to listen to the gymnast’s response to other journalists’ questions and not step on any journalists’ toes. Maybe it will feel more exciting a few days from now. I do have to say, I’ve enjoyed the work I’ve done so far at the gymnastics venue. Every day has brought a new adventure, whether it’s seeing whether the lunchroom is serving apples or bananas at the day’s meals or whether I have the opportunity to interview a gymnast who’s just won a medal.

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An adventure-filled Day 7

Today is one of the clearest days in Beijing, and certainly the clearest in about a month. The sky was blue and clear. Apparently yesterday’s rain cleared the skies.

I went to work, where my only assignment was to watch the French compete in the women’s gymnastics individual all-around final and interview them if they medaled. They did not, so I joined a friend to explore the Olympic Green a little. That’s when the adventures started.

We heard there was pin-trading outside the MPC (main press center). We didn’t find anything in the direction we took outside the security gates, so we figured we’d go back through security and find another side of the MPC. We got into the MPC (we didn’t have clearance for it), ended up wandering around the basement of the place, twice to blocked-off exits, for a while before we found a security guard to ask how to get out. He led us out past the clothes-washers and cooks to the cafeteria of the MPC.

Once outside, a Chinese- and English-speaking woman approached my friend and I, asking if our volunteer uniforms were the U.S. team uniforms and if we were therefore athletes. Even after she found out we were volunteers and not athletes, she wanted us to take a picture with her two children.

On entering the State Grid pavilion, a staff member informed my friend that she was the 2,008th visitor that day, and we were escorted to the second floor for her to be interviewed and given a gift. Her gift: five books in Chinese, a flashlight that is magnetic and can be used as a night light for a bike rider (you know, the kind with a white light in front and a red one in back), a flashdrive/bracelet, and a hand-held fan that requires three batteries that my friend didn’t have. In the spirit of friendship, I asked what I got for being the friend to the 2,008th visitor and was also given a fan that requires three batteries. I didn’t have any batteries with me.

That would have been enough of an adventure in itself.

On leaving, someone asked if we wanted to trade pins. We started trading pins, which attracted more pin-traders, which attracted more pin-traders, which attracted more pin-traders… we walked 100 feet in 30 minutes. The majority of that ground was covered when my friend made the mistake of giving a pin away to someone to start their collection, which resulted in what she describes as a sudden wall of hands wanting a free pin. She got wide-eyed, grabbed her pin bag and quickly walk away.

If you’re looking for internet, the State Grid pavilion has wireless. At least, according to the German woman sitting on the steps outside the pavilion checking her e-mail on her laptop. I felt a little bad for her because when I sat down for a friendly chat with her, two minutes later we were surrounded by people wanting to trade pins.

My favorite exchange of the day:

German man (I had conversations with people of other nationalities today, as well) : “Are you volunteers?”

Me: “Yes.”

German man: “Are you Asian?”

Me: (thinking, Did we really just get asked that? Me, with light-brown hair and brown eyes, standing next to a curly-haired blond woman?) “Uh, um, no?”

German: “Oh.”

Wow.

And for my BA (bonne action) for the day, I helped direct a woman from Reuters find her way to the Bird’s Nest. She got off metro line 10 to take metro line 8. I suggested the bus would be the fastest way. She was determined to take line 8. A friend (different from the one earlier in the day) and I walked her in the direction of the security lines for line 8. She got almost to the lines, then decided it would be faster to walk. We told her it would take 45 minutes to walk and the subway would take 5 minutes, followed by a 10-minute walk to the Bird’s Nest. We then told her to go to the farthest security line (reserved for accreditated personnel access) which would be faster than waiting in the ticket-holder lines. I hope she made it in time. But gosh she was hard to convince. That brings my personal count of helping people find their way to three: A Russian journalist, a French personal trainer and now an American journalist with Reuters. And I feel important every time.

Tomorrow: in the morning, we’ll cover the first day of trampoline gymnastics, then several of us have tickets provided by BOCOG to watch athletics in the evening. It’ll be my first time inside the Bird’s Nest.

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Primo seats for the gymnastics gala

I hear the gymnastics gala is the third-most sold out event, after the opening and closing ceremonies, here at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. I haven’t been able to verify that information on the Internet though.
But I have primo seats.

Julia Shuck (her blog is here) and I will be sitting at the announcer’s table during the gala, which starts at 2 p.m. on August 20. I went to the announcer’s table today, and it’s pretty much on level with the raised floor of the gymnastics floor exercise platform. Pretty good view, I’d say.

How did I get these seats?

Speaking French.

See, there is a French-speaking announcer, an English-speaking announcer and a Chinese-speaking announcer. The French-speaking announcer has been asked to introduce the gala events in French and in English, even though he hasn’t had to announce events in English up until now. He says his English is not too strong, so he asked one of the venue managers, a French man who teaches English in France, to translate the text for him. That manager could very well have done it, but decided he had too much work and that I would appreciate the opportunity more. I gladly translated the text. So the introductions you hear in English at the gymnastics gala will be my translation, potentially with some tweaks by the French announcer. And maybe I’ll appear in the background of the gala on TV, so for those of you who can’t be at the gala in person, you have an excuse to watch the gala on TV.

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Day 2 of the Olympic Games

Today was more successful. I managed to get fewer quotes, but with more meaning, and faster than last night. The athletes I interviewed were also extremely nice and patient with me as I took quotes. I am apparently not a very fast quote-taker. Thankfully the athletes I was assigned to interview came by the print reporters relatively soon after the performance ended.

Today felt good in other ways: I talked to the PR woman for the U.S. gymnastics team, and she is very nice and traded a pin with me. I also will be doing a little bit of translation, from French to English, which I don’t feel comfortable talking about right now, but I hope it will be useful to the party who has asked for it. Don’t worry, Dad, I haven’t taken on the translation of someone’s speech or anything big like that!

Tomorrow is a day off. And BOCOG (which is the official group for which I’m volunteering - roughly the Beijing Olympic Games Organizing Committee) has given any interested Mizzou students tickets to the 9 a.m. men’s beach volleyball game. Hopefully it doesn’t rain tomorrow; it poured several times today, but I had the good fortune to be inside during the times it was raining. It appears we’ll be watching Argentina play Latvia. I’ll be sure to take lots of pictures and tell you how it goes!

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Day 1 of the Olympic Games

I’m not sure if the Opening Ceremonies count as day 1, so I’m calling August 9 day 1. It was the first day of work with a paying crowd! I only had to work during one rotation of the men’s qualifications. It was a little easier, although I think the stress was a little higher because there are more journalists here now and it was a real event, unlike all our previous mock events.

I cannot say anything about the events or the athletes, because of my position as a volunteer, but I can say the music played between events is permanently stuck in my head. Even moreso because I told one of my coworkers that I had it stuck in my head and was tired of it (that’s a reflection of hearing any ditty repeatedly, not a reflection on the ditty in question here). She proceeded to sing it whenever she could on our subway ride home. I’m sure a few Chinese who rode the subway with us now think Americans are crazy.

I did not do my job entirely satisfactorily. My job is to get two or three good quotes from two or three athletes, and run them back to the office for publication. I have slipped into a mindset of grabbing as many quotes as I can from as many athletes as I can, which isn’t good. I just have to remind myself that even though I think long conversations with athletes are fascinating, I am not here to write whole stories, but to collect a few quotes. I admit it’s a little harder in French because it goes by a bit faster and I don’t understand all the words. I have discovered a trick: I write in English and French, which goes faster than trying to write in only one language. I have no idea why it’s easier for me to think in the two languages than to think in one or the other when I’m interviewing in French. Tomorrow, though, I will improve on my job as I interview the French women’s gymnastics team.

Our paid staff is at the office all the time, it seems like, and they cannot get out much, so tonight, when some of the other flash quotes reporters who were done with their jobs talked about getting food at McDonald’s, I offered to pick up food for our managers. They reacted like it was a really good idea, so I’m glad I offered.

I thought a trip to McDonald’s would be easy, but it wasn’t: we were mobbed by McDonald’s employees wanting to trade pins. We weren’t the first to be asked: several of the employees already had Mizzou pins, but my advice to those going to McDonald’s who want to order quickly: hide your pins. (Yes, I know that sentence had two colons and that’s probably not proper English.)

I almost forgot: for lunch, I ordered pasta. I had to have someone interpret the all-Chinese menu for me, and it felt like such a long, difficult thing, that I didn’t even try asking for cheese. But that doesn’t mean I don’t miss grated parmesan cheese on my pasta.

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