Dispatch: The Silk Road

It was another pristine day in Beijing. There were no traffic jams and the security lines at the Bird’s Nest were short and quickly maneuvered. Too bad most of us were suffering the residual effects of the previous night’s dinner. It made for a less than celebratory atmosphere in our tiny contingent. It was women, women, women on the track and field. America’s athletes were superb, with all of 200-meter contestants easily winning their heats and all three of the long jump contestants moving on to the finals. However, both of the women’s hammer throwers were pitiful; finishing at the bottom of the pack. Afterwards we caught taxis to Silk Road in the Chao Yang district.

I have never seen anything like Silk Road which is possibly the largest and most expansive knock-off mall in the world. Located near the CCTV Tower, the Silk Road building is seven-stories of fake merchandise ranging from Nikon cameras and designer watches to Tommy Bahama shirts and Olympic trinkets. A premiere destination for tourists in Beijing, Silk Roads narrow aisles were jam packed with a United Nations contingent of bargain shoppers. Pretty young sales clerks, forever flirting and playing coy; compliment potential customers as they punch sales numbers into calculators. “You look so handsome Mister. You buy, you buy? Give me your best deal,” was repeated into narrow stall after narrow stall. Silk Road has to represent the hardest sell that I have ever experienced. It is not a negative experience, but it is overbearing and it does wear one down after a bit.

Silk Road represents the Olympic  knock-off shopping experience. It is not for the faint of heart or those inexperienced in product negotiation.  You know that you are on the right track when the flirting stops, the clerk’s eyes go narrow and their fingers fly furiously over the calculator keyboard. Be willing to walk away from a negotiation and chances are that they will accept your final offer and everybody will walk away happy.

Unless you have dedicated your life to shopping, Silk Road will wear you out very quickly. The girls and I spent an hour negotiating Tommy Bahama shirts. Although we were successful, I was burnt by the end of the deal. While waiting for the wives and nieces, all better trained for bargain shopping, I sat outside and watched a parade of Olympic athletes, including Australia’s beautiful diver Sharleen Stratton, leave and enter the shopping center. Even they looked beat upon exiting.

Absolutely exhausted from the experience we crossed the street for a western style dinner at the Blue Marine. The steak and fries at this little French Bistro was better than we could have expected, and for me at least, a welcome change from Chinese food.  Two Russian wrestlers, at least they looked like Russian wrestlers, purchased pirated DVD’s from the proprietor at the table next to ours.  

Imodium is great stuff. By the end of the day I was feeling much better. Simultaneously exhausted and exhilarated, day two of our Olympic adventure fulfilled all of our expectations.

Dispatch: Beijing

How many Stephanie's does it take to answer a question? I will tell you at the end of this post. Who would have thought that Beijing would ever be used in a sentence with the phrase blue sky, but that is exactly what happened yesterday as our first Olympic experience occurred under pristine conditions. In fact we got so cocky that we were totally surprised and unprepared for the dinnertime downpour. We braved the elements and met Stefanie Dang (Lucas’ niece) for dinner at Dadong Kaoya Dian, a restaurant famous for its succulent roast duck. We ordered a feast and spent more than two hours at the big, open, modern and very popular restaurant, which makes it all the more ironic the we all spent the night performing our various renditions of the Beijing Bosa Nova back at the apartment.  Best Peking Duck ever? Not if you are the duck.

While we were waiting for our table famed TV chef Martin Yan walked through the door. I waved to him and he came over for a brief introduction and a picture with the girls. It turns out that he and Violet know many people in common. This is the second time during the trip that Six Degrees of Jackie Chan has demonstrated how truly small the world really is.

Taxis are extremely cheap in Beijing and very clean. The Mandarin word for taxi is taxi and once you find one you can get almost anywhere for $3 or $4. It is fast becoming our preferred mode of transportation.  I am blown away at how cosmopolitan and modern Beijing is: a vast improvement over our visit of a decade ago.  I just watched the sunrise, which is a very good omen in Beijing and can see the new CCT V tower from our window, which means that visibility will again be unlimited, so once the Imodium kicks in we should have another fantastic day at the Bird’s Nest. If the Russian women’s gymnastics team is outside exercising again this morning I am going to take some pictures of them.

Yesterday we sat at ground level 25-rows back from the track and today our seats are only 11-rows back. Since all of the seats in the Bird’s Nest are covered by its architectural canopy we don’t need hats, shades or sun block, but a few little American Flags would be nice so we could show a little nationalistic pride.

As dinner was winding up, but not the experience of dinner as it turned out, we couldn’t figure out the ingredient that flavored our shaved ice dessert. Although she very good at conversational Mandarin S. Dang couldn’t understand the answer, which left it to S. Mar to ask, in Mandarin, if it was persimmon. Now you know the rest of the story.

Dispatch: Bird's Nest

Another smooth flight and we arrived in Beijing full of anticipation. Our apartment at Star City is serviceable, but not nearly as nice as the promotional pictures would have you believe. The Russian delegation is staying here as well and as we left the building this morning the Russian women’s gymnastics team was exercising in front of the building. Gymnasts are so tiny that they make Eva and Justine look tall. Anyway, we now have a new team to root for.  Twenty minutes later and we were dropped off at the Nation Athletic Stadium, known throughout the world as the Bird’s Nest. Wow! What an awesome facility.

Security was a breeze and we were soon inside the Olympic facility snapping pictures like crazy. We lapped the Bird’s Nest in what can only be described as a Kodak moment, forever impressed upon our memories. Eventually we wandered into the Bird’s Nest fully expecting to be directed toward the nosebleed section. Instead we found ourselves on ground level within spitting distance of the track. Woops, I forgot that spitting has been banned until after the games. Our fantastic seats were equaled by Stephanie’s reaction. Rarely does one see such unguarded joy on a face.

There weren’t any gold medal rounds on the track this morning, but we watched women’s hammer throw, men’s preliminary triple jump, 200 & 400 meter race, and 100meter hurdles. It is true that being there is an unmatched experience. Somehow, the pomp and circumstance that is portrayed on television is stripped away as you watch mere men and women compete on the world stage. Hamstrings are pulled, tears are shed, and triumph is experienced when that rare combination of training, technique and talent pays off in a world class performance.  We ate hot dogs, but they were cold and we probably won’t buy them again tomorrow morning. 

The crowd was ecstatic and cheering on every athlete. Of course the Chinese got the loudest cheers, especially one woman who automatically qualified for the hammer throw finals which will be held sometime tomorrow. In subsequent heats American hurdler Terrence Trammell and 2004 Chinese gold medalist Liu Xiang pulled up lame and had to withdraw. Both were running in lane 1, which for some reason was a very unlucky number today.

The last name of one of the German hammer throwers was Klaas. On this day she was the only Klaas that didn’t make the cut.