I said no, and he immediately hung up. Now I wish I had kept him on the line a bit longer. If he wasn’t from NOSC (and I don’t think he was), then what was he trying to do? Promote some sports activity for kids? Conduct a survey? Or maybe just identify mobile numbers of parents with kids in that age range?
When Yao Ming entered the third grade, he was five-seven, and Shanghai’s Xuhui District Sports School selected him for its after-school basketball program. Recently, I visited Yao’s first coach, Li Zhangming, who, like a traditional Chinese educator, spoke of Yao in completely unsentimental terms (“He didn’t much like basketball. He was tall, but slow and uncoördinated”). After our conversation, I wandered around the basketball courts of Shanghai’s No. 54 Middle School, where the Xuhui Sports School holds some of its practices. I watched a group of young girls performing basketball drills, then introduced myself to the coach, a tall woman named Tao Yanping.
“I was a teammate of Yao’s mother,” Tao said. “I went to their wedding. I remember giving them towels and thermoses—things you gave newlyweds back then. See that girl there?” She pointed out a red-faced child, the tallest on the court. “Her mother was also my teammate. That girl is in the third grade. Her mother is 1.83 metres tall, and she made the national team.”
I asked Tao how she recruited. “We go to the schools and look at the children’s height, and then we check their parents’ height,” she said.
The two-hour practice consisted mostly of ballhandling drills. Tao was attentive, shouting commands at her charges (“Little Swallow, you’re travelling! Who taught you to do that?”). At the end of the practice, tall parents materialized at courtside. Zhang Jianrong, a woman who was nearly six feet tall, told me that basketball was just a healthy activity for her daughter; the girl’s studies were more important. Like the other parents, Zhang was a basketball mom in a country that selects its basketball moms by height.
The method of early recruitment is a product of China’s inability to provide every public school with coaches and sports facilities. The system has proved effective in low-participation, routine-based sports like gymnastics and diving, but when it comes to basketball it may be China’s greatest weakness. In America, where community leagues and school coaches are plentiful, athletes emerge from an enormous pyramid of participants. Some, like Allen Iverson, rise to the top with remarkable passion and creativity—but if a recruiter had shown up at the Iverson home when Allen was in the third grade, he would have found no father and a short mother who had given birth at the age of fifteen. It’s significant that China has yet to produce a great male guard—the position requires skill and intensity rather than height. All three Chinese players in the N.B.A. are centers, and two are second-generation centers. The Chinese national team is notorious for choking in key games, partly because the ballhandling is inconsistent. Players rarely appear to enjoy themselves, and their character has not been formed by true competition; even as free-market reforms have changed many Chinese industries, the sports world is a throwback to socialism, with its careful planning and career stability. Once, when I asked Yao Ming how many Chinese would be in the N.B.A. in a decade, he said only three or four.
This seems more like the Chinese way of doing things, and it matches the anecdotal evidence I’ve heard. So if the call was from NOSC, it would be the first time a telemarketer claimed to be from a government body. I guess that’s why it seems so strange. It’s out of character, and kind of desperate in a way.
Li Na lost in three sets to Kim Klijsters in the Australian Open Finals yesterday, and at least part of the blame goes to her own Chinese supporters:
MELBOURNE -Li Na told her coach and husband she would love him “forever” after she lost the Australian Open final Saturday, but she had little love for the “amateur coaches” in the stands who broke her rhythm against Kim Clijsters.
Fed up with boisterous shouts from Chinese fans during the tense second set, ninth seed Li marched to the chair umpire after being broken at 3-3 and asked her: “Can you tell the Chinese, don’t teach me how to play tennis?”
“There were a lot of people coaching me,” she told reporters. “It was really loud and it wasn’t just one direction, it was from all sides.
“I think Chinese people watching tennis can’t be polite … (saying) ‘Take her out!’ and other things.
When they were calling out things it was during returns, so I felt” — and here she inhaled sharply — “so tired!”
The outburst was reminiscent of her moment during her semifinal against Dinara Safina at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, when she told the local crowd to “shut up.”
Flustered by the frenetic atmosphere at Rod Laver Arena, the 28-year-old from the Yangtze river port of Wuhan demanded British umpire Alison Lang order fans to quiet down and railed at flashing cameras as the third set slipped from her fingers.
Unfortunately I didn’t see the match and can’t confirm what exactly the crowd was doing or saying, but still… Obnoxious Chinese fans? Distracting camera flashes? An argumentative Wuhaner? Nothing out of the ordinary there.
Despite her loss, Li’s ranking will rise to a new Chinese record of seven and she is guaranteed a hero’s reception when she returns home, where hundreds of millions tuned in to watch the match live.
I wouldn’t say guaranteed, now that she has made Chinese fans lose face on an internationally televised event. All internet flamers aside, it will be interesting to see the official reaction here. It could be an opportunity to scold Chinese audiences into being more “civilized”, similar to what Beijingers endured in the years preceding the 2008 Olympics. Less likely but still possible is a Wang Zhizhi Situation, in which Li is deemed a “traitor” by the motherland and forced to make a groveling public apology.
The latter is unlikely, as Wang’s was a much more serious offense involving breaking his contract, and it was made against the People’s Liberation Army. For Li, the best case scenario is that they do nothing and just let her play:
SHtig pointed out recently that the nflchina.com website has badly misaligned the team logos and their corresponding links. It seems that the rectangle of space for each link is slightly wider than the actual logo. As long as you’re a Bills, “Dolphines”, or Patriots fan, you won’t have a problem finding your team. After that it gets messy. SHTig’s beloved Ravens logo links to the Jets page, and you have to click on the Bengals logo to get to the Ravens page.
It’s worst for the AFC North, where most of the logos link to a division rival. Same for the Titans (link goes to Colts) and Jets (link goes to Pats).
Soon the alignment is so far off that the Packers link is the last one in the row, even though there are five logos remaining. In what is nothing short of a national (football league) humiliation, the Vikings and the entire NFC West have been pushed to the next “line” on the page, in the space marked by the red dots below. (This would have seemed fitting until the Seahawks beat the Saints just a few hours ago.)
The site has news and photos from the most recent playoff games, so surely they have someone who can tweak the site a bit. Come on, NFL: Fix your site, make America proud, and make this post irrelevant as soon as possible.
I witnessed my first authentic Chinese fire drill when riding out of my apartment complex this morning. The basic form was the same as I have seen back home: A white Volkswagen Jetta was stopped in the intersection where the street meets the side road of the Third Ring Road. The driver got out, followed by the front seat passenger and then a back seat passenger. Each of them walked around the car and re-entered in a different seat. The car then drove away.
But just like the “Chinese food” in America that bears little resemblance to the wide range of fare available here, a real Chinese drill is a far more nuanced and complex performance in its homeland:
A true Chinese fire drill should be performed not when stopped at a red light, but right in the middle of a crowded intersection, where one can block multiple directions of traffic instead of just a single lane.
Participants in an authentic Chinese fire drill should not run around the vehicle in a wacky, chaotic matter; instead, it is preferred to keep a slow and steady pace, and not to betray any sign of concern about possibly blocking other vehicles.
Expert Chinese fire drill practitioners prefer perform at the peak of rush hour; a weekend night out with friends would be unacceptable to the masters of this art.
The audience shows its appreciation for the performance not with a couple of short taps on the car horn, but instead with extended blasts lasting five seconds or more.
It seems the rest of the world is has barely scratched the surface in terms of understanding this part of Chinese culture.
This recent China Daily article attempts to draw attention to the accusations of “group licentiousness” against a teenage girl in southern China:
GUANGZHOU – A 17-year-old girl who is suspected of participating in group sex parties has been put on trial in Dongguan No 2 People’s Court in Guangzhou.
Li Jie (alias), a sophomore at Houjie vocational school, is being charged with group licentiousness in Dongguan.
In the public indictment, the prosecution said Li, who repeatedly had sex with several male students on one occasion, committed group licentiousness.
It would seem unlikely that the girl not only participated parties where she had sex with multiple men, but also agreed to be filmed doing so. Unlikely, but not impossible, especially in Guangdong province, where in the past few years it has become something of a fad for teenage girls to gang up on a classmate, hit, kick, and slap her, pull her hair, rip off her clothes, and otherwise humiliate her, and then film the whole thing and put it online.
Equal consideration is given to both sides of the story — whether the girl knowingly plotted “group licentiousness” or was simply drugged with ketamine and gang-raped. It is both enjoyable and sad to watch the author drop hints, in the most tortured and indirect of ways, that the accusations against the girl are perhaps a bit over the top. No mention is given to any actions taken against the three male students she supposedly “partied” with.
Even more interesting to me, though, were the links in the two right-hand columns. Top billing in the “Specials” column goes to World Cup, which is being played in South Africa. Just below it is an AP story about black slave children in the antebellum United States. Actually, it’s about a photograph of black slave children. This key piece of news was deemed more important than an analysis of China’s economy, which is listed third among the “Specials”. For those who were too dim to catch on, the leading piece in the adjacent “Columnists” section is titled “Africa, World Cup and neo-colonialism”.
I’m watching the NBA 2010 All-Star Weekend festivities right now on BTV 6, Beijing’s sports channel. (CCTV 5 would probably have this in other years, but today it’s showing the Winter Olympics.) After Steve Nash won the skills competition, Dwyane Wade stepped to center court and gave a short speech asking people to contribute to relief efforts for the Haiti earthquake. At the end he said, “And now please listen to this special message from former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.”
The broadcast immediately switched back to the BTV studio, where the three hosts babbled for about five minutes straight. I can’t imagine that the NBA didn’t allow this message to be shown in China, so I can only assume it was BTV’s decision. I haven’t found any video clips posted online yet, but I did find the website for the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund, which somehow hasn’t been blocked in China. Here are some excerpts from the homepage:
On January 12, a magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti just outside the capital city of Port-au-Prince. The devastation – in lives lost, property destroyed, and families displaced – is immense. . .
Our immediate priority is to save lives. The critical needs in Haiti are great, but they are also simple: food, water, shelter, and first-aid supplies. The best way concerned citizens can help is to donate funds that will go directly to supplying these material needs. . .
We ask each of you to give what you can to help ensure the people of Haiti can build back stronger and better than ever.
It’s too bad the ex-Presidents haven taken such an extreme position and chosen to use such inflammatory language. I can only hope that broadcasters around the world, American ones included, followed BTV’s lead and did not let this message go out.
3:32 — I just set up the laptop and will post throughout the game, Sports Guy style. Hope to get the rest of the crew watching and writing as well. Two minutes in and Guo’An already scored–Emil Martinez took a nice pass, shot it right at the keeper from about 15 yards out, then followed up the deflection and bumped it in with his body.
3:44 — It’s great to see a full stadium for once. I always wondered what the players, especially the foreign ones, thought about playing in a city with close to 20 million inhabitants but only getting 20,000 or so fans at each home game.
3:55 — Starting to get a little feisty, with bodies starting to fly. Guoan just got two free kicks in a row from about 30 yards out. On the second one, Martinez ran in for the follow up and almost poked another one in.
3:58 — I think Hangzhou is starting to sense the game slipping away, as Beijing attacks relentlessly. The fouls are getting more and more desperate. This is getting the crowd fired up as well. The early goal probably help keep them in a good mood, but the shabi chants are likely to break out anytime.
4:08 — League update: Henan Jianye, currently tied with Guoan at 48 points, is losing 0-1 at Shenzhen. But the bigger threat is from Changchun Yatai (one point back but playing a weaker opponent at home), currently up 2-0 against Chongqing Lifan.
4:16 — First half is over. Hangzhou was putting a lot of pressure on Beijing in the last five minutes. A free kick just before the whistle bounced inside the 18-yard box and Guoan’s goalkeeper had to kick it away–but he ended up kicking it straight up in the air. Fortunately he was able to recover and grab it as it fell.
4:22 — BTV goes to an impressive split screen with live sideline reporters at all three key match sites: Beijing, Shenzhen, and Changchun. I never saw anything this nice before the Olympics. The other two cities have swaths of empty seats, though the Shenzhen reporter just claimed there were over 40,000 in attendance, even though the sections behind her were barely half full.
4:27 — She also said, if I heard correctly, that the Shenzhen fans were cheering in support of Beijing. I wonder if many Beijingers living in Shenzhen or Changchun are attending their local matches in order to cheer on Guoan.
4:33 — Second half started, then the ref made them start over. Not clear why.
4:35 — Now we’re starting for real.
4:39 — Goal! Martinez again. Got the ball on the left side and looked ready to cross it, but instead blasted it into the perfect spot. Amazing.
4:42 — Beijing’s Tao Wei just got shoved hard in the chest and went down. Looked to be real. Now he’s up. Let’s hope Guoan doesn’t pussy out and start feigning multiple injuries to try and run out the clock. Win it honorably.
4:45 — The crowd is going bonkers right now, chanting shabi over and over, as the announcers pretend not to notice and the stadium speakers blast Ricky Martin’s “Copa la Vida” to try and drown them out. Classic Guoan Football.
4：52 — Horrible defensive error by Guoan’s right back gave Hangzhou a 2-on-1. The Hangzhou player managed to cut down his angle and then shoot it right into the keeper’s hands. Close call.
4:59 — Twenty minutes left. Guoan has backed off and is content to play defense and make the occasional counterattack. They’re looking very comfortable and confident right now.
5:01 — Tao Wei goes down again. Looks like a defender stepped on his right foot. He’s my favorite Guoan player, partly because he always seems to be involved in the big plays, and partly because he’s the only player I can recognize from year to year.
5:05 — And Tao Wei gets a big cheer as he is subbed off in the 75th minute.
5:06 — A Guoan player and his defender both go for a ball about ten yards away from the Hangzhou goal. The Beijing player goes down, and though it looks clean to me, the ref immediately whistles a penalty. The replay shows the Guoan player jumping into his defender. Bad call. Zhou Ting scores on the penalty; 3-0 Guoan.
5:10 — And as I was typing the last sentence, Martinez gets the hat trick! 4-0. He takes off his shirt in celebration, and the ref gives him a yellow card, though he’s smiling and even a bit apologetic as he does so.
5:13 — Beijing is just pouring it on now, pushing forward and shooting as hard as they have all match. I’d advise them to tone it down a bit; this is the kind of thing that can lead to a vicious foul from the other side.
5:16 — In the 85th minute Guoan makes its final substitution and slows down the pace. Hangzhou isn’t even trying anymore and is just waiting for the final few minutes to tick away.
5:25 — And that wraps it up! The crowd cheers the players on a victory lap as Tao Wei gets the first interview. No translator available for Martinez?
5:42 — For once the TV announcers don’t shut down the broadcast right after the final whistle. We’ve had twenty commercial-free minutes to enjoy the celebrations and hear interviews with close to a dozen players and coaches. The BTV sideline report is not afraid to show who she’s rooting for–she’s wearing a Guo’an scarf. Still no interviews with any foreign players yet.
5:44 — Funny shot from Guoan’s locker room, where players are celebrating their victory by dousing each other with…bottled water.
5:52 — The locker room camera catches a Chinese man who has to be at least fifty years old with a Yankees cap on. Now I understand why American teams always have those goofy caps ready for any championship.
6:08 — BTV 6 is outdoing itself–I just watched a fantastic ten-minute montage of the season. No no commentary, but great music. Now we’re back to the studio seen in the pregame, where they’re serving red wine to the audience for a giant toast. The announcers are hugging, high-fiving each other, and welling up with emotion.
ODB and I walked by Workers’ Gymnasium at about 4:30pm yesterday and saw a couple hundred Hangzhou fans cheering and carrying a dragon made of yellow balloons. Later in the evening, as JZ and I tried to hail a taxi in a cold rain, it was easy to spot an inordinate amount of Hangzhou blue on sweatshirts, umbrellas, and glowing devil horns.
Currently The Beijing-Hangzhou match is less than an hour away. I’ve got the TV on but both CCTV and Beijing TV sports channels are showing boring studio talk shows for the pregame. No College Football Gameday in China yet, unfortunately. A Reuters article quoting the Beijing Youth Daily confirms my prediction of a heavy police presence, though even I didn’t expect it to be so high:
Up to 6,000 police will be on duty for Beijing Guoan’s Chinese Super League (CSL) match on Saturday, where they could seal their first title, after fans rioted on Thursday after failing to get tickets for the game….
About 10,000 fans had gathered outside the stadium on Thursday in the hope to buy tickets, but only 13,000 of the 60,000 seats in the stadium were put on sale, leaving thousands frustrated, the paper said.
I didn’t even think a riot would be possible with all the police assigned to the ticket lines. And honestly, I don’t really trust that 6,000 cops will be able to control a stadium full of fans, who will surely walk out either ecstatic or enraged.
Kickoff is now about 25 minutes away. BTV gave a minute or two to the sideline reporter and is back to the studio chat with the sappy background music; CCTV is now showing figure skating.
UPDATE: Added a pic of the riot police lined up outside Workers’ Stadium.
Beijing’s soccer team, Beijing Guoan F.C., is playing this weekend for the Chinese Super League title, and tickets went on sale this morning. Thousands of people are currently in line outside the Workers’ Stadium and Workers’ Gymnasium. I thought about sending an employee to stand in line and buy me some tickets, but it looks like he’d have to wait for hours.
The typical Beijing Guo’an game fills about a quarter of the seats in Workers’ Stadium, though those who do show up are very vocal in their support. I would not be surprised if this match brings in a full house. Here’s a photo of the crowd from a match I attended back in 2005, when the team was known as Beijing Xiandai (the Chinese name for carmaker Hyundai):
In contrast, here’s a picture of the same stadium during China’s victory over Qatar in the 2004 Asian Cup:
Beijing currently is tied with Henan Siwu at the top of the table but is ahead due to a five point lead in goal difference; the title is thus Beijing’s to lose. Changchun Yatai (47 points) also has a reasonable chance to win, and Shandong Luneng (45 points) is mathematically still in the running.
Beijing’s opponent is Hangzhou Lücheng, currently second to last in the table and facing relegation if they lose, so it won’t be a walkover. Henan’s opponent is mid-table Shenzhen (ninth out of sixteen teams), and Henan will be playing away. The greater threat is probably from Changchun, which faces last-place Chongqing Lifan at home. Chongqing cannot avoid relegation and has little to play for besides pride, so Changchun has a good chance to win. This makes Saturday’s match-up a critical match for Beijing.
Even though Beijing’s team is consistently one of the best in the CSL, it’s rare to see much open support for them. The only hint I saw of this week’s excitement came a couple of months ago, when thousands of (mostly young) paraded down Gongti Bei Lu after a match, presumably toward the Dongsishitiao subway station.
Below is a picture I took before the 2005 home match again Dalian Shide, the strongest team in the CSL over the past 15 years and a major rival. There was no line; I just walked up and bought my tickets. Note the dirt-cheap prices, which ranged from 20 to 80 RMB. The “booth” consisted of a guy sitting behind the (locked) entrance gate–you can see his empty chair in the picture. I handed my money through the gate and he gave me my tickets.
Whether in response to aforementioned post-game march, which appeared to be spontaneous, or simply out of habit after the Olympics and recent National Day celebrations, the police are out in full force today. There are perhaps 500 to 1000 officers and dozens of vehicles surrounding the ticket buyers. To avoid even the chance of anything getting out of hand, the ticket line was not a line at all but rather bunches of a few hundred fans, each completely surrounded by dozens of police officers and at least 30 yards away from the next group.
Back in 2005, police were at the games but not down on the field for most of the match, as you can see from the pictures above. Standard procedure was to have them ringing the pitch until game time, at which point they would march up to their own section and enjoy the game.
Meanwhile, Beijing’s fans tended to get very rowdy, making up dirty cheers, hold up signs attacking the refs and others, and throwing anything available onto the pitch.
The most obvious rabble-rousers would be taken away during the game. From my observation, holding up a sign was far more likely to get you into trouble than thowing things at opposing players. (The authorities are well aware of the political dangers of letter fans holding up signs).
Only in the final minutes of the game would the police march back down to their positions around the pitch. Based on the security presence today, one can only imagine how many police they’ll have out for Saturday afternoon’s match.
UPDATE: Talked to a guy at the Subway sandwich shop across from the stadium at around 5pm today; he said tickets had sold out hours ago, and that many of the fans had been camping out for the last two nights. Probably some good business for Subway.
