From my colleague Lin Yang on Friday’s baseball game between China and Taiwan, which is playing under the name Chinese Taipei:
Friday was a day of wonder. It had been a while since i last saw a sky so blue, and the Chinese men’s baseball team, in its Olympic debut, beat Chinese Taipei in 12 innings.
Unlike Taiwan, Japan and Korea, baseball has never been big in China. I once tried to look for a plastic baseball bat to play in parks, only to found such things were nonexistent in Beijing. But things are changing. Coached by James Lefebvre, a former MLB all-star, the team has been making “rapid progress,” as some of my Taiwan friends noted. Yet still, the team’s victory came no less than a shock to everyone.
The number of Taiwanese living in Beijing is fairly small, and it felt like all of them had come to the stadium. They are obviously more experienced baseball spectators than their mainland counterpart (they held blue and white thunder sticks while cheering for Taipei, while those with yellow ones were cheering for mainland), as demonstrated by their cheering. However, as far as passion goes, the mainland spectators were not left behind. Their enthusiasm never abated during the four and half hours under the scotching sun, and the Chinese team’s dramatic five runs in the last moment of the 12th inning certainly made it all worth while.