ADRIAN DENNIS / AFP / GETTY IMAGES
So it’s all over. Hard to believe.
Anyway, there’s a nice analytical piece on the meaning of the Games themselves here on Time.com and a piece on the zinger of a basketball final (when the crowd ended up cheering for underdogs Spain, who at several points threatened to pull off a huge, huge upset …
Here is our latest report about the so-called “protest parks” issue and the two grandmothers being sentenced to re-education through labor for their attempts to register to protest. This is so coldly callous –and such bad publicity– that I assume it must have been ordered at a fairly low level, though I am not quite sure at what level …
Here is a link to yesterday’s official Olympic press conference, attended by a rep from the International Olympic Committee and Wang Wei, executive vice president and secretary general of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games, otherwise known as BOCOG. The whole thing, including a volunteer wrestling the microphone away …
At the basketball quarter finals last night. Watched the show put on by team USA’s NBA stars with enjoyment. There’s a good deal of showboating of course, especially once they’d opened up a lead of 25 plus points in the second half, but there’s any evident passion for the game and a joy in their talents that infectious. In the press …
Here are some thoughts from colleague Lin Yang:
Liu Xiang, China’s sole track gold medalist and national icon who had to pull out of the 110 meters hurdles because of injury, seems to have enjoyed a charmed life and unfailing love from his followers. For millions of Chinese, Liu is the symbol of vitality, individuality, hope, and most
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I have to admit to a certain satisfaction in seeing the “Georgian” pair playing beach volleyball receive a comprehensive whupping from a U.S. team this morning. That’s not because the U.S. won–no one who knows me would accuse me of being overly nationalistic; many others sins perhaps but not that one–but because these two distinctly …
When a Chinese team plays at the Beijing Olympics, the volume of crowd support can be impressive. And when two Chinese teams play each other? It was far short of deafening this morning when the team of Tian Jia and Wang Jie met Xue Chen and Zhang Xi in the …
KAZUHIRO NOGI / AFP / GETTY IMAGES
The excellent China Media Project based in Hong Kong University has put up an post examining the contradictory reporting in the Chinese press of the age of China’s “secret weapon” and multiple medal winner He Kexin. It cites a bunch of stories last year referring to her as a 13 year old (here’s our …
The other evening I chanced upon two copies of the TV & Entertainment Times from 1986. The magazine has long folded, but it was widely read in late colonial Hong Kong—my family were subscribers—and as an indicator of expatriate attitudes at the time it’s marvelous.
One article warns readers that the percentage of Chinese passengers …
You really have to feel for poor Liu Xiang, the world champion Chinese hurdler who more than anyone—more than Yao Ming or diver Guo Jingjing—was the face of these games for the host country. To those of you who haven’t been living here for the past couple of years, it’s hard to describe how omnipresent this guy was in the …
From Lin Yang, a look at how Beijing police are cracking down on Olympic ticket scalpers, and their instructions to her as a journalist on the scene:
Beijing police have launched an “iron fist crackdown” on Olympic ticket scalpers, the state-run Xinhua News Service reported. On the 15th alone, police arrested 110 “scalpers and
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A visibly pained Liu Xiang pulled out of his first heat in the 110m hurdles today due to an injury. The star runner, who won the event in Athens four years ago to become China’s first men’s track gold medalist, had been under great pressure to defend his title in Beijing. Liu, whose face is ubiquitous on billboards in China, had been …
