I am a hopeless Phillies fan. Last fall I wrote about it here, a long autobiographical piece that begins at birth, which was noted as being five weeks before the Phils won the pennant (1950) then dropped four straight to the Yankees in the Series. And so, I was born a Phan. For those who know nothing about baseball, or nothing about baseball before they were born, something happened in Philadelphia in 1964 that allowed many of us to understand what it means to plunge headlong into the Abyss. The drama and confusion of history, set and setting, and a society in rapid transition was mirrored on the field at Connie Mack. It was perfectly, tragically Sophoclean.

And about that baseball thing that happened? Well, I’m not going to speak it, since the least mention of it could flare up the flames of Hell and consume me and the currently hapless Phils (just dropped four straight to Houston) whose bats have fallen silent at a time when they need to be loud. I don’t want to be the emitting source of some weird low-frequency bad shit psychic transmission that might morph into the Phils undoing this month. But if you must know, have a look here. Yes, Wikipedia has its very own entry on the “Phold.”

So when I read a Jeff Passan piece yesterday on the Phils newly acquired pitcher Cliff Lee and his recent two losses after five straight wins, all I could do was shake my head. Passan, a youngster, made an outrageous statement:

They [Phillies] were going to win the NL East before Ruben Amaro Jr. fortified the team with an ace [Lee]. They’re going to win the East with Lee, no matter how poorly he pitches.

All I can say is, “Kid, you might have a future in sportswriting, but you still have a lot to learn.” Calling a division winner with 27 games to go is a DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN-ism. Baseball is built on the solid understanding that there is always hope, that there is always a chance, no matter how much the odds are against it. It’s a game without time, without a clock to wind down, which allows for the appearance of the divine right up until the final out. It’s a game chockfull of numbers, but it is the unquantifiable, the uncountable that keeps us in the game until the final out, no matter how many runs your team is up or down. Yes, there are odds, and more often than not the odds tell a solid tale. But it’s the one off that keeps us in our seats, whether it’s in the park, in front of a television or, my personal preference, the radio (these days via internet).

So when someone calls it over with 27 games to go I’m thinking that somewhere this kid’s missed the point of baseball. The only way for Passan to be right would be if the Phils were up by 27.5 games. And the last time I checked, which was two minutes ago, the Phils are only up by six. And in Philadelphia that’s a “red one.”

While I hope that the Phillies are there at the end of the season – and at the end of the Series too – I would not have the audacity to be calling it a lock in the first week of September. And neither would the folks who root for the Marlins. (The Cubs, on the other hand, are another story all together. Though they are not statistically out of their division race yet, we all know that Heaven has crossed them off the waiting list for a miracle. After all, they are the Cubs, which means it has nothing to do with the “numbers” and everything to do with the “divine.”)

To further belabor a belabored point (baseball and the divine) I clearly remember the fifth game of the 1985 NLCS – LA vs St. Louis – bottom of the ninth, 2-2 and switch hitting, backflipping Ozzie Smith stepped up to the plate, batting left-handed. The announcer (perhaps Bob Costas who often had me screaming at the TV when I had the chance to watch a game) said “Smith has never hit a home run from the left side,” and he was right. In 3,009 left-handed at bats Smith had indeed never hit a home run. I also remember exclaiming loudly, “Those numbers don’t mean shit!” which was the reason I was watching the game. And on his 3,010th left-handed at bat, Ozzie ran one down the right field line for a homer and a walk-off win. What were the odds?

As any kid who’s played baseball will tell you, it ain’t over until it is. And sooner or later Jacques Rogge won’t be the lord of the IOC, and maybe then the MLB will have a little more of a future in China. And then, too, perhaps that secret baseball camp in remote Gansu will finally be revealed. Here’s to the next Sidd!

The Chinese solar calendar let me down this year. Li Qiu, the Beginning of Autumn, fell on Thursday, August 7th, the day before the Olympic Opening Ceremony. Anyone who saw the event can hardly forget the ‘fluttering of ten thousand fans’ in the well-connected crowd. Even the mountain-biking Bush, at rest, looked hot. Judo Putin looked nearly dead, though we learned that had more to do with tanks and planes than with the hot weather in China.

Summer seemed to linger much longer this year, and, for reasons I am not about to dig very deeply into, both Beth’s and my allergies have been more acute than they have been in longer than I can remember. I have no idea if there is a correlation between the clean(er) air, summer heat and allergies. But I can hardly help but ask if the cleaner, less dense air allowed for the wider dispersal of pollens and all-things-allergic? Or did it have something to do with the unnatural planting of so many more plants, trees and shrubbery to impress all the Olympic visitors? Perhaps a combination of both, or maybe neither? I’m not really qualified to say. But I sure can ask the questions. I love inquiry, and some things you just have to ask when your eyes look like you’ve just stepped out of an opium den while trying to convince everyone that, really, you haven’t. Really! It’s allergies, and they’re worse this year than they have been in the recent past. Too many blue-sky days?

“I’m in shock. I haven’t eaten in five days. I was in prison in Beijing and now here I’m in a [Brooklyn] restaurant.”
– John Watterberg, who, along with another American from Students for a Free Tibet, had a life-altering four-day stay in a Chinese jail during the Olympics, for a five-second wave of a flag.

The Vanity Fair interview with these two guys has reminded me once again that tuning the world’s moral barometer is very tricky business, despite the claims of those who have no qualms claiming to be the best tuners in the land. Somewhere there’s a wise saying that goes something like, “Beware of those who wave the truth.” And who could say it any better than Mr. Watterberg, in his own words:

“I’m a negligent citizen. I don’t have a checkbook, don’t work well in office buildings, don’t vote, don’t believe in the political system. This is my contribution. This is what I can do. People know they can depend on me. It’s my right and my duty to fight for what I believe in.”

So we learn that Mr. Watterberg and his faithful buddy, Jeremy Wells, were subjected to four days of undrinkable water, sleep deprivation, hallucinations from dehydration, time in a “toruture chair” and – though Vanity Fair chooses not to tell us – probably packing their dacks (h/t to Guerrilla Snorefare for that gem of Aussie idiom). And all of it in a cell with ten guys. They ought to feel fortunate; it easily could have been twenty or more guys, and a lot more time than four days.

For a biting piece of satire – perhaps not intentional – have a go at this Vanity Fair piece, a glancing blow off the lives of two men who chose to wave the banned Tibetan flag outside the Bird’s Nest during the Beijing Olympics.

Who could wrap it any better than Mr. Watterberg does when he reminds us at the beginning of the interview: “Here I am in a restaurant.” Indeed. In a restaurant. In Brooklyn, New York. Safely far, far away. Telling his story of hardships and friendships in a Chinese jail. I’m thinking this is really The Onion. Somebody, please tell me, “Really, it’s The Onion.”

What did these guys expect? Clean sheets, lights out at ten and a library cart full of Edward Abbey in English? If Vanity Fair doesn’t have their long, snaky tongue buried deeply in their sequined cheek, they ought to. I’m betting they do, but I’m also in a minority on this one. Perhaps it’s because I’m just too much of an optimist. Too bad the Misters Wells and Watterberg will never know how their five seconds of fame played out among the folks whose freedom they’re so desperately fighting for. Somewhere in a restaurant, far, far from Brooklyn, some guy slurping his mutton ‘n noodles continued watching the Olympics as the pair were doing to dacks what dacks weren’t meant to have done to them. And that seems to me to be the way of this world. Good luck guys. See you in London! What do you got on tap for that? Don’t forget the diapers.

Related posts:
Breaking Eggs in the Bird’s Nest – March 21, 2008
Unfurling Cliché – August 15, 2008

All the kitschy paraphernalia that was rolled out for the hyped titanic sales’ event is, I feel quite sure, still safe here within the confines of the city, which probably means we will see a flooded market of Olympic memorabilia, which will prolong the pain indefinitely. (I wonder what the half-life of a fuwa is?)

The bitter truth that Tianjin has learned is that the cry, “The Olympics are coming! The Olympics are coming!” had dramatically less positive impact here than it had in the not-so distant capital. It is, after all, Tianjin, a part of the other China. There is Beijing and then there is the China where the other 99% of the Chinese population does their living, working and getting along, quite often, in ways that have no resemblance to life in the capital city. To go to New York then say that you’ve been to the US is only a fragmentary truth. You will still have no idea what life is like in Wyoming. New York, after all, is hardly the Bighorn Basin, as Beijing is hardly Qinghai. Or Tianjin.

But despite being part of the other, in reality Tianjin is physically and economically closer to Beijing than most other places in China happen to be. That it is it also home to Prime Minister Wen Jiabao has allowed for the historic rivalry between Shanghai and Beijing to ratchet up several notches. When the ex-mayor and former CCP chief of Shanghai, Chen Liangyu, was found guilty this past spring of bribery and abuse of power, it was no coincidence that his trial and subsequent sentencing to 18 years in prison happened in Tianjin’s No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court. The message was pretty clear: “The plans we have for Tianjin are for real.” Sort of. The focus is not so much the city as it is the distant port, which is still quite far from the city. But then there’s that high-speed train, right?

The new high-speed train that links TJ & BJ seems more about being able to say, “We have one here and it’s better than the one they have in the Shank.” No matter that it is less convenient and more expensive to travel back and forth in a bullet. The more practical concern is that the bullet doesn’t even come close to the target. Any target. It may very well only be a half-hour from the center of Tianjin to a point in Beijing, but arriving at the capital terminus is like being dropped into the middle of the horse latitudes. Nan Zhan, the new Beijing South Station is far outside the subway system, and it is little consolation to say that there will, in due time, be a line that actually links it up. But it’s never really about convenience or it’s opposite. It all about the chest-thumping and, of course, the higher plan, which in this case is to create a fast lane to TEDA, the planned meaty heart of the new Binhai region. That Tianjin happens to be in the middle has more to say about Tianjin’s future than anything else.

When ‘Pudong’ is being batted around as a comparative mirror, it has more to do with Binhai’s potential than it has to do with Tianjin Shi, which may not be a bad thing for Tianjin. It might actually help the city keep its ‘step into the past’ reputation. Despite all the breathtaking demolition and breakneck reconstruction, it is still characteristically Tianjin. While Tianjin may indeed be a few laps behind the heart of the kingdom at the heart of the world, it’s because they have no reason to want to be Beijing. It has managed its own life and unique identity for a handful of centuries in the shadow of the empire’s center, which has contributed greatly to its well-deserved “Some days peanuts, some days shells” attitude. It is hard for me to refer to any Chinese city as laid back, but relative to Beijing there is a Chinese mañana-ness to Tianjin that backs its claim that it is, in fact, not Beijing and will not, in fact, ever be.

If the rigidness that grips the capital is able to skip over the city and establish itself in Binhai, then Tianjin will keep its unique flavor: redneck with a twist of gravelly charm. It’s more than just an image. Binhai, on the other hand, is a whole different kettle altogether. No one’s from there, like no one’s from Shenzhen, as it rises from fish farm to player. It will go, more or less, the way Beijing wants it to go, as they defy nature (It’s northern China, for God’s sakes! Where’s the water?) in their bid to make Binhai the great northern entrepot, complete with a high-speed train.

And stuck in the middle, Tianjin, pinched now from both sides. And that Olympic shortfall? While they’ve seen a lot worse than this here, I imagine there are more than a few in this big city by a small river who are happy as clowns on a day-off to have this show finally over. The construction outside my building began late on Sunday afternoon, a few hours before the beginning of the final ceremonies that wrapped things up in Beijing. There’s work to be done, a country to be built, warm beer to be drunk in the cool shade.

If your plan is to make a scene, I am asking you to review your reasons for coming here. If you are coming here to free Tibet, don’t bother coming. More often than not those who do the loudest wailing have no idea what that means to the lives of all the poor Tibetans in China who have no idea why things just got worse. All they really know is that things just got a whole lot worse. They don’t need your self-righteousness being played out in China. They don’t need your Olympic plans to make the world a better place. What may sound like a good idea in a well-lit meeting room in a comfortable Student Center, may, in fact, be the absolute worst thing you could possibly do.

To exacerbate an already bad situation, then hop on a jet and fly back home, is not helping anyone at all. No one needs false ‘heroics’ now, especially the indigenous Tibetans who are, more often than not, disregarded by everyone when it comes to promoting outside agendas. … The reality of life in the countryside is a lot more difficult than what you can possibly imagine it to be. Remember, it’s not about you. It’s always about them, so learn who they are and how their lives go down every day, which, at the moment, is difficult, to say the least. You should ask yourself if what you are planning to do would make life any more difficult for the lives of those who you believe you are helping. The saying, “First do no harm,” is actually not a cliché. Pay it some attention. There are other, more effective ways to make your voices heard.

One week into the Games and we’ve seen the self-righteous waving, swinging and unfurling of one thing and another by those with a higher message. It’s tiresome, counter-productive, and irksomely self-promoting. And now in what appears to be a piss poor piece of journalism, a story by the Guardian’s Jonathan Haynes, accompanied by an incriminating photo, tells us all that it has happened again, this time along the East Third Ring Rd. The accuracy of the story is highly questionable.

The photo shows a couple of folks swinging from ropes from the wall of giant billboards along the what appears to be the western perimeter of the CCTV Bldg. property, not the actual building as Haynes reports.

The pair abseiled down the building’s glass facade and hung their banner over an Olympics billboard with the slogan “Beijing 2008″ at 5.45am local time.

If, in fact, I am correct about the location of the pair – on one of the billboards along the East Third Ring Rd. – it would be virtually impossible to abseil down that side of the building and end up on the billboards. Tower 1 leans 6 degrees to the east, not the west, and to abseil from the building to the billboards would be a real trick, one that would have needed a boom, some expensive and cleverly rigged wires, and the creative direction of Zhang Yimou. It appears to me from the photo that the pair of self-promoting rope folks were near the new Jintaixizhao subway entrance, close to the CCTV Bldg, but hardly on it. I expect better of the Guardian. And if I am wrong, I will be more than happy to apologize to Mr. Haynes, though I think that the apology will be owed by them for their shoddiness of reporting.

To Live, a stunning work of a family’s life from pre-Liberation days through the Cultural Revolution, is one that many Chinese who lived through that period claim to be an accurate portrayal of the confusion and pain of those times. (At one point as the CR gets cranked up, Fugui (Ge You) desperately says something along the lines of, “I am not sure what I should be,” which for me explains it all.) This was ZYM at his storytelling best. But since then (1994) he has worked hard to get into the good graces of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT).

His next two film were sentimental portrayals of Chinese education, which got him into play. I still don’t understand how Happy Times, a film of the south, works into the scheme, but it is not one I’d sit through again. ZYM is a northern filmmaker, and he was clearly out of his element in this one. It was as if he was paying off a debt. But once that bill was settled he got the nod and the subsequent big bucks. Hero was the first sign of what we saw at the opening ceremony: costumes, dazzle, and villages of extras. This sympathetic portrayal of Qin Shi Huang (read ‘Mao Zedong’) set him square with the party. All was forgiven, or, as forgiven as forgiveness gets in China.

That led to House of Flying Daggers, a 30-minute story painfully stretched into 119. This one didn’t know how to end. As Zhang Ziyi did her best not to die, I kept pleading, “Stay down! Please! Stay down. I’ve got other things to do.” Though it was colorful, full of miracles and enhanced wonders, mostly it was empty, just the way things ought to be to make it in this market.

Now there is a great roar over the questionable use of children, computer-generated fireworks displays, and the ‘undermining’ of Adidas’ eighty million USD investment for the Olympic shoe rights by Li Ning, the former Olympian who lit the Flame, and who happens to be a prime competitor of Adidas here in China. The pre-reeducated ZYM would have opted for a concrete-crusty construction worker with a genuine smile running up a broken-tiled stairway, two at a time, to light a little red candle. And that’s why he wouldn’t have gotten the job.

I can hear Steven Spielberg sighing, “Whew!” And Zhang Yimou? Well, he has nothing to worry about. He’ll continue to make approved films and get his large market share despite how this all plays out with the international film set. Don’t expect to see anything like Huo Zhe again. That was then and this is the future where all the money is.

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For some great photos of the opening ceremony have a look at toomanytribbles Flickr set.

The bonus of being in the stands, as opposed to watching events on television, is that you can fix on what you’d like to fix on, rather than being directed by someone in the booth. I have no idea what was shown on television, though I have a clear and vivid memory of what I saw. Whether those memories are accurate or not is anyone’s guess, but they’re mine and I get to have them. Television – the same shared angle, the same flat, boxy plane – allows all viewers to see the same thing, and only the same thing. The size of the screen has no bearing on the sameness of experiencing the event. What we cannot see is most of the details, and so we’re left to imagine what’s happening just beyond the border where the world might be coming to an end, though you’d never know it if the guy in the booth doesn’t want to show it. Be that as it may, I almost never go to live sporting events for any number of reasons, the major one being that I don’t care to be in the middle of unrestrained froth and roar. Anything can happen in a crowd, and howling is the prime indicator that there may be blood in the offing. Crowds have a tendency to move in that direction. Any crowd, anywhere, gathered for any purpose can transmute into something much less than a sum of its parts. It’s all too frighteningly religious.

But I know that going in. And going into this one those sorts of checks were not even an issue. I wanted to be there for the spectacle of it, and this one dished it up just right. Two memories from that game – unquestionably a historic event, not a great game but an exciting one – stand out: one, general, of Yao Ming; and the other, specific, of George W. Bush.

First, and more importantly ,Yao Ming. I like Yao, and I have written in here about him before. To see him lead the Chinese team out onto the court was a moment that I am glad to have witnessed, as I clapped along with everyone else. The Chinese fans were obviously stoked, as were many of us foreigners who understood, in our own particular ways, the importance of Yao emerging from the tunnel leading his teammates onto the well-lit court for the warm-ups. It was a charged, cracking moment.

As the game progressed I watched more closely as Yao ran out of steam, grimaced in pain, bent over with his hands on his knees, slowly lifted himself from the floor after a wreck that left him holding his foot in what could only be described as agony (from the Greek root, meaning contest). It was more like seeing Cool Hand Luke eat fifty eggs – each one more ominous than the last – than it was watching a star in all his glory. Adrian Wojnarowski has a good take on Yao Agonistes here. It was a struggle to watch him struggle. I just wanted the guy to sit down, take a mighty load off his mighty big and painful lower extremities. I wanted to see Yao on the bench, especially after it became obvious that even divine intervention couldn’t salvage a win. How much can you wring from a man? Being Yao is complicated and obviously a painful business.

Now on to George W. Bush. I wonder if there is a chapter in the Presidential instruction manual addressing the proper presidential response to the introduction of opposition players at an Olympic basketball contest. If there is, Xiao Bushi is obviously waiting for the Cliff Notes. As the Chinese players were introduced Mr. Bush remained unmoved and un-clapping. Each player, including Yao, got the same response: a low-browed, leaning forward silence. I’d bet you didn’t see this one on television. I guess he was saving his claps for the home country team, since he applauded heartily for the US team. I’m thinking he probably got a B- in International Decorum 101 at Yale. Or maybe he just skipped it altogether.

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On a more ominous note, during the half time show one of the trampoline propelled dunkers took a nasty spill after a flying stuff, landing on his head, getting up slowly before lying next to the mat. He got up and with the help of two others made it into the tunnel before he again laid down before eventually being carried off in a stretcher. No idea how this one turned out, though if anyone knows, leave a comment.

There’s the bullet train from Tianjin to Beijing (and vice versa, though we only took it one way) to report on. And Ai Wei Wei and Norman Foster at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing 798 on the morning of August 8th, an odd encounter on Wangfujing, water polo, a retired Brazilian colonel in the rain, and George Bush, both of them: we shared the same basketball game, though they were on the far, other side and I am quite sure that we were seeing the entire experience from distinctly different angles.

And (surprise!) I took more photos of the CCTV Headquarters Building in Olympiadic repose. (Click on any of the photos below for a larger version.)

And there are a lot more here, which I will be adding to over the next few days.

The quake’s epicenter was located about 50 kilometers (30 miles) north-northwest of Guangyuan [Plant 821, a large plutonium producing reactor is located near Guangyuan, a city that lost 5,000 people in the May 12 earthquake], near Sichuan’s border with neighboring Gansu province.

Hours before the quakes struck, the Olympic torch relay made its way through parts of Sichuan, on its way to the Summer Games, which get under way Friday in Beijing, some 1,200 kilometers (745 miles) away.

The earthquake occurred at 5.49 p.m. local time (0949 GMT), news agency Xinhua said — striking a few hours after the relay made its final stop in the Sichuan provincial capital of Chengdu.

I have just gone through the People’s Daily, China Daily and Xinhua and learned that Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan will attend the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games: (Kazakhstan was the first stop on the international leg of the torch relay and Mr. Nazarbayev, a character with some serious issues of one-man rule, also was a torch bearer); that both the Grand Duke of Luxembourg and Quatar’s Crown Prince have arrived in Beijing; that Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukado may not this year visit “Yasukuni Shrine on August 15, the anniversary of Japan’s defeat in World War II;” and that Reuters has pledged fair coverage for the Beijing Games. But not one mention of the latest Sichuan earthquake, close to the border with Gansu.

In some world some of this is considered great news. Where else would I have learned that Reuters has made a pledge to Beijing to be fair? Reuters does, in fact, have a story on last evenings earthquake, which shows that they are keeping their word. But what about the state media? What are they pledging? To close their eyes in hopes that all things bad will somehow go away? That hasn’t worked so far.

There’s nothing really wrong with reporting what insurers refer to as Acts of God, which means that no one can possibly be blamed. It’s not just about the fuwa fuzzies.

The first women’s preliminary football matches will be held tomorrow evening, a double-header kicking off at 9 PM, Argentina vs. Canada, followed by China and Sweden, which is scheduled to finish at 1:30 AM on the 7th. The final match in Tianjin will be on the evening of August 15th, a women’s quarterfinal match.

Though the car limitations don’t begin each day until noon – theoretically allowing for a full morning rush hour, while restricting the evening one – car owners who work the day shift will be able to drive to work on any day, though able to drive their cars home only half of those days, unless, of course, they hang out at the job and wait for the clock to strike ten.