After more than a week, I can finally update my blog here. It has been a busy time, first about a week in Beijing with miles and miles of walking, hundreds of thousands of people, delicious and special food and and and... To get more, keep on reading...
My last Entry was from Hong Kong, where I was staying with a friend. After one night there I crossed the border at Shenzhen to get a train to Beijing.
As I only have a single visa, which was less than easy to get, I could only enter the country on the day of my actual departure.
Therefore I was a bit nervous whether or not I would be able to get a decent seat. It turned out that only a soft sleeper ticket was still available, so I payed the extra money (around 70€ for 2500 km, still not that much) and a few hours later I was on my way on the 22h trip.
The sleeper train is really comfortable, only four persons per cabin and clean, fresh bedcloth. I had nice company and with a long nights sleep I was in Beijing seemingly in no time, finally rested and fresh to start into whatever was going to face me.
I found my way to the appartment of the friend of my chinese ex-neighbor who was hosting the whole group that was going to gather for a week in Beijing.
We were two Germans, me and Thomas, a friend from Kaiserslautern, Alfonso and Natalie, also ex-students of TU Kaiserslautern and then my chinese friend Chen and his girlfriend. The first evening we all went to the National Hall and the Tian An Men Square.
I have been here before, as you can find in my blog post from my china trip more than two years ago, but for my other friends it was the first time. Its quite impressive, especially with all the new security measurements like metal detectors in underground passages to the square and guards everywhere. That was one big difference I noticed from before, even more security personnel, more people to sweep the streets from litter and garbage, hundreds of Olympia volunteers at every street corner to help the help seeking visitor.
All in all a great effort to make the 29th Games as smooth and disruptionfree as possible.
Coverage of the games was really ubiquitous, every subway, every bus, many public squares, private televisions, it was virtually impossible to escape the media machinery.
The only thing to mention here, it was very interesting how the chinese TV and media were reporting about the events. They showed the chinese gold medalists and their wins over and over again, never silver or bronze unless it was a big star athlete, and if they showed defeats, it was either the direct live coverage of events or funny bloopers of foreign competitors.
For example this story... The second day I went to Womens Beach Volleyball semifinal with Chen. The third game was about who was to compete against the USA in the gold medal game and it was with two chinese teams playing against each other. The game was great, good atmosphere, really beautiful cheerleaders and perfect weather.
The first two thirds, both teams were up on the same level and noone was able to gain the upper hand, but then one of the players, Xue Chen, had a cramp or even a strain on her back and couldnt play as good anymore.
After their Team has been defeated, she collapsed on the Sand and had to be carried out of the arena. But on the next day, the TV repeated the pictures of the winners over and over again and never the loosing team. None of the chinese media I encountered even mentioned her again exept of showing pictures of the teams former victories.
So, all what was reported was of course correct, but clearly handpicked to show a successful games to the chinese and international public.
And clearly they also overdid it a bit with the coverage, while most of the chinese citizens where originally really proud of being the hosts of the games and wanted to follow the events tightly, many of the people I met agreed with me, that after the third week of constant olympic information on all channels almost 24/7 they were a bit fed up with it.
But I dont want to rant about chinese media, we also saw much else of interest.
Of course we also did the typical walking around and sightseeing and dining out and what else a proper tourist does. As our group was quite big and we had different tickets for different competitions, we regularly split up and followed our plans in small parties of two or three, which is a great compromise between individual freedom and the fun of having friends around.
Quite a few pictures are uploaded now to http://picasaweb.google.com/erathostenes/AuswahlChina2008 , so I dont say as much anymore and let the pictures speak for themselves..
On the 24th in the evening we took the sleeper train to Qingdao, the former German colony in the south east of Beijing, home of the famous Qingdao Beer. That beer is actually quite good, I like it.
In Qingdao we couchsurfed with an english teacher, Robert, and his wife. They were really so nice and welcoming to us!
If you still dont know about couchsurfing, check it out at http://www.couchsurfing.com/people/erathostenes . Its a great website for travellers and open people who want to welcome you at their home or visit you.
