Chinese Culture Blog

By now, the Chinese public must have at least reached the "bargaining stage" in the fives stages of grief over the early exit of Chinese hurdler Liu Xiang from the Olympics on Monday.

Liu Xiang walks off the Men's 110m Hurdles Heats at the National Stadium in Beijing on August 18. (Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)

Much has been written about the disbelief and anger of Chinese bloggers over Liu's departure from the field before he was set to race in the 110-meter hurdles due to an inflamed Achilles' tendon and a bone growth on his right heel.

Some harsher critics have said it was fear that led him off the field. Others have actually accused him of faking his injury and giving up. Bloggers have also expressed anger that he did not at least acknowledge his fans when he left the stadium. (Beijing communications consultant Kaiser Kuo has some interesting thoughts on using blogger comments as a dipstick of Chinese sentiment here.)

But just a day later, the country seems to have softened. A poll by the Chinese social-networking Website Xiaonei found that an overwhelming number sympathized with the 25-year-old athlete who literally jumped to stardom when he won China's first track and field gold medal in the 2004 Olympics in Athens. Read more...

Sunday was a magical day in Beijing as I sat in my bleacher seat at the Wukesong Olympic Baseball Stadium to watch China play South Korea. It was the resumption of a game that I actually missed when the two teams first faced off last Thursday.

For some reason, I thought that Thursday's game was at night, and not during the day. So when the the first pitch was thrown, I was out buying shoes. But thanks to a downpour of rain, the game was put on hold until Sunday, and I was the first through the gate. This gave me ample time to watch the players practice. (See slideshow above.)

Highlights (and lowlights) included:

Blue-shirt teenage Olympic volunteers asking every player that happened past our stand to throw them a ball for a souvenir - including my favorite player, Bu Tao. At one point, one of the players said if they kept giving them away there would be none to play with.

Read more...

Holland House

London House

The international feel of Beijing has expanded exponentially with the influx of Olympic visitors. Foreign tourists have clogged all known tourist traps, including Hou Hai Lake, Nanluoguxiang, Wangfujing, and Sanlitun bar street.

But in addition to local attractions, many countries have established their own temporary "house" to showcase the best of their nation to visitors and their own citizens. This week I popped by the Holland House and the London House, and the differences were striking. Check out a photo gallery I created of my visits here.

In Beijing's China National Agricultural Exhibition Center, where the Dutch laid claim, orange was the color of the day and it might as well have been Heineken House for the level of branding by the brewery. Read more...

It was revealed yesterday that the pretty little girl that sang the Chinese national anthem at the opening ceremony of the Olympics was actually lip synching, much to the chagrin of Chinese fans and Olympic organizers.

Yang Peiyi, 7, sang for the Olympic opening ceremony, but another girl got the credit. (AFP/Getty Images)

The news was disclosed by the musical director of the ceremony Chen Qigang, who told the Beijing Radio station that there was a last minute decision to pick a prettier girl "in the national interest."

Thanks to a translation of the interview by the blog Fools Mountain, Chen told the radio station: "We felt the coupling of a perfect voice with the best appearance produced the most optimal result." Read more...

As I left my apartment this morning, something bright and ray-like hit me square in the head. It took me a second to realize that what I was experiencing was the sun, a celestial phenomenon I've not seen in the week that I've been in Beijing.

Sculptures on the Olympic Green are shrouded in smog on the opening day of the Games. (Photo by Feng Li/Getty Images)

The clear(er) sky was a welcome change following two nights of hard rain and days of smog-choked skies. China had heavily cloud seeded the area around the capital to prevent rain from ruining the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. It worked, the celebration was h2o free, but the last few wet days have more than made up for it. Read more...

Yao Ming with Lin Hao during the Olympics opening ceremony. (Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)

When Chinese flag bearer and basketball phenom Yao Ming walked through the National Stadium during the opening ceremony of the Olympics, there was so much commotion where I was that I neglected to find out more about the little boy was that he was walking with.

It was Lin Hao, a nine-year-old who survived the deadly earthquake in Sichuan in May. It's interesting how this tribute to the earthquake by opening ceremony director Zhang Yimou has been covered by the international press. Read more...

Olympic visitors are still shocked by the news of the stabbing death of Minnesota tourist Todd Bachman, the father-in-law to the coach of the US Men's Volleyball Team.

The Drum Tower in Beijing after an American was stabbed to death. (Photo Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)

Bachman, his wife Barbara, and a Chinese tour guide were stabbed yesterday during a visit to Beijing's historic Drum Tower. The assailant, Tang Yongming, was a Chinese man from the coastal Chinese city of Hangzhou. After the stabbing, Tang jumped off the tower, killing himself. Bachman's daughter, former Volleyball Olympian Elisabeth Bachman McCutcheon, was also present but was unhurt.

Today, the U.S. Olympic Committee announced that after an eight-hour surgery at the Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Barbara Bachman was in critical but stable condition. Her son-in-law, Hugh McCutcheon, did not coach the men's volleyball team today against Venezuela. Just before the game, the team linked arms and bowed their heads. Read more...

Along with hundreds of Chinese who live around Beijing's Altar to the Earth, I sat for hours in the humid August air to both wait for and watch the opening ceremonies of the Olympics on two jumbo screens.

Highlights included a very young police force that attempted to keep order (including drawing seating areas with chalk in the ground -- which many spectators actually adhered to), an attention-mongering foreigner wearing nothing but striped pants and the Chinese flag, and hours and hours of anticipation for the big cheer for the Chinese team (though the wait was probably a low-light). The cheer, however, did not disappoint. Watch a clip of it here. Read more...

Olympic tickets are flying as fast as the hands of a Beijing noodle-maker, so possessing one for a prominent sport is indeed something to be congratulated. I am now one such person. I'm headed to watch China vs. South Korea, duke it out in baseball, on August 14, at the new Wukesong Baseball Field in Beijing. I'm in seating category B, which is the second-best category. (Out of two categories).

Truth be told, I was looking for a more symbolic baseball game to view, like China vs. Chinese Taipei (Taiwan) or China vs. USA, both of which take place later that week. But since those tickets were long gone, I snapped up the best thing available.

Nothing against South Korea. Some of my closest friends are South Korean. No, I just would have loved to see a baseball battle of the two Chinas or the fight between the current world superpower and the soon-to-possibly-be world superpower. Read more...

With the 2008 Beijing Games just one day away, hearts are abound in Beijing, and it's not just for the Olympics. August 7 is Qi Xi Jie or 七夕节, a traditional holiday that has been recently called China's Valentine's Day -- Because apparently, no one can understand the concept without first making a Western analogy.

The 2,000-plus-year-old holiday takes place on the seventh day of the seventh month in the lunar calendar, and marks the star-crossed love between a cow herder Niulang and Zhinu, a weaver of clouds and the daughter of the Jade Emperor who is the Daoist ruler of heaven.

The Milky Way, around 1990. (Photo by Space Frontiers/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

The story goes that the the two fell in love and got married, but their bond was met with disapproval by Wangmu, Zhinu's mother and the queen of heaven. Niulang is viewed as the star Altair and Zhinu as the star Vega. With a swift move of her hairpin, She separated the two with a river in the sky, known today as the Milky Way.

But the queen took pity on them and gave them one night of the year to spend together. On Qi Xi Jie, the queen is said to send magpies to bridge the celestial gap between the two star lovers.

The tale seems to be an interpretation of the prominence of the two stars Altair and Vega, which together with Deneb, make up the Western constellation, The Summer Triangle, which is highly visible in the summer in the northern hemisphere. Read more...