A three-hour tour

Got our first visit of a Chinese hutong the other day, the famous neighborhoods that feature old-fashioned, narrow streets and courtyards filled with small homes. Many have been razed in the name of progress, but there’s a number still remaining. The media was given a three-hour tour of Beijing and only allowed to stop once, that to check on one of the hutongs after much pleading with tour organizers. It was only a glimpse, but it was pretty cool. Neighbors greeted each other as if long lost friends the way they only do in places with close surroundings (ever see anyone jump out of their SUV in a large mansion and run next door to hug their neighbor? I mean, without spilling their latte?). Kids clambered on steps and bikes of all shapes and sizes rambled past with racks overflowing with vegetables or parcels wrapped in brown paper. A row of bikes stood silently in one of the narrow alleyways, and the family’s laundry was flapping in the breeze perhaps six inches from the curb of the street.

Our tour guide, who was pretty good despite refusing to stop at Tiananmen Square so we could take pictures, explained that families usually lived in prescribed styles in courtyard homes. The rooms in the southern parts were given to the elderly because they would be warmer in winter (with the sun coming from the south at that time of year) and cooler in the summer, when the sun was higher in the sky. Males were in the eastern portion of the courtyards, while females and married couples took up shelter in the west. At least I think that’s what she said. Definitely an experience.

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HOOPS NATION

Badminton and ping pong still rule, but basketball has become increasingly popular in China. There’s a giant likeness of Yao Ming outside a sporting good store on Wanfujing Street, near Tiananmen Square. Not far away on Sunday night, a huge throng of youths, perhaps a couple hundred, were gathered under the lights playing pickup games in the gathering dark. Not far away were huge stores for everything from Gucci to Dolce and Gabbana and Ferragamo. You wonder if Chairman Mao, who’s buried nearby, would recognize the place.

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COME ON IN

Spotted on the street near Tiananmen Square: a restaurant with the name “Palatable Pizza.” It’s not very good, folks, but it’s palatable.

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WHOLE LOTTA CARS

Sunday night it took 50 minutes to drive five miles in choking traffic. Whatever happened to the city where everyone used to ride bikes, anyway?

A story in the China Daily states that Beijing’s subway system will be the world’s largest by the middle of the next decade, surpassing the 415 km kilometers of subway in London. The city has since 2002 has invested more than $7.69 billion U.S. on the subway, and yet the traffic is still thick.

The first subway track in the city wasn’t built until 1969 but there’s now 200 kilometers of subway line in the city.

It costs only two yuan, about 27 cents Canadian, to buy a subway ticket. Guess they get a bit more subsidy than the Toronto Transit Commission.

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The kindness of strangers

Say what you want about the Chinese government, and lots of people do, but the people are as friendly as you can imagine at the Olympic centres. A straggling reporter arrived late at the media village the other night to find the shop that sells Tsing Tao beers for $1.50 Cdn was closed. He was visibly shaken by the experience. But no problem. A key was produced, a cash register powered up and a smiling worker was happy to help. Great folks. Later, that same reporter (okay, guilty as charged) misplaced his Chinese address book on a media bus. An eager volunteer called the phone number on the business card inside and brought it back to the Main Press Centre a couple hours later.

HEY SAILOR: The people in the tourist business also are super-friendly in these parts. One woman spotted a Canadian with his knapsack and Olympic accreditation and stopped him on the street near Tiananmen Square. “You a visitor?” she asked in halting English. “Yes,” came the reply. “Here, you call,” she said. The card she handed the reporter showed her company as the China International Travel Service Head Office and Beijing Air Service Company. “You call,” she said. “Full body massage. You call.”

WHEELS UP: China has increasingly become a city of cars. But a trip downtown the other day revealed plenty of people still out on bikes. Oddly enough, a lot of the bikes parked on the sidewalk aren’t even locked. Of course, nobody wears a helmet. And most of the bikes are pretty old and rickety. But it’s fun to see women in slinky dresses riding their bikes alongside grungy looking older men. And there’s a wide variety of styles, including some with small motors or second seats for passengers. One guy yesterday was towing a small cart with two buddies lying down (pictured), both of them shielding their eyes and faces from the searing afternoon sun.

TOILETGATE: Goofy as it may be, it’s common for journalists at the Olympics to be told to tape over the logos on their computers if they’re not made by the company that happens to be the official laptop supplier of the Olympic Games. But someone at the Main Press Centre has taken it to another level by placing small strips of grey duct tape over the logo of the urinals in the men’s washrooms. We kid you not. American Standard apparently isn’t the official toilet of the Olympics. Or maybe somebody doesn’t like Americans, which is kinda hard to believe in China. Isn’t it?

HEADING OUT? International Olympic Committee member Kevan Gosper, who’s been head of the IOC’s press commission for a couple of decades, is said to be on his way out the door. Gosper raised eyebrows this week when he told reporters he was sure his boss, president Jacques Rogge, knew that Internet sites in China had been blocked from journalists’ view by the Chinese government. You don’t hang your boss out to dry like that in any world, let alone the cutthroat world of the IOC.

WEB TROUBLE: There’s been tons written on the issue of Internet access. You can blame the Chinese for blocking journalists’ access to websites they don’t like, but this comes as a surprise? And the IOC didn’t know about this? What a load. Olympic voters knew what precisely what type of bed they were climbing into when they checked their ballots next to “Beijing” back in 2001, bypassing Paris, Toronto and other cities. Many IOC types come from countries that are just as undemocratic as China, and they don’t really care who they give the Games to as long as the buses run on time (buses for journalists, that is; they all take private limos in specially designated Olympic lanes) and provided there are plenty of nice, five-star restaurants. For the IOC to say all they can do is encourage the Chinese to provide full Internet access is a complete load. They could’ve written a demand for full access into the contract when they gave China the Games. They didn’t do it.

MIA: By the way, whatever happened to the torch relay?

HONEST MAN: Give Turkish sailor Ates Cinar full marks for honesty. Apparently his coach had a dream that Cinar would win a medal. Asked about the coach, Cinar replied, “I’ll give this dream a one per cent chance.”

SPEED KILLS: Australian swimmer Markus Rogan was asked abut the new Speedo LZR suits that have helped his fellow swimmers set new records almost daily. "I tested it," Rogan said. "I threw it in the pool and it didn't move at all. So I'll still have to swim."

Tipping, taxis and donkey meat hot pots

BEIJING – This takes some getting used to. I got a bill for 186 RMB for dinner (a little pricey for Kung Pao Chicken and a can of Coke, but there you go) at a restaurant near the Olympic Green in north Beijing and left 4 RMB change on the table.
“No,” the waitress insisted, shoving the money at me as I got up from the table. “No. No tips in China.”
This is weird. You get out of a cab and the meter says 33 RMB and you give the guy 33 RMB. No tips.
Not only do they not encourage tipping here, a lot of people insist on outright refusing them. It’s an odd feeling for a westerner. But not a bad one for a journalist on a per diem.
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The waitress who refused the tip was working the other night at a place called “Hot and Spicy BBQ” near one of the media villages.
Like many restaurants in China, the people who worked there were eager to speak English. And they were pretty good, for the most part. But the menus are definitely a work in progress.
One offering was “Special tufei hog foot,” which I hadn’t tried in years. Another was for “Donkey Meat in Hot Pot,” and that was sure to raise the interest of the visiting Canadians (“Hey, kids, forget Swiss Chalet, we’re going for Donkey Hot Pot”).
One more fun item was “Tasted Chicken Wings.” Not sure who had tasted them, but I certainly didn’t.
The restaurant must have been new. After the meal, a man came rushing over to my table to ask what I thought.
“Good,” I replied. “Spicy. Really good.”
“How was the price,” he said. “Fair price?”
Imagine that in Canada.
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Vancouver Scheduling
The International Olympic Committee’s executive board on Saturday approved Vancouver’s detailed schedules for the 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games. Tickets will go on sale Oct. 3, but at least folks can start planning now. The Opening Ceremony will begin at 6 p.m. Pacific Time (9 p.m. Eastern) on Feb. 12 at BC Place, but the first event will be a qualification ski jump for men, beginning at Whistler Olympic Park at 10 a.m. Vancouver time. The final Olympic event will be the men’s gold medal hockey game at 12:15 p.m. on Feb. 28 at General Motors Place. The first Paralympic event will be March 13 at 9:30 a.m.; the men’s and ladies alpine ski competition, and the final Paralympic event will be the ladies and men’s one-kilometer sprint final in cross-country at noon on March 21.
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Canoe racer likes the beach
Australian canoeist Clint Robinson is a smart dude. The multiple Olympic medalist said he’s going to retire from sprint canoeing after the Beijing Games and spend most of his time with surf life-saving, a big deal Down Under. But he said he’ll continue to do some canoe racing around the world.
“My wife likes international holidays,” he quipped.
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Despatie goes shopping
Not sure if he’s after real Rolexes or Chairman Mao models, but Canadian diver Alex Despatie said he’ll definitely do some jewelry shopping during his time in Beijing.
“After my competitions I want to go around the markets. I’ve got friends at home and told them I’d bring them some watches; maybe a couple of pairs of shoes, we’ll see.”
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Clean taxis
The taxis here are remarkably clean and cheap. A fellow who took a couple journalists on a half-hour ride to the Tiananmen Square area racked up only about $5.50 Canadian on his meter. He stopped at traffic lights a couple times and got out his chamois to give his dashboard a wipe. All taxi drivers in town have been outfitted in spiffy new uniforms with yellow shirts and striped yellow and blue ties. Again, imagine telling a Toronto taxi driver he has to wear a uniform.

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Opening Soon

IOC president Jacques Rogge on Saturday said he’s not worried that too many athletes will skip the Opening Ceremonies next Friday, thus making the parade of athletes look skimpy. He explained that some track and field athletes won’t be in attendance because their events start later in the Games, while others won’t take part because they have events the next day and don’t want to be tired. Rogge said he missed the opening ceremonies in Montreal in 1976 because he was competing in sailing, which took place on Lake Ontario outside of Kingston.
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I.D. PLEASE

Asked about stories of underage gymnasts representing China at the coming Games, Rogge said the IOC has been told all athletes meet the minimum age requirement of 16.
“It is not the task of the IOC to go and check all 10,500 athletes,” he said.
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NICKNAMES
We’ve heard of the Soccerroos, which are Australia’s soccer players. But we didn’t know the New Zealand women’s basketball team was called the Tall Ferns. And, no, we’re not making this up.

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Breakfast and cooling tents: So far so good

BEIJING

Woke up to … wait for it … clear skies. The mountains outside of Beijing were clearly visible, and it looked like the sky had been clean-scrubbed by Thursday night’s rain. It was quite a difference from Thursday’s dreary weather, and it made the Birds Nest stadium look positively shimmery.
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After a big fuss about Internet access, the Chinese appear to have lifted some restrictions. The Star was able to go onto Amnesty International’s web site on Friday, which wasn’t the case the day before.
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China Daily, the official English language paper in these parts, runs something called China Scene. Five Ring Circus will attempt to pass along some of the more interesting, intellectual items as time permits. For example, the Aug. 1 edition talks about a chap from Beijing who proposed to his girlfriend while wearing a giant Garfield the Cat costume and holding a dozen red roses. Another item talked about how there’s a dog in Guangzhou who’s quite an expert skateboarder, which sounds like an item out of an old Monty Python episode “And now, a man with three buttocks.”
The July 31 edition discussed how a woman in Kunming was bitten on the hand while riding a bus. It seems a young man offered her a seat on the bus and was offended when she demurred, so he grabbed her and took out his revenge on her hand. Finally, it seems an 87-year-old woman from Henan province walked 100 kilometers the other day to visit her son in prison. The 65-year-old son, who’s in jail for theft, is said to have broken down in tears and promised Mom to clean up his life. Jail officials were so moved by the woman’s tale – she didn’t tell anyone where she was going – that they altered the rules and allowed she and her son to meet face-to-face in a private room.
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The sports are still a few days away, but there already is plenty of training going on. Reviews have been outstanding for the Olympic swimming pool, which is a nice place to keep cool in the heat of a Beijing summer. Turns out there’s a way for horses, who will compete down in steamy Hong Kong, to cool off as well. For the first time at the Olympics, there will be a 400-litre tank of water and ice with a spraying device attached on a vehicle about the size of a golf cart. Five vehicles will provide a light dousing to any overheated horse that might need a quick cool-down. The device has been given the nickname “Thunderbird.” There have been cooling tents in the past, but the advantage of Thunderbird is that it’s mobile and can get to where the horses are.
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Another new feature at the Beijing Games will be video refereeing at the fencing competition. The changes come after a Hungarian fencing referee was expelled from the Athens Games in 2004 following mistakes during a gold medal match. The IOC’s official news web site explained that the referee made six scoring decisions in the men’s team foil final between Italy and China and that all the errors were in favour of the Italian team, which beat the Chinese 45-42 to take the gold. The referee was expelled by the fencing organization and suspended for two years. But there was no mechanism at the time for filing a complaint and the results were allowed to stand. Athletes will now be able to use video to appeal a referee’s decision during a bout.
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Your mother always said breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Some of us take that to an extreme and pack Tim Hortons coffee and raisin bran to be sure we have something familiar to start the day. that's especially important if you were at a media village in Turin, where breakfast was the same every day for three weeks; decent breads and cheese but uncooked bacon and two choices of cereal; cocoa puffs and corn flakes. There was a toaster that took five minutes to make one piece, and I swear there were fights between Germans and Canadians (unnamed, of course) over whose slice of Wonder Bread was whose. If someone grabbed yours, you had to wait another five minutes for this circular contraption to warm your bread. And this in a country that invented the Ferrari.

It's much better here; good scrambled eggs and sausage, noodles for those so inclined, a decent selection of fruit and a whopping four kinds of cereal, including granola and ... cocoa puffs. Even Raisin Bran, God love them. And a 30-second toaster! No excuses for missing deadlines now.

The coffee, not surprisingly, is not up to Turin standards by a long shot but that's to be expected. The cappucino at McDonald's actually is pretty good. Not quite Balzac's at the Distillery District quality, but pretty decent.

Beijing: First impressions

BEIJING

That was a pretty painless 12 hour flight. A little bumpy now and then, but straight up over the pole and into the grey skies of what will become the centre of the universe come August 8. Ron MacLean of the CBC was on board, but I don't think he was in steerage with the rest of us plain folk. I assume the sniffer dogs had a go at him, however, just as they gave me the once-over as I went down the gangway at Pearson. A little unnerving, but guess better to be safe and all that.

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Everyone knows about globalization, but it's a little weird when the first store you see when you land at the airport in Beijing is a Starbucks.

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The Olympic centre, or Olympic Green as it's called, is in the north end of Beijing and is surrounded by some pretty drab high-rise neighbourhoods. It's not that dissimilar from Downsview or parts of north Etobicoke or Scarborough. But they've done a lot to dress things up. The airport has some lovely landscaping, and the freeway into town had two-foot-long window boxes on top of the guard rail for several miles. There had to be 10,000 boxes, each filled with bright-yellow and pink flowers.

Closer to the Hui Yuan media village, immediately across a busy road from the Olympic Green, was a bunch of spiral-shaped bougainvillea with bright fuschia blossoms, surrounded by brilliant yellow marigolds. Quite striking.

The freeway passes your usual non-descript towers, but there also are what appear to be newer condos sprinkled here and there. And some of the stores are pretty upscale: a large Kohler bath products shop, a FIAT dealership, a lovely-looking Japanese department store and other signs of an increasingly wealthy populace. Near the airport there were a bunch of billboards; one for a Volkswagen Lavida, another for fireworks and a third that simply said, "Deliver clean energy towards a harmonious world." And who can argue with that?

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Not that many journalists here can write in Chinese letters or speak Mandarin, but you still have to smile at some of the translations. There's a small sign above the tap in my media village washroom that says "Please heat up before drinking." And a map of the media village showed that I'm only a short walk from the Ming Tien Coffee Language.

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Don't know what the government had to say about Thursday's air pollution levels. But it was pretty smoggy. Visibility might have been a couple miles around 4 p.m., but by 6 it was hard to see more than a quarter of a mile. This could get interesting.

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All that talk about censorship on the Internet rings true. Chinese officials are promising full access come the start of the Games, but it still could be impossible to log onto sites the government doesnt' approve of. A test on Thursday revealed that thestar.com and cnn.com and the Guardian in the UK were fine and dandy. But a computer in the main press centre didn't allow its user to access Amnesty International's website.

Beijing Games - coming up fast

Feels in some ways like we just said farewell to Torino/Turin, and here we are getting ready for Beijing; ordering cell phones, filling out endless forms for Games organizers in China (hey, honestly we don't mind, we love you guys; please don't put me in the long line at customs), typing out preliminary schedules for our staff of 11 reporters/photographers (and a videographer; a first for the Star, so watch for some really cool videos on life in Beijing and at the Olympics), plus raiding the home office larders for batteries and notepads and hitting the local drug store for everything from advil to air masks (hope we don't need them but those pictures of the athletes village and L.A 1966-style visibility were pretty scary). It's wheels up on Wednesday, at the back of the plane next to the big guy who snores, no doubt. But you can never really complain when you get to go to possibly the biggest event of the year on the world's calendar, second only perhaps to the Steelers-Bills preseason game in Toronto.

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There doesn't seem to be a huge buzz about the Olympics right now. But it's always this way for Canada and the Summer Games. We are an ice and snow nation for much of the year, after all, and we don't exactly burn up the medal standings in the Summer Olympics. The other issue, of course, which Oakville kayaker extraordinaire Adam van Koeverden was saying the other day, is that the athletes aren't yet competing and all we media folks can write about is doomsday scenarios and problems that are cropping up in China. It was the same way in Athens - will things be finished on time. For the most part they were, and the Athenians gave themselves a little dig at the end when the opening ceremony featured a guy with a tool kit on hs belt making last minute adjustments to the stadium. In Sydney, there were massive protests about how the beach volleyball stadium would ruin legendary Bondi Beach, which doesn't appear to have happened, and worries about sharks taking a nip out of triathlon swimmers. Only a half-dozen or so got shark bites as I recall. It's simply the way things are with the Olympics. Once the Games begin and the first hammer is tossed and the first tiny gymnast (albeit, possibly underage) takes to the balance beam, most of the focus will be on sport and the Chinese will be able to relax. There will still be daily questions about smog and Tibet and terrorism, but at least for the host nation they can count on a few sports queries to balance things out.

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Here's a trivia question. There's only person ever to have an Olympic gold medal in baseball, a World Series ring and a U.S. College World Series ring? That would be former Stanford player and one-time Blue Jays third baseman Ed Sprague. Given this could be baseball's last year as an Olympic sport - it's up for review in the fall of 2009 by the International Olympic Committee's tall foreheads and it looks like golf is putting on a big-time push to take its place - Sprague might forever be the only person in that category.

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It's a lovely day in Toronto, sitting in the backyard tapping out some thoughts in the bright sun and admiring the flowers and greenery that a warm, rainy summer has provided a hack gardener in the north end of the city. Figure it's good to soak in a little nature while we can, although the photos of the media village near the Olympic Stadium look pretty decent. The media usually in ensconced in small apartment units not far from the main village. In Sydney, the media village was a former insane asylum, and you can fill in the rest of that your joke yourself. In Salt Lake, most of us had innocuous but tidy hotel rooms near the airport (and if you think downtown SLC is lacking in nightlife, hoo boy). In Athens we snagged a few media rooms within stumbling distance of the main press centre and the main stadium, while the rest were a 15-minute bus ride away. And in Turin the Star was about 20 minutes from downtown in a dreary suburban zone, but the rooms were fine. The Beijing options look quite nice and they're close to the action as far as we can tell, so thanks to the organizing committee for that. It's always good, after all, to take care of the people who send reports back to readers around the globe. One of the reasons Atlanta ran into trouble was that media people were taken for spins around the Georgia countryside by bus drivers from Alabama who'd never been to the big city and didn't know their way around a city where every other road is named Peachtree.

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Restaurants in Beijing have been told to take dog meat off their menu for fear of offending foreign visitors. Personally, I had no intention of sitting down at Beijing's version of Chez Panisse and ordering up a dish of Chihuahua surprise. But there's something disturbing about seeing the Chinese "clean up" all areas of their city to impress visitors and journalists. I remember four years ago, at the end of the Athens games, writing a small item decrying reports that the Chinese were tearing down their historic, crowded hutong neighborhoods in favour of new and improved buildings that look like they could be in Toronto or Fresno or Dubai. I got an angry email from someone accusing me of being anti-Chinese. In fact, I think the Chinese people I've met are pretty cool. I just don't understand their rush to tear down everything that a westerner would want to see when they visit. If I want cool, modern highrises I'll go to Frankfurt or Dallas. But if I go to China, I want history. My god, it's an incredible civilization with history that dates back centuries and centuries. Westerners want to see that, feel it, touch it, and taste it. Maybe not the dog, thank you very much, but that doesn't mean you should take it off the menu. We want to go and marvel at the things the Chinese people eat that we waste or that we turn our Western noses up at. That's the fun of travel. Maybe they're doing what they think is best, but from this perspective, it's positively befuddling.