A proud father notes

Annie Kaufman, Tad Fallows:



 Married today, August 31, 2008, Pasadena, California.

My prediction about Sarah Palin

Unless you have seen it first first-hand, as part of the press scrum or as a campaign staffer, it is almost impossible to imagine how grueling the process of running for national office is. Everybody gets exhausted. The candidates have to answer questions and offer views roughly 18 hours a day, and any misstatement on any topic can get them in trouble. Why do candidates so often stick to a stump speech that they repeat event after event and day after day? Because they've worked out the exact way to put their positions on endless thorny issues -- Iraq, abortion, the Middle East, you name it -- and they know that creative variation mainly opens new complications.

If someone is campaigning for the presidency or vice presidency, there's an extra twist. That person has to have a line of argument to offer on any conceivable issue. Quick, without pausing in the next ninety seconds, tell me what you think about: the balance of relations between Taiwan and mainland China, and exactly what signals we're sending to Hamas, and what we think about Russia's role in the G-8 and potentially in NATO, and where North Korea stands on its nuclear pledges -- plus Iran while we're at it, plus the EU after the Irish vote, plus cap-and-trade as applied to India and China, and what's the right future for South Ossetia; and let's not even start on domestic issues.

The point about every one of those issues is that there is a certain phrase or formulation that might seem perfectly innocent to a normal person but that can cause a big uproar. Without going into the details, there is all the difference in the world between saying "Taiwan and mainland China" versus "Taiwan and China." The first is policy as normal; the second -- from an important US official -- would light up the hotline between DC and Beijing.

The further point is that not even the most accomplished person knows all this off the top of his or her head. Example: Barack Obama. He is a quick study and has been campaigning very hard for 18 months. But this summer, when he tried to offer a reassuring message about his commitment to Israeli security with his AIPAC speech, he made a rookie error by getting the standard phraseology slightly wrong.

Let's assume that Sarah Palin is exactly as smart and disciplined as Barack Obama. But instead of the year and a half of nonstop campaigning he has behind him, and Joe Biden's even longer toughening-up process, she comes into the most intense period of the highest stakes campaign with absolutely zero warmup or preparation. If she has ever addressed an international issue, there's no evidence of it in internet-land.

The smartest person in the world could not prepare quickly enough to know the pitfalls, and to sound confident while doing so, on all the issues she will be forced to address. This is long before she gets to a debate with Biden; it's what the press is going to start out looking for.

So the prediction is: unavoidable gaffes. The challenge for the McCain-Palin campaign is to find some way to defuse them ahead of time, since Socrates, Machiavelli, and Clausewitz reincarnated would themselves make errors in her situation. And the challenge for Democrats is to lead people to think, What if she were in charge?, without being bullies about it. 

The Palin pick is not like the choice of Dan Quayle

But it is exactly like the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. That is, an unbelievably obvious but potentially effective attempt to jiu-jitsu the standard identity politics of the moment in a way that flummoxes the Democrats. I would spell out the logic but I think it's obvious and am at a computer for only sixty seconds.

The image to have in mind is not Dan Quayle: a person with quite a bit of grounding in national issues who was added to the ticket in an attempt to jazz it up. Always and only the comparison should be with Clarence Thomas -- with this one interesting difference. Thomas was a shrewd choice not simply because his race made it more complicated for Democrats to oppose him but also because, once confirmed, all evidence suggested to conservatives that he'd be the kind of Justice they were looking for. In Palin's case, this seems to be a choice that looks forward to Election Day, and not one day beyond that.

Convention speeches

Here is what's unusual about the lineup of Democratic convention speeches. Usually each convention features one very strong speech, sometimes two. Barbara Jordan with the keynote at the Democratic convention in 1976. Teddy Kennedy with his memorable (though damaging to Jimmy Carter) "the dream will never die" speech in 1980, bidding farewell to his presidential aspirations. Ronald Reagan speaking to Barry Goldwater's supporters at the Cow Palace in San Francisco in 1964, beginning his own presidential aspirations. Barack Obama serving a similar function in 2004.

I don't know of any parallel to what just happened for the Democrats in Denver, where a series of speakers all performed at the top of their form, notably:

- Hillary Clinton, doing as much for "party unity" as she plausibly could, with her best delivered speech of the whole campaign cycle;

- Bill Clinton, reminding everyone in the party (and much of the country) of why he had won two terms; giving Barack Obama an implicit lesson on how to cast the choice in this election; and erasing in 30 minutes 98% of the problems he had created for himself in his party over the previous year;

- John Kerry, speaking with an intense, tough, terse contempt for Bush administration policies that would have gotten him elected four years ago;

- Al Gore, like Kerry liberated from any previous starchiness by contempt for Bush-Cheney and by knowing he has nothing more to prove;

- Michelle Obama, who in terms of presenting herself and her husband for the election could not have been more cannily effective -- and appealing;

- And of course Barack Obama himself, who showed his own canniness in using his familiar oratorical virtuosity in an unfamiliar way, with a specific, by-name, respectful contempt for the ideas of John McCain. Respect for the serivce of John McCain; contempt for his record.

Joe Biden is an honorary member of the list. His speech was the one slightly-short-of-expectations moment among the big speakers, but its very artlessness probably added to its political effectiveness in the long run.

This has never happened before. Usually there are a number of obvious turkeys among the big-kahuna speakers. This time, the biggest names came in facing very tough tests (how will Bill and Hillary behave? How can Obama re-position himself?) and very high expectations. They aced the tests and beat the expectations in every case.

John McCain's speechwriters have one thing going for them at the moment: a week to look over what the Dems have said and work out a response. 
 

A farewell to 加油

It's the first day of the rest of Beijing's life. I have no further thoughts to offer about the Games and their aftermath, so I bid them adieu with these few notebook items.

I also take leave of blog-land for the next week, because of (happy) family gatherings and other duties. The Democrats in Denver and the tennis players in New York will keep everyone occupied:

- The most riveting detail in today's NYT story about Olympic TV ratings success is fingering the person responsible for scheduling the games in the hottest time of the summer. It turns out to have been NBC's Dick Ebersol, and not, as everyone I've talked with had assumed, some astrology-conscious faction within the Beijing Olympic Committee that was obsessed with having the opening ceremony on August 8. Of course that's 08/08/08, heavy on the most traditionally "auspicious" number in Chinese culture.  Details in the very interesting NYT story. Years' worth of pop-culture analysis of modern China, right down the drain!

But maybe it was local people who added the flourish that the ceremonies start at 8:08 pm.

- The last big-deal event I saw was a big deal indeed: gold-medal football/soccer match, Argentina 1-0 over Nigeria. (Tickets offered by a foreign friend at the last minute.*) As a viewer,  I was reminded that soccer is the sport that suffers most in the transition from in-person to TV. TV can capture a whole court's worth of action in basketball, and tennis, and usually baseball and football, though each is different when seen for real. But the soccer field is so big that what you see on TV is little isolated chunks of action rather than any larger flow -- or else, in the wide shots, a whole field with tiny dots moving around and kicking.  

Despite the appeal of on-scene viewing, despite the Argentinian team's long-standing popularity among Chinese fans, despite the gold-medal stakes, and despite everything else, once again the arena was not full. As at most venues, the cheap upper tier seats, where tickets had been opened for sale to the public, were all occupied. A lot of the fancy seats were flat empty. (Click for larger.)




Note in the shot below the Chinese participants who I think edge out the opening-ceremony cheerleaders for the gold medal in stoicism. During the entire match, they had to look constantly into the crowd. This was presumably to be on guard if  anyone tried to charge the field or -- much worse! -- take out some kind of banner. How you could sneak a banner in through the security screenings is mystery on its own. Not once did I see a one of them turn around, even when the crowd roared and the stadium seemed to pulse with excitement. They didn't move or flinch at all. Assuming that they were actual people and not mannequins, I say: Well done! Jia you!

(Note also the optical illusion in the shot: with the curved lines, it looks as if the picture is a trapezoid, with the bottom edge sloping up toward the right, rather than a rectangle. Or maybe the Games have destroyed my eyes and mind.)




- Speaking of empty venues, the photographer Zach Honig went to the Olympic Green some 12 hours after the closing ceremony, and: ghost town!  You can see more of his pictures here.



Enjoy the convention and the US Open. Signing off from Olympic coverage and all things  Internet for a while.
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* I benefited from the strange ticket distribution system, in this way. Before the games, my wife and I felt lucky to have come up with any ticket whatsoever: a first-day, standing-area only ticket to preliminary heats out at the rowing center. Over subsequent days, we ended up seeing quite  a lot of the action, in every case because people who had gotten tickets overseas or through companies ended up with spares. Thanks to our benefactors Tom B, Ken S, Andy R, Howard S, Eliot C, and Melanie C.

About Biden as speaker (updated x2)

Because of my recent forced immersion into the entirety of the primary debate season, I have this reaction about Joe Biden's presence on the ticket:

As a questioner at Senate hearings, Biden has often been disappointing. He typically uses up too much of the time listening to himself talk, and at the end he's left with barely time enough to pose an easily escapable question like "Isn't that right?" or "I'd like to hear your reaction to that."

But as a debater within his own party and as a rhetorician against the other side, the Biden of the primary campaign was very good. He stuck to the time limits because he had to, and with that discipline he almost always made the points he wanted to, and forcefully.

He also showed a certain bearing in the debates that could come in handy as a running mate for Obama. This was his "let's cut the crap" impatience with what he considered fatuous questions and what he also considered the plain foolishness of Bush Administration policy.

Politicians have to be egomaniacal to be in the business. Anyone who enters the US Senate with a limited appreciation of self soon has it expanded. But while Biden's ineffective hearing "questions" often sounded as if they came from "normal" Senatorial egotism -- I'm on stage now, listen to me -- his debate comments and his partisan anti-Bush arguments reflected a more attractive egotism of knowledge and policy. Let's call it simple confidence, of the sort that Bill Clinton in his prime displayed when dismissing Republican economic arguments. The subliminal message in this pose is: I know what I'm talking about here, I've dealt with this for years, and I have no time for the other side's ignorance.

It may seem a small difference, but it can make Biden more effective as an authoritative and unhesitating mean-cop counterpart to Obama during a campaign. 

After the jump, one example, based on one of Biden's answers at a debate last year.

UPDATE: Here is a YouTube clip of Biden giving the answer quoted below, and some more. Fortunately it looks as strong as I remembered! Thanks to Christopher Adams.

Extra update: This clip is really great until about the last 20 seconds, when Biden gives an answer about dealing with China that is as glib as his other answers are well-informed. Unfortunately, all the Democrats took that line in the debates. Topic for another time.
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Continue reading "About Biden as speaker (updated x2)" »

Catching up on two Olympics points

1) Nationalistic coverage. Background: previous comments about the quite impressive Sino-centrism of what China Central TV chooses to broadcast.

Right now as I type, some of the marquee events of track and field, on the last night of competition, are underway at the Bird's Nest Stadium a few miles from here. And CCTV is showing instead: a ping-pong match between a Chinese player and a Swede, a diving contest involving two Chinese stars, interviews with a foreign coach of a Chinese team, and replays of week-old swimming events in which Chinese athletes did well. These are at the very instant that the men's 5000m is underway. Same thing during men's 800m.  Will this apply to the men's and women's 4x400 relays?? Arggh! One world! One dream!
 
 Update: Indeed, nothing from the final night of track & field was carried on the normal Chinese stations available on our normal Beijing TV set -- except, who knows why, the women's 1500. No problem, no one from China was in any of the races, but still I don't see even the "nationalistic" NBC doing it just this way.  Similarly, we're getting the bronze-medal women's basketball game, China-v-Russia, but not the gold medal women's volleyball game, US-v-Brazil. (And now we're getting a replay of a taekwando match rather than the volleyball championship. This makes me realize that I haven't ever seen on CCTV the live-action cutaways taken for granted in US sports coverage: "Let's go now to the Water Cube, where the final round..." ...) But whenever I feel down, I realize: we've got wall-to-wall ping pong.

2) Translation vs Transliteration. Background: some people have written in to hint -- gently! -- that I might be exaggerating in saying that crucial maps and guides for international visitors to the Olympics were written in Chinese characters plus transliterated "English" versions of those Chinese words. After the jump, proof that I wasn't!

Continue reading "Catching up on two Olympics points" »

Media note (updated)

Late Thursday night, Beijing time, I did an interview about the Olympics for the Lehrer News Hour show that I think will be shown early Thursday night US time. This was foreign-correspondentry from Ye Olden Days: hearing a question over the telephone, carefully putting down the telephone so it's out of camera frame, and then answering the question into the camera -- and those recorded answers being FTPd to the US to be spliced with the questions. OK, semi-olden days. Basic theme: Zhongguo Jia You! Aoyun Hui Jia You!

* Update: Apparently not shown Thursday. Maybe Friday? Que sera sera.

 ** Updated update: The segment did run on Friday. Info here, with link to streaming video here.

Blue skies

For the last week, Beijing's skies have been, mostly, glorious. I went for a long run this afternoon, and got sunburned while doing so, a risk I had not previously feared.

Out the window today


Same window two weeks ago (and much of the preceding six months)


All credit to whoever and whatever made this happen, from the Chinese scientists I quoted a few months ago saying that it would play out more or less the way it did; to the Chinese officials implementing the factory- and traffic- shutdown plans; to the American scientist who accurately predicted that the wind would shift to the proper, cleansing direction two or three days into the Games; to whatever powers were fundamentally responsible for the change of wind. The Japanese concept of 神風 -- kamikaze, "divine wind" -- unavoidably comes to mind.

In the bleak days just before the opening ceremony, I wondered whether the air could be such a problem that it would, through sheer shock, force a reconsideration of China's environmental policies. Now it's possible to imagine the opposite prospect: that Beijingers, having for once seen how transformed and pleasant the city can be when not under a pall, might resist being pushed back into the blear. As Jake Barnes once put it in different circumstances,  Isn't it pretty to think so.
 

How to avoid becoming a Kindle nerd-bore

Only one way: Just shut up when tempted to say or write anything about it. Otherwise you'll be driving people crazy with your enthusing about how useful and convenient it is, and what its potential might be, and how many elegant decisions are evident in its conception and design.

I'm talking mainly about high-level functional design: what should the whole system be able to do? What functions should be built in or omitted? Rather than the physical industrial design of the device itself -- which is quite nice but is widely recognized as Ver 1.0 of something that will go through many refinements and tweaks.

After the jump, two points about functional-design elegance, then maintaining silence on this subject for as long as I can:
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Aviation note

I am way behind on the small-plane aviation news, because of the dreaded combination of (a) Olympics happening all around me and (b) actual writing to do.

As a place marker, two items: one positive, one.... interesting.

Positive news:  Much more information about Cirrus Design's new "Vision" personal jet here, from Flight Blogger, and here, from Cirrus itself.




Among many other things, I love the idea that Mike Van Staagen. who when I interviewed him for Free Flight in Duluth nearly a decade ago was working on the interior for the then-revolutionary SR-20, is now a Vice President for the Advanced Design Group making this plane.

Interesting news: So much is happening so fast at Eclipse Aviation that I'll have to catch up another time. But for later examination: a few months after I moved to Shanghai, in September of 2006. I heard from a friend in the FAA that it was worth noticing the way the Eclipse certification had so rapidly been approved.

Now that there is business turmoil in the company, a Congressional investigation seems to have been opened into that exact topic -- according to this story in the Albuquerque Journal. For the moment I say... interesting. (Thanks to David Strip.)
 

Sincerest sign of gratitude for Beijing's new air

For the first two days of the Olympics, things looked bad on the air front. Then after two big thunderstorms and the passage of a cold front, things have been nice! Confirming my oft-expressed optimism that it would all work out just in time.

And after 25 months and zero outdoors runs in China, I've gone for four- or five- mile runs three times in the last week! All this along a reasonably nice flagstoned path along the canal that is  just south of Tonghuihe North Road, between the old Beijing Train Station and the 4th Ring Road. (Only peril is migrant workers sleeping on shaded parts of the path during the day. I barely avoided planting my foot directly on one, in a dark underpass, today. I jumped over him at the last second and he didn't wake up.)

Previously I had praised the USATF.org site as a way to map running and bike routes. It turns out that MapMyRun.com works provides the same kind of mappable routes even in China! Ah this modern age. I'll keep this up as long as the good times last.
 

On the ages of the female Chinese gymnasts

I haven't watched any gymnastics, live or on TV; don't follow the sport; and have no opinion on how old members of various teams look and how much that matters.

But this new post, from the Stryde Hax blog, does an impressive technical job of finding information that has not yet been removed from caches of official Chinese sites. At face value it makes a strong circumstantial case that one of the gymnasts, the double gold-medalist He Kexin, was born in 1994 rather than 1992, making her 14.



The post also includes links to two cached screenshots of Chinese birth records that, for now, still exist. (Many others have been very recently removed.) See them here and here.  No harm in saving or printing a screen shot..... These are Chinese charts that show name, sex, date of birth, place of birth. The name in question is 何可欣, and one of the lines where it appears says:

618,"何可欣","女","1994.1.1","湖北"

Take me out to the ball game (Beijing version)

Monday night fun, watching Team USA take on Team China at the Beijing Wukesong Olympic baseball field. The Olympic basketball stadium, which stands next door, is destined as a lasting addition to Beijing's sporting patrimony. The baseball field, like the velodrome and (sigh!) the beach volleyball area in Chaoyang Park, is destined to vanish as soon as the games are done.

Beforehand, much good natured cross-national cheering in the stands. The US team was the favorite but this was not necessarily a gimme. The Chinese team had, for the first time ever, beaten the Taiwanese. (I mean, the team from "Chinese Taipei.")

Stands were almost full! Perhaps because of the unmolested presence of hordes of scalpers outside. At many venues, scalpers can't do much because you need a ticket to get within a mile of the arena. Oh, yes, also it's illegal. In the jovially packed house, there was a polite cheering alternation as one group of fans would yell the ever-classy "U - S - A! U - S - A!" and then the other would give the equally imaginative Zhongguo! Jia You! Zhongguo! Jia You!
 



Then everything became a mess, as detailed in this story. Executive summary: China's best player, the catcher Wang Wei, was knocked out of the game when American Matt LaPorta bowled him over and scored. In the next inning the backup Chinese catcher was knocked over in a similar play. When LaPorta next came to bat, the pitcher promptly drilled him right in the head -- the ball bounced so hard off LaPorta's helmet that it came nearly back to the mound.


 
In the end, LaPorta left the game (but is apparently OK), the US won 9 -1, and the Chinese fans got some satisfaction when the backup catcher, Yang Yang, hit a 9th inning home run. Yang showboated as he rounded the bases, leading to apparent ill feelings on the field. But most in the stands seemed to miss it, and a relatively good mood prevailed in the crowd on departure, considering.

Main athletic point I learned by seeing this in person: most noticeable overall difference between US players and Chinese was how hard and accurately they threw the ball. It was not just the difference in the pitchers: the US starter Jake Arrieta throwing above 90mph early in the game while China's pitchers were in the 70s and low 80s. I think the one that hit LaPorta was clocked at 68. The throws across the infield and from outfielders also looked different. It's always amazing at Major League games to see the ease with which the 3rd baseman pegs it across the infield or the center fielder throws toward home. From the stands, that was the easiest way to tell the teams apart.

Update: Ouch! Team China's final game was tonight against the mighty Cubans. The game was called by the mercy rule at 17-1, after the Cubans had batted only six times. On Friday Cuba meets the US in one semifinal, with South Korea vs Japan in the other,
  

Too much Olympics? Try 'Ace in the Hole'

No more heart to watch the Olympics now that Michael Phelps and Liu Xiang have left the stage? To say nothing of the departed archery teams, lightweight weightlifters, rowers, etc?

Fill the empty hours, and get into the right mood for the upcoming conventions and general election campaign, with a fabulously bleak and cynical old movie from Netflix: Ace in the Hole.

Empty-seat mystery, cont.

In several previous posts I've mentioned the paradox of Olympic tickets being flat "sold-out," yet huge tracts of seats sitting empty. Many people have written in to solve the mystery. This, from Alf Hickey, reflects the consensus view:

Large amounts of empty seats are actually quite common at Chinese concerts or sporting events that claim to be "sold out." The reason for this is that a large amount of tickets are given to the bigwigs who organize the events so they can guanxi them out ["build relationships"] as needed. Since the Olympics had so  many different organizing bodies, the central government, the local Beijing government and the Chinese Olympic committee, I'm sure there were vast amounts tickets given to various officials.

The reason that these tickets are not used is that by the rules of Chinese guanxi, you don't refuse a gift, especially not from someone connected enough to get Olympic tickets. So the tickets to the rowing finals are probably in the hands of people who have no desire to see the event, but just needed to stay in the good graces of some random Beijing bureaucrat. I suspect that the tickets have already changed hands more than once, passed along like a box of moon cakes that no one actually wants to eat.

Saying something nice about CCTV

As I've harped on before, in posts too numerous to link to, China's state-run network CCTV has been unashamedly nationalistic in choosing which Olympic events to show. OK: most people watching are Chinese.

But the play by play expert commentators seem surprisingly non-home-team in what they say. Sports broadcasting is its own stripped down dialect in any language, and the CCTV team seems about as willing to apply the standard Chinese versions of "beautiful" or "well done" or "not bad at all" terms to a nice dive, three-point shot, good serve by a rival as to one of their own. And they usually say "China" rather than "we" for the home team.

Of course, my sample could be skewed, since I haven't seen any Japan-v-China events.

In a crew race where the Chinese women's team came from behind for a dramatic upset victory, the announcer screamed himself hoarse and raised his voice two octaves as the boat crossed the finish line. But that was straight out of America's own "Do you believe in miracles?!?!?" Olympic play book.

Biggest news of the Olympics for China: Liu Xiang is out

Incredible.  During the entirety of our past two years in China, Liu Xiang has been the face of the upcoming Olympic games. He is China's greatest-ever track and field athlete, defending Olympic gold medalist in the 110m hurdles, the man whose smile and whose action-shots soaring over hurdles we have seen in maybe ten thousand TV ads, billboards, subway signs, and every other medium.

In happier times, as Olympic champion in Athens:


He stumbled just now in a heat in which someone else false-started; then he withdrew from the event. As I mentioned a month ago, Liu has probably been under more individual pressure than any other person involved in these Games. It would be as if Michael Phelps were the only American ever to have won a gold medal in swimming -- Liu's position among Chinese male track and field athletes -- and would be racing only once, in the 50-yard freestyle.

Liu has known for four years that a billion-plus people in his country would be watching -- and that, in something less than thirteen seconds, he would be celebrated forever as the man who helped glorify the Olympics and his country, or reviled as a big disappointment. I don't have them on hand at the moment, but there have been many recent quotes to the effect of: "If Liu Xiang fails to win a second gold, on his home soil in front of his countrymen, everything he has achieved so far will be dirt." Etc.

Probably there's something so wrong with his foot or Achilles tendon that he couldn't even try to compete in the re-run of the heat. But it would be natural and human if it were something more too: perhaps better not to try at all than to be captured forever on tape coming up short. It's hard to feel sorry for someone as rich and celebrated as Liu Xiang. But you can sympathize.

Halfway through: #4 (and last for now)

4) The imposed order and absence of protests is creepy, to say the least.

Before the Olympics, I had thought that the most likely way the whole event could go wrong would be this: Someone, somehow, was sure to mount a protest about Tibet, human rights, or any other issue. When that happened, the authorities, bast on past performance, were sure to over-react.

As it turns out, they've over-reacted in advance by buttoning everything up so tight that no dissent of any sort shows. Three big venues have been set aside for "authorized" protests, but these last few days it's been clear that no authorizations will be granted. (And that smart Chinese groups realize they shouldn't try.) I see that Nicholas Kristof has today published a column on this very topic, so I needn't explain any more.

Related: papers in Australia and the UK have been publicizing what they say is a leaked memo from the Chinese propaganda ministry, with 21 do's and dont's for the Chinese media in covering the Olympics and possible protests.  One version of the text, from the Sydney Morning Herald, is here (background here) and includes this item:

9. In regard to the three protest parks, no interviews and coverage is allowed.

I can't be sure whether this leaked memo is legitimate. Most China veterans I've asked say that it probably is, since it sounds like other, similar guidelines (including one I quoted in this article about the Great FIrewall) and in fact is not news at all, since it reflects no more than established policy.
 

Halfway through: #3

3) Logistics. On the whole, they've worked pretty well. In particular, the new subway line 10 has been a godsend for getting people to the main Olympic venue. Sometimes line 10 shuts down earlier than the Olympic events do, but that's a detail. And the young volunteer guides are numerous, friendly, and eager to help.

There are three notable exceptions, which I say based not just on general reports but on repeated personal experience with all of them.

    - Food. Spectators are searched for food and drink on the way into the venues, and any consumable item is confiscated. (After previous confiscation episodes, my wife got away with smuggling a small Toblerone bar into a stadium. The guard held it up skeptically and asked what it was. "Medicine," she said in Chinese. He made her taste some, which she did quickly without letting him look too closely at it -- and got through.)
 
    The problem is, it is very difficult to find much else inside. The relatively abundant food stands sell snack-junk only: potato chips, popcorn, sweet rolls, ice cream cones, plus cheap beer and Coke. I have not yet seen even one spectator at a venue consuming anything heartier -- say, sandwich, hotdog, you name it. Is McDonald's, the monopoly fast-food sponsor, responsible? It has a huge central outlet on the Olympic Green, but not any at the sporting venues. Some other business obstacle? I don't know. Believe me, I'm not the only one to notice.

Continue reading "Halfway through: #3" »

Halfway through: #2

2) Medal counts, as discussed earlier. Both the "Chinese system" and the "US system" of national medal-ranking have obvious flaws. Chinese system = only gold medals matter. US system = all medals count the same. Obviously some "weighting" system would be more sensible -- say, 3 points for gold, 2 for silver, 1 for bronze. 

Of course the most sensible approach would be to dump country-ranking altogether, given what an odd assortment of sports are aggregated to determine total national "success."  Skeet-shooting; hammer throw; badminton; the triple-jump; wind surfing; trampoline; team archery; beach volleyball; one more stop on the pro tennis tour. Compounding this is the imbalance in "medal richness" among sports. Even if Kobe Bryant were as dominant in basketball as Michael Phelps is in swimming, there's only one gold medal to be won in hoops, or a maximum of two for Roger Federer in tennis. (He got one, in doubles.) So individual athletic celebration would be best. But let's stay in the realm of reality.

While the bizarreness of Olympic sport-selection means that not even a sensibly weighted system would say much about a country's overall strength, merits, soft-power, future prospects, average fitness level, etc, the contrast between the "Chinese" and "American" systems does show something about their respective athletic systems.

Mainly because the United States is so much richer than China, a far larger share of its young people participate in organized sports of some kind. Ivy League admissions directors  complain that they have to set aside a big chunk of their entering classes to ensure that sports rosters are filled (fencing, lacrosse, men's and women's crew, football, etc). No elite Chinese university has ever had that complaint. The national sports system in China has instead concentrated on picking a few people, very early in life, and training them intensively for specific Olympic disciplines. That is the point of stories like these, mentioned earlier.

The US system provides a deeper pool of athletes in a narrower range of popular US sports: swimming, basketball, track and field, etc. Australia is the extreme example of this approach,  with 1/10th as many people as the US and 1/40th as many as China but still presenting deep squads in swimming and rowing. (For a while on Sunday, with swimming and rowing just done, Australia was #3 in overall medals, behind the US and China.) China has a more systematic approach to developing a few potential champions in as broad a range of competitions as it can cover.

These are different approaches, suiting the wealth and to a degree the social systems of the countries. Not better or worse, but with different medal implications.

Update: I should have read Wednesday's Wall Street Journal when it arrived! Ian Johnson has a story on this same pattern, pointing out that in theory the IOC discourages country-ranking at all. After the jump, an interesting quote from the story about different opinions on the two systems.
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Halfway through the Olympics: #1 in a rapid-fire series

1) Never to be forgotten: It's good for the Chinese people and good for everyone else that the Olympics have overall gone as smoothly as they have -- air quality improving, no deal-breaking logistics problems -- and that so many Chinese athletes have done so well. This is notwithstanding a number of the less-positive points we'll get to shortly. Considering all the different ways in which China has interacted with the world in the last 50 years, considering all the challenges ordinary Chinese people have to put up with, it's beneficial and, and, by any rational standard, non-threatening to have national energies channeled into this kind of competition. It's touching to see so many ordinary Chinese crowds cheering for their new heroes.

         1A)  Related point: Positive Chinese nationalism - the "I love China" decals on many people's faces - should not be threatening to anybody else. History is full of examples of "rising national powers" getting the big head, feeling arrogant, and doing dangerous things. That's not the main feeling I get here.  It's negative Chinese nationalism, like what appeared after the protests over the Olympic torch relay in April, that we should worry about. So a confident China is to be congratulated; a victimized-feeling China is the one to be feared.

McCain and Pastor Rick Warren

I didn't see Barack Obama's session with Rick Warren. Hey, I'm in China. Just now I saw that John McCain's session with Warren is being shown.

McCain looks comfortable and is doing well. How do I square saying this with my argument in this recent article that he is a poor public speaker who does not show up well in debates? Easy.

1) Although Obama and McCain appeared back to back, this was in no sense a debate. This was the Larry King show, minus the usual incisive follow-up. In 45 minutes or so I saw, Pastor Rick Warren did not once ask "what do you mean by?" or "but what about?" He served up topics and sat aside as the candidate gave his standard answers, which were subject to no examination.  OK: that's one approach.

It is an approach basically similar to the "Town Hall" meeting format, where average citizens present questions -- often more barbed than Warren's -- and then the politician says what he wants, usually without rebuttal or followup. As I pointed out in my article, this is the one form of spoken discourse that McCain enjoys and often does well at:

In these circumstances, McCain's tactics against Obama are obvious. He will ask for as many debates as he can, starting with informal town halls before either he or Obama is officially nominated. The informal setting shows him off to his best advantage, with the affable bantering that has long made him a favorite with the press.

2) The candidates did not have to perform under pressure, which is what makes face-to-face debates different from every other form of political discourse.

I mean, of course there is pressure in any campaign appearance. In this one, Obama faced the pressure of entering presumably hostile territory; McCain, of figuring out the right way to shore up his conservative support. But they did not have to deal directly with each other -- with challenges to their arguments, with taunts and repartee, even with the effects of body language and the knowledge that viewers were sizing them up side-by-side. Again as the article said:

We don't watch debates to learn what someone thinks about Social Security. We watch to see how the contenders look next to their opponents, how they react when challenged, how well or poorly they come up with the words we later see in print.

These are the things we didn't really see --at least about McCain, in the part I watched. Not even how well or poorly he comes up with words, since most of what he said was part of his standard repertoire.

3) If I were in the Obama campaign, I would ban all mention of points #1 and #2 and would instead stress as often as I could: Boy, now that we seem him in action, we have a sense of how good a debater this John McCain really is! Frankly, the best we can hope from the debate match-ups is to get out alive. Everybody knows that our guy is not at his best in debates. And with that charm and wit, there's no way McCain won't win over the crowd. Expectations for him have to be sky-high..... 

The Olympics will have to take care of themselves for a while now...

... as actual work impends. Back home at 1:30am from the "afternoon" events.  Tales of logistics nightmares, of a phenomenally clear, crisp, and beautiful Beijing day, of the true meaning of medal counts, and other such topics later on. (Stop reading here if waiting for delayed broadcast of tennis games.)

The event that made the hassle worthwhile: watching Roger Federer, seemingly in the course of the first set, pick up the instincts of the doubles game:



At the start of the match, against the dominant doubles team in the world (Mike and Bob Bryan of the US, top seeded in the Olympics), Federer looked mildly chagrined to be out there -- and ill at ease on the doubles court. Every point his Swiss team lost in the very first game, Federer lost himself -- muffed volley that seemed to take him by surprise, ground stroke into the net, etc.

He and his partner Stanislas Wawrinka -- the second-best male tennis player in Switzerland, sort of like being the second most successful presidential candidate in the Clinton household  -- won the first set in a tie-break, and in the second set Federer suddenly seemed to find his instinct and place.

  

The Bryans are made for doubles, but Federer took over, and he and Wawrinka upset the Americans in straight sets.

Happy as I am for James Blake, who knocked Federer out of the Olympic singles with his first-ever victory over him (before being knocked out himself a few hours ago), it is undeniably sad to see the elegant Federer (like Sampras before him -- like everyone before him) starting to look mortal on the singles court. It was nice to see his revival in doubles -- and it must be a strange kind of milestone for him, that an "upset" means he won.

More on Chauvinism. medals, and Olympic TV

This follows up the recent item saying that people who are in a huff about America-centrism in NBC's coverage should put things in perspective. (I've heard from many people about beach volleyball-centrism in NBC's coverage too. Agnostic on that.)

1) A Slate item, by June Shih, whose headline makes the point: "You think NBC is bad? You haven't seen CCTV." CCTV is of course China Central TV.

If you're going to rely on CCTV to bring you your Olympics, you've got to care about the Chinese teams. ...

Instead of [NBC's] soft-focus profiles, what you get from CCTV is raw, one-sided footage. Predictably, the cameras were trained exclusively on the Chinese gymnasts. During the early rotations, when the Chinese unexpectedly found themselves in fifth place, CCTV broadcast little or no footage of the teams in first, second, third, and fourth. ....

It was a reminder that, at the end of the day, [CCTV] is still a large cog in a giant propaganda machine. NBC is patriotic because patriotism sells; CCTV is patriotic because patriotism is the law.

Shih, like me, is positive about these Olympics, many of the Chinese athletes, One World One Dream, the Fuwa, and all the rest. But she's describing the same thing I see.

2) From "Traveling Lavalles," by an American family now in Shanghai, a completely true point about varying national conceptions of "success" at the games:

Medals: Only gold count!  Contrary to internal propaganda regarding the country not being in a quest for gold, that is all that is being counted.... They want the most gold medals - nothing else matters.  Locals are frustrated that Yahoo! ranks country performance based on total medals [instead of gold medals]...That would make Michael Phelps something like number 4 as a country as of right now.

It's interesting to look at the official Beijing Olympics medal-count site, which like all other media I've seen in China ranks countries' performance according to how many gold medals they have won. Right at this moment, it shows China as #1 with 22 golds, vs 14 for the runner up, the United States. Then look at the main US Olympic Committee/NBC medal-count site, which as of right now shows the US as #1 with 43 total medals, vs 36 for #2 China.  We're all above average!

This is kind of an electoral college/popular vote issue. I don't know how it will shake out when all the events are done, but right now the gold supremacy is another cause for good national feelings in China.

UPDATE: More on the medal-count wars here.

Here's something you don't see every day

Michael Phelps, finishing second in a swimming race just now:



He's the one in lane 4 touching the wall... well, second, after a guy from Serbia* in lane 5, who is already looking upward in his white cap. (Click for larger.)

Yes, it was only the preliminary heats of the mens' 100m butterfly; and yes, he had the second-fastest time of the large field overall; and yes, he lost by .11 of a second; and yes, it looked as if he was not trying his very, very hardest. And yes, he's failed to win some other heats in events in which he eventually won the gold medal. Still, somehow disorienting to see!

(Saturday am update: The "guy from Serbia" was the same Milorad Cavic whom Phelps out-touched by .01 of a second in the finals for his seventh gold medal.)

Saw it this evening at the Water Cube -- last minute tickets from a friend --  and having complained about some Olympic logistics. and kept other complaints to myself, I will say that everything about transportation, crowd control flow, security screening, and all the rest of the tedious practicality of an event was handled very, very well.  After the jump, two other photos illustrating things I hadn't known until my wife and I went there tonight:
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Am I the last person to know this? (Fuwa dept)

We all know and love the Beijing Olympic mascots, the five Fuwa, right?


And I've known they had names. Bei-Bei for one, I think. Maybe Pan-Da for the black and white Fuwa? I haven't been quite sure...

It turns out, thanks to my wife the linguist, that there is a very easy mnemonic way to memorize their names -- easy if you're hanging around Beijing these days. Their names, in proper order, are:

Bei-Bei
Jing-Jing
Huan-Huan
Ying-Ying
Ni-Ni

And the first syllables of those names, put together, spell out Beijing Huanying Ni ! -- "Beijing Welcomes You!" which is not only one of the official sentiment of the Games but also the refrain of a can't-get-it-out-of-your-head Flintstone-type song playing all over the place these days. So now I know! It's like that "Aha!" moment when you understand the master code at the end of The Name of the Rose or The DaVinci Code or perhaps Citizen Kane.

If there were two more Fuwa, perhaps they could be called Jia-Jia and You-You.  Just a thought.

More on Chengdu and collectivism

A friend recently sent on quite an amazing blog post. It is a systematic, but funny!, examination of the "science" behind NYT column I was objecting to recently:  David Brooks' claim that economic competition between China and America should really be understood as a clash between collectivist and individualist models of life and thought.

The premise of the NYT column was: We don't like to admit it, but brain experts and experimental psychologists know what we're going to do before we know ourselves. For instance, by knowing whether we come from a collectivist or individualist system, they can predict what we'll see when we look at a tank of fish.

I was complaining about the application of this theory to the real world of modern China. And I didn't make a point I should have: The problem is not just sweeping generalizations about the billion-plus highly diverse people who live in China. The further point is that if you were to generalize, you'd find that many outsiders who've lived in China consider it more individualist-minded than many other Asian countries, notably Japan. (For instance, southern China is full of tiny mom-and-pop factories, since people love being their own boss and aren't that keen on taking orders from others.) It's commonplace to hear Americans and Chinese say that they feel their cultures share many personality traits, despite the obvious huge differences. More another time.

But that is small potatoes compared with the argument presented by Mark Liberman, of the linguistics and computer science department at U Penn. It turns out that the theory itself is .... well, see for yourself in Liberman's devastating analysis at the Language Log blog.

One little sample:

Brooks' column: "If you show an American an image of a fish tank, the American will usually describe the biggest fish in the tank and what it is doing. If you ask a Chinese person to describe a fish tank, the Chinese will usually describe the context in which the fish swim."

Liberman: "First of all, it wasn't a representative sample of Americans, it was undergraduates in a psychology course at the University of Michigan; and second, it wasn't Chinese, it was undergraduates in a psychology course at Kyoto University in Japan; and third, it wasn't a fish tank, it was 10 20-second animated vignettes of underwater scenes; and fourth, the Americans didn't mention the "focal fish" more often than the Japanese, they mentioned them less often."

In my twilight years, I am not looking to pick a fight with anyone, and explicitly am not looking to do so with the amiable David Brooks. But I didn't like the argument or craftsmanship of this column, and I do hope he recognizes the danger of applying this kind of theorizing to big, important parts of the world. Or any parts!

Update: A good roundup of online reaction to Brooks's column here.

Wednesday evening Olympics, in two parts

The real Beijing
Before the Olympics began, one hypothesis for their outcome was "Potemkin Beijing." All the preparations would have worked so perfectly -- migrant workers dispatched home, construction sites completely finished or else covered with bunting and billboards, no one spitting, everyone standing in lines, the air sparkling blue and clear, the Olympic Lanes avoiding all inconvenience for Olympic crowds -- that visitors would come away not simply with the proper degree of respect for what China has pulled off but with an unrealistic sense of a magic kingdom.

Jim Boyce, an resident of Beijing who is so enthusiastic about his home city that one of his blogs is called Beijing Boyce (the other, about the local wine trade, is called Grape Wall of China) says in a note that he is no longer concerned on this score:
  

I think we can put to rest the worries of long-term expats that visitors wouldn't see the "real Beijing". The air has been fairly bad, the traffic, while lighter, shows that the "etiquette" rules have not been taken to heart by drivers (I saw a few terrified tourists amid traffic last night as cars did U-turns through the cross walk), every fifth taxi driver has a bad attitude, etc. This is the way it should be -- Beijing doing a good job on infrastructure, the people being friendly overall, and a few warts (traffic, air) for all to see.

The point is actually an important one: giving an impression of Beijing and China that is on-the -whole positive, with more goods than bads (while having some of both), is more valuable in the long run than the perfect Potemkin effect. Though I imagine the organizers were hoping/ planning for perfection.

It's so crowded, nobody goes there any more
Both the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal have good stories today pointing out that crowds are disappointingly thin at the main Olympic Green areas -- disappointing for the advertisers, that is, who have paid tens of millions to put up expensive displays.

Anyone in or around Beijing can diagnose the problem here, which the stories also point out: You can't get into the place. Even to board the special Olympic subway line to the venues you need to have an admissions ticket to one of that day's events. This is entirely apart from the pre-Olympic crackdown on issuing visas for potential Olympic travelers, much discussed by hoteliers. I would have liked to see these pavilions -- if I had been able to get a ticket to swimming, tennis, or some other event at the main site. If and when I do get tickets, maybe I will enjoying strolling without the bother of fighting crowds!

Bonus point, speaking of perfection: The main, official Beijing Olympics site, English version here, is very, very good. Easy to navigate; fast; accurate; updated practically in real time. This master-schedule page lets you see exactly who is doing what, and has done what, in any sport. Tabs at the top let you look up any athlete from any country instantly. Nicely done.

 

Two very eloquent articles about the people behind China's gold-medal run

This wonderful article by Rebecca Blumenstein in the Wall Street Journal, about Chen Yanqing, a female Chinese weightlifter who is now a repeat Olympic gold medalist and part of the dominant Chinese weight squad I've been following on TV. The article was published a few days ago, so check it out soon in case it is one of the WSJ articles that times-out in a week and goes off the public site. A sample, from the lead:

As a child, Chen Yanqing was the fastest girl in this farming village. She often outran the boys. One day at a sporting match, a coach noticed her throwing skills and took out a tape measure. She was 11 years old, and the muscles in her arms and legs were extraordinary.

So was the proposition her parents received: Release their daughter to the state, and she could go away to sports school and improve her future, with possible financial benefits for the entire family.

"It was rock hearted of us, but we had no choice," says her father, a farmer named Chen Zufu. "If we didn't send her away to sports school, she would have ended up a farmer."

Later in the story, Blumenstein quotes the father as saying, "A rich person would never let his child do this." Worth bearing in mind whenever you hear about the "natural" collective-mindedness of today's Chinese.

Also, this one, by Adrian Wojnarowski on Yahoo Sports, about the burden Yao Ming is carrying for his country, even though it's not likely to lead to a medal of any sort. (Thanks to Rick Gunnell for the tip.) Both well worth reading.

Jia you!

My own personal Olympic marathon (NPR dept)

Sure, Michael Phelps may swim practically back-to-back Olympic finals just now and win gold medals in both of them. But I'm pulling an all-nighter for the greater good of publicizing our outstanding magazine!

Will be on NPR's Talk of the Nation live around 2:30pm EDT Wednesday, 2:30am Thurs China time, discussing my article on presidential debates in the hot-off-the-presses September issue of the Atlantic. It may not have as many juicy inside memos as does Josh Green's wonderful story on the Clinton campaign's final days. But it has more words!  And it has great video-clips of debates and debaters, added by Jennie Rothenberg Gritz and other members of the Atlantic web team. (Plus, it has an obscure reference to Marshal Petain.) We all sacrifice when Going for the Gold.

Update: The audio of the interview is here.

PS: If you're going to see only one of the clips, make sure you see the one from the Obama-v-Keyes Senate race in 2004, which is the third video clip on the web version's first page. It gives a sample of the rhetorical phenomenon that is Alan Keyes, along with how easily Obama was able to handle him back then.
    But of course you should see all the clips and read the whole thing....

 

Wednesday morning Olympics

A little less cheery this time. (By comparison with this from yesterday.)

1. Weather
The air today looks the way it looks most days. That is, bad. Well, we enjoyed yesterday while it was here.

2. Media Control Dept
Here is a big feature story from yesterday's (state-run, official-voice) China Daily about the adorable little girl who "sang" the patriotic anthem at the opening ceremony.



Today's paper has not a word about the story that is all over the international press: that she was lip-syncing for a recording from another girl, judged not "cute enough" to represent the country at the ceremony.  Fortunately the Chinese blogosphere is all over the story, largely in defense of the off-camera girl. For what it's worth, I also have not seen any followup on the photo-shopped nature of the dramatic "footprints" firework display during the opening ceremony. (If it's been publicized within China, I've missed it.*) This is how it is. Some kinds of news "exist" and are publicly discussed. Others don't and aren't.
*Update/correction: of course the faked-firework story was originally broken by a Chinese publication, Beijing Times, which has received credit from nearly all foreign sources for its scoop. I knew this and regret any slight to BJT. I guess what I meant was follow-up discussion on CCTV, which I haven't been aware of. Thanks to Albert Sun for reminder.)

3. More Media Control
There are a bunch of illustrations I don't have the time or heart for now. For the moment, here's today's official view of how the outside world judges the games in general.




4. On the brighter side, I've become a big fan of low-weight-class weightlifting, which is mainly what's shown in the evenings here. These short, square pocket-Hercules types from Colombia, Korea, Azerbaijan, Turkey, and of course usually-triumphant China are inspiring to watch. Jia you!

5. Update Bonus Item: On the larger-scale question of what's at stake for China-- culturally, politically, and psychologically -- in the Olympics, I highly recommend this new piece in the New York Review of Books, by my friend Orville Schell. It puts the questions of "humiliation" and "face" in a clearer and deeper perspective than I've seen elsewhere.  After you've read it, take another look at today's David Brooks column, in wonderment.
 

David Brooks from Chengdu: my lord

Some of his pensees:

If you show an American an image of a fish tank, the American will usually describe the biggest fish in the tank and what it is doing. If you ask a Chinese person to describe a fish tank, the Chinese will usually describe the context in which the fish swim.

These sorts of experiments have been done over and over again, and the results reveal the same underlying pattern. Americans usually see individuals; Chinese and other Asians see contexts.

This is the kind of thing you can say only if you have not the slightest inkling of how completely different a billion-plus people can be from one another. Beijingers from Shanghainese,  Guangdong entrepreneurs from farmers in Sichuan, Tibetans from Taiwanese, people who remember the Cultural Revolution from those who don't, people who remember the famines of the Great Leap Forward from people who've always had enough. The guy across the street from his brother. His daughter from his wife. People hanging on in big state enterprises from those starting small firms. People who stayed in the villages from those who came to the city for jobs. Christians from Buddhists. Hu Jintao from Jiang Zemin,  Olympic weightlifters from Olympic tennis players, Yao Ming from Liu Xiang, Wen Jiabao from Edison Chen  -- and while we're at it, Filipinos from Koreans,  Japanese from Chinese, Malaysian Chinese from Malaysian Malays. Lee Kuan Yew from Kim Jong Il. People from Jakarta from people in Seoul. Hey, they're all "Asians".

Continue reading "David Brooks from Chengdu: my lord" »

Tuesday Olympic Notes - cont

(Following items 1 - 3  here.)
4. The mysteries of the Great Firewall
     Immediately before the Olympics, there of course was a flurry about whether or not the Chinese government would allow foreign visitors and reporters un-firewalled access to the internet. (As I reported in the Atlantic early this year, the original idea was to quietly un-block all IP addresses in hotels or Olympic areas where foreigners were likely to be, so that they'd say: What's this we hear about the firewall? Works fine for me!)

The Chinese government ultimately agreed to open unblock access for the Olympic visitors. For a while, it looked as if that meant blanket unblocking through much of Beijing. My own apartment access has always been firewalled, which I've worked around quite easily with my VPN. But for a day or two, I seemed not to need it. Now the blocking is back again -- and I'm reminded of what a nuisance that is, since on one of my computers, for odd reasons, the VPN is now no-go.

The real point, of course (as emphasized in my story), is that the very uncertainty of the Firewall's operation tremendously magnifies its effect. You don't know day by day what you can easily see, what you can't, or whether any problems you're having come from your own computer or always-shaky ISP setup.

5. The mysteries of Olympic food.
After the jump, an account from a reader trying to buy food at Olympic venues, whose experience exactly mirrored my wife's and mine at the rowing site on Sunday.

That site is really distant from downtown Beijing, and is a big open-air meadow, but on the way in we went through a very, very thorough security search. After I passed through the metal detector with no beeps, a young man poked my right rear pocket several times and said shenme?, "What's that?" I pulled it out and said, "We call this a 'wallet'. " My wife had brought some peanuts and other little sna