Chinese Gymnasts Cleared

I've already talked about what I felt was poor journalism by the AP on the story of the Chinese gymnasts (their whopping two sources where one dried up and the other wasn't actually verified by Chinese Gymnast officials - which they told the AP) - and just the simple fact that everyone got into Yellow Peril mode.

So I'm glad to see that after an extremely long inquiry into the ages of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Gymnastic Team's ages, that everything has come up clean and at least for this Olympics (because now they're looking at the 2000 squad) - it finally puts this issue to rest for people who just couldn't believe that China was on the up and up in this case, and I think it's important because it can make a difference in how people look at Asian Americans here in the U.S. no matter how different we can be (and I know that's unfair, but it's also a part of the game, so I'm always up for things like this to turn out good rather than bad -- see the link to the previous post for more clarity on that thought).

P.S.

If there's been one moment in the Olympics when I think the whole world wanted to reach out and give someone a hug I think it had to be when little Haley Ishimatsu from the U.S. diving team was being interviewed after she didn't advance to the finals and she kept on tearing up and saying "I'm sorry".

I mean it just kind of got to you.

But don't worry Haley - you'll be back, and I'm sure next time it will be with a medal.

Wang Chen Makes Some History

I have to be honest and say that I never thought I would have heard the words "I really need to see that table tennis match" come out of my mouth - but I'm kind of getting sucked in a little bit - and there's some history being made too:

Wang Chen of the United States defeated Kim Kyung-ah of South Korea on Thursday to become the first American in Olympic table tennis history to reach the quarterfinals.

All three Chinese players also advanced and kept alive the possibility of a medal sweep for the host team. After her 4-3 win over Kim, the world's top defensive player, Wang collapsed to her knees next to the table and cried into her towel.

"I thought it was possible to beat her as long as I was full of confidence, because she's a defensive player," Wang said about her victory. She won 11-9, 9-11, 11-8, 10-12, 6-11, 11-9, 11-5.

Wang, who's ranked No. 23 in the world and runs a popular pingpong club in New York City, will face sixth-ranked Li Jia Wei of Singapore on Thursday night.

Who's a Ping Pong Playa?

It's The Kinesio: Walsh And May-Treanor Put On A Great Finals

While you definitely have to give it up to Walsh And May-Treanor -- back-to-back American gold medal winners -- as well as the team of Wang Jie and Tian Jia (pictured far left who got the silver) -- let's also give a little hand to the Kinesio Tex Tape invented by Dr. Kenzo Kase over 25 years ago in Japan -- because in a way, it's kind of cool to think that behind the 2008 U.S. Beach Volleyball Gold Medal, there's a little bit of Japanese technology.

We Can Fence Too?

I have to admit that I don't really know much about fencing or the fencing world. I mean it looks great in the movies, but I don't think I've ever actually fenced in my life (and who knows if that's even the proper term because "I fenced with him" just doesn't sound altogether like a phrase people in fencing would even use).

Either way, I am glad to know that we fence, and that Emily Cross (far right in the picture) helped bring home a silver medal.

h/t epicanthus.net

A Random Conversation With Myself On The 2008 Beijing Olympics

BK Me: So what do we think about the Olympics so far? They’ve been pretty good huh?

Me: I don’t know. The games are kind of becoming this platform for Asian bashing and I can’t help but get a little turned off by it all.

BK Me: Hmm...to be honest I just thought you’d agree with me and we could go get some food. I didn’t actually think this would turn into a conversation.

Me: Didn’t you just eat?

BK Me: Like two hours ago.

Me: So you just wanted me to agree with you because you’re hungry?

BK Me: Well I’d hoped so, but since you seem to be getting a little touchy...

Me: Fine. I agree with you. The games have been wonderful and I absolutely love them and now you can go on your merry little way and eat yourself into a Value Menu Heart Arrhythmia.

BK Me: Well…geez....no reason to get like that about it. I mean what did the Junior Whopper ever do to you? Since, its not like it doesn't have vegetables.

Me: *Sigh*

BK Me: Obviously we won't be able to go anywhere until we've had this conversation, so let's just talk about it. Why are you so angry?

Me: I'm not angry.

BK Me: Okay then. What's "bothering you"? Is it the chinky eyes?

Me: Obviously it's the chinky eyes. I think everyone agrees on the chinky eyes.

BK Me: And?

Me: Like the fireworks. Who in their right mind actually thought those fireworks were real anyway? Have you ever seen fireworks created in the shape of a footprint set off in the sky where it looked like they were actually walking in real-time without the help of some computer graphics? I mean it was a stage show. It was theatrical. But instead of everyone saying how great they were, everyone's just focusing on the fact that they were computer generated. The whole tone that some of these articles take when reporting on the fireworks "issue" can just be boiled down to "Look at how they lied to us", even though no one ever lied about it.

BK Me: True.

Me: And then there's the lip syncing.

BK Me: You're defending the lip syncing?

Me: I'm not defending the lip syncing itself, becau--

BK Me: I mean sure, the one flying was a little cuter.

Me: First of all, that's just wrong, and second--

BK Me: What? You're going to tell me that one wasn't cuter than the other one? Like all Asian babies are created equal? Please. Even places that reported about what a travesty it was didn't put up a picture of the singing "still adorable" one. They put up the flying "chosen" one.

Me: Well, both were adorable and both were talented, and yes, both got the shaft, and while I'm not defending the lip syncing--

BK Me: Because you can't say anything bad about our Asian people.

Me: Can you stop interrupting me?

BK Me: Whatever...

Me: What I was trying to say was that while I don't condone it, I can understand it a little bit because it was meant as a stage show and I don't think they realized how some other communities, even in China, would look down upon it. I mean look at other places like in Vietnam. Lip syncing is still kind of O.K. when doing a stage show.

BK Me: Yeah. With their own voice.

Me: Like I said, I'm not condoning that part of it, I'm saying that I think it got blown out of proportion and people are using it just so they can say "Look at what those Asian people did. How can we ever trust them on anything?"

BK Me: Well...

Me: And now people are even reporting on how the kids who represented the different ethnic groups in the opening ceremony were all from the same ethnic group dressed up as kids from different ethnic groups and that somehow this is more of that Chinese "trickery". I mean, c'mon. It was symbolism. It was a representation. What's next? Are people going to start complaining about how the stadium isn't really a bird's nest?

BK Me: Sure, but what about the gymnastic team and their ages? Isn't that legitimate?

Me: Well first of all, some of us look young. That's just the way it goes. And you can't tell me that Shawn Johnson doesn't look young either. But the bottom line here is that no one is going to be satisfied until someone is proven to actually be underage because everyone already believes that there's no way in hell they could be telling the truth anyway because of this Yellow Peril attitude.

BK Me: What about the reports from the official Chinese newspaper that seemed to have disappeared with information stating ages from other events? You're denying those?

Me: What? Like newspapers and other media outlets don't have corrections? Organizations don't get things wrong? Didn't The New York Times just cop to a dozen years of reporting errors on McCain and his status as a fighter pilot? Didn't The Washington Post just incorrectly call Jin a Korean American rapper? I mean Bloomberg even told me that the Cavaliers won in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Semi-finals and that Kevin Garnett's scoring average during the playoffs was 13.2 when it was really 21.3 which is an eight point swing. Is it that hard to believe that a newspaper or the organization handling some paperwork that they used as verification can get things wrong? No. They get it wrong all the time.

BK Me: Wow. I didn't know you hated newspapers so much.

Me: That's not the point, and I don't hate newspapers. They've been great free speech advocates, we've known some good folks who've taken that track, and the press in that sense has broken some great stories. But the fact still remains that they make mistakes. Just because they have a gazillion editors and fact-checkers doesn't mean they can't get it wrong here and abroad.

BK Me: But it was the Associated Press.

Me: So what? Like I'm supposed to take everything the AP says at face value? Please. Since, this story smacks of Yellow Journalism, and when you make an accusation like that, because that's what it is no matter how you try and dress it, I think you should have more than, I don't know, two sources, especially when one dries up and you already have an official with the Chinese gymnastic's team who said the reports which AP used as a source were never verified by them anyway.

BK Me: Maybe. But what happens if the allegations are true?

Me: If that's the case, medals should be stripped. I mean that goes without saying. But that's not the point and you know it. I mean if this was an all white Canadian team do you think people would really be pushing as hard they are to uncover the "real truth" demanding that the IOC get to the bottom of it all. No way in hell.

BK Me: Well, I don't know about that, but--

Me: And look at how places are reporting on Liu Yan, the dancer that was paralyzed during opening ceremony rehearsals. Even though after the opening ceremony in a press conference Zhang Yimou said there were some serious injuries, people are still calling it a cover up because he didn't specifically mention her name.

BK Me: Yeah, but some places have reported that they did ask that it not be mentioned before the games and that some information may have been censored from Internet forums.

Me: But how's that any different from a film company not wanting to talk about a stunt person getting injured during the filming of a movie, especially when the stars are out and about on the red carpet during the premiere? I don't remember Jerry Bruckheimer having a press conference about Tony Angelotti and his hospital landing injuries during "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" and that because he didn't, the media said he was covering it up, insinuating the cover-up was because he was worried it might affect the bottom line of the movie, do you?

BK Me: I get what you're saying, but I'm not sure I agree with you on that one.

Me: Well, we're allowed to disagree, but to me it's just another way for people to gravitate to the "sneaky Chinese" mentality that unfortunately is going to make its way back here to the U.S.

BK Me: I don't know. I think you might be a little off on that one.

Me: Are you kidding me? Listen. You and I both know that there's going to be people all across America who use this Olympics as another way to explain away their racial and ethnic bias against us. I mean it's a forgone conclusion because of the "Every Asian person is a part of the collective" mentality that we can't seem to get away from, and I can't even believe you're questioning that. Do we really have to share the same body? Isn't there some procedure we can get?

BK Me: Well you can try and get rid of me if you want, but I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon especially without some serious medication, and even then I think you're still stuck with me so you need to deal with it just like I do.

[Pause]

Me: Yeah. I guess you're right.

BK Me: I know.

How Many Olympic Cheerleaders Does It Take To Pick Up A Fallen Mascot?

China Daily

That would be three.

And you're a dumbass: The Spanish Basketball Team

I got sent this link to me about the Spanish basketball team (thanks to an anonymous user that passed it to my inbox from The Guardian) and you just have to wonder what in the hell they were thinking, because while you might expect that from maybe one individual, you really just don't expect to see it from say, I don't know - a whole friggin national basketball team.



Here's some text from the original story;

Spain's Olympic basketball teams have risked upsetting their Chinese hosts by posing for a pre-Games advert making slit-eyed gestures. The advert for a courier company, which is an official sponsor of the Spanish Basketball Federation, occupied a full page in the sports daily Marca, the country's best-selling newspaper [...]

No one involved in the advert appears to have considered it inappropriate nor contemplated the manner in which it could be interpreted in China and elsewhere. No offence was intended by the advert, but whether the Chinese see it that way is a different matter and it is likely to provoke more criticism at a delicate time for Spanish sport [...]

Reading the full article I'm left wondering two things: How did the author of the article deduce that there wasn't any offense intended by the advertisement (and like it matters anyway), and who actually put them up to it.

At the same time, I honestly can't help but actually wonder if this is somehow fake news because it's just that absurd, and in a way, I'm waiting for someone to e-mail and say "Gotcha!" because you really just don't think this is going to happen nowadays - I mean seriously - this is messed up.

Someone. Anyone. Please tell me this is a joke.

China And The Olympics

Here's some more commentary on China and the Olympics from Asian-Nation:

But even more important, beyond the political issues that are inevitably present, China’s hosting of the Olympics does have some very real significance, although I do not see it as China’s “coming out party” as many have described it. Instead, we should remember that prior to the late 1800s, in many ways China was already a superpower and as the NBC commentators even noted during the opening ceremonies, for nine of the past ten centuries, China had the largest economy in the entire world.

Click here for the full entry.

Let The Games Begin

So the 2008 Beijing Olympics are finally here and it's nice to get a glance at some early pics of the U.S. teams walking into the stadium in full Olympic glory representing our country.



And then you have this.

Leaked: Preview Of The 2008 Beijing Opening Ceremony

To be honest I don't really get it, because it's not like they show you that much anyway:

The tense relations between China’s Olympic authorities and the international media took another turn for the worse yesterday after a South Korean television channel broadcast illicit footage of the secret opening ceremony of the Games.

In an embarrassing breach of security, journalists from Seoul Broadcasting System walked into the Bird’s Nest national stadium and filmed rehearsals for the ceremony, which will be attended by world leaders, including President Bush, next Friday.

But if you're interested, catch the SK special report from station SBS below (the linked article at the Times Online has the video too).

Nothing Says The Olympics Like 200,000 Cheerleaders

So I happened to stumble across an article at Yahoo News on the 200,000 cheerleaders that are being put together for the Beijing Olympics (and some will be dancers and acrobats for a select squad of 400) and I had a plethora of thoughts including the following:

• Cheerleaders with nunchucks? You don't see that in the NBA.
• That's some really frizzy blond hair.
• I wonder a little bit about the Elite 400 - was someone afraid that the other 199,600 other cheerleaders wouldn't be able to get the job done?
  
• When I read quotes like "Everyone knows cheerleading is a Western activity, but we hope we can find a Chinese way to do it [and] show the world," says He He, who sports long, dyed-red hair and a sparkly belly-button ring. and "They're a lot like Americans -- they use pompoms, they do flips," says 20-year-old Patriot dancer Corie Mae Callaluca, every bit the picture of the stereotypical cheerleader with long blonde hair and blue eyes. -- I think to myself that this is pretty cool, because in a lot of ways people think of the cheerleader, an All-American Girl archetype, as mostly being blond and blue-eyed -- not really Asian. So showing the world that Asian women can cheer with the best of them can be a good thing, and maybe in some ways (especially here in the U.S.) it can help re-define what an All-American really is on some level (even if you think in a superficial way).
  
• I could really be grasping for straws on that last point but just go with it for now.
  
• Just an FYI that the majority of the 200,000 cheerleaders are retired civil servants and have never shaken a pom pom in their life - and it's not just women - it's dudes too.
  
• Men have the right to be a part of the Cheerocracy.

And because you wanted to know more - I'll give it to you here, here, and here.

Torch Run in Seoul

To be honest - I'm not sure who I'm rooting for in all of this:

Thousands of young Chinese assembled to defend their country's troubled Olympic torch relay pushed through police lines on Sunday, some of them hurling rocks, bottled water and plastic and steel pipes at protesters demanding better treatment for North Korean refugees in China.

Two North Korean defectors living in South Korea poured paint thinner on themselves and tried to set themselves on fire in an attempt to protest what they condemned as Beijing's inhumane crackdown of North Korean refugees, but the police stopped them, according to witnesses and the police.

Read the full coverage down at the IHT.

More Pro-Olympic protests?

I guess (?) it was bound to keep happening?

Several thousand Chinese on Saturday rallied in Paris, Britain and Berlin in support of the Beijing Olympics and against allegedly biased media coverage of the torch relay and recent unrest in Tibet. Clad in T-shirts daubed with the slogan "One China, One family" and brandishing signs critical of the western media, up to 4,000 Chinese students and other expatriates gathered in the Place de la Republique in the French capital, according to police estimates.

"We're demonstrating against the disinformation in the French and western media, to promote the Olympic games and to construct a bridge between the French and Chinese people -- and not a wall as the media do," said one of the rally's spokesmen, Thirry Liu.

The full story is at The Times Of India.

When Big Men Go Down Who Tells Them To Get Back Up?

With Yao going down - and the Houston Rockets looking at the remainder of the season where the trade deadline has past and there's been significant moves in the Western Conference (Jason Kidd, Pau Gasol, Shaq) - things could just be getting started.

ESPN's Henry Abbot asks the question in a new article of who makes the decision if Yao plays in the Olympics:

The relationship between the NBA, the Houston Rockets, and the Chinese government figures prominently in any and all matters Yao Ming. Even picking him first in the draft was not simple. Now, with Yao Ming slated to be the superstar showpiece of perhaps the most important sporting event in China's recent history -- the 2008 Beijing Olympics -- there must be a hundred new ways these international relationships can be tested. With something this bad having happened, there will be blame to spread around, and future questions to work out. Will Yao Ming be ready to play in the Olympics? Whose decision will that be? Are the Rockets prepared to let the Chinese team make that call? And what about next season -- now that China's national basketball treasure has injured himself repeatedly Houston's watch (he has also had a broken tibia) might there be concerns about his returning to the NBA at all?

Yao's injury could heal with surgery in three months, technically giving him another 3 months to work out and prepare for the games - but NBA teams would rather have a franchise player of his caliber sit out from any formal play until next season.

While the Chinese national team is preparing for an Olympics without Yao, when asked about not playing, he said this from a recent article:

If I cannot play in the Olympics for my country this time, it will be the biggest loss in my career to right now

Yao didn't say anything about an NBA championship for Houston, or the dearth of playoff successes for the team. What happens if he and the Chinese government are adamant on him playing no matter what the cost to his NBA career? Will Rocket fans still support him?

I don't think there's anything in the NBA's Collective Bargaining Agreement that quite covers this situation.

Spielberg, China, and E.T.

If you haven't heard, Steven Spielberg has decided pull out from any involvement in the Beijing Olympics, where he was supposed to be on a team for the opening ceromonies helmed by Director Zhang Yimou, citing Darfur and China's involvement with the Sudanese government. From Variety:

Steven Spielberg has decided not to participate in this summer's Beijing Olympic Games as an artistic adviser, citing China's lack of progress in resolving the humanitarian crisis in Darfur.

His move is a public relations blow to the Chinese government, which is under pressure to force the government of Sudan to resolve the crisis in Darfur. Spielberg's worldwide profile could lead others involved in the Games to pull out and even lead sponsors to reconsider their roles in the event.

"I find that my conscience will not allow me to continue with business as usual," Spielberg said. "At this point, my time and energy must be spent not on Olympic ceremonies but doing all I can to help bring an end to the unspeakable crimes against humanity that continue to be committed in Darfur."

And the Chinese Government's response? Word from the Chinese Government and some local bloggers insist that it's more politicising of the games. From The Independent:

We regret Steven Spielberg's decision but we don't need him to stage an excellent Olympics, was China's defiant response to the film-maker's resignation as artistic director of the Beijing Olympics this summer. In line with previous comments about human rights defenders trying to tie political issues to the greatest sporting show on Earth, Beijing officials blamed activists with unspecified "ulterior motives" for trying to spoil the Games.

The tone of the Chinese response is best described as a combination of defiance, nationalistic resolve and a feeling of being hard done by. "It is understandable if some people do not understand the Chinese government policy on Darfur. But I am afraid that some people may have ulterior motives, and this we cannot accept," said Liu Jianchao, aForeign Ministry spokesman. He emphasised China's concern about the humanitarian crisis in Darfur but insisted China had been playing a constructive role in promoting peace there.

The news has not been widely reported in China but it has prompted a reaction among bloggers. One described Spielberg as a volunteer salesman working without a salary, peddling the American Dream by making blockbusters. "Maybe without his help we can show during the Olympics the more traditional side of our culture. Farewell, Mr Spielberg! Maybe the people of Iraq need you more than us."

At the same time as all of this is happening, China is apparently also censoring Spielberg's film E.T. as well as any movie with aliens, ghosts, or the supernatural. From the Telegraph UK:

Even before Spielberg announced he was pulling out of the Beijing Olympics, Chinese officials were plotting against his most lovable creation - ET.

In a new twist in the Chinese censors’ campaign to clean up the country’s viewing habits, aliens, ghosts and all other aspects of horror and the supernatural are to be banned from videos.

Video and audio products often “involve alien-looking characters and fictional storytelling, both specifically plotted for the sole purpose of terror,” the General Administration of Press and Publications, one of two main censorship bodies, said.