Starting with the egotist in me.
Mr. Mike Nagel:
"You're the glue that holds this group together. You talk to everyone and get them together. You're a good guy."
Tonight:
Dining in the smoke filled back room of a Uighur restaurant, a group of young and rowdy locals pound back beers in between laughter and clapping. After numerous clangs of glass and exchanges of good wishes, we buy these fine gentlemen and lady a round. Before we leave the most vocal of the group stands up and pronounces:
"You go. Before we sing a song."
We agree.
He begins:
"This land is your land, this land is my land..."
And the divide disappears.
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Mao Money, Mao Problems
Time moves fast on the other side of the world. Maybe it has something to do with the time travel that was my flight over here but I can't seem to get on the same page these days. I'm moving quickly but it sure doesn't feel like I'm going anywhere. I'm talking plenty but not saying a word most people can understand--except pijiu (beer.)
This is where I work:
National Stadium aka The Bird's Next. Yesterday my fellow flash quote reporters and I had a scavenger hunt inside the diamond of China's Olympic Crown. The building seats 91,000 people and there's plenty of room to spare. The innovative steel design is breathtaking and I'm sure NBC will have a blast broadcasting it.
I wandered through the tunnel and onto the field and thought what it would be like to be an athlete stepping out to 91,000 screaming people as you get ready to run the race of your life. I got choked up just imagining it.
I also saw some of the rehearsals for the Opening Ceremony. I won't say anything else though. Wouldn't want to ruin the surprise (or end up in jail.)
This needed to be posted at some point. Bruce cooling off at the ruins:
Not much else to report. The food's great, the people are many, beer and cigarettes are cheap, and soon enough I won't have time for anything. I got my schedule yesterday. From Friday the 15th until Sunday the 24th I have one single day off, the 20th. The rest shall be days for interviewing athletes and transmitting quotes via Info2008.
I did, however, score the Olympic Gold medal game for Futbol. Not bad. Sure beats Racewalking--which I also landed.
This is where I work:
National Stadium aka The Bird's Next. Yesterday my fellow flash quote reporters and I had a scavenger hunt inside the diamond of China's Olympic Crown. The building seats 91,000 people and there's plenty of room to spare. The innovative steel design is breathtaking and I'm sure NBC will have a blast broadcasting it.
I wandered through the tunnel and onto the field and thought what it would be like to be an athlete stepping out to 91,000 screaming people as you get ready to run the race of your life. I got choked up just imagining it.
I also saw some of the rehearsals for the Opening Ceremony. I won't say anything else though. Wouldn't want to ruin the surprise (or end up in jail.)
This needed to be posted at some point. Bruce cooling off at the ruins:
Not much else to report. The food's great, the people are many, beer and cigarettes are cheap, and soon enough I won't have time for anything. I got my schedule yesterday. From Friday the 15th until Sunday the 24th I have one single day off, the 20th. The rest shall be days for interviewing athletes and transmitting quotes via Info2008.I did, however, score the Olympic Gold medal game for Futbol. Not bad. Sure beats Racewalking--which I also landed.
Monday, July 14, 2008
The End of Week One
Well, I made it.
For the first seven days, at least.
And it's been everything I've expected and nothing I could imagine all in one fried pumpkin dumpling.
The Great Wall was the Great Work-Out, The Summer Palace, in a bizarre way, reminded me of Summer's in Jersey, being out on a boat in the middle of a lake with two friends just taking it all in, the Chinese Opera a cultural experience unlike anything I've ever encountered, the ruins of the Winter Palace, a harsh reminder of Western destruction, the Chinese village, a blatant living-portrait of Communist propaganda, the people lining the streets, patient and quick, graceful and rushed--everything is a mystery to this provincial boy.
Friendships formed under this pressure make me feel fortunate. The human condition in it's unbending strength and unavoidable frailty is front and center.
Today we went to St. Regis Hotel and we're treated like royalty. Scotch, champagne, and a Monte Cristo-- the only way to wrap up the first week of a grand adventure.
Still--I look forward to our adventure, the first, the last, the greatest, the only.
For the first seven days, at least.
And it's been everything I've expected and nothing I could imagine all in one fried pumpkin dumpling.
The Great Wall was the Great Work-Out, The Summer Palace, in a bizarre way, reminded me of Summer's in Jersey, being out on a boat in the middle of a lake with two friends just taking it all in, the Chinese Opera a cultural experience unlike anything I've ever encountered, the ruins of the Winter Palace, a harsh reminder of Western destruction, the Chinese village, a blatant living-portrait of Communist propaganda, the people lining the streets, patient and quick, graceful and rushed--everything is a mystery to this provincial boy.
Friendships formed under this pressure make me feel fortunate. The human condition in it's unbending strength and unavoidable frailty is front and center.
Today we went to St. Regis Hotel and we're treated like royalty. Scotch, champagne, and a Monte Cristo-- the only way to wrap up the first week of a grand adventure.
Still--I look forward to our adventure, the first, the last, the greatest, the only.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Day Two
Frustrating and fantastic.
A simple trip downtown, to WalMart of all places, proved the first (of what I'm sure will be many) difficult and disorienting experience. People littered the isles, products were all foreign, and even the familiar such as Chips Ahoy! looked alien. Not to mention the smell--not particularly bad but certainly unfamiliar.
The inability to communicate makes even the trivial seem insurmountable. Gesturing with hands and remaining patient is a must as the only two phrases in Mandarin I'm comfortable with are "I'm sorry" and "I don't understand." Just about sums up my exchanges with the locals.
Night was an entirely different beast. Seth, Mikala and the Aussies went out to Donata's, a surprisingly good pizza place just outside of the CUC. Cheap beer, cold beer and good people go a long way.
After nourishment of the body and spirit, Seth and I went downtown with the Aussies to explore the bar scene. And like all great explorers, we were not content to stay in one place for too long. What followed was a night of heavy drinking (starting with a drink called the freak-out, a drink that needed to be lit on fire and it's fumes inhaled) and Western bonding. Man needs to know he's not alone in the struggle, and once realizing this it becomes not a struggle but an adventure.
After our final bar and some hookah we stumbled into a cab and were dropped off in the wrong place. The prototypical dark alley that all foreigners are told to avoid. After passing around a card with our address to a group of strangers, we attempted to return to our home. Of course, with no sense of where we were or where we were supposed to be, the effort proved futile.
Except a stranger ran after us explaining in broken English that he was a student at the CUC and he could take us there. Wary of a stranger in the night, we followed the man down side streets. The Aussies wanted to shake him, believing he was just looking for some money.
That wasn't the case.
He led us back on our campus and departed wishing us a good stay in Beijing.
A simple trip downtown, to WalMart of all places, proved the first (of what I'm sure will be many) difficult and disorienting experience. People littered the isles, products were all foreign, and even the familiar such as Chips Ahoy! looked alien. Not to mention the smell--not particularly bad but certainly unfamiliar.
The inability to communicate makes even the trivial seem insurmountable. Gesturing with hands and remaining patient is a must as the only two phrases in Mandarin I'm comfortable with are "I'm sorry" and "I don't understand." Just about sums up my exchanges with the locals.
Night was an entirely different beast. Seth, Mikala and the Aussies went out to Donata's, a surprisingly good pizza place just outside of the CUC. Cheap beer, cold beer and good people go a long way.
After nourishment of the body and spirit, Seth and I went downtown with the Aussies to explore the bar scene. And like all great explorers, we were not content to stay in one place for too long. What followed was a night of heavy drinking (starting with a drink called the freak-out, a drink that needed to be lit on fire and it's fumes inhaled) and Western bonding. Man needs to know he's not alone in the struggle, and once realizing this it becomes not a struggle but an adventure.
After our final bar and some hookah we stumbled into a cab and were dropped off in the wrong place. The prototypical dark alley that all foreigners are told to avoid. After passing around a card with our address to a group of strangers, we attempted to return to our home. Of course, with no sense of where we were or where we were supposed to be, the effort proved futile.
Except a stranger ran after us explaining in broken English that he was a student at the CUC and he could take us there. Wary of a stranger in the night, we followed the man down side streets. The Aussies wanted to shake him, believing he was just looking for some money.
That wasn't the case.
He led us back on our campus and departed wishing us a good stay in Beijing.
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
The First Day
As the plane descended to land, I stared out the window wondering where exactly Beijing was. Not in relation to America, as I've looked at a map quite a few times in order to show my family that I would be on the other side of the world, but in relation to the plane I had spent the last 14 hours pleading for sleep on. The view from the window was an unhealthy gray, the plane's wing barely visible through the all-consuming smog.
It wasn't possible to see the ground until were nearly upon it. The scene was captured perfectly by one Bruce Lerch.
"Welcome to Providence, Rhode Island."
And he wasn't far off.
Maybe it was six months of anticipations or the 14 sleep starved hours jammed in a tin can with wings but the first sight of the People's Republic was underwhelming. Some fields, housing compounds, a rundown runway strip.
This impression lasted all of the 10 minutes it took to get into the airport.
I've flown in and out of Heathrow, Newark, Logan, JFK, San Diego International, and Amsterdam Schiphol and I've never seen anything like the newly opened Beijing Capital International Airport. The sheer size, the absolute quiet, the state of the art technology and that wonderful new car scent. To stand, as I did, in the middle of the vast expansive space and stare up at the unreachable ceiling, one feels both small and yet essential, part of a beautiful and incomprehensible force.
Or maybe it was the disorienting day lost in the air.
I'm staying at the Communications University of China, a college dormitory not unlike Emerson. My roommate Seth and I had a lengthy battle with the air-conditioner unit but after a couple initial defeats, Seth struck a winning blow and we've been living in luxury ever since.
The food is delicious, it's ingredients unknown. Somethings are better left a mystery, even for this inquisitive mind.
Meals are communal, a practice that should be adopted worldwide. Everyone sits around a table, each ordering an item and promptly sharing it. Chopsticks fly as people reach over and around each other, laughing in delight, tasting not only spices and flavor, but friendship and family.
For as Americans, we are all one. That's not something I've thought about while home. But away on the other side of the world our provincial hearts call us together, inescapable is its familiarity and comfort.
On another note: Don't try to out drink an Aussie.
It wasn't possible to see the ground until were nearly upon it. The scene was captured perfectly by one Bruce Lerch.
"Welcome to Providence, Rhode Island."
And he wasn't far off.
Maybe it was six months of anticipations or the 14 sleep starved hours jammed in a tin can with wings but the first sight of the People's Republic was underwhelming. Some fields, housing compounds, a rundown runway strip.
This impression lasted all of the 10 minutes it took to get into the airport.
I've flown in and out of Heathrow, Newark, Logan, JFK, San Diego International, and Amsterdam Schiphol and I've never seen anything like the newly opened Beijing Capital International Airport. The sheer size, the absolute quiet, the state of the art technology and that wonderful new car scent. To stand, as I did, in the middle of the vast expansive space and stare up at the unreachable ceiling, one feels both small and yet essential, part of a beautiful and incomprehensible force.
Or maybe it was the disorienting day lost in the air.
I'm staying at the Communications University of China, a college dormitory not unlike Emerson. My roommate Seth and I had a lengthy battle with the air-conditioner unit but after a couple initial defeats, Seth struck a winning blow and we've been living in luxury ever since.
The food is delicious, it's ingredients unknown. Somethings are better left a mystery, even for this inquisitive mind.
Meals are communal, a practice that should be adopted worldwide. Everyone sits around a table, each ordering an item and promptly sharing it. Chopsticks fly as people reach over and around each other, laughing in delight, tasting not only spices and flavor, but friendship and family.
For as Americans, we are all one. That's not something I've thought about while home. But away on the other side of the world our provincial hearts call us together, inescapable is its familiarity and comfort.
On another note: Don't try to out drink an Aussie.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
