TS in English

Only the 1st day of olympics and we are under such sorrow…

1 American tourist (a relative of US team) was killed at Gu Lou(Drum tower),a downtown tour spot. His wife, seriously injured, was in hospital. The tour guide, Chinese, was ok, and the attacker leapt the tower to death(tower has a height of 130 ft, about 40m). The victim,Todd Bachman, is the father-in-law of US men’s volleyball team head coach, and father of 2004 olympic womens volleyball player,Elisabeth Bachman McCutcheon. And the seriously wounded is his wife, who susffered from “life-threatening injuries”, according to MLB.com’s news.(Yes, MLB.com. Chinese media will not say the identity of the victims, just a “tourist” will cover.) 

And that’s the result of more than a million of people in city to protect the olympic? the result of security check on EVERY SINGLE bus, subway…?Maybe it’s an incident, but please, a knife? A knife that can KILL someone? In a tour spot?…I don’t want to say any more. And I don’t want to be GFWed(GFW = Great Fire Wall, China’s internet content filter system)

Mourn the victims. And, sorry for the whole US team.

Go China!

After that beautiful ceremony, it’s time for some serious sports. And we did it just fine.

Though Li Du missed the 1st gold medal of the XXIX Olympiad by a large margin(5th overall, 4th qualifying), China has managed to get a pair of gold medals today. A woman weightlifting 48kg, and a men shooting air pistol 10m. Congratulations to the winners!

XXIX Olympiad. Finally here in Beijing.

The opening ceremony, to be honest, is better than I expected. A lot. Typically, I don’t think Yimou Zhang can do anything other than hiring thousands of people and fill the whole screen with a single color. And the first minutes of the ceremony confirmed that. Though not so unfavorable, but please some new points…not spetacular but new…however, the latter part of last night proved I was wrong. The drawing scroll through the whole ceremony is one of the best ideas I’ve ever seen. Really, the scroll has some Chinese spirit, and painted by dancers, children and atheletes, the scroll showed more of acceptance and beauty. Plus the smiling sun (or moon) painted by children is interesting =)

Athlete incoming ceremony is as always long and laconic. Only new point is the sequence of entrance. Sorted by the strokes of first word in Chinese, hehe… therefore creating a whole new sequence different from any ceremony that sort teams in alphabetical order…

Finally, the fire. Though that Ning Li will light the main torch has been said for days, the official confirmation comes just hours before it’s done. And he did a surprising job well. Orbiting around “the nest”, or National Stadium of China, reviewing all the highs and lows the fire had come through, and finally lit up the main torch. That’s hard, that’s exausting, but that’s surprising and, well, more surprising.

Rank the ceremony? Out of 100, I’ll give a 95. But, thanks to some poor mistakes by broadcaster, a -10 has to be applied and make it 85 for me. Seriously, a 85 is still high, at least high enough in my mind.