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a 4-hour-plus battle against Chinese Taipei on the Wukesong baseball field and we left there as the WINNER! Imagine how unbelievable this is considering the opponents who has sent Chien-Ming Wang, Hong-Chih Kuo and other elite players to MLB…The last hit is just amazing, though lucky - Taiwan’s first baseman dropped the ball and didn’t catch up to throw out the last Chinese runner…We have to say thank you to IBAF’s extra innings rule - runners on first and second for each 11+ inning…Almost everyone chose to bunt to push the runners forward, and a walk will make it loaded…That’s some cool situation as a fan, but a pressing situation for the players. Anyway, we did it! We beat the Chinese Taipei baseball team! WOW!

That’s some serious achievement. Congratulations Team China!

The gold of team gymnastics men has come back in Chinese’s hand after 8 years, and a apocalyptic loss 4 years ago. This one should be the most important one for China, maybe for the whole 08 event. Competition was fierce, and US, Japan are chasing right behind us. Fortunately we handled that well enough to preserve the gold medal.

And a BIG surprise comes from the fencing lane. Man Zhong got the gold medal for men saber fencing. Great achievement! Fencing has long been the backyard of europeans and after China’s trio of Chong Ye, Zhaozhi Dong and Haibin Wang, seems that few people could even come close to what Jujie Luan, China’s sole fencing gold medalist, did in LA, 1984.

Nothing to mention on weightlifting and diving medals. We are always good at this.

By the way, can someone stop Phelps? He’s just unstoppable in the pool… he beat Park in 200m freestyle with a record-breaking time, and got his 3rd gold of the event. He is tied for the greatest gold harvester all-time, will it be his sole lead? I do agree so.

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.

Yes, I do live in Beijing, China, but as for Olympics this summer in Beijing, I can feel it only by new stadiums, renovated stadiums and the banners and flags and those 5 “fuwa” all over the city. At least I felt so several days ago.

But things can change. I have felt what Olympic brings to me - personally - on two things.

One is on Aug 5th. My girl was sick and having a fever, so I escorted her from her workplace(hospital, how ironic) to her home and looked after her until her dad comes back from work. Then I took risks to catch bus 800 to get home. Everybody knows what the 2nd ring road looks like when it’s a workday’s 6pm, but - out of my imagination - the road is almost empty. With only buses on it, and certified olympics vehicles at times. Man, this is something I haven’t seen in my whole life - the whole North 2nd ring gets cleared totally…although the bus is crowded as usual…Recalling this, I think it should be the pre-security check for the torch relay next day? I don’t know…

The other happened just now. Transportation system in Beijing has developed pretty well thanks to the olympics, but sometimes things happen like today. Seeing off my girl in Dongzhimen subway, I decided to take subway line 2 back to Xizhimen where I can catch a bus home. 5 mins passed…and 10…and 15…there was no sign of train coming, provided the bulletin board saying, “Next train will be in 1 minute”!…what the…and 5 mins later, the announcer called. “Train for Yonghegong(station next to Dongzhimen) is currently unavailable, if you are in a hurry, please take the opposite train.” Alright, I give up. Another first-time happens. I know subway may experience some temporary stops in the tunnel, bu not for 20 mins and even more…So leave it, I turned to ground bus 107, a electric bus that’ll take me to the bus station where I can catch a bus home as well. Another mistake… On the route of 107 stands Houhai, a famous nightlife area of Beijing. What’s more, the Britain olympic committee is opening a “London house” right there at Houhai, and tonight is their premiere night. You know what it’ll be. Police cars, Embassy cars, lots of foreigners, even more security people and looker-ons. Those just blocked almost the whole street. Then there comes the wired 107, which can’t move a single inch without grabbing electricity via 2 wires from the cable above. Those cars just blocked the way 107 goes, and I got stuck there for another 10-15mins. Call it luck?Call it Olympics. By the time I got to the transfer station, bus carrying me home has long gone. Taxi is the only choice left…

And now I really felt the Olympics, personally.