In February of 2001, the International Olympic Committee made their final inspection visit to Beijing to see if the city would be up to hosting the 2008 Olympics. In preparation for that visit, the city got a major “spruce-up.” Office and apartment buildings that had been a dull gray since their construction decades before were […]
I Miss the Chinese Curlers
For the first time since in years I am not watching Olympic coverage on CCTV5, the official Chinese sports channel. This means, of course, that I am missing out on watching the competitions the Chinese tend to do well in, like women’s speed skating and curling. Yes, I said curling. One of the funny things […]
My Brief Brush with (non) Olympic Glory
I spent most of the decade of the 1990’s in the northeastern city of Changchun, where I was the director of a program for Americans who were studying Chinese. Our program was a joint venture with a university there, so I and the foreign students that I supervised all lived on a campus. One fall […]
Blizzard in the Bird’s Nest
Having successfully dazzled the world as the site of the Opening Ceremonies of the Beijing 2008 Olympics and the sporting events that followed, the Olympic Stadium, or “Bird’s Nest” as it has come to be known, has fallen on hard times. It was originally thought (hoped, really) that the Bird’s Nest would become a top […]
