Saturday Aug 9 : First day of the Olympics!…well, events…I’m stoked and don’t really know what to expect. My first event of the 2008 Beijing Olympics is Judo, a flashback to my childhood. I took 7 years of Taekwondo from 6 to 13 years old, and as both Taekwondo and Judo originated in Korea, I was introduced to both. I have a taekwondo ticket on the 21st. 
Upset because the cab driver didn’t know where the event was, and ended up being late because the gymnasium was in the middle of the university campus which required extra walking. Three or four of the first entrances I came to were for Vehicles, athletes or tech crews, none of which I could finesse my way through. Then my nalgene with all the stickers was seized and put in a locker. There wasn’t even anything in it! Second day in, this place is on lock down. Hopefully it will loosen up with time. Minus the protocol, I walked right in, no lines or anything.
When I finally got into the venue, my seat was pretty high up, but I could still see everything clearly and about half of the seats were empty. It was this first event that taught me four lessons that served me for the rest of the Games: (1) Look for the Americans because it is always fun to be able to root together. It was a little hard to tell when the next American was going to compete because there weren’t schedules available, and there were two mats going at one time. Just like the fourth of July, this was a reason to be obnoxious and excited about the red white and blue. Unfortunately, Judo is only a popular sport in Korea (obviously), Japan, and France (???), so there weren’t many Americans. This was kinda cool, however because the Americans I did find and awkwardly step over to sit next to were the rest of the USA Judo team! USA Judo Website They were understandably more into watching the matches than chatting with me, but one of the girls offered me some cheap extra tickets to another day. I was still a little freaked out from having over 50 tickets in my posession at that time, so I graciously declined. (2) After the team, for reasons unknown … moved to the other side of the arena, I met some nice Japanese people who had noticed me looking through my tickets for the event later that night. Number one question after “Where are you from?” is “What tickets you got?” They asked me if I had any extra judo tickets and said that they would pay 500 rmb per ticket! Always take underpriced tickets and have extra money in your pocket if the occation arrises. It will almost always be unexpected so be prepared, but not too prepared … you don’t want to get robbed. (3) Already mentioned slightly, take the better seat. If your seat is crummy and the stadium is pretty empty, move up. What is the worst that could happen, the original owner of the seat will come by and you have to find another. The volunteers were about the least threatening, but most annoyingly friendly category of humans I have ever encountered. They certainly don’t bother foreigners once in the venue unless you are trying to get into the really good seats. (4) Don’t get upset by their zombie-like (minus the human flesh craving) personalities. They only know enough English to do one or two jobs, and by Mao, they are going to do it perfect. Some useful phrases if you volunteer for Chicago 2016: “This way, please.” “Thank you, enjoy the games.” “This is forbidden, I check … forbidden.” “Turn around please, okay.” Additionally, they all wore the same Adidas sponsored clothes, from sneakers to bright yellow fanny pack. It was like an army of brainwashed, smiling, determined (fill in chinese stereotype here).
On the way out, I forgot my waterbottle! At least I still have the ticket, unless their utter dedication to service is just contrived, I should be able to get it back when I’m in this area again. Next stop, Olympic Badminton. I didn’t even know this was a real sport until I came to China, but everyone loves it, almost as much as pingpong, but not quite as much as basketball. I see people all over who play “bat the shuttlecock” like we would play catch back in America, no net or anything. There were three courts of play and it was amazing how physical the players were. The shuttles went so fast, and dudes were jump-slamming all over the place. When the Hong Kong girl came out, the Chinese people went totally nuts, even though Hong Kong competes separately from mainland China. I sat next to a nice Canadian with a really nice camera who has been to 5 or 6 other Olympic Games. He ordered his tickets back in the day at face value, so he had 2 or 3 events every day. His hobby was taking pictures of the Athletes and sending them the pictures on Facebook, haha. He entered the lottery on 4 separate orders, so he ended up with plenty of overlap tickets that he could trade, sell, or just give away to friends. Ended up making a really sweet trade of one Canada baseball ticket and one Chinese basketball match that I had for a USA Gymnastic prelim on the 10th that he had double booked. His job back in Canada was as a buyer/tester for a government managed wine company…and he gets enough time off to see the entire Olympics… Behind me was a really annoying white dude that thought he knew how to commentate badminton. Sounded like he was trying to fit the ex-pat intellectual Chinese researcher/cultural expert stereotype. These prelims are a really good deal for the money with almost four hours of matches per ticket. I didn’t get home until after 11.
I have some pictures, but am not sure when I’ll get motivated to put them up…