08-08-08 Opening Ceremonies

I've been trying to buy tickets to various Olympic events since I got here to Beijing.  One of my contacts for tickets called today and said she had found some tickets and would meet me at the hotel in the afternoon.  6 tickets which originally cost $50 USD a piece...and I was now paying over $1,200 USD.  It just makes me sick to think about how much we are paying for these cheap tickets --but that is all you can find now! 

Well she takes cash only, so I went down to the atm next door to take out cash to pay her.  Turns out my bank only allows me to withdraw $500 a day, so I had to call a colleague of mine to come down and take out the rest of the cash we needed.  The lady called me on my Chinese phone (yea, I have a Chinese cell phone now!) and said she was in the lobby with the tickets.  I said okay, told her what I was wearing (we hadn't met yet), and that I would be down in a minute with an envelope in my hand (and it was a big envelope stuffed full of 8,800 RMB in 100 bills).  So I get off the elevator and this girl walks straight up to me, grabs my arm, and says, "Where can we go?"  It was like a freaking drug deal! I was freaking out!  We walked to this dark corner off the lobby, she took my money, counted it, handed me the tickets, and walked out.  It was INSANE.  I mean I know it's really illegal to be scalping Olympic tickets in Beijing, but come on!  I thought I was going to jail or something! :)  Oh well - we got some tickets and she got paid a ridiculous amount of money for them...that's how it goes this late in the game.

I was pretty hungry at this point (late afternoon) and decided to go down to the Times Square shopping mall just down the street to try and find some lunch.  It was a high end mall (Gucci, Prada, etc) so no shopping for me.  I was headed down the escalator for the food court and I caught the glimpse of a DQ sign (Dairy Queen!).  I LOVE my ice cream, and I nearly trampled over this Chinese family to get to it - seriously.  Turns out, they don't really have the same flavors of blizzards that we do.  They had seven flavors:  fruits (couldn't they be a little more specific?), green tea (puke), brownie (I don't like chocolate), cookies & candy, blueberry storm, cheesecake, and the best for last "special recipes"!!  LOL...God only knows what THAT could be!!  Needless to say, I passed on the DQ blizzard.  Right next to it there was a New Zealand Natural place that had fruits and smoothies and ice cream, too.  On top of the "corn juice nectar" (what in the world is that??), they had ice cream flavors that were quite interesting as well.  The rainbow ice cream was green and brown...looked very appetizing.  ;) They also had chocolate (spelled chokolat), rum and raisin, fruits of the forest (really?) and strawberry and surprises!  That's what I went for...two scoops of strawberry and surprises please!  I was pretty surprised that they spoke absolutely NO English.  I pointed to the strawberry and pointed to a cup, and held up two fingers and said two in Chinese.  She got the picture!  So now I just needed to find some real food.  There were lots of little places there, but nothing looked good.  I finally decided to try some little Chinese place that had what looked like spaghetti.  The girl said a complete sentence to me in Chinese, and I just looked at her blankly like I always do when someone talks to me in Chinese.  She then said, "You speak Chinese?" and I said no in my best Chinese. :)  So I pointed to the spaghetti and she brought it over with a bottle of water for a whopping 24 RMB (about $3 USD).  The noodles were edible, but I have absolutely no idea what was on top of them.  It definitely wasn't beef - some sort of weird ball of something, and it definitely wasn't tomato sauce either.  Strike out number 8,000 on food since my time in Beijing!!  Oh well, at least the ice cream was good!  So I walked around for a little bit, realized I definitely could not afford anything in that place, and left the mall, out a different door on a different level than where I came in.  I was kind of in a daze about all of the security guards lining the street and how dead the whole city was with streets shut down etc, and just started walking.  I tried to cross a street to get to a book store, but they wouldn't let me, so I just kept walking...thinking about who knows what.  About 15 minutes later, I realized I had absolutely no idea where I was, because I had left the mall out a different door and walked the wrong way.  Perfect!  So I turned around and back tracked back to the mall, went back in, and back out the other side where I came in, and walked the other way back to my hotel.  Thankfully I remembered where I was going that time! :)

Back at the hotel, I met up with some of the other guys I work with, who were all dressed up in crazy red, white, and blue outfits with American flags and beads hanging all over them. 

I got my festive colors on too and we decided to head out to this cool outdoor area to watch the Opening Ceremonies with a couple of the investors.  I got the China Daily newspaper this morning and it had the Top 10 places to watch the ceremonies live.  We decided to go to "The Place" - real original, I know - and we decided to take the subway!  Taxis were pretty much non-existent today, as most of the roads were shut down.  I hadn't been on the subway yet, but I knew there was a metro station right down the street, so off we went. 

(Michael and a random Chinese guy - they thought we were all crazy!)

The subway turned out to be a good decision!  It was really pretty clean, was air conditioned, and was like .60 cents for a one-way ticket to the stop we needed to go to!  We managed to get on and off at the right stops with no problem.  However, when we got off, we couldn't figure out where we needed to go to get to "The Place."  I had the address written down in English and in Chinese and stopped several people along the way, who all pointed in the right direction, while giving full-on details in Chinese...I just gave them my blank stare, nodded and said thank you in Chinese.   (Do these people really think we understand a word they say??) 

So we finally found it...it is the largest TV screen in Asia, and the second largest in the world.  It covers the entire street between two new five-story, high-end malls, and two 23-story office towers.  It was MASSIVE!  And surprisingly enough, it wasn't that packed! 

So we walked around trying to figure out how to get in, because it was all blocked off, and this voice came on the loud speaker and said (in English) that all of the tickets were sold out.  The newspaper didn't say ANYthing about tickets!!  So I asked around, and turns out the tickets were free, but they were long gone and we weren't going to be able to get in to watch.  We were SO bummed out!  

There was a lot going on outside the blocked off part, so we found a really cool bar with big TV’s and tried to walk in.  VIP with reservations only...no luck.  So the guys decided to walk a couple of blocks away to an area that had some restaurants, but Shannon and I decided to stay and try to watch the ceremonies on the big screen from the outside.  Well I got tired of that and come on, it's China...so why can't I get in where I want?  I walked up to the lady at the cool bar, with her fancy list, and pretended to be really busy and on the phone, and just walked right past her!  She grabbed me and I said, excuse me?  I said I had friends in there, acted really annoyed, and just kept going in.  My friend knew the drill and just kept on walking too...with her and now two other people following us trying to talk to us.  We made it in the big bar, which luckily was pretty dark and very crowded, and disappeared in to a sea of people. :)  It was PERFECT!!  It's CHINA...anything goes, right? :)  So now we were in the air conditioned, VIP bar where drinks and food were free and got a seat right in front of the big screen with unbelievable surround sound!  It was way too hot and humid to stand outside for 4 hours to watch.  The show really was amazing.  I'm sure you guys all watched it too...not sure if it was shown live over there or if it will be played tonight?  We don't have NBC over here, so I'm not sure what you guys will see.  But over here, they zoomed out and you can see a lot of Beijing and all the big fireworks going off throughout the city.  The fireworks were SO cool!!   (Especially at the end after the torch was lit!)  I was pretty sure the Birds Nest was actually on fire at one point in the beginning...turns out it was just the fireworks. :) 

The whole city of Beijing was completely shut down for this.  It was almost scary.  It's like seeing New York City with NO cars or taxis anywhere!  INSANE!  The fireworks went off all through the city, around all of the big venues.  And there were cool lights in all the trees along the main road, which is where our hotel is.  It was a cool experience.  So we decided we wanted to stay at the bar until we saw the US team walk in at the stadium.  The place was full of people from every country.   We sat with a guy from Germany, and another from Russia.  There were some people from Australia and Argentina...you name it, and they were there!  However, we noticed everyone cheered and clapped for Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Cuba and Russia.  Hmmm...we were kind of wondering, how much does everyone really hate America?  I mean I've always kind of joked around about it, but we were putting two and two together at this point.  I had on red, white and blue with an American flag hanging out the back pocket of my skirt, my friend just had on jeans and a white shirt.  So when USA finally came out...we kind of clapped and my friend waived the little flag a little bit...and everyone started booing the screen.  I honestly could not believe it.  And when President Bush came on, everyone REALLY booed!!  It was actually kind of sad...everyone really does hate Americans!  No one booed for ANY other country...it was just unbelievable.  I didn't know we were so disliked throughout the entire world...it was definitely an eye opener.  We left about 5 minutes after that...with the  American flag put away in my purse. :(

The city was still completely dead -- eerily quiet.  We walked a couple of blocks without seeing one person or car, and then some little white car pulled up along the street next to me and just kept driving really slow beside me.  I kept walking, kind of ignoring it.  Then the guy rolled down his window and turned the light on in his car and said something.  I thought he was asking if we wanted a ride, so I hollered no in Chinese and shooed him away.  He stayed there, driving really slow beside us and we walked along.  I kept kind of glancing over at him, trying to figure out what in the world he wanted.  I finally looked over at him, just in time to see him turn the light on again and point down to his crotch...haha...I think he thought I was a hooker or something!!  (I did have on a pretty short jean skirt and a tank top but come on!)  So we just stopped walking at that point, not sure what to do, and thankfully he just drove off.  Crazy!!  We walked another block or two and got to a main street, and one sole cab came by a couple of minutes later - we didn't really want to deal with the subway again because it's not that fast (6 stops between where we were and our hotel).  I got in and handed him a card from the hotel with the address in Chinese written on it.  He didn't really act like he knew where it was, and started talking to me in Chinese...blank stare from me again, so he called someone and figured out where to take us.  We drove down the main road in Beijing, and could see where some of the fireworks were going off.  There wasn't anyone around...just guards lining the street.  We drove right by the Raffles hotel, and it was completely barricaded by police cars and the biggest, coolest army tanks I've ever seen!!  Probably where President Bush was staying...I can't imagine any other person needing that kind of security in China!  It was pretty impressive!!  The security in Beijing really has been great so far.  I mean nothing crazy, but very tight...makes people feel safe!

So anyways - I'm back in the hotel room, it's after midnight, and I'm going to bed now!  (If the fireworks every stop exploding all over Beijing! My hotel is very close to the Forbidden City and Tienamen Square, which are completely blowing up at the moment!)  Not sure what is going on tomorrow or the next day...if nothing exciting happens I probably will stop this every night novel I've been writing! :)


-TK