2008 Olympics in retrospect

As a huge sports fan, I have been glued to the tv for the past two and a half weeks. The 2008 Summer Olympics have been every bit satisfying as I could have ever expected any sporting event to be. The fanfare, the pageantry, the spectacle have been all consuming for me as each night and every weekend I tuned into watch the competition and athleticism.

Some of my favorite highlights of the Olympics include...

The Opening Ceremonies
Choreographed and produced by Zhang Yimou, the opening was the most thrilling Olympic spectacle I have ever seen. Zhang managed to reproduce his filmic aesthetic live, which was something I didn't think he could reproduce from his films. He perfectly captured the national sentiment of Chinese people and somehow he managed to bring together an increasingly fractured China through his dramatic retelling of Chinese history and the feeling of Chinese pride. The production was lush and aesthetically pleasing; I was in constant awe of how he was able to mobilize and coordinate thousands of volunteers for the various numbers.

Olympic world records broken, gold medals won
While I was never that excited about Michael Phelps, I was excited to see which records would get broken and how. The most exciting moments included:
-Dara Torres swimming the 50m freestyle
-the men's 4x100 freestyle swimming relay in which US anchor Lezak came back to beat France's Bernard in the last seconds
-Kitajima breaks various breaststroke records
-China's gymnastics team wins first gold medal amidst age controversy
-Guo Jingjing most decorated diver in Olympic history
-Redeem Team finally brings back dignity and dominance to US basketball
-Men's volleyball gold after tragic losses
-dominating US women's beach volleyball duo May-Trainor and Walsh win gold
-Usain Bolt blows away track records with humor and swag (media loves/hates this)
-men's beach volleyball

Olympics rivalries played up by the media
-Kitajima against Brendan Hansen in breaststroke event
-Nastia Luikin compete with and against Shawn Johnson, both US gymnastics
-US women versus Chinese women in gymnastics
-Jamaica women versus US women in track
-US men versus Chinese men in gymnastics

The agony of defeat
-dominating US women's softball upset by Japan and must settle for silver
-Liu Xiang withdraws because of injury and is unable to defend hurdles title
-US favorite Lolo Jones catches second to last hurdle in 100m hurdles and finishes seventh
-both US men's and women's relay teams drop batons in the 4x100 relay semifinals
-South Korea upsets favorite Cuba in baseball
-US women's volleyball, with famous Chinese coach, loses to Cuba for gold
-Cuban Taekwondo athlete banned for life for kicking referee in face

I am sad that I didn't get to catch much of the diving, rhythmic gymnastics, or synchronized swimming. I also loved seeing the amazing architecture of the Olympics sports complexs and arenas.

Aside from the exciting competitions themselves, I was fascinated to see how the media would handle covering the games in China. I felt sincere pride for being Chinese American while watching these games and was constantly annoyed by the commentators' characterization of China as coming into modernity through these Olympic games. The language they used consistently framed China as very traditional (read: foreign and non-western), but now the Olympic allowed them to enter into an age of international modernity. I could hear the fear in the commentators' tone, as if that old threat of Cold War Communist China was rearing its ugly head again. At the same time, the tone was contradictory - China was now a part of the world scene and Chinese youth were the nation's future to international properity.

American commentators also reinforced other Chinese stereotypes of face, honor, and national loyalty every time they characterized Chinese athletes as having a sense of duty to nation before self (this was most noticable withthe Chinese men's and women's gymnastics teams). American athletes, on the other hand, were characterized as heroic, individualistic, ground breaking, and independent-minded (most characterized by the US women's gymnastics and Phelps).

The worst parts of Olympic coverage was during late night reporting, Mary Carillo, who was relagted to doing the "local culture" pieces on Beijing and China. Her bits tended to be stupid American visiting Chinese authentic locales in order to "explore" local culture. The worst one was, of course, the food segment, in which she eat her way through exotic China, but in the end could not stomach eating fried scorpion or some hideous insect like that.

Other announcing also made me cringe. The gymnastics crew loved to tell athlete's stories over and over again. Now I will never forget how Shawn Johnson "bounced" into her China-born coach's training facility in Des Moines, Iowa and how building the facility was her coach's dream. I also cringed everytime they characterized the Chinese gymnasts as having the weight of 1.4 billion (Chinese) people on their shoulders. Awful stuff.

The commercials were another interesting aspect of the games. Between the "Go World" Visa ads with Morgan Freeman voice-overs, McDonald's Chinese kids who fight over Chicken McNuggets with kung-fu ads, and presidential Obama/McCain ads, the in-between ad space was a bit weird. I am glad to have no gotten bombarded with pharmaceutical ads though!

Aside from that, Olympics in Beijing was completely awesome. I can't wait until 2010 for Winter Olympics in Vancouver!