Urban Sociology and Urbanism, in China and North America
There was a long period in Chinese history where most 50 foot statues were constructed in the image of one particular individual.
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Nope, that’s not the Great He1msman, but rather the Great Diesel, greeting beach volleyball fans to Chaoyang Park.
Last night (on TV) I witnessed the most competitive match I have seen thus far in the Beijing Olympics. A vastly improved Chinese basketball team led by Yao Ming, jumped out to an early lead, and managed to fight off a late comeback by Dirk Nowitzki and the Germans. The teams both fought hard the entire way and the game infinitely more entertaining than the USA’s drubbing of Spain which followed. At the end of the first quarter though, I nearly turned the game off, or at least put it on mute. Why? The heavily partisan Chinese crowd had been yelling their jia you (加油) cheer on nearly every possession. After a week of the Olympics, I feel like my brain is rattling back and forth in my skull, to the rhythm of jia you.
Jia You is not a bad cheer. It’s simple, catchy, and easily customizable to any team, country, or individual. The literal meaning of jia you is “add oil.” It doesn’t make a lot of logical sense, but then again most good cheers don’t. It works like this. The leader shouts out the name of the team, for example “China” and then the others shout “jia you.” The leader then shouts “jia you” and the others reply with “China.” My beef with jia you is that it is the only cheer in China, and is cheered on auto-pilot at virtually every event where China is competing. In fact China has added so much oil this Olympics that it makes one wonder whether it is the impetus behind China’s rapidly rising gas prices.
Jia you is so prevalent, that cheering sections for other countries, (possibly ironically) have even been creating their own variations of it as well. At the soccer game Wednesday, on numerous occasions “Jia You, Argentina,” cheers could be heard echoing throughout Worker’s Stadium. When talking to China newbies this Olympics, one of the first questions I hear is “What is it they are all saying during the competitions?” I’ve even heard several spectators inquire whether jia you is the way to say “China” in Chinese.
Back when I taught English, my students would often ask me how to translate jia you into English. This was not an easy question to answer. If you are in Kansas, jia you could mean “Rock Chalk Jayhawk.” In Nebraska it’s “Go Big Red.” At Arrowhead Stadium, jia you is signified by waving your arm up and down like a tomahawk, and howling a war chant. But in China jia you is the be all end all for every single team, at every single event, and in every single sport. In almost four years in this country I have honestly never heard a different cheer. Maybe with the Olympics in town, Chinese fans come up with a new chant to put some variety into their cheering sections. Somehow though, I don’t see that happening over the next seven days.
Russia and Croatia played a hard fought game of basketball Tuesday morning, but nothing captivated the audience as much as this moment during the halftime show.
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As Ying Ying (the yellow Fuwa) was heading back to the locker room, he fell flat on his face. It took him about a minute to get back to his feet, and his costume was rapidly losing air as he scurried off the court. The entire crowd stood laughing and cheering. Fortunately for Ying Ying, his anonymity remained protected by his over-sized plastic suit.
Remember the old days when people would put their hands on their hearts to honor their country?
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Yeah, me neither. That tradition is long expired. In these technological times, the hand goes on the “record” button.
Yesterday my friend Joe and I wanted to see some live Olympic action. Tickets have long been sold out, and the only way to acquire them is to buy them off of the second hand market. We had been told by Chinese friends that scalpers were charging outrageous sums, even for the most obscure events. Nonetheless, we headed over to the Olympic Sports Center in search of resold tickets. After about ten minutes, we were both able to find women’s handball tickets, for face value of 30 RMB (approx $4 USD). The handball matches were not scheduled to begin until 2 pm, so we decided to grab some beers, and stroll around the complex.
At a typical Beijing watering hole, a Tsingtao usually costs around 20 RMB, and we were expecting to pay at least this much to drink at the Olympic Games. You can imagine our surprise when we found that beers (Tsingtao, Yanjing, and Budweiser) were all being sold for 5 RMB (71 cents) each. You are even allowed to carry open containers around inside the park. After two rounds of beer, we entered the gymnasium to watch the match. I hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast, so I bought a Snickers bar, also for 5 RMB. By the time handball was finished, we had each gone through three more rounds of beer.
Now for those of you who haven’t been counting, that’s a ticket to an Olympic event, a Snickers bar, and five beers…for the grand total of 60 RMB. At the current exchange rate of roughly 7 to 1, that comes to a whopping eight US dollars and fifty seven cents! It doesn’t take a mathematician to figure out these Olympics are cheap, dirt cheap.
Even granted that the cost of living in China is considerably lower than the United States, price gouging is not uncommon in the Middle Kingdom. Wealthy Chinese will often intentionally dine at extravagant restaurants or purchase over-priced event tickets as a means to garner face with guests and invitees. Likewise, many private establishments in Beijing cater to foreign clientele who are not accustomed to China’s low cost of living, and are more than willing to pay Western prices. Last weekend I had dinner at Houhai, a glitzy outdoor entertainment district in central Beijing. At the restaurant where I dined, a bowl of rice was 5 RMB, coke and sprite were 30 per can, and even a glass of ice water was going for 10. To watch the Olympic Opening Ceremony, I attended an all you can eat buffet at a Scandinavian style restaurant. The food reminded me of my junior high cafeteria and the price tag was 188 RMB (approx $27 USD) per head.
With many event tickets as cheap as 30 RMB and concessions sold just slightly above retail value, these Olympics are surprisingly affordable, even by Chinese working class standards. Knowing in advance that hordes of foreign tourists and their favorable exchange rates, as well as masses of affluent middle-class Chinese would be flocking to the capital, Beijing could easily have charged far more than they have been for tickets and concessions. Over the past three days, I have attended judo, handball, basketball, and boxing, and loaded up on concessions at each event. My total expenditures thus far…just a hair above 50 US dollars. Welcome to the 2008 Beijing Econ-O-lympics.
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With prices this low, it’s actually cheaper to eat in drink inside the Olympic grounds than it would be to patronize local restaurants and bars.
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So far one of my favorite activities of this Olympics has been meandering around the Bird’s Nest and people watching. You run into all sorts of people…such as this guy selling unofficial T-shirts and flare. Maybe he’s going to use his profits to get his teeth fixed. Have to give the thumbs up on the sunglasses and hat though.
The Beijing Olympiad is almost three days old. Here are my initial thoughts.
-The “completely sold out” tickets for most events are cheap and widely available. Every day I have been picking events, showing up at the gate, and looking for second hand tickets.
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Other than high demand events like basketball, most tickets can easily be bought for face value second hand if you are willing to stand around the gate for fifteen minutes. Face value for most events is under 100 RMB (approx $15 USD). I bought boxing tickets for only 30 RMB ($4 USD).
-Yesterday’s weather reminded me of typhoons in Fuzhou. After half an hour of torrential downpour, there was standing water almost a foot deep. The rowing events could have been held on the Third Ring Road.
-Maybe I am just too American, but I was completely taken back by the fact you can get a beer for 5 RMB (less than 1 US dollar) inside the venues. Snacks are cheap too! Beijing and/or the IOC easily could have price gorged Olympic guests for much more than that, but instead concessions are priced cheaply, even by Chinese standards. In another pleasant surprise, I was watching judo when the Hurricane Yao hit yesterday. The Olympic volunteers passed out free ponchos to all attendees. If this was the US, they would have been selling them for ten bucks. Gotta love the 经济奥运 (economical Olympics).
-I watched the Opening Ceremony with two American friends in a Scandinavian bar. We were all a little worried about the reaction we would receive when we cheered for the American team. When our guys came out, the entire bar cheered. When CCTV panned to a shot of W, the entire crowd booed in unison…clockwork.
-Last night, I saw the US v. China men’s basketball game in a movie theater. By my count, we out-dunked them about 35-2. The problem was if we play with as much over-confidence and as little effort on defense as we did last night, we are going to get smoked by Argentina or Spain. I’d put the US’s chances of winning the gold this year at about 50/50.
-Kudos to the city of Beijing for preparing itself of the onslaught of foreign guests. An American friend of mine who had lived in China for five years, but had never been to Beijing, spent the first two days of the Olympics here with me. On multiple occasions, he remarked, “Beijing is so clean and orderly.” There are many of us who are fans of Beijing, but how often is it for those reasons?
I’m generally pretty skeptical when it comes to Chinese propaganda banners, but occasionally comes one so poignant, even in its vagueness, that I find myself nodding in agreement.
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This baner is currently on display in the center of “T” Square. Loosely translated it means, “The Reform and Opening Up will write the poems of harmony.” It directly faces the portrait of Mao Zedong.
Best of luck to Beijing tonight, and more importantly, to the Chinese people in the generations to come!
Three weeks ago I wrote a post about the changes Beijing has witnessed between 2006 and 2008. Just yesterday I returned from a brief trip to Dongbei to find the Beijing of today vastly different from the one I left only one week ago. China’s capital city is currently in the home stretch of its extensive eight-year Olympic preparation plan. The goal is to transform a city, once severely lagging in public infrastructure, into a worldwide metropolis capable of being a host to the global stage. As the final pull towards preparation, a new onslaught of rules and regulations went into effect on July 20. The aim of the regulations have been to ensure a positive Olympic experience for the record numbers of visitors expected to flock to Beijing in the coming weeks. Here’s a rundown of some of the changes.
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| Northern Third Ring Road, Monday evening rush hour, 6 pm |
Traffic
Until the end of the Olympics, only half of Beijing’s private automobiles will be allowed on the street each day. Who is allowed and not allowed is determined by license number. Dates alternate between cars with even numbered license plates and those with odd numbered license plates being allowed on the road. Today was the first business day with the policy in place. At 9 am I had to make a trip to the Lenovo service center, located along the Eastern stretch of the Third Ring Road, to pickup my laptop which was being serviced. I had taken public transit to get there, but decided to test out the new policy by taking a cab back. My apartment is located along the Northern stretch of the Third Ring Road, and it was 9:30 am on a Monday morning. Usually at this hour, the Third Ring Road is a virtual parking lot, and those traveling in cars are lucky if they can move faster than the bicycles which pass them on either side. Under normal circumstances, the taxi from the Lenovo service center back to my apartment would have taken anywhere from half an hour to an hour and cost around 20 RMB. In fact, it would have been even more than likely the taxi driver would have just told me to take the subway. Today I made it back in under fifteen minutes, and at the cost of 11 RMB. Traffic moved fluidly the entire way.
Security
The past week has seen a major increase in security in and around Beijing. Yesterday, while taking the bus from Dalian back to Beijing, the driver collected each passenger’s ID card. At three different checkpoints, police stopped the bus, and asked to see all of the ID cards. At one of the checkpoints, I was asked to get off the bus, and taken into a police questioning room, where several officers looked through my passport scribbling down information in a log. They asked me how long I had been in China, what I was doing there, and how long I planned to stay. After a brief questioning session, I was led back to the bus. The officers were all friendly, and told me that the check was in order to “ensure the safety of the Olympics.” Upon arrival in Beijing, every passenger’s luggage was run through an X-Ray scanner before we could leave the station.
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| A troop of student volunteers eagerly awaits duty at Beijing Capital Airport. |
Army of Volunteers
With a population of over 1.3 billion, China is rarely shorthanded when it comes to manual labor. With this in mind, they have enlisted the help of tens of thousands of volunteers all across Beijing, many of them students and senior citizens. On the streets, in subway stations, at the airport, and virtually any other place where people congregate can be found uniformed volunteers, wearing red arm bands and Olympic volunteer credentials. From pedestrian traffic, to queuing control, to simply answering questions, the army is in force, in preparation for the mass influx of visitors to Beijing. The quantity of citizens eager to help appears to be so great that there almost seems to be a surplus of helping hands. I saw one senior citizen volunteer today sitting in the shade under a sky bridge reading the newspaper. I asked what his responsibility was, and all he could produce was “ensuring safety.”
Po11ution
As of yesterday, many local factories were shut down and ordered not to resume until after the Olympics. This, along with the traffic restrictions, is expected to seriously improve Beijing’s air quality. In addition to the reduction in the number of cars on the road itself, the lack of traffic jams is expected to curb the amount of pollutants released per vehicle per trip. Today the air is fresher than normal, and the skies are showing a hint of blue. This would be considered a good day, compared with Beijing’s usual grey summer skies. However it is probably still too early if this is attributed to a cut back of pollution, or just the natural effect of the change in weather. I’ll have to check back up on this in a couple weeks.
City Beautification
Now that pollution controls are in effect, Beijing has been gung ho on the beautification and Olympification of the city. Ornamental Olympic displays have been appearing in traffic medians, and the streets are now draped in “Beijing 2008” flags and banners. Along with the backdrop of all the volunteers, it is finally starting to look and feel like the Olympics are coming to town.
Business Hours
Since I live relatively close to the Olympic grounds, many of the nearby local businesses have had their hours staggered in order to help control traffic. The idea is that staggering employees working hours, will space out the rush hour strain on transportation. When I went to use the ATM in the shopping mall near my apartment at 9:45 this morning, the entire mall save for the grocery store in the basement had been roped off by security. “In order to comply with regulations, everything except for the basic necessities, has to stay closed until 10 am,” I was told by a security guard. This included my ATM. “The only place you can go now is the grocery store, to buy basic provisions like food. For everything else, you have to wait until 10.”
Subway Transit
July 20th also saw the opening of Beijing’s newest subway lines. Line 10, which runs a route roughly under the north and east sections of the Third Ring road, Line 8, the spur route to the Olympic grounds, and the Airport Express line connecting Beijing Capital Airport to the rest of the subway system. Beijing’s subway system has long been inadequate for a city of its size, and the new subway lines will no doubt ease the strain on the gridlocked road system. The one potential bottleneck however is that the Olympic spur line only connects to line 10. Therefore subway riders coming from line 2 (Beijing’s central loop line), will have to transfer 3 times (first to either Line 13 or Line 5 and then to Line 10 before transferring to Line 8 ) in order to take the subway to the games. The 2012 subway plan calls for Line 8 to be extended to meet up with Lines 1 and 2, but this will be long after the Olympics have left town.
Bus Transit
With the excessive subway transfers required, Olympic visitors might be better advised to take advantage of the Olympic buses which are now running test routes around the city. To alleviate the threat of traffic jams on main traffic arteries, special lanes have been marked off and reserved solely for Olympic traffic. This will include transporting the athletes and officials to and from the games, as well as special free buses for spectators. With the Olympic subway spur only connected to Line 10, the buses will likely be the most convenient ride to the Olympics for most visitors not staying near the North or East Third Ring Road.
Beijing has come a long way since it was awarded the Olympics in 2001. The Chinese capital was badly in need of a face lift, and the Olympics could not have come at a more convenient juncture in time. While the city still has a long way to go, it is certainly in better shape to handle the influx of tourists now than it was when preliminary planning first began eight years ago. With only 17 days 16 hours and 48 minutes to go, only one can only wait to see how it all unfolds.
I distinctly remember the first time I ever went shopping China. It was my second day in the country, and my students took me to the “Not Second Market” grocery store located near the university where I was teaching. I had only bought around 7 or 8 items, basic provisions such as a toothbrush, toothpaste, toilet paper, shampoo, and junk food to snack on in my dorm.
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| Across China shoppers are looking for reusable, non-plastic alternatives to carry their groceries. |
As I paid for my groceries, somehow the clerk managed to use four plastic bags to wrap all eight of my items. The toothbrush and toothpaste were in their own bag. The snacks were separated into two bags. The 24-pack of toilet paper, which was already in plastic, was wrapped in another plastic bag. I began to notice a pattern. The plastic bag did not serve any necessary purpose. Groceries were to be wrapped in plastic, and that was the way things were done. I even recall several instances where I had bought individual items such as a can of soda or a pack of AA batteries, and they had been wrapped as well.
It isn’t hard to see how in a country with a population in excess 1.3 billion that this situation could easily create a global environmental hazard. And it did. Just across from my dormitory was a large dumpster where residents would dispose of their garbage. Every evening at 10 o’clock, the maintenance men would set the contents of the dumpster ablaze, invariably including hundreds of bags from the Not Second Market. Around 10:10 every night, the warm aroma of burning plastic would creep its way up to my fourth floor apartment en route to the stratosphere. This practice was common across China, especially in rural areas.
With China preparing for a “Green Olympics” clearly something needed to be done to curb the massive waste of plastic making its way into the atmosphere. Fortunately, action has been taken. Below is a sign posted in front of the shopping center near my Beijing apartment. Notices like these have been popping up all around China over the past month.
It reads:
Protecting the Environment Begins with Me
According to the country’s regulations, from June 1, 2008 onward, Beijing Hualian Market will no longer be able to provide free plastic bags. The (new) fee structure is shown below:
| small bags | 0.10 RMB | 4 kg |
| medium bags | 0.15 RMB | 6 kg |
| large bags | .20 RMB | 8 kg |
| extra large bags | .30 RMB | 10 kg |
| environmentally safe bags | 4.9 RMB | 15 kg |
| 100% cotton bags | 9 RMB | 15 kg |
Thanks to our customers for your support and cooperation. Please use the environmentally safe bags. Thanks for your support.
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Contrary to several reports, China has not banned plastic bags. Rather, they have banned the practice of giving them away free of charge. And from my observations around Beijing (and from reports across China) the new regulation is being strictly enforced. The beauty of the new regulation is that it is not an actual moratorium on plastic wrapping, which would be too radical for just about any society, let alone China. Instead, it shifts the decision of whether or not to use plastic on to the shopper. Along with carefully worded slogans (i.e. Protecting the Environment Begins with Me) the subtle message is that individuals have a responsibility to protect the environment. In reality, the fees for plastic bags are not expensive, even by Chinese standards. But with the decision to bag or not to bag now resting on the consumer, along with pro-environmental propaqanda, more and more Chinese are forgoing on the plastic, opting instead to either use reusable bags or carry their items by hand. The real question however, will be whether or not the policy will continue to be strictly enforced after the Olympics have passed.
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