Beijing Olympics



From a "historical" perspective, one of the defining parts of this summer was the Beijing Olympics. Now, I may not be the biggest Olympics fan out there, but I usually do tune in and try to follow the big events when they roll around every 4 years. First off, I guess I'll be Captain Obvious for a moment and make 2 quick observations that everyone else already made a long time ago:

1. Michael Phelps is a fish

2. Alicia Sacramone is hot

Now that I have that out the way, I guess I would start by saying that with every passing Olympiad since I was a kid, the Games have been steadily losing their luster in my mind. I think a lot of it comes from the doping allegations and judging scandals, which make it hard to take the sports and "winners" seriously. I find myself always wondering what goes on behind closed doors as I watch a lot of these events.

But one thing that actually bothers me more than that issue is what I consider "false patriotism", which seems to always pop up around this time. It's like all of a sudden, for 2 weeks everyone is super pumped about Team U-S-A. And what makes it worse is that I noticed that a lot of this energy spills over into the area of borderline (or outright) racism in this country.

Obviously, these particular Olympic Games hit closer to home for me, being a Chinese-American. Even though my family is from Taiwan and I personally neither support nor identify with the current Communist Chinese government of Beijing, it still bothered me to see a lot of the underlying anti-Chinese sentiments come to light during those couple of weeks that the games were taking place.

Of course, much of the bad publicity was self-inflicted by the Chinese authorities, and I'm not saying that it was wrong for the media to report on and criticize the things that they did. I'm just sad and discouraged, I guess, to see a lot of the negative stereotypes reinforced during these Olympic Games, at least judging by the general public's reaction to these reports. For example, the jokes that started to come out on Leno/Letterman type shows, commentaries by newspaper columnists and internet bloggers, or discussion on sports talk radio, all seemed to hone in on the worst aspects of Chinese stereotypes. It was just disappointing for me personally to see that there is still a lot of distrust and lack of understanding between Americans and Chinese relations.

The thing is that even though I haven't really dealt with a lot of overt racism in my life since I was in grade school, I always got the sense that there was still a significant amount of "latent racism" that was always present underneath the outer surface of today's American psyche. And every once in a while, it seems that these hidden feelings will bubble up to the surface, such as in times like these. As I said, the phenomenon of faux-patriotism that comes out every 4 years around Olympic time just seems to flush out all of this negative energy in people.

Once again, being of a Chinese-American background myself, I think a lot of this hits me more personally than usual. For one, I feel like I have always tried to live my life in a way that shows non-Asians that we aren't all small, sneaky, petty, cheap, etc., as it seems we're often portrayed by the rest of the world. Maybe it sounds cheesy, but as someone who was born into a bi-cultural situation, I do feel a certain sense of responsibility that I should play some part, however little it may be, in promoting better awareness and understanding between the two worlds that I'm caught between.

But of course, I am only one person in this world with a very limited sphere of influence. Sometimes I wonder if it really makes any difference in how other races view Chinese people, based on the way I carry myself around other people. All of these efforts could be completely worthless for all I know. I mean, do non-Chinese people even see me as a representative of the Chinese race to begin with? Who knows.

On the other hand, I definitely believe that a large-scale international event like the Olympics could make a really big impact in this respect. Ideally, something like these Games should promote better understanding between countries and different racial groups in the world, bringing us all closer together in the process of participating in friendly sports competition.

Well, I think it's safe to say that this did not occur at Beijing 2008. Whether it was the constant reports of the Chinese government "faking" things, or accusations of cheating, or just the general attitude of "Us against Them" in the medal count, so much of these games made me feel unusually awkward and even ashamed to be Chinese. Kind of like riding the school bus in 3rd grade all over again. Rather than bringing the different sides closer together, I found it to be accomplishing more of the opposite than anything else.

Anyways, I don't want this entry to ramble on too much about racism in the United States, so I'll leave it at that for now. Some other (less contentious) thoughts I had about this years games:

- The USA women's softball team losing to Japan was, as a wise woman named Alanis once said, "Ironic". Very ironic because the sport was already being canceled for the next Olympiad, due to USA being way too dominant over the rest of the world! It's like 10,000 spoons, when all you need is a knife. Either way, I didn't understand the logic behind that decision to begin with. They give out medals for events like "Olympic Trampoline" and "Walking" without anyone saying a word about it - but then they're gonna boot a real sport like softball instead? How does that make any sense? For what it's worth, I don't think they should even have BMX events, although I had a lot of fun watching it. Dirt bikes belong in the X-Games, not the Olympics. Bring back softball!

- In some of those gymnastics events (like parallel bar, rings, etc.), I always wondered what's the use of having those guys run up to "spot" the gymnasts when they do those tricks/jumps in the air and stuff. If the gymnast really slips or misses the bar, I really doubt that this one guy sticking his hand out is actually going to save them from injury.

- A bittersweet moment was watching Coach K "leading" the "Redeem Team" to the gold medal in Men's Basketball. Note that those are sarcastic quotation marks. If there's one guy I really hate in the world of college basketball (and believe me, there's much more than one person I hate), it would be Coach K. I know there's no originality points for hating Duke, but man... this guy really is so full of himself and so phony in everything he does. And nothing bugs me more than phony people. Of course I'm glad that the US finally took back the gold medal (in a sport we invented!), but I'm annoyed that Coach K had to be a part of it and is going to get credit for being the coach that got it done. As if the American Express and Chevy commercials during March Madness weren't already enough to stroke his oversized ego.

- Taiwan (otherwise known as Chinese Taipei) won 4 bronze medals. Sure, nobody else cares about Women's 48kg Weightlifting, but whatever. Go Taiwan!