Good Luck Beijing

There are 340 some days left until the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and Beijing is wasting no time getting ready. Currently there is something called "Good Luck Beijing" going on, where they have exhibition tournaments in various events to test out the stadiums and staff.

Peter being the baseball addict that he is, we had to go to the baseball Good Luck Beijing event. We went to the final game, between China and Japan. Japan dominated, with the score 5-2 at the end. It was a pretty quick game, for which I am always grateful to the baseball gods.

In this case, I think it was more to ensure time for the elaborate awards ceremony at the end. The Chinese audience was not the most sophisticated baseball audience (baseball is not nearly as popular here as basketball, volleyball, badminton, diving, any other sport where China either has a star, or is historically strong in) and cheered for any bat to ball contact, even repetitive foul balls. The cheers were much louder for the fuwas 福娃, the "Friendlies," the Chinese Olympics' ubiquitous mascots. They came on the field, danced around while they set up the podiums, and then medals and flowers were distributed to the players individually. We caught the Caucasian press guy from MLB.com taking pictures of the crowd rather than the ceremony also, and agreed that the crowd reaction was more entertaining.