Yet another Olympics post

[amaliestar]

I have been in two minds for much of the duration of the Olympics. On the one hand, I absolutely loved the Opening Ceremony - I thought it was brilliantly done, and Zhang Yimou richly deserves a lot of accolades. Speaking of Zhang Yimou, I started teaching a segment on Chinese film to my Chinese Culture students on Monday and I asked them if they

Comments

[koalathebear]

Fabulous post ...

I'd commented more but I've landed myself in a pickle :P
http://koalathebear.livejournal.com/1097112.html

[amaliestar]

Thanks! Your LJ posts do seem to inspire strongly worded responses at times. I totally understand that issues like these are hard to be diplomatic about. ;-)

[susanjacobson]

I, too, am mesmerized by the Olympics. To the extent that I stay up until 2am and get up at the crack of dawn so I don't miss anything. It sounds like the US press has been less critical than the Australian press. Our anchors are all over there having a grand ole time, practicing their Chinese and ogling the disgusting fried scorpions in Wang Fu Jing. The only controversies they have mentioned are replacing one little girl with another because she was prettier, and they have questioned the age of the Chinese gymnasts. The singing girl controversy has gotten a lot more airplay than the age of the gymnasts, which they kind of gloss over, but I swear those gymnasts looked like they were 11

[praeteritio]

On the NBC issue, apparently the network has spent a lot of money trying to get the official schedule changed, to the chagrin of many overseas networks (or so says our national broadcaster - I think it was one of the networks affected), so that major swimming events and other large drawcards could be broadcast primetime in the US. There has been criticism lately that NBC despite doing this did not broadcast many events live (I think Phelps' 10th gold medal swim was broadcast half an hour late, while NBC showed an entertainment program). It seems as though NBC has a lot of influence over these games and perhaps you're right - there's some sort of 'look both ways' deal going on.

My name's Wei, by the way. 's LJ friend. Nice to LJ-meet you. :)

[amaliestar]

Nice to see people socialising on my LJ. :-)

[amaliestar]

We know all about the NBC controversy with scheduling of the finals over here. For once we thought we'd get to watch events at reasonable times instead of staying up half the night as we're used to doing with sports events in different hemispheres but with the Beijing Olympics we thought we'd be OK! (Beijing is 2 hours behind Australian Eastern Standard Time). Nonetheless we do get replays of the finals that Australians have won or got a medal in. :-)

I wish the Australian press would show something like Wangfujing or other places in Beijing - last night was the first time they seemed to venture out of the Water Cube/Bird's Nest/other venues, to show Beijing South Railway Station. Not as interesting as Wangfujing et al would have been. I must admit I was never brave enough to try the more esoteric foods on offer at the night market there!

It must be comforting to know you don't have to put up with Dubya for too much longer. :-) I wish we had a 2 term limit in Australia.

[praeteritio]

A great post! I'm addicted to the Olympics (despite swearing I wouldn't be!) and I find that Channel 7's coverage this time round is probably worse than Athens, which was pretty disgusting. I felt like the commentators back then came across as a bunch of racist fools, but this year just tops the lot.

[praeteritio]

Argh, please ignore my posting sloppiness!

Things never change... :)

[amaliestar]

How depressing. I didn't get into Athens too much, probably because it was the Olympics straight after Sydney which were so emotional and exciting. I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one who finds the coverage disgusting. Honestly, how hard can it be for the media to hire people who have a basic understanding of Chinese culture and know how to say names in Mandarin properly? Not to mention of course all the other languages which they stuff up with monotonous regularity.

[liukaiqin]

I know, isn't it amazing, I think the best is the anchors trying to say "Liu Xiang" and coming out with everything from "Leo Chang" to "Lee-YOW Shee-Yang" :)