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Our take on this nebulous subject here.

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Here’s a comment from John Smith, a regular. Sorry dude, but lighten up a bit! This is supposed to be funny. To be honest, we get a lot of odd comments but a little tiny touch of SOH (look it up) is vitally important:

London will be excellent just by being itself. And having enough food at the venues, let all kinds of people protesting against anything, including the Queen’s hair color and weight problems, and Charles’ boldness. And, of course, Free Scotland. No internet blocking and full stadiums will make the London Games much better.It is not how much you spend, not how many new buildings you build. It is allowing people having a good time that makes the Games. We will sure not having another Boring Olympics, or No Fun Olympics.

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ADRIAN DENNIS / AFP / GETTY IMAGESSo it’s all over. Hard to believe. Anyway, there’s a nice analytical piece on the meaning of the Games themselves here on Time.com and a piece on the zinger of a basketball final (when the crowd ended up cheering for underdogs Spain, who at several points threatened to pull off a huge, huge upset over the US redeem team) here.Like everyone else, we’ll have a wither China after the Games piece up later, to which I will link. Meanwhile though on that note, I was interested to hear that the crowd in Tiananmen Square during the closing fireworks were chanting: 中国 起来, Zhongguo qilai. It is a chant I hadn’t heard before in the last few weeks and though ostensibly simple, is a bit tricky to translate. Simply put it means “China Rises” or “China awakens” but it definitely has a sense of something starting and continuing, so maybe “China is awakening” might be more accurate. The phrase has a number of historical echoes: first the phrase Mao Zedong used in the same square at the formal proclamation of the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949, “The Chinese people have stood up!” 中国人民站起来了! (Added later: it also occurs of course that “Qilai!” ‘Arise!” is the first word of the national anthem, repated lower down three times in a row as a call to action when “China faces its greatest danger.”) Others might think of Napoleon Buonaparte’s oft quoted phrase: La Chine dorme. Laisse la dormir. Quand la chine s’éveillera, le monde tremblera. China sleeps. Let her sleep. When she awakes, she will shake the world. Anyway, enough history. It was a great moment for China. A moment to be proud of everything that has been accomplished by the Chinese people and look forward to even greater things to come. 中国 加油, Zhongguo jiayou! Go China!

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So, we asked ourselves, what could London possibly do to match the massive spectacle that Beijing put on for the Opening and Closing ceremonies? It couldn’t possibly do anything to compare to the sheer scale of the Chinese efforts so (leaving aside the dire business with the double decker bus which I will pass over without further comment), the only answer was that most British of qualities: silliness. Check out the Mayor of London Boris Johnson at London House in Beijing on the night of the Closing Ceremony here. Priceless. Don’t forget to catch Seb Coe (er, sorry, Lord Coe), head of the London organizing committee behind him cracking up repeatedly. Can’t see Liu Qi reacting the same way under similar circumstances somehow…….:)

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ADRIAN DENNIS / AFP / GETTY IMAGESSo it’s all over. Hard to believe. Anyway, there’s a nice analytical piece on the meaning of the Games themselves here on Time.com and a piece on the zinger of a basketball final (when the crowd ended up cheering for underdogs Spain, who at several points threatened to pull off a huge, huge upset over the US redeem team) here.Like everyone else, we’ll have a wither China after the Games piece up later, to which I will link. Meanwhile though on that note, I was interested to hear that the crowd in Tiananmen Square during the closing fireworks were chanting: 中国 起来, Zhongguo qilai. It is a chant I hadn’t heard before in the last few weeks and though ostensibly simple, is a bit tricky to translate. Simply put it means “China Rises” or “China awakens” but it definitely has a sense of something starting and continuing, so maybe “China is awakening” might be more accurate. The phrase has a number of historical echoes: first the phrase Mao Zedong used in the same square at the formal proclamation of the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949, “The Chinese people have stood up!” 中国人民站起来了! Others might think of Napoleon Buonaparte’s oft quoted phrase: La Chine dorme. Laisse la dormir. Quand la chine s’éveillera, le monde tremblera. China sleeps. Let her sleep. When she awakes, she will shake the world. Anyway, enough history. It was a great moment for China. A moment to be proud of everything that has been accomplished by the Chinese people and look forward to even greater things to come. 中国 加油, Zhongguo jiayou! Go China!

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Here is a link to yesterday’s official Olympic press conference, attended by a rep from the International Olympic Committee and Wang Wei, executive vice president and secretary general of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games, otherwise known as BOCOG. The whole thing, including a volunteer wrestling the microphone away from a South China Morning Post reporter who wanted to ask a follow up question (they’d had a bad experience with these: see here. Jump to the series of questions by the Chanel Four reporter. Great stuff.), is fascinating theater.Wang faced persistent questioning about the supposed protest zones in three Beijing parks (see numerous stories on the issue on the web, ours here) and the reported arrests and harassment of those attempting to register to protest. His response was a long lecture about how Chinese traditionally look for compromise to settle disputes rather than confrontation. This does make one wonder what was happening during the the three decade long Civil War or the ten years calamity, sorry, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, when an estimated 1.5 million died as victims of warring political factions. They weren’t exactly tea parties, but then of course, ‘revolution isn’t a tea party,’ as someone once remarked: 革命不是请客)). Wang also refers to the Hundred Flowers Movement launched by that same someone, Mao Zedong, in the mid-1950s. Here’s what he said.

You mentioned just now Mao Zedong led a ‘100 flowers bloom’ that is in an attempt to let everybody to express their opinion. I think everybody has the right to speak. Nobody said that you don’t have the right to speak. This is another thing. This is not the same as demonstrating. Thank you.

This is pretty breathtaking. The “Let one hundred flowers bloom and one hundred schools of thought contend” (百花齐放，百家争鸣) was yet another of Mao’s endless political stratagems designed to flush out and destroy his enemies and the opponents of the Party. He encouraged criticism from intellectuals, most of whom resisted the impulse to criticize, quite sensibly fearing reprisal. Eventually, however, people allowed themselves to be persuaded and millions of letters of complaint poured in to Party Headquarters, vilifying the Party’s arrogant conduct, calling for democracy, human rights etc etc. A Democracy Wall even went up in Peking University, something that was to happen several times again over the years, always with a tragic outcome. At the height of the tsunami of dissent, Mao launched an ‘Anti-Rightist’ campaign. Half a million intellectuals were arrested, tortured, sent to prison camps for decades or just killed. Once they had been silenced, Mao was free to kick off the Great Leap Forward, a disastrous attempt at rapid industrialization that would leave some 20-30 million Chinese dead from starvation. Maybe in this case a bit less “harmony,” possibly even the odd demonstration or two, might have been useful. And, perhaps one of the reasons relatively few people registered to protest this time around could have something to do with what happened to protesters back in 1957? People tend to have long memories when it comes to this sort of thing.

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Here is our latest report about the so-called “protest parks” issue and the two grandmothers being sentenced to re-education through labor for their attempts to register to protest. This is so coldly callous –and such bad publicity– that I assume it must have been ordered at a fairly low level, though I am not quite sure at what level such an order is issued. Anyway, I’d guess that someone higher up will step in an reverse it as they don’t want more stories about half-blind 79 year olds being sent to re-education through labor. I hope so.Separately, while we’re on the news updating front, the London Times has a piece saying that the International Olympic Committee has launched an investigation into the age of gymnastics gold medal winner He Kexin (our previous post here), crediting stories from the New York Times, our own Hannah Beech at Time and finally the uncovering of official records that had been deleted by blogger Stryde Hax (here) for the change of mind. (In characteristic fashion, the IOC previously said it wouldn’t/couldn’t interfere). My gut says there’s no way they’ll conclude this was a fraud and withdraw her medals but we’ll see. The evidence appears pretty strong.

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At the basketball quarter finals last night. Watched the show put on by team USA’s NBA stars with enjoyment. There’s a good deal of showboating of course, especially once they’d opened up a lead of 25 plus points in the second half, but there’s any evident passion for the game and a joy in their talents that infectious. In the press conference afterwards, it was also very clear from what Kobe Bryant said that they are not here to fool around and that making up for the loss at the world championships, and especially at the last Olympics to Argentina, is very much on the players’ minds. Anyway, here’s some action. First, a dunk by 6′ 11″ center Dwight Howard:Then Kobe netting a three pointer:And best of all, the Fuwas breakdancing!

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The other evening I chanced upon two copies of the TV & Entertainment Times from 1986. The magazine has long folded, but it was widely read in late colonial Hong Kong—my family were subscribers—and as an indicator of expatriate attitudes at the time it’s marvelous.One article warns readers that the percentage of Chinese passengers in the carriages of the Mass Transit Railway may be “up to 99.9%!” (yes, that’s their exclamation mark) and cautions that “there is little in English anywhere to help you” (untrue, by the way).There is an editorial and a two-page feature devoted to the wedding of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson (“for sheer color and grace, it was unmatched”).The phrase “colored gentleman” is used in a caption to refer a non-Caucasian male. There are letters from readers about racial door policies at local nightclubs, and an interview with a nightclub owner who says that racially integrated venues have “never been popular.”Tips are offered for the perfect party (“Are your parties swinging occasions?”). John Mortimer’s latest novel is reviewed. One columnist complains that radio presenters are “mangling” English because they pronounce words like “research” with the stress on the second syllable, while another mocks a Chinese newsreader’s pronunciation of “lightning.” Listings are provided for British Forces radio.1986 was a long time ago. But it wasn’t that long ago. There were such things, for example, as PC viruses (the world’s first was discovered in January 1986), electronic stock trading (October) and hiphop (Public Enemy signed to Def Jam records that year). The TV & Entertainment Times and its readers, however, inhabited a parallel universe where everything was 1952. I mention this as a sociological curiosity and because a lot of former residents have a tiresome nostalgia for Hong Kong before Reunification, or the “Handover,” to give it the colonial term (you can see that nostalgia at work in middle-aged Facebook groups like this one). And what I want to say to them is that just 11 years before 1997, Hong Kong was, on many levels, utterly backwards. It was the kind of place where terms like “colored” appeared in print and where white elites hesitated before boarding a subway car, and any nostalgia for those times is inseparable from the awkward reality.

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Here are some thoughts from colleague Lin Yang:

Liu Xiang, China’s sole track gold medalist and national icon who had to pull out of the 110 meters hurdles because of injury, seems to have enjoyed a charmed life and unfailing love from his followers. For millions of Chinese, Liu is the symbol of vitality, individuality, hope, and most importantly, national pride. His handsome face, defiant demeanor and self-confidence speak of a modern China, or how China would like to be seen by the world. For my part, however, I have never been a big fan. In fact, I was growing weary of seeing pictures of him everywhere and particularly his smug smile. He was a was the champion who seemed to bask in the glory of being a superstar, but I wasn’t sure there was any more to him than that. Now I know there is. Faced with a tragic moment in his career, under tremendous pressure from a sports system where victory is everything and confronted by disillusioned, bitter former fans filled with righteous rage, Liu showed integrity, tenacity, and grace. At 10pm on the night of August 18th, the day he had to pull out of his qualifying heat, Liu appeared on Chinese television. He was calm, composed and quietly apologetic. “There are so many people supporting me, caring about me, helping me along the way, and I am really sorry,” Liu said. He tried to explain what happened on the track but there was little he could say. “I also didn’t want to see this happen. I thought of soldiering on, but if I did that, my tendon might have been permanently damaged. I really could not do it. At the moment I couldn’t even put my feeling into words.”Liu also expressed an admirable optimism about his future. “I know I have the potential, if only I let my injury recover. I won’t explain more. I believe I will get better. The main task for me at the moment is to get treatment for my injury. There are other opportunities next year, and years after that. I must think positively. I will not blame the circumstances and I do not give up easily. I will pull myself together. That is who I am.”This is who Liu is and his remaining fans, as well as new ones like me, love him for that. Here’s the link to the interview:

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