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Beijing Para Olympics 2008
06
September

I almost forgot that tonight was the Opening Ceremony for the Para Olympics! Luckily we have China Satellite so I’m able to catch it in it’s full glory. I didn’t really pay much attention initially, but I couldn’t help but be drawn towards to incredible performances China put on yet again. One of the more memorable performances has to be all the little kids dressed up as frogs! I thought they were some kind of cartoon or robot at first =P

And of course the other performances were just as impressive, how could they not be when the artists are disabled in some form or another and yet perform just as well? The one with all the birds depicted by arms reminded me of the beautiful peacock dance we watched in Kunming, I can’t remember the name but apparently she’s very famous and it was her last show…

It seems that the dance was more likely than not, performed by 杨丽萍

Beijing's Games: What the Olympics Mean to China
 Beijing’s Games: What the Olympics Mean to China

Why is hosting the Olympic Games so important to China? What is the significance of a quintessential symbol of Western civilization taking place in the heart of the Far East? Will the Olympics change China, or will China change the Olympics? Susan Brownel

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[Edit 17th September 2008]
My dad came home and the first thing out of his mouth was, “Tonight is the closing ceremony for the Para Olympics, make sure I don’t miss it.”

If he never said anything, I wouldn’t have even realised it was finishing! And since I missed out part of the opening ceremony, I decided to watch the closing ceremony. The speeches were, as usual, quite boring and repetitive.

I quite enjoyed the performances… but I felt like some of them seemed a little on the random side. I only really understood the ‘Posting of Envelope’ theme, something to do with ‘One World, One Dream’? What caught my eye was the performers running in mid-air in a Mexican wave…

Like I said, some of it seemed quite random. But I’m sure that it would have made a lot more sense if I could understand what the commentator was saying… Somehow though, I still think that China would make it random like they were trying to impress the world with their performers (which they already did at the Beijing Olympics).

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Missing Beijing
17
August

Watching the Olympics and listening to all this talk about Beijing makes me really miss that place! All I hear and see is Beijing this and Beijing that and I hate that I’m not there to explore all the really cool things that they did just for the Olympics =( I even missed out on trying out the new Beijing International Airport by a week!! 天天听着看着中国的旅游 hotspots ，新和旧的东西我全部都想看！非常可惜！

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I can’t help but tune myself into the Olympic events everyday, especially now that we can watch it on CCTV! The problem with Channel 7 is that they give a lot of air time to swimming and other popular Australian sports, concentrating on the Australian athletes because that’s what our Australian market demands of them.

But this time around, CCTV gives me the choice of what to watch. I don’t think I’ve ever watched softball, equestrian, weight-lifting, judo， badminton， 乒乓比赛 什么的 during the Olympics before…

虽然我可以看别的运动，我还喜欢看游泳比赛，diving (especially synchronized diving), gymnastics… mainly the sports that involves a lot of gravity defying and/or contortion of the body O_o; The least favourite for me has to be the equestrian competition and the white water rafting.

我很像北京。。。 我想见我的北京朋友。。。

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On a side note, I’m starting to get really frustrated with always hearing 中国加油，《insert athlete name》加油，《insert team name》加油，《insert country name》加油. My goodness, how many times do they have to say “Jia You!” at least mix it up a bit… isn’t there something else in Chinese besides 加油??!

Category: 中文, Events  Tags: ,  2 Comments
Beijing Olympics 2008
09
August

I thought I would use the Beijing Olympic Games as a good excuse for me to blog a little in Chinese…

BUT my vocab prevents me from writing about just how crazily fantastic the Olympic opening ceremony was! Only in China can you get a HUGE mass of people performing in sync with 99% accuracy. I enjoyed playing ‘spot the mistakes’ during the performances just because it would be unfair if there weren’t any mistakes at the Beijing Olympics… it’ll make the Australian Sydney Olympics look bad!

Sydney 的奥运会不必北京奥运 Opening Ceremony 好。其实 Sydney奥运会已经过了八年，我差不多都忘了。。。 我才记得我们有 lawn mowers 和 Nikki Webster， 别的想不起来。

The Beijing Olympics though, there are some performances which I doubt I’ll easily forget. I especially loved the performance with the mass of drums which lit up in sync and the moving columns which was so in sync that I almost believed it was computerised.

我最不喜欢的是 the order of which each country entered the stadium! 我每次等澳大利亚队出来才坐别的东西。因为澳大利亚第一字是 ‘a’ 应该在前面的，可是这次澳大利亚差不多是最后出的！！My dad had to explain to me that countries were entering in order of number of strokes in their Chinese character… STROKES?! Poor Australia has way too many =(

Anyways, like I said great ceremony. Even the lighting of the Olympic flame was cool! Although, it would have been cooler if there were no mistakes…

Beijing's Games: What the Olympics Mean to China
 Beijing’s Games: What the Olympics Mean to China

Why is hosting the Olympic Games so important to China? What is the significance of a quintessential symbol of Western civilization taking place in the heart of the Far East? Will the Olympics change China, or will China change the Olympics? Susan Brownel

- – - – -

P.S. 过了几个星期，北京语言大学才挤过来我的 transcript, 等了差不多五个月才收到! 我的考试分都不错，我的听力比口语好的多。我觉得这是因为我看很多戏，不少没有英语字幕和dubbing所以我用汉语听，猜一猜戏的意思。

Category: 中文, Events  Tags: , , ,  3 Comments
One World One Dream Olympic MTV
20
April


I was watching CCTV 9 when they announced a music video for the Olympic games, One World One Dream. Interested at what it might sound like, I saw this One World One Dream music video. Note: The video quality isn’t perfect but the audio is fine.

First of all, did they really HAVE to make his hair look like that? Couldn’t they have messed up his fringe just a little bit?? Oh well, I suppose they might have wanted him to look like a good little china boy and not a lady’s man.

So the song itself isn’t actually too bad and could even catch on. But (and it’s a big but) in my opinion, everything starts to go down hill when the English kicks in… I’m hoping they don’t sing this in the grand opening because people from English speaking countries will be cringing in their seats hoping no cameras are on their face. Nowadays, you can’t react to things like this in fear you get sued for discrimination and have eggs thrown at you. And since it’s the Olympics, there’ll be a huge public outcry about how insulted people are blah blah.

I think it’s too late now, if it’s already out on CCTV 9 then it’s probably going to go world wide. I just wonder if the Olympic committee did a test run on this song before they publicised it, to get any positive/negative feedback? And if they did, was it done with people from outside of China? Because I can tell you, my parents would probably think he sings pretty well in English too.

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