It doesn’t seem that Chinese sports stars get into as many embarrassing incidents at bars as American sports stars do (See Adam “Pacman” Jones for a good example), but perhaps that will soon change. Wang Hao, one of the premier ping pong players in China, was caught peeing outside of a Karaoke bar, and while struggling with the guard allegedly said:
“I am the famous Wang Hao! I am the world champion! Does it matter if I beat you?” shouted the 24-year-old, according to a witness quoted by the papers.
Wow. It appears that he will get fined by his army affiliated club Bayi for this, as well as receive counseling. Wang later told CCTV “It taught me that I have to be very careful about anything I say or do.” Who would have thought that peeing in public and screaming like a evil villain from 1980’s action movie would be something you need to be careful about.
While the start of the Olympic games next Friday is the big item in the press right now, there is one upcoming international competition that is going unnoticed:
When an obvious pun is there, I see it as my duty to seize that opportunity.
Anyway, I was going to rehash some of the theories on why this has happened, but Shangaiist and The Guardian have that area well covered. Instead I would like to share with you the bizarre comments that are posted in the Wall Street Journal China Journal on this story. I have pasted them below in their entirety.
8-8+8-48….888..8. I know, too.
Comment by redwilliam….8-16-48….China - May 28, 2008 at 7:47 am
The People’s Olympics fares well. The People are You and China is 1. 1 Mother, 1 Father, 1 Child, 3. Good Luck is Kindness, to YOU, who is 3 in 1.
Comment by Anonymous - May 28, 2008 at 9:59 am
It dont matter where they cut of the basketball shows they aint talkinbout nothing until they let me in.
Prince Of Da Ghetto
Comment by Da next Hot Sauce - May 28, 2008 at 3:19 pm
I would think that most people know this is a racial slur, especially people on television, but I guess Bobby Clampett was unaware.
During today’s (4/11) Masters broadcast, CBS announcer Bobby Clampett referred to Chinese golfer Liang Wen-Chong as “the chinaman.”
According to CBS spokeswoman LeslieAnne Wade, Clampett later apologized on the Masters webcast.
Clampett has been working Amen Corner the last two days, and his commentary can be heard both online and on DirecTV. He used the “chinaman” slur while describing Liang’s round and explaining that he will not make the cut.
The official apology is rather weak. For more anti-Chinese fun in the golfing world, one has to look no further than The Telegraph:
At the beginning of the week Colin Montgomerie said that he would have received an invitation to the Masters if he were a Chinaman. Then Monty flounced about a bit more and said that TV rights were a strange way to make up the field for a major championship.
What Monty failed to ask was why on earth the Masters committee was inviting a dodgy golfer from an even dodgier country.
How ironic it was that Monty had a pop about Liang Wen-Chong’s invitation to the Masters, not because it sends out a questionable political signal about a country with an appalling human rights record, but because commercial self-interest was not a fair way to run a golf tournament. Presumably this is the same Colin Montgomerie who has been paid vast amounts of yuan for constructing two golf courses in China and who has another one in design. This is the same Colin Montgomerie who set up a sun lounger in front of the media spotlight after Scotland won the World Cup in China last year, but uttered not a word on freedom of speech, workers’ rights, freedom of association, Tibet or Darfur.
Sixty years ago today an eager young man, wearing a No. 11 New York Rangers jersey, skated onto the ice in the old Montreal Forum.
In that historic moment, 24-year-old Larry Kwong became the first person of Asian descent to play in the National Hockey League. It was literally a dream come true for Kwong, whose life story reads like a piece of classic fiction.
Kwong was born in Vernon, B.C. in 1923, one of 15 children. It was in the cramped apartment above the family’s grocery store where young Larry Kwong’s infatuation with hockey began, listening to Hockey Night in Canada on the radio.
In a Rudy like turn of events, Kwong played one shift for about a minute and a half, and never played in the NHL again. He went on to play and coach for many years in Quebec, England and Switzerland. And even though he had to have both of his legs amputated because of poor circulation, he seems to be in pretty good spirits.
With only about 20 ice rinks and fewer than 500 registered players in the country, hockey has tumbled into obscurity in China’s highly competitive sports world. Only three hockey teams remain in its domestic league, and only one Chinese team has survived in the professional Asia Hockey League, where teams from Japan and Korea dominate.
Lan Li, the vice-chairman of the Chinese Ice Hockey Association, noted that, “We have fewer hockey players than pandas”
The focus of this Project Hope is not only to spread and create the awareness of ice hockey, but also to help Chinese students excel academically. Project Hope plans to bring a number of Chinese student-athletes to the US to learn English during the summer holidays. The long-term target is to provide scholarships to students who do well in both academic and athletic areas as well as master English proficiency to attend American educational institution.
With my week long celebration of the New York Giants’ Superbowl win, the greatest upset in sports history, (maybe second greatest) I totally forgot to mention this ad that aired during the game for Salesgenie.com:
My first thought after this was, “Wow, that is racist.” Not to mention that this is just a bad commercial.
Tomorrow the New York Football Giants take on the New England Patriots in Superbowl XLII in Glendale Arizona. Now, thanks to Chinesepod, you can now attempt to talk to people in Mandarin about this most wonderful of games:
And for those of you in China who attempt to use the vocabulary in this lesson, you will probably encounter the same response that the person in the dialog does, which is complete indifference.
As for the game, I am hesitantly optimistic about the Giants’ chances for winning against the Patriots, as unstoppable as Brady and company may seem. GO GIANTS!!!!
A story from the Los Angeles Times, Ancient pastime has some Chinese bug-eyed, details the rise of cricket raising among affluent 20-something Chinese. It is portrayed in the story as a uniquely Chinese pastime, one that is far removed from the movies, music and video games that litter the cultural landscape. There are different breeds that are used for signing and fighting competitions. Both are expensive, not counting the variety of accessories that can be purchased for your cricket. And there is probably a reason why it is primarily men that participate in this sport:
And most important: The cricket has to bed at least two or three females before he fights.
“The cricket who is most successful making love will be the best fighter,” Zhao said.
All the fighting crickets are male. So are the singing crickets, whose song, after all, is a mating call. In cricket-collecting circles, female crickets are nothing more than sex slaves to the males.
“There is a little machismo in this,” Zhao conceded. “After a while, you come to identify with your cricket.”
Perhaps this will grow larger as more and more people have disposible income. However, no matter how big of a spectacle this grows to be, it is doubtful that it will ever become as big of a deal as it was in the past, especially with regards to fighting crickets (from Chinese Cricket Culture) :
From the beginning of the Song dynasty (960 - 1278 A.D.), there are many historic references to the use of crickets within recreational fighting events. Good evidence for the age of this sport comes from three pieces of cricket transfers (special containers for moving fighting crickets between containers) were unearthed from the tomb of South Song in Zhen Jiang, Jiangsu province in 1964. (Meng, 1993)
With the same popularity that football enjoys today, cricket fighting became a popular game and sport for all people, from adults to children. China produced a famous Cricket Minister, Jia Shi-Dao (1213 - 1275), who was accused of dereliction of his duty due to his obsession with an all-absorbing passion for cricket fighting cult. China also yielded the Cricket Emperor, Ming Xuan-Zhong (ca. 1427-1464). Once the emperor favored cricket fighting, crickets became the primary tribute for the palace. Each year, thousands of carefully selected crickets were sent to capital where many people’s financial fate were placed in the mandibles of these insects. It is written in “Ming Chao Xiao Shi” (The minor history of the Ming dynasty): When he saw a good cricket, an officer of the local rice-granaries exchanged it for his best horse. While he was away, his wife opened the pot to peek at the special cricket which promptly jumped out and was instantly eaten by a cockerel outside. The lady was so scared that she committed suicide. Her husband, upon returning and seeing his dead wife along with the missing cricket, also took his life. This sad historic record apparently is the source material for the famous story of “Cu-Zhi” (Cricket) within the book of “Liao Zhai” (Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio) by Song Ling in Qing dynasty (1679) (cf. Laufer, 1927). There are numerous tragedies and comedies associated with cricket fighting.
If need to know what your favorite NFL team is in Chinese, then you can consult Chinese Characters for NFL Teams at about.com. Like most of about.com’s website, it is not very user friendly, but it did help me to learn I am a fan of the 巨人 （even though they lost terribly to the 维京人 this Sunday). You can also check out other teams from inferior sports such as Chinese Characters for NBA Teams and Chinese Characters for English Soccer Teams. Enjoy!
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