for a change

“Ladies and gentlemen, in keeping with the spirit of the Olympics, please do not applaud competitors’ errors. Thank you.”

To my satisfaction, after at least two matches of local fans applauding whenever the opponent of Li Na, a Chinese female tennis player, would double fault (i.e. two successive salah serves), they were finally told off. Granted that their interest in the sport of tennis was largely relegated to the sphere of a fellow Chinese playing in the match, and therefore they probably were not aware of expected tennis-watching etiquette, but even with that taken into consideration, i did think that they were at least partly to blame in terms of being disrespectful of whoever Li’s opponent happened to be. Nothing against Li though (she is a very good tennis player, and in fact, she did yell at those errant fans to shut up at one point), but thanks to such ignorant fans, for the first time ever i ended up rooting for Venus Williams in their match (and of course Venus went on to lose, but that’s another matter…)

It’s things such as this that which have made me to be the anti-supporter, if you’d like, of the Chinese team (admittedly, my sympathy for Liu Xiang and his untimely injury was more than matched by glee that at least some of the ridiculous Chinese public pressure for performance was not satisfied). Way back in 2001, in fact, i was probably one of the few here who was (albeit silently) rooting (in vain) for Toronto to win the bid to host the games, and in the seven years since then i’ve still not warmed in the slightest to Beijing. I suppose that to a large extent my rationale behind such a negative (and minority) view of the hosts has already been covered ad infinitum by the (chiefly western) news media (e.g. human rights abuses, pollution etc - such as this), and to that end I do recognize that there exist inherent flaws and sound counter-arguments. Nevertheless, there definitely are more than legitimate concerns in favor of a dissenting view, and perhaps I feel more strongly about them than most others (at least in this particular neck of the woods) do. So where that is concerned perhaps the ‘agree to disagree’ truce camp is the best way to go.

The other major factor behind my lack of enthusiasm, sad to say, is basically the inherent Chinese-ness of everything. Definitely my early disdain for Mandarin, a result of this more-than-reluctant so-called ‘mother tongue’ student being force-fed xi zi and zhao ju and what not for way too long a time, and hating almost every moment of it, has somehow developed over the years into an aversion of (and cynicism towards) many things Chinese, particularly whenever the annoying Chinese cultural card is played. So i rarely eat Chinese food (at least not voluntarily), think nothing of wearing black at CNY or sticking my chopsticks into the bowl rather than resting them at the rim (and in fact in cases would purposely do so just to annoy some others), and would never go to China for a holiday (again, at least not voluntarily).

And so now when there’s all this talk about how the impressive opening ceremony has shown how China has ‘made it’, i lament the unnecessary extravagance and opulence of the whole thing, thinking that $ could have been better spent in many other areas. When China dominates the competition in sports like pingpong and diving (and at least for the former sport, proving a very successful exporter of top-notch players to lesser rival countries such as S’pore), I regret the extremely tough Soviet-era training that these world-beaters have had to undergo in order to get where they are, separating parents from child and depriving the latter from many aspects of a childhood (and not forgetting the hundreds, of not thousands of others who are not the best, and as such not making it to the world stage, their effort at least in this respect being in vain. And when China is head-and-shoulders above the rest of the countries in the medal tally, prompting all those sentiments of how Chinese from all over the world can be truly proud to be Chinese, here am i rolling my eyes, wondering how, with more than a fifth of the world’s population to work with, surely such an achievement is but merely to be expected (and of course this sparks all those commentaries comparing India’s one gold to China’s close-to-fifty at this point).

In any case, China definitely deserves to be congratulated on its performance during the Olympics, be it in terms of sporting or hosting achievements. However, there lies much behind these achievements that is far less worthy of praise, and perhaps is more worthy of criticism. Not popular sentiments, i know – and perhaps i may kena whacked for voicing such views. Oh well, again, let’s agree to disagree on this. (and so don’t even get me started on how irritated i am with those who criticize people like me who don’t care much for Singapore’s alleged sporting success in the form of a silver medal – in short, all credit is due to the three ladies and the team behind them, but at the end of the day, regardless of all the talk about S'pore being small, and how we are a globalized society and what not, personally there is something inherently wrong with the way in which they have come to represent the country with such blatant recruitment being undertaken and how their success/failure is perceived and handled by the media and the public - oops, so i got started :p)

Sianifying nie work awaits…