DETROIT FREE PRESS COLUMNS, 2008
Hi, Mitch Albom here. I covered the 2008 Summer Olympics for my column at the Detroit Free Press. I am so grateful to have had the chance to be there and wanted to share my journey with you. China is a fascinating place, and I had a lot of little adventures - enlightening, funny, sad. I've posted my columns below, and when I could, some pictures, too. There's a good deal about sports - it was the Olympics - but many are about my experiences in a place I had never been and perhaps you haven’t either. I hope that you'll read them and feel like we were on this trip together.
*****
Because I can still see the opening ceremony in my head.
Because the first people who greeted us gave a small bow, a symbol of respect that repeated itself every day.
Because of Michael Phelps.
Because of his mother.
Because of stories that turn on one hundredth of a second.
Because of NBA players jumping up and down at center court, as if they'd just won a high school title.
Because of seeing Kobe and LeBron, unannounced, clapping for U.S. athletes at the pool.
Because 20 Chinese will gather to give directions.
Because 20 Chinese later, you're still lost.
Because, for once, drugs were not the story.
Because of Natalie Du Toit, an amputee from South Africa, who swam a marathon with one leg.
Because of Eric Shanteau, who arrived with testicular cancer but still competed in the breaststroke, serving notice to his disease: you will not kill my dreams -- or me.
Because who knew beach volleyball had that much drama?
 To the Great Wall and beyond
Because I thought I knew about China and was wrong on so many levels.
Because a worker shared with me an old Chinese expression, "You're so poor, you only have money."
Because of Peking Duck.
Because of Usain Bolt.
Because of dropped batons and gold-medal relays.
Because fans actually cried when Liu Xiang walked off the track.
Because a 67-year-old farmer led us up a mountain to the Great Wall of China, and when we gave him more than the $4 he'd requested, he invited us to his home for a meal.
Because, despite what we heard, the Chinese do hold hands in public.
Because, despite what we heard, you do not need a mask to breathe.
Because, despite what they're told, the Chinese do long for larger families, same as us.
Because, despite what they're told, many Chinese seek out God and religion, even at great risk.
Because the Chinese volunteers took on Western names, like "Betty," to make it easier for us.
Because the Chinese will give you a Chinese name if you ask, although I still can't pronounce mine.
 Because, while undeniably under a Communist government, Beijing seemed nothing like the old Soviet Union or East Germany, grim places with miserable people looking over their shoulders. There were smiles and laughter and hope and growth and a belief in their system, even if we doubt it.
Because I didn't know that before going.
For the old and the young
Because our female gymnasts were as graceful in defeat as they were on the bars and beams.
Because our softball players cried real tears when they lost their finale -- not just over a silver medal, but because their sport was being eliminated.
Because an American you never heard of -- Bryan Clay -- won the decathlon; still, in my book, the greatest athletic feat in the world.
Because women like Sheila Taormina, Dara Torres and Lisa Leslie proved you're never too old.
Because 14 year-old divers and who-knows-what-age gymnasts proved you're never too young.
 Because of the Forbidden City.
Because of the Temple of Heaven.
Because in two-plus weeks of sporting competition, I never heard a boo.
Because of busses next to cars next to bicycles next to a mule.
Because of hutongs (or alleys) that show what Beijing once was, and gleaming shopping malls that show what it's becoming.
Because you never appreciate another country -- or your own -- until you walk on foreign soil.
Because of these reasons, and a million others, I have an answer to the question I've been asked upon returning: "Was it worth going all the way to China?"
I thank you and this newspaper for the privilege of telling Beijing stories.
Because it really, truly was.
*****
BEIJING -- The stage is bare, the seats are empty, and you can hear your voice echo off the ceiling. On any given night a musical or concert might take place here. On Sunday mornings, however, around 7, people enter the 21st Century Theater off Liangmaqiao Road carrying wires, microphones and large posters of Christian religious symbols. Within a few hours, services are being held. There is praying. There is a sermon. It mimics, on most levels, what will happen today in churches across America.
Except in Beijing you need a foreign passport to get in. If you are Chinese, you are turned away.
And by 1:30 in the afternoon, everything comes down.
You can shop in this country. You can drive in this country. You can dance and sing and make a fortune in this country. Yet you can't have multiple children and you can't pray where you wish and you can't say anything you please.
As these Summer Olympics draw to a close today, viewers rub their weary eyes and marvel at what they have seen. Others question what they have seen. Others criticize what they have seen.
Rob Tucker is a 42-year-old pastor for the Beijing International Christian Fellowship, which runs the services in this theater every Sunday. He has seen a lot. His church is housed in a hotel, on the second floor, down the hall from a dental clinic. Tucker, who grew up in Michigan but felt a "calling" to come to this strange and impressive nation a decade ago, has learned that nothing is as simple as its appearance in China.
"You hear the term 'underground church,' " he says, "you hear the terms 'government-controlled church,' you hear that there's a lot of persecution going on, and you hear that there's complete freedom going on."
He sighs. "Everything you hear about China is true. It just depends where."
The Games of Phelps and Bolt
Has there ever been an Olympics like this? So impressive and so suspicious at the same time? From the Opening Ceremonies, which set a new high for visual awesomeness, yet were questioned about lip-syncing children and video-enhanced fireworks; to the gymnastics, in which China hauled in massive gold, but was suspected of using underage children; to the track, where China's biggest sports star, Liu Xiang, lined up in the blocks and then pulled out with a sudden injury, which some claim was a national tragedy and others claim was a ruse to avoid losing to a Cuban rival; to the city of Beijing, which was full of celebration, yet was virtually devoid of predicted protests because, according to the government, the protesters hadn't filed the proper paperwork.
I have never, in a 16-day period, witnessed so much and been less sure of what I've seen.
But I do know this ...
I know Michael Phelps was real. I didn't think any swimmer could rouse American fascination -- the sport has been trying in vain since Mark Spitz -- but with each successive race, Phelps turned up the volume. He couldn't have scripted a wider assortment of victories, from total dominance to a hundredth-of-a-second nail-biter. The more he won, the more people wanted to know about the swimmer who spent the past four years training in Ann Arbor. What Phelps ate. How he slept. Where his mother was sitting.
Most prehyped Olympic athletes pale once the torch is extinguished. Phelps will be the exception. With eight gold medals, he is not going anywhere. What was it teammate Aaron Peirsol said would be the new term for Olympic amazement? "The Phelpsian feat"?
Welcome to the dictionary, Mr. Phelps.
And I know this: If an American kid redefined speed in water, a Jamaican kid redefined it on land. Usain Bolt, 22 this past week, one year younger than Phelps, had nowhere near the hype coming into Beijing but every bit of it coming out. Three races? Three gold medals? Three world records? Bolt-mania was, to the Games' second week, what Phelps-mania was to the first.
Bolt's races spanned only eight days. But he is Exhibit A in how one Olympics can catapult you into the stratosphere. Criticized for his self-celebratory attitude -- even Jacques Rogge, the head of the International Olympic Committee, laid into him -- Bolt didn't care.
"All I can say," Bolt told the media, "is, 'Yo, Jamaican sprinters taking over the world.' "
A gold-medal sweep of the men's and women's 100 and 200?
I know that's true.
Keeping up with the Chinese
I know this as well: We may catch Jamaica one day, but we are not catching China. Not in gold medals. Not under our current system. And not under China's. There are simply too many athletes to choose from in China, and too big and complex a machine that molds them.
Remember two decades ago, at the Seoul Olympics, when East Germany won more gold and more total medals than the United States? The Chinese employ a similar approach. Take kids from a young age. Put them in sports schools. Isolate them from family, drill them endlessly, pick the best of the best and focus on sports in which multiple medals are available.
But East Germany had only 17 million people. China has 1.3 billion. So forget it. Nobody is catching the Chinese if they keep this up. It was only three Olympics ago, in Atlanta, that China didn't even make the top three in the medal count. Since then, it has been climbing steadily. Perhaps, in years to come, it will scale back. But in Beijing it was part of a massive grand plan: Put on the most golden Olympics, and win more gold than anyone attending.
But then, this is a country with an endless series of grand plans. Five-year plans. Fifteen-year plans. Spontaneity is not encouraged. Individualism is not encouraged. I studied carefully the translations of the comments made by China's gold medalists. You almost never heard a detailed individual story. No talk about "my grandmother, when I was 5 years old, gave me a pair of running shoes ..." And you certainly never heard, "First I want to thank Jesus Christ ..."
What you heard were comments about "honor" for the nation or living up to expectations of the people.
You heard female archer Zhang Juanjuan, after taking gold, tell the media: "The honor is not just for me but for all those related to the sport."
You heard female weightlifter Chen Yanqing tell reporters: "I dedicate this gold medal to my country."
You heard gymnast Chen Yibing, who won the gold in men's rings, sum up his performance in typical Chinese analytical fashion. "Today, my biggest rival didn't do his best," he told reporters, "so I sealed my victory when I landed steadily."
By the way, Chen, 23, began training at a sports school at age 5.
And he already was behind the others.
We are not catching the Chinese, not with their current system. And in my opinion, we shouldn't try. After all, Americans do not need the Olympics to send messages about their society. Gold medals don't make our nation unassailable. Bronze medals don't make it weak.
By contrast, these past few weeks in China were always about making an impression, framing a story, coming out to the world on its terms.
So while the Games were a mural of Phelps and Bolt and the gymnasts and the divers and the Redeem Team and the swan song of softball and baseball, and the dropped batons by the U.S. relay teams and the cancer-stricken American who still competed in the breaststroke and the one-legged woman from South Africa who competed in a marathon swim, while they were about every athlete and every inspiring story that stepped up to a starter's pistol, the biggest character in Beijing was China itself.
So, as the Games come to a close, what do we know?
 A warm and friendly people
The answer is, still, very little. On so many levels, in so many places, Beijing looks so much like the United States -- shopping malls, Starbucks, traffic, big buildings -- that you can forget the state runs everything in China. That the Chinese don't hold elections. That there are indeed people in jail for simply expressing their point of view. I tried, in vain, during my time here, to speak to a friend of a friend who was under house arrest for daring to film a documentary about religion in China. He kept balking at an interview because, his friend told me, his phone was tapped and he might suffer penalties simply for a conversation, even off the record.
You can't forget that. Nor can you fairly say that people are unhappy here. Most do not appear so. There was laughter and hand-holding and pride and tears. The people of Beijing were as warm and as open as could be. Sure, their politicians may have dubious motivations. But would you want foreign visitors judging you or your family strictly on the actions of the president or Congress?
Besides, you cannot study China in a vacuum. Those cynics who are aghast at the lip-syncing little girl in the Opening Ceremonies or the facades that were put up over ugly Beijing buildings (and by the way, we did similar things in Detroit when the Super Bowl came to town) should put such things in the context of this country.
Remember, this is a place where Chairman Mao regularly swam in the Yangtze River to prove his virility to the people. He did so, famously, in 1966, when he was 72 and rumored to be sick and powerless. According to the propagandists, Mao swam nine miles in just 65 minutes, which was world-record pace. At 72? We might laugh at such a spectacle. But that's what the Chinese people were told.
And it was with a straight face.
So how much of these Olympics were a swim down the Yangtze? No doubt some. And not as much as critics accuse.
"Everything here is political. And the government sees its reach as stretching into religion," Tucker, the pastor, says. "But that's just how it is here. ... The missionaries that came to China in the 1800s faced the same thing. It's not necessary one regime. At that time it was an emperor. So is this more of a Chinese or Asian attribute? Maybe it is."
Tucker, from the Algonac area, has accepted that he and his fellow workers are here as guests. He says he has never had a service interrupted. He has never had a sermon questioned or edited.
But, of course, his service is for foreigners -- tourists, expats, students. Chinese nationals are not allowed in. There is a Christian church that is sanctioned by the government called the Three Self Church (or the Three Self Patriotic Movement). Some see it as a sham, a place where the pastors have been government-trained, where you can't sermonize about human rights, abortion, the resurrection or any political issues.
Others will point to it as progress. They say many of the pastors are sincere in their Christianity, and that on many Sundays, it is little different from church services in America. There is also a burgeoning "house church" movement in China, in which people gather in homes to worship. Sometimes these thrive. Sometimes they are busted up. Two summers ago, an attempted church build in the Xiaoshan district was destroyed by the government. Yet, sometimes local officials look the other way.
"It all depends where," Tucker says.
Still, when you think America was founded on the idea of religious freedom, that the pursuit of happiness is written into our Constitution, and that we hold majority-rules elections, you realize a place where you don't vote, you can't easily pray, and your happiness -- if it involves family -- is capped, well, that's as different as it can be.
One night, at a massage-and-health facility that I have written about, a pleasant, middle-aged therapist whom we knew only as No. 9 spoke about his having only one child, a son. He seemed melancholy about it. When he witnessed friends of mine who brought two sons by the facility, he nodded his head approvingly.
"Two sons," he said. "Is good."
So many sights and sounds
Here is the last of what I know from my visit to Beijing: What I've seen. I've seen a man on a bicycle carrying 20 shoe boxes stacked on the back, a horse sleeping in the middle of the road, a shopping center that puts Somerset Collection to shame, a woman selling baby shoes that she had sewn and a Cold Stone Creamery about to open.
I've seen beautiful women handing out medals chosen by size and face and body, with their hair done in one of three mandatory styles, and I've seen toothless men in hutongs (or alleys) skinny and shirtless and playing a form of checkers.
I've seen old people singing Chinese folk songs in the rain at the Temple of Heaven and young people gathered in a rock 'n' roll club called Starlife, listening to Chinese bands, singing in English, trying to sound like Blondie. I've seen plates of food that are stacked high and cost $2, and restaurants that charge $100 for a bottle of wine.
I've seen some of the biggest skyscrapers in my life, and I've seen five Chinese women, laborers in a hotel, on a break from work, squeezed together under a bar, leaning on each other. They did this on their own. They could have stretched out anywhere, had their own space. Instead they lay as if packed in a slave ship, some sleeping, others with eyes open. It remains one of the most haunting images of my time here, an indication of how little I really know about the culture.
Perhaps of all the things I've seen or heard in this country, the comment that echoes the most came from a 67-year-old farmer who broke away from selling walnuts and dried fruit to take a small group of us through the woods and thicket up the side of a mountain to the Great Wall. He had lived his whole life in his rural village, and he laughed easily as he marched up to the ancient edifice, something he said he did almost every day of his life.
I asked him if he ever wanted to visit America and he said, "What would I do in America?" When I insisted, in a typical Western way, that he must have some curiosity, he said, through a translator, that he knew about the recent 15-year plan China announced to become the global leader in economics and technology. But he remembered similar grand ideas, under Mao, of how his country was supposed to outdo the West.
The period he referred to was known, on our side of the world, as the Great Leap Forward.
He mumbled something as he moved through the brush.
"What did he say?" I asked.
"He said," the translator replied, chuckling, "I don't think the Great Leap Forward is happening."
Yes it is, and no it isn't. They're leaping forward and they're stubbornly backward. They don't do it our way, but they do it their way, and many like it and some do not. It is old and it is new. There are some rich and many poor. Everything you hear at these Olympics is true, but some of it isn't.
And that is what I know about China.
*****
BEIJING -- They finished the Olympic decathlon Friday, opening with the 100 meters, then the long jump, then yada, yada, yada.
I had my own decathlon to run. Before leaving Beijing, there were 10 events I needed in order to complete my experience. I woke up early. I pulled on my USA jersey. And I plunged into ...
1. The Forbidden City 1,500 Meters: I had to see this before I left. The Forbidden City was the private home to many Chinese emperors, who lived there with their families, staff and, as the earpiece voice reminds you, "many concubines." Behind a giant wall, protected by a moat, the Forbidden City is a beautiful collection of palaces, most of which carry names like Palace of Meditation, Palace of Inspiration, Palace of Contemplation. You get the idea the emperors had lots of time on their hands. Also concubines. Since I have neither, I employ the "Wow, cool, let's keep going" tourist technique. I cover the Forbidden City in 52 minutes, a personal best.
2. The 5K Subway Ride: Having enjoyed cabs to this point (if you call near-death experiences enjoyable), it is time to try the subway. Beijing's is clean and efficient, I am told. All I saw of it was the armpit of a woman and the chest of a man. I don't want to say there is no personal space at rush hour, but I could count other riders' molars, OK? I finish in 4 minutes, 18 seconds, when the doors open and we tumble out like rice from a sack.
 3. The Short-track Cycling Event: Next, I take a bicycle into Beijing traffic. As far as survival, I could have jumped from a plane and had better odds. During my 9-minute lap of the neighborhood, I was cut off by two busses, four cabs, eight pedestrians and another cyclist who had -- and I'm dead serious here -- a ladder on the back of his bike. I finish and proceed to ...
4. The 76-pound Wrestling Match: You may recall last week I ventured into Yashow Market, where you are expected to negotiate, and got laughed at when I only reduced the given price by 25%. This time I returned with weapons. Two boys, Sam and Nick Ross, 12 and 15, who come from New Zealand but live in China and have that whole teenaged derring-do thing going. Their approach was to hear a price and then say to the salespeople, essentially, "Are you nuts?" And I'm proud to say, we got belts reduced from $14 to $4 and a piece of luggage for about 12 bucks. Not only that, but when we were done, a salesman said to Nick, "You my friend, come back." I'd say we got the gold in that one.
5. The Peking Duck Individual Medley: Everyone says you can't leave Beijing without trying the Peking Duck. At the last minute, a restaurant was arranged and duck was ordered -- along with a bunch of other things I pointed to on the picture menu. Always go by the pictures in China, as the translation often reads "riveted codfish and eel cake in fried leek and garlic crab nooshi noodle, pineapple sauce, plus butter."
6. The 10-meter Platform Dive: Figuring to try one actual Olympic event, I went to the Water Cube. I looked up at the 10-meter platform. You know, I have to say, that's really, really high. And this 15-year-old Chinese champion named Chen Ruolin is really good, even if she is too young to be a gymnast, which in China means diapers. So I watched Chen instead. You'd have to say I no-heighted in this event.
7. The 100-meter Starbucks Dash: I made up for it in this event, using my indigenous advantage over the locals in being able to pronounce "Frappuccino."
8. The 25K Walk: I did this trying to find a ride home from the track and field venue in the rain.
9. The 4xStore Souvenir Relay: Having waited until the last days, I frantically flipped through T-shirts trying to find anything bigger than a "men's medium," which in China is a tight fit on a Chihuahua. I found two black "Trampoline" shirts. Not my best event.
10. The 26-mile Protest Marathon: OK. I got lost, or something, but I couldn't find any protests. I just ran around the city aimlessly. Official word from the government is that "paperwork" was not correctly filed by the protesters. Once again, as so often happens at the Olympics, we have a judging controversy.
Final score: 2,918 points. Don't be impressed. Once you convert, it's around four bucks. Or one belt.
*****
BEIJING -- "Ma," I say.
"Mother," she says.
"Ma," I say, my voice rising.
 "Linen," she says.
"Ma-a," I say.
"A horse."
"Ma!" I declare.
"Fight," she says.
One word. Four meanings. The only difference is a tone change. You could, with the slightest wrong inflection, ask your mother what she wants for Horse Day. Or tell Mr. Ed you want to punch him in the snout. Oh, and if you put "ma" at the end of sentence? It turns it into a question.
You following-ma?
I am getting all this during my one-hour Chinese lesson with a teacher named Chen Ying, who wants me to call her Chen, even though her first name is Ying, because to call her Ying, I "would have to be husband." And that's a bit much for the first lesson.
The truth is, with the Olympic Games winding down and the flame almost extinguished, I have decided it is the time to learn the language. That, and the fact that, as an American, I feel compelled to say, to the hundreds of millions of joyous Chinese fans reveling in their whopping gold-medal dominance over us, two of our favorite USA words: "Basket" and "ball."
How you like us now-ma?
"Ni hao," Chen tells me, "is the word for hello, or to get attention."
"Ni hao," I say. "Which actually means ...?"
"You good."
You good? Why, yes, we are. We good at basketball.
Did I mention that?
 Redeem Team to the rescue
I repeat it because, let's be honest, these Olympics have been a comeuppance for those of us Yanks accustomed to American dominance. We moved down on the medal stand in the track sprints (yo, Jamaica!), we can't even hand off a baton correctly (blown men's and women's relays), we no longer box worth a medal hoot, our divers are outdone regularly by the Chinese, our gymnasts have met their match in the host country, our virtually perfect softball team actually lost the gold Thursday -- lost? -- in perhaps the last Olympic softball game ever to be played. And without Michael Phelps' eight gold medals, even our swimming results would be less than phenomenal.
Which is why, for the first time since they allowed NBA players into the Olympics, we kind of need our hoops stars to win. You don't hear anyone in the States calling for college players anymore. This has gotten ugly. It's clear many countries pay for training, schooling, travel and compensation to get their athletes to the gold-medal stand. Suddenly, the U.S. doesn't feel so bad about a point guard with a Nike deal.
So with the Caribbean to the left of us and the China to the right, it's all on Kobe, LeBron, Carmelo and company to remind people that, hey, when we pay our people to do something, we still do it better than anyone.
The Unites States plays Argentina today in the semifinals. "It's go time ..." Kobe Bryant told the media. "The money's on the table."
Right! You go, Kobe!
But that's a lot of slang for my first lesson.
So much to learn
"There are four tones in Mandarin," explains Chen, who works with the Beijing Language and Culture Center for Diplomatic Missions. "Each one very different."
Yes. And here, from my notes -- and I hadn't eaten in hours, so don't hold me to them -- are the tones: the first is flat, the second is up, the third is a dip and a rise (like how Scooby-Doo talks) and the fourth is straight down.
By the way, this is just in Mandarin Chinese. In Cantonese, there are nine tones. There also are countless dialects in regions and villages, some so dissimilar you can't understand what is going on if you weren't born there. Kind of how I feel at an Ohio State game.
"We like to make our sentences like a wave," Chen says, moving her hands up and down.
Hey. No sweat. That's how I communicate with the cab drivers.
"Test me out," I say.
Chen has me make some tonal sounds with vowels, like "uh," then "uhh," then "uuhhh." I sound like a man having his spleen removed.
"Also, when you have 'a' at end of sentence, it means you are excited."
Got it-a!
"Also, there are 3,000 characters in Chinese, each one different."
Got it.
"Also, when you put one character and a tone against another character and tone, it can change meaning."
Got it.
"Any questions?" she says.
"How do you say, 'You are a great boss' in Chinese?"
She purses her lips as if embarrassed. "Oh, we never say something like this in our language."
Sorry, Boss. I tried.
Eyes on the prize
But getting back to basketball-a! We do want the rest of the world to call us boss this weekend. It would soothe some wounded egos. We've already been proved beatable on the track, the open road, the diamond and the soccer grass. We need to keep the hardwood sacred.
So far our Redeem Team has done all it should. It wins by a landslide. It plays great defense. It takes everyone seriously. Best of all, the only time you hear about these guys off the court is if they show up at a fellow American's competition, like Kobe and LeBron James at Phelps' swim races.
That's a whole lot better than the original Dream Team, which made news in 1992 when Michael Jordan played golf in another country on the off days, or when Charles Barkley said after elbowing an Angolan player, "Well, he might have pulled a spear on me."
Nobody is playing the fool here. The NBA guys are as serious as a typhoon. "We haven't accomplished anything yet," Jason Kidd told reporters after the quarterfinal victory over Australia. "We've taken one baby step. And now our next step is going to be tough."
Which is exactly how I feel when my Chinese teacher says, "Time for vocabulary."
A guarantee of victory
Here's the thing about Chinese language. We can't pronounce a word of it. And you don't get any better. Go to France, and after a couple of days, you make progress. Words sound vaguely familiar. Go to Italy, Spain, it's the same thing. Even in Norway, you can at least read something.
But in China? Every sign. Totally lost. Every menu. Totally lost. Every brief encounter -- with a cop, with a volunteer, with a waiter, totally lost. Unless you're lucky enough to find someone who knows any words in English besides "Yao Ming."
The other night, this was an actual exchange.
"Do you have a Diet Coke?"
"Ahh. Co.'
"Diet COKE."
"Co-la."
"Yes. Yes! But 'diet.' "
"Ah."
"OK? Diet Coke?"
"Ah-K. Cola."
"Diet Coke?"
"Ahhhh ahh. ... Ah?"
After two weeks of stuff like this I finally had a revelation as to why it was constantly happening: We don't speak their language!
So here I am, at a table, studying flashcards, with Chen Ying. She says that the word for "ask" and the word for "kiss" are so close, it is easy to get smacked. And that calling someone "a good friend" or calling him or her "a dog" is only a matter of a tone.
Which come to think of it, is true on a lot of levels.
"How do you say Ford?" I ask.
"Fu-teh," she says. I am making up the spelling.
"How about Chrysler?"
"Cara-sula," she says.
Much too easy.
"How long will it take for me to speak Chinese?" I ask, cutting to the chase.
"To speak? If you study hard, work very hard, you can speak maybe in two years."
"How about to write?"
She looks me over. "I don't think ever."
I want to say, "Are you kidding-ma?" I want to say, "You don't know me-a!" I want to say lots of things, but I can't even get the Scooby-Doo sound right.
In the end, I take a few worksheets and promise to continue my lessons if for some reason my boss, discovering that there is no word for his greatness, decides to cancel my return ticket.
As for our basketball team, the players will do their talking on the floor today, and as a proud American, I fully expect them to win this horse.
I mean this linen.
This fight.
Mama!
*****
BEIJING -- Oh, mon, it was a party! Bang the steel drums! Yams for one and all! Anybody in a green "Jamaica" shirt was being swarmed for interviews. We didn't even know who they were.
"We're proud to be Jamaicans!" a middle-aged woman declared. "We are the sprint factory of the world!"
"Is that his mother?" a reporter whispered.
"He can go faster! You won't see nobody like him for another 50 years!" insisted a middle-aged man.
"Is that his coach?" a reporter whispered.
It was not his mother. It was not his coach. It didn't matter. Suddenly, thanks to Usain Bolt's second gold medal, anything having to do with a Caribbean island caused frenzy in the halls of the Olympic Stadium. I think I saw someone selling sand.
"I just blew my mind," Bolt would say later, "and I blew the world's mind."
Uh, yeah. This kid who once wanted to be a cricket player has, in five days, so rewritten the book on going fast, he should get to respell his name. The way he approaches a race, smoothing his head with his hands, then wiping his forehead as if flicking sweat, then pulling his arms back like an archer and pointing two fingers to the sky -- right there, the cameras should flash his moniker, punctuated by a question mark:
U-Sayin' Bolt?
OK, I will.
And he does. Whew. He does.
Running down the legends
Nobody has ever run faster. Think about that sentence. Nobody has ever run faster, not in the 100 meters, not in the 200, not in the history of the Olympics or for that matter in the history of the planet. Bolt did it between a Saturday and a Wednesday in Beijing. And there was no mugging or preening that cost Bolt precious time in wining the 100 over the weekend.
No, this time, the 6-foot-5 sprinting giant had his eye on the prize, chopping his arms like firing pistons and blowing air out of puffed cheeks. He ran as perfect a turn as you could conceive, and as he roared down the straightaway the only thing he seemed to be looking for was the clock. He actually leaned at the tape, which is like getting Madonna to do her own grocery shopping.
When he looked up, the clock read what he wanted it to read: a world record, breaking Michael Johnson's famous 19.32 set in 1996 that many thought would last another decade.
Only Carl Lewis in the last 25 years had won the 100 and 200 in the same Olympics. And nobody had ever set two world records while doing it.
U-Sayin' Bolt?
Don't mind if I do.
A gold medal for celebrating
"I said, 'I'm going to leave everything on the track,' " the double-gold medalist explained afterward. And he did -- at least once his victory lap was over. Along his celebratory way, he 1) fell to his back, 2) pointed to the sky, 3) wore the Jamaican flag like a stripper's boa, 4) removed his golden shoes, 5) did the Charleston around his golden shoes, 6) did some kind of moonwalk around his golden shoes, 7) blew a two-fingered kiss to the cameras and 8) pointed to himself and declared, "I am No. 1."
Humility is not his thing.
But when you go that fast and give a TV network those ratings, people will forgive you anything. Bolt is not egotistical, we're told; he's just clowning. He's not full of himself, he's just an island guy.
What's the truth? Who knows? We're interviewing shirts, remember? All we know for sure is that few men in Olympic history have gone from the wings to center stage with the sudden blazing floodlights that Bolt has. He has rewritten the record books and the geography books. The world used to look to the United States for speed; now you look south, to the Caribbean, from which sprinters already have captured gold or silver in the men's 100, women's 100, men's 200, women's 400 and women's 400 hurdles.
I thought we went to the islands to relax.
No more. Watch for speeding bullets on the beach. Expect the pina colada delivered before you order it.
"The prime minister is on the phone!" someone yelled in the tunnel, waving a cell.
Why not? Mr. Bolt, who turns 22 today, has the world at his feet. And those are fast feet. By the way, that 200 world record? He ran it into a headwind.
Most likely a Jamaican Breeze.
*****
BEIJING -- Let me throw some names at you. Carl Lewis. Bob Beamon. Bob Hayes. Evelyn Ashford. Bob Seagren. Cassius Clay. Sugar Ray Leonard. Greg Louganis. These are athletes who became famous by winning Olympic gold in sports in which the U.S. once excelled -- the 100 meters, long jump, pole vault, boxing, diving. There was a time where you could check off American medals in certain events before we even marched in the opening ceremonies.
But look around Beijing. What do you see? Jamaicans raising their fists in the sprints, with Americans behind, absent or rubbing their hamstrings. Boxers from Kazakhstan advancing to the medal rounds, with nary an American in sight. Long jumpers splashing sand in the face of American men, who for the first time ever, couldn't even make the finals.
Heck, the 1,500 meters (the "metric mile" as they used to call it), which once had us glued to TV sets rooting for Jim Ryun, this year was won by ... Bahrain.
Now, I don't mind losing to the Russians or the Chinese, since I can at least find their countries on a map. But Bahrain? What do they run on there, sand? And this was after a frustrated United States succumbed to importing its 1,500-meter contenders, including Bernard Lagat, the former Kenyan two-time medalist, and Lopez Lomong, one of the "Lost Boys of Sudan."
Nice work. Lagat didn't even make the final. And it's a good thing Lomong carried our flag during the opening ceremonies; that was the last time he was in front of anybody.
He finished last in his semifinal.
The national pastime
So where's the answer? Well. Why not go back to where it all began? And so I did. Finally, after nearly two weeks in this strange and amazing country, where you can get a foot massage at 3 a.m. but you can't hold a protest in broad daylight, I got in the taxi, ricocheted off 40 other cars, narrowly missed two buses and nine pedestrians, got out, threw up and entered Peking University, where I walked past rows of bicycles and lounging students and finally entered the huge gymnasium. And there I was greeted by the thwick-thwock that started it all.
Ping-Pong.
Don't tell me "table tennis." I can't call it "table tennis." For one thing, when I hear "table tennis," I think miniature John McEnroes and Bjorn Borgs, playing on mahogany.
Besides, "Ping-Pong" is what got us to China in the first place. Without Ping-Pong -- as we all called it in 1971 -- who knows if Beijing is even hosting these Games?
Or don't you remember? According to the story, a guy named Glenn Cowan, a one-time California college student, was in Nagoya, Japan, for the World Table Tennis Championships, and after a practice, he missed his team bus. A Chinese player waved at him to jump on their bus, which he did. It might have been the most significant bus ride since Rosa Parks.
While on the bus, Cowan, an outgoing guy, tried chatting with the Chinese players. A few minutes later, one of them, Zhuang Zedong, came up from the back and presented Cowan with a gift: a silk screen of the Huangshan Mountains. Cowan wanted to give him something back, but, the story goes, all he had in his bag was a comb.
There were photographers and journalists waiting when the bus stopped. Americans and Chinese did not hang out in those days. It was news. Someone asked Cowan whether he would ever want to visit China, and he said, reportedly, "Of course."
Word got back to the Chinese government. One thing led to another. And shortly thereafter, in April of 1971, nine American players -- including Cowan -- crossed a bridge from Hong Kong and played a series of exhibition matches in a previously shut-off nation.
A year later, President Richard Nixon went to China -- and the normalization of relations between the two countries had begun.
They called it "Ping-Pong Diplomacy."
And here I was.
Thwick-thwock.
An American story
Now the reason this has anything to do with anything is because the Chinese are great at Ping-Pong (OK, table tennis, stop yelling) and they have always been great at table tennis and you don't see them dropping off in table tennis the way we have in the sprints or the distance events or boxing.
(Really. Boxing. I can't understand it. We love to fight. We fight on "Jerry Springer." We have fights on HBO all the time and I never heard of the guys -- and I'm a sports writer! How come we can't beat up a few kids from Kazakhstan?)
So I went to Peking U. (fight song, "Hail, hail to old Peking U, we got a billion, how about you?") to get some sort of answer. And sure enough, I found it, out on Court 2 -- or Table 2 -- whacking the little white ball back and forth, in the form of a Chinese-born player named
David Zhuang.
Zhuang now lives in New Jersey. He is, sad to say, America's entire men's table tennis team in Beijing.
And he's 44.
I watched him play. The crowd was into it, cheering every point. (I can't help it, I watch this stuff, I'm thinking "basement.") Zhuang went the distance with a Nigerian player, both were sweating and needed to wipe down with towels during the breaks. But Zhuang ultimately lost in a long and close match.
In the tunnel afterward, mobbed by three -- count 'em, three -- American journalists, Zhuang talked about the difference between Chinese players and American players, whom he teaches back in New Jersey.
"I think American kids are more happier," he said. "They really love the sport. They aren't forced to play it."
But why does it stay so popular in China and isn't so in the States?
"Go check how much money the Chinese make for their gold medals," Zhuang said, "and you'll know."
So that's it?
He laughed. "What do you think?"
And there, folks, in a nutshell, you have it. The Chinese players are funded by their government. They are paid well for success. As Zhuang put it, once you show you are good enough, "everything is taken care of."
Meanwhile, American players, Zhuang said, "have to spend their own money and their own time just to play this lovely sport."
And that, more and more, is the truth about many Olympic endeavors. Yes, U.S. athletes can get some money from the U.S. Olympic Committee, but our kids are not government funded. They aren't plucked for sports schools. As they're coming up, they usually have to hold down jobs, take their normal high school and college classes, juggle their schedules, search for sponsors.
The Chinese don't. Nor do many athletes whose countries we are now losing to in events we once dominated. That's the way it goes. Do we want your tax dollars going to train a wrestler, a cyclist or a synchronized swimmer?
The athletes might say, "Please, yes!" I'm not so sure. I kind of like the fact that we know the difference between work and play, that we don't let government officials start making rules for athletes.
Take what happened to Zhuang. As soon as he made application to move to the United States, "I lost all my opportunity in China. Even though I had to wait 10 years for a green card. It was my prime time. I was 17. But why will they invest in me if I am leaving?"
I don't like the whole idea of athletes as government investments. I kind of like the image of Cowan, jumping on another country's bus, chitchatting, and helping in a small way to change the world.
By the way, the story goes that Cowan ultimately found a gift to give Zedong in return. It was a red, white and blue T-shirt with a peace sign over the words "Let It Be."
Maybe, instead of fretting over medals we once owned and no longer do, we should heed that message.
*****
BEIJING -- In a moment, we will get to the injury and abrupt quit of the biggest sports star in China, an event that, on Monday morning, brought this nation of 1.3 billion people to tears. But first, the big news: The suits are back, and they fit great!
So do the shirts, which I bought five more of, along with three more suits, two more sport coats, all handmade, and I think I got change from my dollar.
Say what you will about small trifles like air pollution, population control or that China's national hero didn't make it over a single hurdle. You can't beat the shopping here. I picked the fabric, picked the style and had a whole new wardrobe waiting for me three days later in the Ya Shi Tailor Shop, where Hannah, the saleswoman, stood with pins in hand for my "second fitting."
"Look good," Hannah said.
I think she meant the suit. That, or her country's chances in table tennis.
(By the way, "Hannah" is not Hannah's real name. I doubt I could pronounce Hannah's real name. Chinese workers, in an incredible act of selflessness, take on Western monikers to be more accessible to Western visitors. You see a bellman in the hotel lobby with the straightest black hair, high cheekbones, a thin frame and a face full of Chinese features, and when you ask his name, he bows and says, in total seriousness, "Kevin.")
 The morning workout
There is, in fact, a "Kevin," a "Joey," a "Nan" and a "Chris" who work in the gym in the basement of my hotel, which is called The Opposite House, and is only the greatest hotel in Beijing.
I'm not kidding. I could move here. The name stems from some sort of feng shui thing about a guesthouse and a main house, but I believe it is called The Opposite House because the service is as opposite from an American hotel chain as you can get.
For example, the gym I am talking about, in the basement, is consistently empty of guests, yet the Gang of Four -- Kevin, Joey, Nan and Chris -- stand waiting for me each morning, like an eager family at the airport gate, hoping I will need help with the buttons, or the towels, or the water fountain, or something. I don't actually need help with anything, but this does not stop them from swarming me the moment I get on the elliptical trainer. Joey fidgets with the headphones that hang on the bar. Chris slides my room key a half-inch over. Kevin examines the video screen, perhaps deciding, yes, this screen needs a wipe, let me do that. Nan tries to take my tissues before I have used them.
"Still clean," I say, smiling and snatching them back.
She looks vaguely disappointed, and I think about blowing my nose just to accommodate her. But then she smiles, steps back and says a phrase repeated all day long: "Anything more I can do please ask."
Honestly, if they could, they would exercise FOR you.
So many people, so little room
This brings me to the wider issue of personal space, which in China is actually a narrower issue. You don't come here if you're into "boundaries." You get no boundaries in Beijing, unless a half-inch counts. Anything farther, you're liable to smack into someone trying to help you.
Let's take the simple act of going out to dinner. The hovering begins in finding a cab. You tell someone where you want to go, and a Shriner's Convention breaks out. Suddenly, you are swarmed by a dozen buzzing workers, all of who seem to be quarrelling, except I am told that normal Chinese conversation as well as angry Chinese conversation sounds, to the Western ear, exactly the same. So a man and woman talk here, voices flaring up and down, and I'm convinced they are saying, "The heck with you, too, Frank, let's call this relationship dead right now!" But they could be giving directions.
Anyhow, once in the cab, your new "boundary" consists of the width of the steel of the car, which gets close enough to tourists, cops, construction workers and pedestrians to scratch their ears. As for other cars? Ha! Just sit through one left turn in Beijing. You go left, everyone else goes left, or right, or straight, you're like a bag of jellybeans squirming around each other, and here comes a grandfather on a bicycle, balancing a roll of carpet. It is best, if in the back seat, to simply shut your eyes and imagine Kansas.
Finally, you reach the restaurant, where they almost run out the door to grab you, then send five people to the table with menus, water, bread, then someone to take away the menus, the water, the bread, someone to fold the napkin in your lap, to refill your water, to refill the bread, to take the order. And I won't get into how many cooks are in the kitchen.
The star of stars
But all right. Why am I telling you this? Because if they make that kind of fuss over just another American tourist, imagine the kind of pressure that was on the shoulders of 25-year-old Liu Xiang as he lined up in the starting blocks of the 110-meter hurdles Monday.
Liu is no tourist. He is, in China, Michael Jordan and Mary Lou Retton combined, the best in the world and a national treasure. He achieved this status by sprinting over 10 hurdles faster than anyone in Athens four years ago, winning China's first-ever gold medal in men's track.
For that, he has earned a fortune, including more than $20 million last year, according to the China Daily. (That's dollars; we don't have room for how many yuan it is). Liu's face is everywhere in this country, on billboards, on bus stops. He is bigger than Yao Ming. (And that's saying something.) He has endorsed products from soft drinks to cigarettes. People go nuts when Liu is within range, screaming and waving and fainting.
I don't think the average American could name a 110-meter hurdler if life itself depended on it. But China -- a country that eschews deity -- does deify its sports heroes, at least in certain sports. Table tennis, diving, gymnastics -- all are kingmakers. But the reason Liu is even bigger is because he won gold (and later set a world record) in a sport in which no Chinese ever had excelled.
Simply put, China doesn't win at track. It doesn't produce sprinters. It doesn't manufacture hurdlers. The factory has no factory for speed.
And yet here is the best sprint/hurdler in the world, and he is one of them. He is living proof that China can compete with the Western powers in going fast, not just being precise.
So with 91,000 fans in the Olympic Stadium, some of whom had paid thousands of yuan for a ticket, Liu -- like Elvis -- was introduced for the first heat of his event, and then immediately began an exit that couldn't have been more dramatic if it came in an opera.
By any other name
Liu grimaced while stretching. He seemed in pain in the blocks. He limped out during a false start, clutched at his right leg, then peeled the competitors' adhesive number off his leg, as a billion people sucked in their breath.
He exited down the tunnel.
Elvis has left the building.
People cried. Honestly. Reporters cried. His coach, Sun Haiping, broke into tears when explaining the pain Liu had been dealing with. The guy had not raced in three months after a hamstring injury. His progress was a secret the way nuclear warheads are a secret. People were told that he would be ready. As late as the Monday morning papers here, Liu was quoted as saying he was set to take on his formidable competition.
But it was clear the guy could barely run. His coaches told the media he was "shivering" with pain. An Achilles tendon injury that reportedly he has been battling for -- I'm not kidding, this is what they said -- six years was hobbling him.
"Liu would not withdraw unless the pain was intolerable and there was no other way out," said Feng Shuyon, the Chinese track team's head coach.
That seemed to be the sentiment around the country. Liu would have run with a bit in his mouth if it made the pain tolerable. Still, the disappointment was everywhere. People actually left the stadium, having only traveled there to see the superstar perform. Blogs on the Internet contained countless gushing well wishes for Liu's recovery (imagine if there were an Internet during the Beatles' heyday and you get an idea of the tone). There was also some questioning of how the athlete was handled by the coaches.
Liu's golden run was set to be the signature event of these Games for Chinese fans, sort of like Sinatra doing "My Way" to close the show. A TV reporter said Liu's quitting was like discovering "that a god was just a man."
Personally, I can't imagine the pressure this guy was under. To have waited four years, to be the centerpiece of your nation's global coming out party, and to wind up as a horse that never left the post, well, that's beyond harsh. Liu, who as of this writing hadn't been seen, was said by his coach to be "depressed."
Monday night, in the lobby of The Opposite House, I asked one of the workers what he thought of Liu's exit and he said, "Sad." Then I asked him his Chinese name, which was something I couldn't pronounce, and then I asked him his Western name, and he said, and I'm not kidding here, "Owen."
And I thought, if Liu Xiang could switch identities like that, he'd do it in a heartbeat.
*****
BEIJING -- "Fruits? Almonds?" he says in Chinese.
His "store" is a table. He sits on it, offering plastic bags to visitors. The sun is hot and the mountains loom overhead, and there are half a dozen vendors trying to sell us the same stuff, and besides, on the way into this village we passed a donkey sitting in the middle of the street, so to be honest, business is slow.
 "Can you take us up to the Wall?" we ask.
He thinks for a second. His face is bony and his smile is missing a few teeth. When he stands, he's maybe 5-feet-5, and his stringy black hair is covered by a Nike cap. You'd guess him to be in his 50s (we will later learn, to our amazement, that he is 67), with a thin frame draped in cotton pants and a long-sleeved, button-down shirt.
"I find someone for my shop," he says.
Moments later he returns with a woman. She sits on his table. And he motions us to follow him and he walks down the road.
You would never guess you are looking at the Fastest Man On Earth.
Well. OK. I should qualify that. Later this day I am scheduled to attend the 100-meter track finals at the massive Bird's Nest, formally known as the National Stadium, where the title of Fastest Man On Earth will be bestowed on the winner. But that is night and this is day and right here, far from Beijing and all its traffic and crowds, the rules for stardom have changed.
 On our drive into this village of Xishuiyu, in the rural Huang Hua Cheng region, we passed tin roofs, barrels, bicycles, burrows, a rusting red motor scooter, and a man with a white beard who was nearly bent in half. We have been told there is no way to climb to the Great Wall from here. It is too dangerous.
But our man in the Nike cap, the smiling fruit-and-nut vendor named Xie Shang Quan, is willing to guide us up on his own.
So at the moment, he's a star.
"His price," says my pal, Alex, a.k.a. Beijing Bubba, from China via Atlanta, "is 30 yuan."
Or about four bucks.
I gaze up at the mountain.
Seems fair to me.
An ancient marvel
Now, you don't go to China without seeing the Great Wall. I know that. But I always pictured the pilgrimage to one of the Seven Wonders of the World as a respectful encounter, maybe with some chanting and incense. Instead, I discover you can chair-lift up the Great Wall and luge your way down. You can tour-bus in. You can rope-slide out. You can do a marathon or even host a dinner there. This amazing edifice, 4,000 miles long and dating to around 600 B.C., is apparently a Chinese theme park.
 The Great Wall-y World.
At least in the tourist spots. Which is why we have come here instead, to discover The Wall the way people would have centuries ago, by walking up to it through nature. I am joined by my wife, by Alex and by a few workers from my hotel, The Opposite House, the greatest hotel in Beijing, partly because the staff will get stuff like this together for you, and find a guy like Shang Quan, whom I would have left at his table with his dried apricots.
And -- ta-da! -- here we are, climbing through brush and dirt, heading to a quiet, lonely section of the Great Wall.
And 20 minutes later, we're still climbing.
And 40 minutes later, we're still climbing.
And 60 minutes later, we're still climbing.
And soon we are soaked in sweat, and there are bugs the size of Volkswagens, and they buzz so loudly, it sounds as if you are in the middle of some major city's electrical grid, and branches are slapping in our faces, and we're tripping through mud and streams, climbing on shaky rocks, and I'm thinking this has all the makings of a Chinese "Deliverance."
 And up ahead, steady as clockwork, Shang Quan walks on, hands behind his back, deep in thought, as if trying to decide if God exists.
Behind him, we are praying he does.
A modern superstar
Even as we're walking, hours away, a tall Jamaican named Usain Bolt has gotten up at the eye-popping hour of 11 a.m. and has gone, as he will later explain, "to eat some nuggets." I am thinking McDonald's.
Then he watches TV.
Bolt is a 6-foot-5 phenomenon, a sprinter who only took up the 100 meters a little over a year ago and who is supposedly too tall to be fast in it, but has been blowing peoples' doors off. He is 21, a kid really, and as he sits before a TV screen, he contemplates a nap.
This, by the way, is before the biggest race of his life.
Meanwhile, our race to the Great Wall has become a question of which comes first: reaching our goal or bleeding to death from branches, thickets, pickers and falling down. And, of course, I'm wearing shorts because, well, there is no because; I'm just an idiot.
And there's 67-year-old Shang Quan, marching on, brisk and easy, turning now and then to smile and yell "zhixing!" ("straight on!") as he steps lightly through the muck.
"How often do you climb up here?" I ask him, through Alex's translation.
"Every day," Alex says.
Every day? Up a mountain to the Great Wall?
"Since he was a little boy."
His skin is brown from the sun. He has the straggly hairs of a mustache. His father was a farmer and he was too, until his crop dried out. He asks where I am from. I tell him.
Then I fall into a hole.
"Walnut tree," he points out, when passing it.
"Pear tree," he points out.
Walnuts, pears. We find some mayonnaise, we got a Waldorf salad.
 The final destination
The Great Wall is actually many stretches of fortification built at different times over 2,000 years, going back beyond the First Emperor, who employed more than a million slaves to build the thing. There are strong, healthy parts and decaying, crumbling parts. But the concept in all parts was the same: Keep the enemy out.
As I smack my face from bugs and slip on crunching gravel and enter a patch of weedy growth so high it envelops us over our heads, I wonder why those emperors didn't just build a moat, buy a few alligators and call it a day. I mean, honestly, who would tramp through this jungle to attack? It's like "The Blair Witch Project" in here.
"How much longer?" someone asks. I don't know. Maybe it was me. I couldn't see myself.
"To the Wall?" Shang Quan says.
No, to Macy's, I want to answer.
"Yes, to the Wall."
He says something, matter-of-factly.
"We're on the wall," Alex translates.
And, by gosh, we are. Weeds and small trees have grown through it, but there is stone on both sides of us, and as we come through a clearing, suddenly we are near a ridge that overlooks the most spectacular valley, unfurling green mountains that stretch across the horizon.
And there, stretching to our left and to our right, is a magnificent, winding, stone and earthen wall, sky to sky, as if God dropped a ribbon down from heaven.
Who needs the big city?
At the same time we are gasping for words, Usain Bolt has risen from his nap, "had some more nuggets" and then headed over to the stadium for his semifinal and final.
In the semis, Tyson Gay, one of Bolt's chief rivals -- and America's top sprinter -- finishes fifth and fails to make the final. One less obstacle for Bolt, who will wear golden shoes in the Big Race.
Meanwhile, Shang Quan, who wears sneakers made by 7Chun, a Chinese manufacturer, is walking the wall as if it's an old friend. He says he treks up sometimes by himself, because it's "peaceful."
Nothing but cicadas and the wind.
He says he hasn't been to Beijing in 16 years. I ask if he'd ever want to see America.
"What would I do in America?" he says.
Wow. What must his world be like, so cut off in his village that he can't even imagine a trip to the States? I feel sorry for him.
"Does he know about the Olympics?" I ask.
Over his shoulder, he answers.
"We watch every day. On satellite."
OK, maybe I shouldn't feel sorry for him.
Life in the fast lane
Later, when the sun has set and the hour has grown late, Usain Bolt and his golden shoes line up in the starting blocks. And when his name is called, he makes a pose as if about to shoot an arrow.
The gun goes off, eight men dash forward, and the crowd rises. Midway through, Bolt separates from the pack, taking those long, big-man strides, and with about 20 meters to go, he starts looking to the side, making a face as if to say, "How could you doubt me?" He even pounds his chest once and nearly tiptoes into the finish line.
Despite all these theatrics, he breaks his own world record with an amazing time of 9.69 seconds. Had he actually focused on the race, he might have threatened 9.6.
"I didn't come here to set world records," he will say. "I came here to win."
He takes his victory lap, blow kisses to the crowd, does a hip-shaking dance, and later meets with the press, while slouching in his chair, giving halfhearted answers. Some reporter asks whether he were paying homage to God with his look to the stands and Bolt quickly says yes, that was it.
Sorry, but unless God is sitting with the photographers, I'm not buying that one.
Earlier, after a 90-minute trek down from the Wall -- making it three hours in total -- we had come to a parting with Shang Quan. I rolled up 500 yuan (about $70) and handed it to him, thanking him. He was so appreciative, he invited us to his home. It was just past the donkey and down the road.
The last we saw of him, he was waving good-bye, flashing his half-toothless smile, the mountains in the background, one of man's great marvels part of his backyard. He will scale it again today, perhaps about the time Usain Bolt receives his gold medal.
So you tell me. That medal is significant. But it seems the Fastest Man On Earth is one who knows where he's going every day, gets there safely and comes back.
If so, Bolt will have his gold, but I've already met the gold standard. He's selling almonds.
*****
BEIJING -- The journey ended, fittingly, with Michael Phelps not in the pool but above it, cheering on his teammates. The greatest Olympian of all time may indeed now hover over his sport, but he could not have achieved such heights without a little help from his friends. And this morning, in the last race on the last day of the greatest swimming feat in the history of the Games, his friends brought it home and laid it on the velvet pillow. The final gold.
 Eight is enough.
"I'm more at a loss for words than I was yesterday," Phelps told NBC after breaking Mark Spitz's mark of seven golds in a single Olympics. "The help from these guys made it all possible. ... It's amazing to be part of this."
And it was an amazing finish, with Phelps, swimming third in the 400-meter medley relay, using his superior butterfly stroke to surge his team out of third place to hand a small lead to Jason Lezak. Then Phelps rose from the pool and, alongside his teammates, watched his destiny unfold. It was close. Nerve-racking. The Americans were flanked by the Japanese and the Australians, pushing them on both sides.
But when it was over, Lezak, swimming the freestyle, touched the wall first, seven-tenths of a second ahead of the Aussies, in a world-record time of 3:29.34, and history fell from the sky and splashed in the water.
The crowd went crazy. Phelps shook his fists. He finally, finally was finished. Ulysses had come home. Eight gold medals in a single Games. In all the Olympiads staged in the modern era, no one ever had done that.
"The Phelpsian Feat," Aaron Peirsol, who swam the leadoff leg in the relay, declared to the TV cameras. "We've all heard of the Spitzian Feat. It's a new one now."
The Phelpsian Feat?
Eight is enough.
 A most difficult task
What Phelps has done in Beijing is somewhat beyond imagination, no matter how many times it is explained and detailed, no matter how many times you read about his calorie intake or the music he blasts in his ear buds. You can hear about 17 races in nine days, all the prelims and semis and warm-ups and cool-downs, but you can't feel the effects on your body. You can't sense the fatigue. The muscle drag. The jumpy sleep. The surges of adrenaline needed over and over.
Remember this: There are swimmers who peak once every four years for a single event -- in some cases, half a lap of the pool. Dara Torres, the veteran sensation who captured a silver medal this morning China time did just that, foregoing even the relatively short 100-meter freestyle to concentrate on the 50-meter version.
OK, she's 41 and Phelps is 23. Doesn't matter. The in and out of the pool, the different strokes, different distances, different mentalities, different knowledge of competitors that it takes to win eight different races is simply beyond comprehension.
It's a little like a baseball player pitching to himself, hitting the ball, fielding the grounder and throwing himself out. Phelps has enough strokes to row to China.
There was the tough but stirring opening victory in the 400 individual medley, Phelps' weakest event in which he still set a world record; there was the heart-throbber in the 400 freestyle relay where Lezak saved Phelps' quest with an amazing comeback final lap; there were blowout victories in the 200 freestyle, the 200 butterfly, the 200 IM and the 800 relay; and there was, of course, the most incredible race of all, the 100 butterfly in which Phelps came from next-to-last at the turn to win by a fingertip, one-hundredth of a second over a smack-talking rival, Milorad Cavic.
And, finally, there was today's relay, the last Olympic race in this very fast Water Cube pool, which has yielded so many world records, it might just set one with no swimmers in it.
"What was the most memorable part?" NBC asked Phelps as he was flanked by his relay teammates, Lezak, Peirsol and Brendan Hansen.
"The whole thing ... every race from one to another," Phelps said. "The one-hundredth of a second last night to finishing off with the world record. It's the whole thing. It's a great experience for me and something I'll have forever."
Phelps dove into the Beijing water eight days ago with all these medals on the line. He towels off with a clanging golden collection around his neck. A perfect 8-for-8.
Eight is enough.
He needed Spitz
"It's something that you always want to do and dream of doing and you think you can do," Phelps told NBC after tying Spitz's mark of seven medals. "But I guess it's never really real until you actually do it. The biggest thing I've been thankful for is I've been able to use my imagination. When people said, 'It's impossible, it can't be done,' that's where my imagination came into play."
Spitz was listening to Phelps as he spoke those words. In the past few days, hanging out in the Detroit area with personal and business obligations, Spitz has stepped before the cameras and played the graceful, accepting and now-surpassed icon. That is a somewhat new routine for him. But even the fact that he is in Motown says something. He should have been in China. He was miffed that certain organizations didn't invite him personally (although he has tried to downplay that recently).
It is understandable. Moving over is never easy for legends. Hank Aaron did a decent job of it for Barry Bonds. Russian wrestling legend Alexander Karelin lowered his hands in respect to Rulon Gardner, after the American snapped his 13-year undefeated streak at the Sydney Olympics.
Spitz, 58, has been more enigmatic about surrendering his status. The man who won all that gold in 1972 without a swim cap, a speed suit or a haircut, the man who later flopped in attempts at movies and TV and who now makes investments, corporate endorsements and motivational speeches, recently said this about the comparison between Phelps and him to Sports Illustrated:
"The guy who probably has more of a problem with it is Michael. Michael can't be Michael. Michael's middle name is 'Mark Spitz,' basically."
It is an inelegant thing to say -- and not the only one Spitz has said. And yet, it is not a lie. Without Spitz, there is no Michael Phelps Story. He is just a phenomenal athlete piling up the golds. If you don't think so, tell me who holds the record for most golds by a female swimmer. Or an Olympic archer. Someone does. But if you don't know who -- if it hasn't been sold to you as unbreakable -- you don't care. Phelps actually shares the equally impressive record of most medals in a single Games (eight) with a Soviet gymnast named Alexander Dityatin. Do you even know who Dityatin is?
Spitz, by being so high-profile in Munich 36 years ago, provided a mark that America always could locate. And if it's one thing we love in America, it is new stars trying to eclipse old ones. Spitz gave an invaluable high bar to Phelps. It is the reason Michael can live richly for the rest of his life by simply having his picture taken, and Matt Biondi cannot. Biondi won five swimming gold medals in the 1988 Seoul Olympics and seven overall. Pretty amazing feat, right? A few tenths of a second here or there, and he would have equaled Spitz.
Did you remember him until I mentioned him?
Could you recognize him in a lineup?
No such problem for Phelps now. He is the face of these Beijing Games, the tall, gangly, toothy-smiled guy who was getting roars and gasps when he was introduced for a race.
"It's cool," Phelps told NBC of all the attention he had gotten. "I'm having fun. It's all I wanted to do."
One for the ages
And now he gets to do what he hasn't been able to do more than a week: relax. Let others chronicle his story.
You can start the clock on this amazing journey on Day 1 of the competition in Beijing, but it really begins years ago, when Phelps, as a child, jumped in a Baltimore pool, partly as a way of dealing with his hyper energy and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.
It continues through his first national record at age 10, through his qualifying for the 2000 Sydney Olympics when he was only 15, for his amazing performance in Athens four years later (six golds and two bronzes), for his four years in Ann Arbor swimming for Club Wolverine, for all the unseen early-morning training swims, day after week after month after year, all the way through the media circus in China from Day 1 until the final touch of the wall in the 400 medley today.
Through it all, he handled things with grace. He may not major in speeches (his most common sentence was "I'm at a loss for words"), but he did things right, he was deferential to the Olympians before him, congratulatory of his teammates, and, of course, sweet to his mother, who has been captured on TV almost as much as her son.
Of all the things said about Phelps during this run, perhaps Peirsol said it best, when asked by the media when we might see another one like him.
"I'm not sure when. It might be once in a century you see something like this," he said.
If so, it'll be a memorable 100 years. Phelps stands alone, but he didn't do it alone, and that final image from the Water Cube, Phelps roaring with teammates who shared a common flag and a common dream, is maybe the best snapshot of all.
Eight is enough. The pool is closed. Put your weary feet up, Michael Phelps, and enjoy what you've done.
*****
BEIJING -- If it isn't about representing your country, why do they play the national anthem when you win? It is time, once and for all, to end the hypocrisy over who competes for whom in the Olympics. Athletes who switch countries as if ripping off one sweaty T-shirt and pulling on another have made a sham of the whole process.
There have been many examples of this in Beijing, from basketball players to sailors, but none worse than the other day at the women's beach volleyball competition. Russia was pitted against Georgia, which, of course, also is happening on a far more serious stage, one of war.
Journalists sensing a "see the world through the prism of sport" angle, raced to an event they usually would ignore to chronicle the battle.
And in dramatic fashion, the Georgian pair rallied to defeat the Russians, making the news media salivate with metaphors. But in the post-match news conference, when asked about the issue, the Russian team smirked.
"We were not actually playing against the Georgian team," Natalia Uryadova told the media. "We were playing against our Brazilian friends here."
And she was right. For all their sudden declarations of patriotism, the "Georgian" team consisted of two Brazilians who were offered citizenship only because of their talent. The two women, according to reports, have visited Georgia only twice in their lives.
Going for international hoops
Basketball fans are familiar with the stories of Chris Kaman and Becky Hammon, two Middle Americans who are competing, respectively, for Germany, a country we battled in World War II, and Russia, a sworn enemy for much of the 20th Century. Neither was born there. Neither can sing the national anthem. Both were offered quick citizenship because their talents could help those countries' chances.
And both jumped at it.
"Some people," Hammon said in an interview, "get caught up with the patriotism aspect of it."
Yeah. Some people. Like the ones who invented the games. But today, apparently, the Olympics exist to provide nations for athletes to compete for, not the other way around. Use a grandfather's lineage. Use a pro contract to leverage a passport. Whatever gets you in. Last week, Togo won its first Olympic medal, thanks to a French kayaker who apparently has been to Togo once -- as a child.
And how about 18-year-old Haley Nemra, who recently worked at a pizza parlor in Washington State, but is competing for the Marshall Islands in the 800-meter run. The Marshall Islands?
"I'm so excited they even wanted me," she told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, "especially since I've never lived there."
Athletes like Nemra use loopholes -- in her case, a father who was born in the Marshall Islands -- to get into the games. All you need are the proper papers. And nations, especially small ones, are often quick to provide them for a chance at seeing their colors displayed on the international stage.
Especially if it's on the medal stand.
Everybody seems to do it
But that's exactly where this hypocrisy becomes so ... hypocritical. I asked Bernard Legat, a gold-medal hopeful for the United States in the 1,500 meters, how people in Kenya would feel if he stood on the victory stand this week. After all, he had won medals for that nation, his homeland, in the two previous Olympics before taking American citizenship.
"They might have lot of mixed feelings back in my country seeing the American flag being raised instead of the Kenyan flag," he said. "... For me personally, I don't feel any shame. ... My loyalty is for my country that I'm representing right now."
Which pretty much says it all. Look. Either the Olympics are a unique event in which you have to have been born and raised in a country to compete, or they should just let anyone compete for anyone, like a pro sports league. Right now the lines are so blurred it's as if a painter's palette got soaked and all the colors bled into each other.
There was a photo last week of Hammon, born in South Dakota, holding her hand over her heart amid her new Russian basketball teammates. She was wearing the red Russian uniform, but they were playing "The Star-Spangled Banner."
If that doesn't make you want to shut this whole thing down, nothing will.
*****
BEIJING -- So my big toe is being squeezed between this guy's knuckles, shooting a pain up my body and straight out my ears, when I notice the guy's eyes are shut tight and his head is close to my foot, leaning into it, face calm, as if listening for something, listening very, very carefully, and I realize I may be in the presence of ... a Toe Whisperer
"Sleep ... no good," he says.
 At first I'm thinking, "Sleep? While you're inflicting this kind of torture? Who am I, Torquemada?"
But then he repeats, "Sleep ... no good."
And I realize he is saying I am not sleeping well, a fact you also could guess from my face, which, thanks to jetlag, has the look of a cardboard box that has been shipped through baggage claim to Buenos Aires. But he is not looking at my face. He is listening to my toes. They are speaking to him. My dogs are barking. Well, not so much barking as whimpering, apparently in Cantonese.
"Pain ... back," he says, as he squeezes another toe and I want to throw a brick at him.
"Eyooow! Yes! Yes! I have back pain!"
I am in a large chair in a dim room in a basement-level massage shop, which is open 24 hours -- yes, 24 hours -- and has a sign in English calling itself the Ouijang Healthcare Club, and another sign in Chinese that I am guessing reads, "Physical Torture For Foreign Guests; Reasonable Rates."
I am getting a one-hour foot massage, something that is a growing rage in China. It costs about 20 bucks. I could have had two hours for 40 bucks, but why be greedy with this kind of agony?
"Eeeeeyah!" I scream.
"Knees no good," he says.
A tradition for the ages
I first came to this place the day before, in an effort to investigate the enormous advantage Chinese athletes are experiencing in these Olympic Games -- so far winning twice the gold medals the United States has won -- and while, yes, it might have been more productive to immerse myself in, say, the balance beam, I doubt they'd let me near that. Also, I have an interest in Chinese culture, and what could be more cultural than a Chinese massage parlor?
 Besides, according to my vast research, the first documented descriptions of massage were discovered in China and date to about 3000 B.C. I didn't even know there were human beings in 3000 B.C. But, apparently, there were already plenty of Chinese and they were giving massages, thus explaining the steady nerves they now employ in the Olympics. Traditional Chinese medicine is based on the principle that every illness, pain or ailment can be traced to an imbalance in your "Qi," or life force.
Or, in my case, the little toe.
"YEEEOW!" I scream.
"Mmm ... bad shoulder," he says.
At the Ouijang Healthcare Club there are beautiful women out front calling you in (don't get any ideas) and a front desk with more women, and then you are given a room down a hallway that is draped every few feet with silk curtains.
That's where the romance ends. Next you are assigned a male therapist (in Chinese, the word is, I believe, "bone crusher") who introduces himself only by his number. It occurs to me, too late, that so do prison inmates.
Rearranging your organs
Now, according to its brochure, the Ouijang was inspired by the mythological Chinese doctor Qibo, who learned his craft from a heavenly being and is described in the brochure as "a northerner who was born smart and good at medicament."
Which is where I soon found myself. In a medicament. I interpret that to be where "medicine" meets "predicament." My medicament was that the therapist they assigned me, No. 110, despite my request to be made as fit as a Chinese gymnast, was soon grinding on, of all things, my stomach, pushing it back and forth, elbowing it so deep I thought he'd go through my spleen to tie his shoes. Also, he had one of those sharp-pointed haircuts and harsh cheek-boned faces that reminded me of the prison guards in "The Deer Hunter," only I think those guys were nicer.
"Hrnng hrrnng," he grunted now and then, as if pitying me my sad and pathetic Western medicaments. And he pushed my stomach a foot to the right.
Now, I am not sure, when you go for massage, that your organs should be reassigned to other regions. This is just me. Later he worked on my kidney area and my liver area, and also he put his hands around my eye sockets and pressed in, really hard, and, well, let's just leave it there. I don't want to damage Chinese-American relations any more than necessary.
Suffice it to say that I did not feel Olympian when I departed old No. 110, although I could relate to the Ping-Pong ball that they whack around with such joy in this country. But as I was leaving, one of the women out front said, "You come foot massage. Foot massage. Very good. Tomorrow. Foot massage. You come. Yes. What time?"
(As you can tell, there is no such thing as the low-key sales approach in Beijing. People are as sweet as can be, really, but if they could, they would burst into your hotel room and drag you by your pajamas into their store.)
And I realized, my mistake, apart from the chicken I'd eaten in the Olympic cafeteria, was in choosing the agony of the body, when I should have gone for the agony of da feet.
So I did.
An insightful body part
Here is how that begins: You get in the large chair and are brought a giant wooden bucket filled with scalding hot water. And you plop your feet in that. I know this because my new therapist, No. 19, yelled something like "Nyeh! Nyeh! Gauy!" until I did (it was that or give up state secrets) and instantly my eyes bulged from my head and he grinned and said, "Hot, hot?" (Oh, so NOW he speaks English.)
Anyhow, while you are soaking in the boiling vat, No. 19 works on your back. (This actually feels good, although at one point, and I swear this is true, I felt two hands on my shoulders and then this sharp driving force in my spine and I'm thinking, "That can't be his elbow, unless he's a contortionist," and I realized it was his ... knee. Really. He worked my vertebrae with his knee! No wonder these folks are so good at gymnastics.)
And then, finally, comes the real medicament, the long, blissfully painful, analytical foot massage, in which every metatarsal, phalange, talus, navicular and cuneiform is pounded, pummeled, knuckled and squeezed until you can't see straight.
"God in heaven, no more!" I plead.
"Elbows no good," he says.
By the way, this process of breaking down the entire body through the foot is apparently called reflexology in the United States and other places where they don't win as many gold medals. Here it is called "Royal Foot Massage For One Person, 60 Minutes." At least that's how it's listed on the menu.
And, suddenly, with my head flung backward and my eyes rolled into their sockets, I am finished. And No. 19 scrubs my feet with a hot, wet towel and he listens once more to my toes, which apparently are saying, "We pledge eternal loyalty to the motherland, just, please, we are begging you, leave us alone," and he takes his gear and departs, but not before pointing to his badge and saying, "Ah, ah, OK?" which is either his way of saying, "Come back again and ask for The Toe Whisperer, OK?" or "If you tell anyone what went on here, No. 19 will hunt you down like the scrawny dog you are."
Either way, I leave with a spring in my step, ready to pummel a pommel horse. And I think I get why the Chinese are doing so well at these Games. Compared to surviving a daily foot massage, capturing gold is a piece of cake.
*****
BEIJING -- What did you expect? Any country that would lip-sync out a 7-year-old singer because she wasn't cute enough for the opening ceremony wouldn't hesitate to use underage children to capture gold medals. That's a no-brainer. There is what you see and there is what really goes on in China, and what you see at these Games, the image they project, is as precious as oxygen to the New Emperor of the Planet. Who cares if a gymnast is so young she is, as one critic charged, "missing a tooth"?
"Deng ..." a reporter, according to Reuters, asked a Chinese gymnast who looks small enough to pack in a suitcase, "what Chinese zodiac animal are you?"
"A monkey," Deng responded.
Not only was it the correct chronological answer, it was dead on in the irony department. Every four years, female gymnasts become dueling national Tinker Bells. And while we ignore their sport in between, during the Olympics it's as if our existence hangs in the balance.
China beat the U.S. for gold in the team competition, and it became a drama and a controversy. Tonight, they battle for the individual title of Olympic champion.
Brace yourself. It's barefoot war out there.
A question for the ages
America gasped when our blonde pixies slipped and stumbled. Alicia Sacramone, a 20-year-old from Boston (making her almost a grandma), fell off her balance beam mount and plopped on her rump during the floor exercise. Her teammates, at times, seemed wobbly.
Meanwhile, the Chinese girls, performing before a raucous home crowd, delivered mostly flawless performances and waved with wild exuberance before, presumably, being put down for their naps.
You must turn 16 in the Olympic year to compete in this sport. But honestly. This one girl? Deng Linlin? She's 16 the way I'm 16. All the girls are tiny: She looks up to them. Previous registrations for events suggest several Chinese gymnasts may barely be 14 (even that is hard to believe), but all you need for the Games is a valid passport, and, surprise, the team has those. Who are you going to interrogate? The Chinese president?
Instead, Deng and her teammates were grilled by journalists with: "How did you spend your 15th birthday?" "What are your memories of it?" All that was missing were the hot lights and the cops.
But they won. That's what matters here. If you're looking for outrage, remember that not long ago, with its One Child policy, little girls were in danger of being killed over here or, at the least, shipped out for adoption. Now, in service to the state, they are on a pedestal.
It's a win-or-else mentality
But then, China is not in this for the warm and fuzzies. They don't make commercials here about the joy of trying even if you fail. There is an expression you see -- I spotted it at a museum that featured the urban planning of Beijing -- and it goes "Have no best, only better."
Translation for the Olympics: Gold is the minimum. More gold after that.
It is the reason why, as of this writing, China had more gold medals than anyone, and more than three times as many golds as it had silver or bronze. America may have more total hardware, but second or third place is of little interest here. The Chinese planned for years to specialize in sports that yielded multiple medals and go for gold. East Germany did it. So did the Soviet Union.
Now the Chinese are getting their wish -- no matter what the sacrifice -- and we seem more upset over it than they are. When news broke that the darling of the opening ceremony, a cute-as-a-button, pig-tailed singer who performed "Ode to the Motherland" was actually lip-syncing, because the true singer, a 7-year-old girl, was judged by a high-ranking official as not pretty enough, the Western world was aghast. But not the hosts.
"We combined the perfect voice and the perfect performance," Chen Qigang, the ceremony's chief music director, told Beijing Radio. "The audience will understand that it's in the national interest."
It may sound cruel and robotic. But Luciano Pavarotti lip-synced his Olympic aria in Torino. And Bela Karolyi, the hysterical gymnastics analyst for NBC who blasts the Chinese for age abuse, was accused of similar things when he was the "enemy" coaching Romania, remember?
Tonight, if an American finishes second, we can say she gave her all. And if a Chinese girl wins gold, her government can say "as expected." It's a barefoot war out there, with young women crying and little girls on the firing line. You can forget sometimes, here in Beijing, that sports are supposed to be fun.
Aren't they?
*****
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