China Olympics Trip

I thought it would be fitting in my final post to include a link to one of the four songs that they play incessantly here in Beijing. BOCOG (Beijing Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games) commissioned four songs for the Games. The link below is to Youtube which has one of the videos for these songs. The song is called "Beijing Welcomes You", and without exaggeration, I have probably heard this song over one hundred times in the past two weeks. They play these four songs repeatedly everywhere you go: in the taxis, in the Forbidden City, at the venues, in the lobby of the hotel, on the streets, etc.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvSRkY4eEfM

One of the highlights of the past few days was watching Adam van Koeverden race in the K1 500 metres. Flat water canoe/kayak is a sport that many people in my family have participated in (including my grand-father, my father, my brother and myself) at local and national regattas over the years at the Rideau Canoe Club in Ottawa (and surrounding paddling clubs), so it is a sport that we naturally follow very closely. Below is a video of Adam's race. He lead for 98.9% of the race, and placed second, having missed first place by a mere 0.03 seconds. Nonetheless, Adam should be proud of his silver. Not many Canadians can say they own an Olympic medal, let alone all three Olympic medals (gold, silver and bronze).

Well, my time in China is coming to a close. I have seen many things here in Beijing, and learned a great deal.

Yesterday, my brother returned home to Canada, and my father and I attended at the closing ceremonies.

As with the opening ceremonies, the police and military presence at the closing ceremonies was intense. Below is a video I took of some of the soldiers standing guard outside the stadium. My father and I also took this photo with one of the more pleasant soldiers who was offering to have his picture taken with visitors.

The closing ceremonies were excellent, and a fitting end to a very well run Games. Below is a video of the closing ceremonies with Jimmy Page playing "Whole Lotta Love".

As the title of the post states, to some degree, Beijing 2008 can be summed up with reference to numbers.

As for Canada, the number is 18 -the number of medals we as a country won in Beijing (3 gold, 9 silver and 6 bronze). That is a 50% increase over the 12 medals we won in Athens. Canada's 18 medals equals our total from Barcelona in 1992, and is only surpassed by our success of 22 medals in Atlanta in 1996 (*except for the 44 medals we won at the 1984 Games in Los Angeles that were boycotted by the Eastern Bloc countries). According to the COC, Canada had a 67% conversion rate at the Games, compared to 34% in Athens. The conversion rate is the number of medals that our athletes won in relation to the number of athletes that were projected to finish in the top 5 of their respective events.

Some other random numbers that have caught my attention while I was here:

-China's rate of GDP growth is a staggering 10% per year. However, China's rate of inflation currently stands between 8-9% per year. Obviously, both of these numbers are directly affected by China's stated policy to firmly peg the Yuan to the US Dollar, without allowing their currency to appreciate against the US Dollar. If they let the Yuan freely float on currency markets and it rose against the US Dollar, their exports (i.e. Made in China) would suffer, and that would hurt their rate of GDP growth. However, if their currency did appreciate against the US dollar, that should help with their high rate of inflation and make goods cheaper for their citizens. There are no easy answers for this country as it grapples with growth.

-The cost of a public bus (which I have used here), is 1 Yuan or 15 cents Canadian. If you are a student, the cost is 0.40 Yuan or 6 cents Canadian.

-3 of the 5 largest banks in the world are now Chinese based banks.

-The average income for a family living in Beijing is approximately 2500 Yuan or $382 Canadian.

There is one final number for me to contemplate, and that is my 11 hour flight from Beijing to Vancouver, and after a 5 hour layover, to be followed by a 5 hour flight to Ottawa. I know, even in Beijing, I can hear the violins playing as you read this back in Canada.

Hope you enjoyed the blog from Beijing 2008.

All the best,

Josh