USA vs. China!

Free tickets were given to back in October to go see "a basketball team from Chicago" play a Zhejiang team here in Beilun. We went down to the big stadium near our house and were real excited to see this Chicago team play this regional team. How cool! We had been missing watching some good basketball!

So we walk in, all eyes on us, and we notice that the game has started. Chinese people were in our seats, they refused to get up, and where we wanted to sit, Chinese people refused to let us sit down. We finally get to a spot on the aisle and we see that the court was full of gansta black guys from Chicago. They were AWFUL! They couldn't complete chest passes, they were turning over the ball every time down the court, and the team was full of individual ball hogs that couldn't make one flipping shot! "China" even had a big black guy on their team too! The Zhejiang team was much more classy however, and the crowd was so excited to watch the game. With every shot made, they would clap and cheer. I wondered maybe they didn't quite understand the point of the sport. Too, they shouldn't have been clapping for the mess that Chicago brought to the floor. At one point, these young guys from the USA started a fight with the Chinese, refused to take the Chinese offers of help off the floor, and even went crying off of the floor like those mama boy soccer players. The ultimate display of unsportsmanlike conduct was when one American put himself on the bench and refused to come back into the game.

We had no idea who would win, much less did we care. Before the game ended, we actually DIDN'T know who was winning, because one scoreboard read something different than the other (CLASSIC CHINA)! USA (that's what their jerseys said) ended up ahead (*insert funny story here*), then the game went into overtime. Just when we thought we could go home, we had to stay 5 more minutes. It was like watching a car wreck. No, wait, nope...uhhh, what's going on...Oh, great! USA refuses to come back on the court. FANTASTIC! Game over. No body wins! What a bad way to end a bad game.

*Funny story: A 2-year old little girl comes barreling up the aisle stairs in the stadium. She's flirting with all of the Chinese strangers on her left side, alllll the way up the stairs. She gets to where Desi and I are sitting, looking at the man in front of us, snaps her head to flirt with Desi, realizes it's a scary, big Lao Wai, contorts her face to absolute fear, sccccccrrrrrrreaaaaaaaaaaams...in slow motion the whole side of the stadium turns to look at Desi and me! No parent in sight, she starts barreling DOWN the stairs to get away from us, and strangers are trying to catch her. It's important to note here that all eyes are on us again. I mean all eyes too. Looking back now, I'm surprised the game wasn't paused. They couldn't care less about the kid, and they started pointing and laughing at us. Sooo embarrassing, yet soooo funny. Her dad soon finds the girl and brings her back to us. More screams. Poor thing. Anyway, before the end of this lousy game, an old couple came up to us and gave us their little, old thumbs up in approval of scaring the crap out of this child.

That was the real highlight. Desi also got to take two or three photos with Chinese fans of his. That is how an adventure always ends here.

Photo ops with Desi.

P.S. We never could figure out who these Chicago guys were. Our only guess was that they came from some community college and maybe just started up a team. Some of them looked like famous ballers. We took their pictures out of boredom. Enjoy.

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