Olympic news-short, no photos

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Olympic news
China Daily, the official English newspaper, had a story about water. The Olympic visitors will have drinkable (potable) running water. I wonder how that will be accomplished. No one in China drinks faucet water. Water is drunk hot to be sure it was boiled. My visitors do not want cold water, even on hot days, and none of my guests has ever said 'yes' to the offer of ice in the water.

In Beijing, one day a month is queue day. Everyone in Beijing has to line up for the busses, elevators, etc., on that day. As it gets closer to the actual Olympic date, queue day will probably happen more often, e.g., every week, then every day. Before the Cultural Revolution people used to be very polite and would line up; but the CR destroyed courtesy. At least, that's what I've been told by a few people who lived through the CR. The young people are the worst. They push and shove, not being mean, but they learned that’s how you get on a bus or the elevator.

Remember the blog about Yuntai Mountain. At the bottom of the mountain is a huge parking lot. Tourists leave their busses and gather to get on the Yuntai busses. There are no markers for where to stand. Our guide arranged with one of the officials for us to get an incoming bus. As the bus pulled in, though, a large group of young people (ages 25-35 or so) pushed in front of us, yelling and screaming, and got on the bus. We got the next bus. But we learned that several people have been run over because of the pushing. The officials will be putting in metal bars to force people to line up. (Zig, zag lines like you see at 6 Flags.) The other large tourist places we visited have those forced queue structures.

The other social change that the government is making is to get people to quit spitting. The air pollution is bad in Nanjing and I imagine it's worse in Beijing. I often want to spit because I have a post nasal drip from the smog. Much as I hate to hear the spitting, and the throat clearing noise beforehand, I now know why people do it. To prepare for the Olympics, there's a man in Beijing in charge of changing the social habit. He has a team of workers carrying tissues. They pass out tissues at transportation locations and talk about spitting. Of course, there is a lot in all the newspapers about it and the comedians on TV make fun of spitters. Other social habits have been changed here, so this will probably change too.

Changing social habits reminds me of a quote by Tom Brokaw, former anchor of NBC news, from the 2007 Skidmore College graduation ceremony, “The real world is not high school. The real world is not college. The real world is more like junior high. You will encounter the same adolescent behavior. That is your burden. We all share it with you.”

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Comments

[Gailey]

The pushing info reminds me of other places I've been... I do think Brokaw is correct, the world is like Jr. high!!!