Good thing the IOC killed Beijing’s idea, back in 2000, of Beach Volleyball on Tiananmen Square. It would never have been such a blast. Who could fathom the centerpiece of the 1989 carnage sandboxed for a fortnight a la playa? Who spiked Beijing boss Liu Qi’s tea before he had that idea, for that matter? As twisted and tactless as Liu's proposed site in the Square came off globally when the story first broke, it would not have played any better domestically today (even as memories of the 1989 crackdown fade from many Chinese minds, or never entered them in the first place.) That's because the whole uptightness of the place could never have hosted flouncing beach gals in string bikinis, patriotic odes remixed to techno, and the favored Americans emerging triumphant in a sweep of gold: dude, not in the square. Chairman Mao would have been bummed.
In the end Games organizers picked a substitute locale, deep inside Chaoyang Park. It’s the capital’s biggest, least historic and most artificial park, known almost solely for the bawdy nightlife around it. And so it became an natural destination for the varied elements of beach volleyball: white sand brought in from Hainan island, blaring dance mash-ups spun by DJ Stari (an Athens vet from Austria), and the frat-boyish emcee “Geeter”, of the U.S. pro tour, firing up the crowd.
At each break in the action, on came the aforementioned beach girls, the most shapely of all the cheerleaders at these Games. The rich-poor gap in flesh and moves, from venue to venue, has not been lost on the spectators. It appears clear that the cheerleaders -- unlike the food concessions, security lines, mascots and volunteers -- could not have been centrally planned.
Two days, two U.S. golds, under divergent conditions. The weather Friday, like five or six other days during this distinctly un-Beijing-like August, was postcard-perfect: authentic blue skies, 77 degrees Fahrenheit - 76 on sand – and manageable 73 percent-humidity, with a cooling mist bestowed by blowers in the grandstands.
Todd Rogers and Phil Dalhausser certainly took their time soaking it up. The world champs had received a welcome wakeup call in their opening match, a shock upset to the next-to-last seeds from Latvia. But from there they pretty much coasted. In the final, though, they faced upstarts Marcio Araujo and Fabio Luiz Magalhaes of Brazil, who in the semis had upset compatriots Emanuel Rego and Ricardo Santos, holders from Athens.
The Brazilians pushed the Americans to three sets. Careless American setting and Marcio’s dipping serve helped them claw their way into serious contention. But the Americans finally began to look serious themselves in the decisive set. Dalhausser was a beast, smacking a rash of blocks and spikes. Up 9-1, Rogers flattened out for a dig but couldn’t elevate on the kill and netted it.
No matter. Dalhausser cleaned up for him, stuffing an authoritative block to end the tourney. Before they were garlanded with gold, the ladies in red (red bikinis, red cowboy hats) jiggled forth a 15-minute encore to fill the setup time. This helped keep people around for the medal ceremony. The P.A. announcer (Aussie accent) summoned a stirring round of applause to send them off. “They were the real stars of Beijing 2008,” he opined.
By contrast Thursday’s women’s final was, duh, no day at the beach. It was played under a relentless downpour. But the match was a showdown: China versus USA. Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh came in the top ranked women in the world, but they were up against the top seeds in the tournament: China’s queen of the sand, Wang Jie, and her nimble 19-year-old partner Tian Jia. The storm did not deter the crowd. In fact, the stands appeared fuller than under the splash of sun on Friday. Never underestimate the will of Chinese to witness their athletes take gold. As an esteemed American colleague of mine observed, “It’s more evocative when everyone’s wet.”
Cool-colored rain ponchos were issued (one size fits all), and DJ Stari played a set to uplift us from dampened straits – no Creedence Clearwater Revival. He led off with the Pointer Sisters’ “It’s Raining Men.” Actually, it was raining women. In the presser afterward, Misty took dig at the skimpy swimsuit debate: “This is just another reason why we play in bathing suits.” (See Ashley Harris’s related piece on this topic).
If the U.S. and China could confine their rivalry to beach volleyball, this would be a very fun century indeed. Revving everyone up pre-game was Geeter, who shielded himself from the rain under a kitschy cap with a Manchu queue – the braided-pigtail emblem of Han Chinese submission to Manchu rule under the Qing Dynasty. Geeter tested his lungs and the limits of his Chinese. Geeter: Zhong guoooo (China). Crowd: Jia You! (“Add Fuel,” i.e. “Go!”). Geeter: “USA”. Crowd (almost as loudly): Jia You!.
During warm-ups, Stari played a Mandarin hip-hop number looping in the notes of that old revolutionary number, “The East is Red”. Early in the match, we heard the sped-up dub n’ bass version of another beloved Mao-era classic, “Ode to the Motherland” (the same tune at the center of a lip-synching imbroglio from the Opening Ceremony). The five-starred red Flag is flutters in the wind/ bright is our song of victory... A journalist from a major Chinese sports tabloid expressed mild surprise at what he was witnessing. But people bounced and swiveled to the retro techno as though it was the most natural instinct in the world. Yet more good reasons this wouldn’t, couldn’t, and didn’t go down at the Square.
The sopping crowd was rewarded with a topsy-turvy contest, which matched Chinese spunk and guile versus American strength, size and experience. The score was knotted numerous times in each set, climaxing at 17-17 in the first and 18-18 in the second. But Misty and Kerri gutted out all the pivotal points, and won convincingly in the end.
The home crowd could not be disappointed, though. The Chinese women took the silver and the bronze in the event, another in a run of medal breakthroughs for China in a number of events (including a gold in women’s wind-surfing). Walsh was effusive about China’s progress at the news conference afterwards. “These girls are so young and they’re so good”. Indeed the Chinese volleyball federation’s influx of investment in the softer surface has paid off very fast, and Tian’s a symbol of that. Rather than being plucked from the six-person game, she was drafted virtually straight into beach volleyball duties, as she explained, in part because her home region of Xinjiang, where the majority of residents are of the Muslim Uighur minority group (though she’s Han Chinese), has no provincial squad. What Xinjiang does have, I might add, is sand.
So does a lot of the country, as matter of fact, and we’re not talking about desertification, but rather beaches. The often cheaply developed strips of Hainan still suggest otherwise. But lily-white skin is not the sole standard of beauty in China any more. Tourism to Thailand and Bali is big, and tanning-booth bronze is in with some fast-moving city lasses. Some are predicting beach volleyball fandom will be a boon to the hang way of life.
In a column on Friday in The Beijing News, China Central Television announcer Han Qiaosheng was particularly bullish on the significance of the women’s medal feat: “Our country has a long coastline. As the economy develops at breakneck speeds, the vacation and beach businesses will be an added growth factor in the coastal economy, and beach volleyball will certainly become a attractive slice of the beach business. Beach volleyball will make a giant contribution to the development of the vacation business, and the promotion of health for the masses.”
