German team practices on the asymmetric bars

We've had very little time to prep once here but that really has been a blessing. Many of the major photo agencies have had guys here for a week or more already and they'll be ready to go home long before the Games are over. Don, Vinnie and myself had a walk around the MPC (Main Press Centre) and a few of the nearer stadiums yesterday. The stadiums are magnificent structures but more importantly the Chinese people have been amazing hosts so far. They really are going out of their way to make us feel welcome and try to help in any way they can. Sometimes it doesn't work out, like last night when we thought we where heading out to Beijing's hippest restaurant but ended up at a Tea house instead. Still had fun and you couldn't fault the hotel staff who where just trying to help us out. Funny though. As it turned out we where all enamored by our host's fluid hand movements while she poured tea....who'd have thought that pouring tea could hold your attention with such gravity?

It's a interesting experience walking around the MPC for me. Although I'm no stranger to the environment it's not my natural surroundings the way it was a few years ago and feel somewhat distanced from it all. Meeting up with old friends and campaigners is great, it seemed like I couldn't walk 5 yards without bumping into someone I knew back in the day. But everyone there had a familiar look of my old world. Already the tense, stooped, serious, unshaven look of the journalist or photographers reminds me of the a world that I lived in everyday. Maybe I feel a bit like an anthropologist observing his old tribe after having moved to the next valley.

This evening's the opening ceremonies and for the first time I'm not inside the stadium. By choice, I wanted to shoot from outside and try and capture what's happening with people outside the stadium. I'm hoping for a big party atmosphere but we'll see. When you go into a less controlled situation it can either be great or rubbish, that's the chance you take.

The second floor of the Lao She Tea House

With 24 hours before the start of the Beijing Olympic Games, the photo team from Newsweek ended up with a bit of tea and lots of culture at the Lao She Teahouse in the Qian Men neighborhood of Beijing. Named for Lao She, the writer of China's famous pre-revolutionary play Tea House, it is a multi-level structure that offers private tea rooms on one floor and a show with traditional song and instruments on another floor. Our trip to the teahouse was a bit of a fortunate accident when our concierge at our hotel had mistaken our request for dinner reservations at “Green T House”, an ultra-chic restaurant a colleague recommended, with the famous Lao She Teahouse. Our mistake became apparent after our hosts inability to find our reservation, but nevertheless was very accommodating to us after realizing we were in Beijing for the Olympics.  We walked into the main atrium which was a quaint indoor Chinese garden surrounded by private cubicles where parties could partake in a traditional Chinese tea experience. After we were seated in our plush room, a friendly hostess dressed in Chinese silk dresses offered us a tea menu ranging from lighter teas at reasonable prices to teas at Dom Perignon fare. We made an inexpensive choice of tea accompanied with some shrimp and vegetable dumplings.  Not only was the tea superb but also the presentation by the hostess was exquisite and a show within itself. The silence in our room while my colleagues and I were entranced by the beautiful hand motions and gestures during the tea presentation was occasionally broken by the sound of a aria-type singing in the background which Vincent said sounded like “a cat in heat.” We found ourselves all laughing, including our stoic yet charming tea hostess, while enjoying a bit of Chinese tea and culture heritage.

Check it out:

Lao She Teahouse
Famous Teahouse with Peking Opera
3 Qianmenxi Dajie
Beijing,
100051

Neighborhood: Qian Men

Nearest Train: Qian Men Station

Phone: +84 10 6303 6830

http://www.laosheteahouse.com/

The private tea-tasting room with a fusion

The boys mesmerized by the hostess' tea presentation

After 3 airplanes traveling more than 6,000 miles in nearly 24 hours with layovers, and four in flight movies including a great documentary on the birth of the Magnum photo agency, my colleagues and I arrived safely at the Beijing Airport. Mike Powell, Vincent Laforet, and myself dubbed “The Dream Team” by Newsweek Director of Photography Simon P. Barnett, looked anything but as we shuffled through the airport baggage claim and customs all in dire need of a shower and shave. After the long journey it was a pleasant surprise to first see not only all of our cases and bags arrive without delay, but also have a smooth transition through customs because of our pre-stamped gear list from the Chinese Embassy. Soon thereafter, we were quickly shuffled us onto a bus routed to our hotel, the Foreign Experts Building (yes, this is a hotel, and no you don’t have to be an expert to stay here) by an over-zealous volunteer who kept apologizing for her poor English. Again to our amazement, this went without any hitches and we found ourselves checking into our spacious rooms, grabbing a bite to eat in the convenient 24-hour hotel restaurant, and crashing out with the help of some Ambien.

At 5’7” and 160 lbs, I am a man of smaller than average stature (as the gangly Mike Powell continually likes to remind me) and even I found it hard to get comfortable in either of the mini-twin beds in my room sized for Jackie Chan. After waking up earlier than I wanted to, I decided that the best thing for me to do after sitting in a plane seat for the previous 24 hours was to go for a run. I am on a pretty religious workout regimen, and either run, swim, paddleboard or surf everyday, but usually can only run when I’m on the road if I’m not near a body of water. However, in the first mile of my jog, my heart rate monitor shot up to 170, and I found myself struggling for oxygen. The air was thick with humidity and the smell of exhaust, and I could only imagine how the endurance athletes competing in the marathon run, marathon swim, or triathlon were going to manage in these conditions. I thought all the articles I read about the Beijing air were negative hype, but even growing up in the Los Angeles smog didn’t prepare me for the atmosphere here. I felt like Ben Stiller in Zoolander after being in a coal mine for a day:

Derek Zoolander: [high-pitched cough] ... I think I'm getting the Black Lung, Pop. It's not very well ventilated down there.
Larry Zoolander: For Christ's sake, Derek, you've been down there one day. Talk to me in thirty years!!!

In the four other Olympics I have covered, I arrived on site 5-7 days before the Opening Ceremonies to shoot previews, acclimate, and prepare. With only 48 hours before the commencement, unlike other photographers we had little time to spare to go sightseeing and had to condense all of our prep into a couple of days. After my black-lung incident, I recovered with a decent breakfast in the hotel and went through the super convenient Mag and Bag in our hotel lobby which gets you onto a bus and negates the need to go through security check again and deal with the lines at the Main Press Center. Once again I was impressed with the Chinese making a possibly bad experience into an easy one. After our entry in the MPC, we quickly hit up the Kodak, Canon, and Nikon booths for our fair share of free swag from the Games. Next we went to the Newsweek office to check in with the team, get our Chinese cell phones and pins arranged by the great Al Pryzbylkowski, and get Wi-Fi cards from the communications office. Doing this alone took nearly four hours as it seemed that we would take four steps and run into another photographer, editor, or writer that you just saw last week or haven’t seen since the last Olympics. But that is the great thing about the Olympics, because you make friends with people who live on the other side of the world whom you only get to see every couple of years. After a bunch of hugs, kisses, and bro handshakes, we were feeling a bit peckish and decided to hit up the dining area in the MPC.

Mike Powell frowns upon the bad nutrition