Look, I dislike the IOC as much as the next rational person, and think the Olympics are a form of corporate imperialism, but the facts don’t preclude me from admitting my feelings: the 2008 Olympics in Beijing were a lot of fun, and I’m kinda excited for it to come back. It’ll be in 2022, when most of us will be DEAD, and it’s the Winter Olympics, which Sochi probably ruined for everybody, but, you know, whatever. Beijing is getting the Olympics!

That’s right, after months of (half-hearted) lobbying, Beijing beat Almaty, Kazakhstan in a vote that was announced this evening. It was 44-40, which is really close. The Kazakhs really wanted this! I wonder if they’ll get their bribe money back.

Prepare to see a lot of stories in the coming days about how you have to be a bit authoritarian to get the Olympics (to say nothing of want it), and about how much it’ll cost this country, etc. I’m not going to preemptively discount any of those pieces, because it’s true, the Olympics as a concept is shit, and only worse in practical terms: it can only be, after all, as not-corrupt as its most corrupt member, which means it’s really fucking corrupt. But you know what else is true? Beijing was never better than 2008 when it was under international scrutiny, and we can reasonably hope that it’ll be great again for 2022. Olympics! It’s going to be fun.

POSTSCRIPT:

Time to meet the official Nanjing 2014 Youth Olympics mascot – Nanjing LeLe, the meaty-tongued phallus.

According to the organizers of this August event, one of his favorite foods is duck blood and vermicelli soup, he’s a Sagittarius with Type O blood, and his least favorite thing to do is “play alone.”

From the Youth Olympic’s Website:

The mascot of Nanjing 2014 “NANJINGLELE” derives from a prestigious specialty of the host city, known as the “riverstone.” The graphic design of the mascot takes an imitation of the typical shape and appearance of this stone but in a creative and artistic way in purpose of catering to the youth’s taste, and meanwhile, highlights the colors from the emblem’s palette to achieve good congruity with the other brand elements.

Leaves me to wonder how foul China’s rivers have to be to birth four-limbed, tie-dyed stones. And If this does seriously cater to the “youth’s tastes,” I’d say our future is pretty seriously fucked.

Look:

God save us all. This is why background checks on firearms should be mandatory. Who in their right mind would give a shotgun to this speed freak? Just look at those electric eyes and that meth mouth, not a single tooth saved from rot. My guess is he’s looking to crank up some Skynyrd and beat down the stepkids. This is one scary sausage.

And here he (it?) is with his trusted steed and six-shooter, off to the Kashgar Corral. I’m your Huckleberry:

B&E Lele. Fu’erdai, check your Ferraris. He’s up to nefarious shit with this crowbar:

Swiiiiiiish:

On his Special Schwinn:

His Heisman trophy better be sequined:

Nanjing is the host city of the International Olympic Committee’s Second Summer Youth Olympic Games, August 16-28. The slogan is “Share the Games, Share our Dreams, Share the LSD.”

Ready for another Olympics, Beijingers? This city’s joint bid with Zhangjiakou (in neighboring Hebei province) for the 2022 Winter Games has come a long way since it was announced last November. Back then, we called Beijing’s chances “slim,” but look what’s happened in the months since:

Krakow, Poland: WITHDRAWN, just yesterday

Stockholm, Sweden: WITHDRAWN in January

Oslo, Norway: falling apart

Lviv, Ukraine: dealing with more important things

Deadspin’s Barry Petchesky also notes that citizens in Munich, Germany and Davos/St. Moritz, Switzerland have rejected the Olympics, and concludes:

With the Sochi games raising the bar to an absurd $51 billion, hosting the Olympics no longer looks like a winning proposition. The failed and aborted 2022 candidacies all have one thing in common: When actual citizens are allowed to have a say, they say they don’t want the Olympics.

That’s not completely accurate. Citizens in China do want the Games, from what I can tell — because tourism and general nationalism (the 21st century belongs to this country, you might have heard) – and they just might get it because everyone else is either too jaded by the International Olympic Committee to play its game or too poor and can’t afford to.

Of the six cities that submitted bids, only two are left. What’s another few billion dollars for Beijing after the $40 billion this country spent for the 2008 Games?

Of course, there is one final obstacle: that other standing, strong bid, from Almaty, Kazakhstan. “It will not be a big budget,” says Andrey Kryukov, executive board member of the Kazakh Olympic Committee.

Your choice, IOC.

Check out pictures of sad former Winter Olympic venues here. Stay strong, luge track:

(Top image credit Kevin Reitz)

For the last 38 years of Hong Kong’s existence as a British colony, a very British-looking flag flew over the city, featuring a cartoonish lion/dragon insignia and some rather ugly red text (HONG KONG) on yellow background. That flag was retired on July 1, 1997, after the handover ceremony, in favor of a red flag featuring a white five-petal bauhinia flower.

Someone in Sochi didn’t get the memo.

That screenshot was tweeted by Tom Grundy via @HKCitizenNews. We’re not sure if it completely deserves the #SochiProblems hashtag because who knows who was working in the Olympics TV production truck at the time, but it raises the same fundamental questions: How is it that anyone still has the old British Hong Kong flag on file? And what Google search would possibly not turn up the new red-and-white flag?

You know what… #BritishProblems. Just throw it into the pile.

UPDATE, 2/11, 12:27 am: Hong Wrong reports, “However, TVB and Oriental Daily reported that the image was – in fact – photoshopped…” Apologies to Sochi. #BritishProblems can stay.

China is officially (politically, that is) an enthusiastic supporter of the Sochi Games, which is why Chinese athletes walked out at the opening ceremony waving both Chinese and Russian flags. To no one’s surprise, then, the pro-government media here is peeved by all the negative coverage in “Western media.” Speaking for them all, Global Times has just published an editorial headlined, “Booing Sochi only shows West’s bigotry.”

Sure, one tires, especially if one has lived abroad, of first-world complaints — particularly from media types who are prone to narrative-following and will invariably proclaim the Games a “surprising” success in about two weeks — but Global Times, per usual, takes it a bit too far, into sourceless sensationalism, confused truthiness, and outright lies:

Some say it is the journalistic nature of the Western media to be critical and ready to challenge authorities. But the excuse sounds so hypocritical when you look at the Western coverage of the 2012 London Summer Games, which was much more friendly and festive.

Critics called various aspects of the London Olympics a “waste of money,” “humiliating shambles,” and “disconcerting.” (That last one was from Mitt Romney.) Then they slammed the logo and mascots. The organizers were called a “closed oligarchy” — by the London Assembly! BBC published “10 reasons some people will dread the Olympics.” Ten days before the opening ceremony, the Guardian published this so-very-British headline (because it’s sarcastic) above a picture of a torchbearer grimacing in a downpour. During the Games, there was a protest featuring topless women. A year after the Olympics, Oliver Wainwright of the Guardian wrote, “At every junction of this roaring A-road sprouts a steroidal tower, each clad in ever more lurid colours, transforming the street into a gauntlet of competing ambitions. Looming over adjacent council estates, these brash totems are a monument to Olympian greed.” You know who cheered the London Olympics though? “The London Olympic Games were hailed a success by visiting journalists,” wrote Xinhua.

Excerpting a bit more from Global Times:

Since the ending of the Cold War, only the 2008 Beijing Games and the ongoing Sochi Games have experienced such criticism. It is surprising how much the Western media stick to their bigotry.

The “Western media,” if I may say, have gone easy on Russia. Most of the negative stories I’ve seen are about toilets, infrastructure, stray dogs, and un-homely hotel rooms. Very few articles have mentioned the Russian government’s targeting, sometimes murder, of journalists, or their systemic, massive corruption that is objectively much worse than China’s, or their lack of social cohesion, or the environment, or NSA-level surveillance… About as negative as the media has agreed to go is a snarky remark here and there about Vladimir Putin’s homophobia.

Russia is much smaller and weaker than the Soviet Union. No matter how “tough” Putin is, today’s Russia will no longer fall back to the Stalin or Brezhnev times. But the West’s endless criticism of Russia under Putin’s rule appears no different from the elder generations’ stances against the Kremlin decades ago.

Okay Global Times, if you’re such a tough guy, you tell Putin that he’s not so tough.

The aggressive political strategy of the Soviet Union used to make the West restless. But today, strategically the West has nothing to worry about besides fighting terrorism. The ruthless pressuring of Russia and the alert against China are pushing the West to the verge of another round of confrontation. Enthusiasts for a “New Cold War” could jeopardize a historic chance for a better world.

And so on.

But this post isn’t about yet another crazy Global Times editorial, because that’s low-hanging fruit. This post is about a comment by topolcats.

Before you read it, please understand how comment sections on pro-government editorials work: they often are frequented by harems of fifty-centers — people who get paid to post pro-China comments on stories — presumably because these people know their employers will come across them. Usually, one commenter will post something, and then someone else will try to one-up, and then someone else. But our man (or woman), topolcats, decided to do the work of four people by writing a four-paragraph paean to… the Russian resolve? It’s anti-West, so it has to be pro-China. It’s also batshit crazy.

The West since the time of the Czars have been trying to rape,control and plunder Russia, USSR, Russia from Napoleon to Clinton & beyond!!
These fascists will never stop but will never win either if history is an indication.

Someone should tap Bill Clinton on the shoulder and tell him he was just compared to Napoleon.

After 1917 Europe and the united states attacked the USSR. But only after 3 years,Trotsky defeated the combined forces of western Europe & America and then came the Nazis. The dream of Hitler and crew was to conquer western Europe, destroy Russia and hook up with the Japanese in Asia and jointly control the world. Yet again Russia/USSR destroyed the german Anti Christ.

Russians suffered greatly during World War II, and they should be rightfully proud of their victory over Nazi Germany. But only someone willfully ideological — i.e. the worst type of person — would confuse the people’s victory with the government’s, since Stalin’s five-year purge of everybody was interrupted only by the war effort. Stalin then rewarded his countrymen’s bravery and sacrifice with further purges until his death, leaving behind a brutal police state whose legacy survives today.

In Archangel lies the graves of the first Americans ever killed in the western invasion of 1917…standing as a monument to anyone (America), who dares try to invade again will be destroyed not to mention the million of graves of Italians and Germans fascist soldiers killed in the great patriotic war.

Don’t invade Russia. Especially during winter.

Today Russia still stands as a country without debt and armed to the teeth ready to do battle with the forces of evil to protect mankind whenever called for!…America,Europe cannot stand that two primary countries, China and Russia stands in the way of world domination…if we are lucky the spiritual guardians of mankind will always allow Russia & China to defeat American imperialism!

I like this, actually. Spiritual guardians of mankind. I mean, slightly theosophical, but poetic. To think of it, a little too poetic for the comment section of a Global Times article. So now we know: fifty-centers are actually unemployed Chinese writers. All of a sudden, I have a newfound respect for the work they do.

The first event of the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia begins in about twelve hours, with the opening ceremony happening on Friday at 8 pm Sochi time (midnight for those in China). By now you’ve probably already decided to watch on the decent chance that it becomes a delightful disaster, but lost in all the stories about stray dogs, toilets, substandard facilities and Potemkin villages is the fact that sports will be on display. China is seeking to improve on its performance from Vancouver 2010, at which it tied its all-time high with 22 medals and set a new team record with five gold. Here’s your guide on five things to watch for out of its 139-member Sochi delegation.

1. Can Fan Kexin be a successful stunt double?

Short track speed skater Wang Meng is China’s most decorated Winter Olympian and was considered as near a certainty in the 500m event in Sochi as you’ll find in the sport. But it’s a dangerous discipline, and a collision with an as-yet-unnamed (and no doubt very unpopular) male teammate in training just a few weeks ago left her with a double ankle fracture and her Olympic dreams in tatters. China will now hope that Wang’s back-up, Fan Kexin, can keep the gold medal in Chinese hands: Fan has the talent to win in what is now a wide open race, but she’ll face fierce competition from a South Korean trio that includes 17-year-old Shim Suk-Hee as well as contenders from Italy and Canada.

Heats, February 10; final, February 13 

2. Will China clean up in the aerials?

While China is a bona fide Summer Olympics power, a 7th place finish in Vancouver four years ago was the only time China has placed in the top 10 in nine attempts. But well respected stats agency Infostrada Sports is predicting that China will sweep the medals in the freestyle skiing aerials events for both the men and the women.

For those unfamiliar with this sport, it’s essentially gymnastics on skis, and China has successfully transplanted a number of former gymnasts to create a formidable team to rival its diving and table tennis outfits at the Summer Olympics.

Of all the names to watch in Sochi, Xu Mengtao will be desperate to banish the memories of four years ago in Vancouver: she led after the first of two jumps in the final but couldn’t stick the landing on her second jump and finished 6th. The event is now an elimination final instead of a combined points score as before, and that could benefit the consistency of the Chinese team.

Women, February 14; men, February 17

3. Will China retain its figure skating title?

In Vancouver, Shen Xue and Zhao Hongbo – a couple both on and off the ice – broke decades of Russian and Soviet dominance to win gold in the pairs’ figure skating event. Pang Qing and Tong Jian – who are also romantically involved – won silver after setting a new world record in the free skate element of the event. But they were inevitably overshadowed at every turn by their teammates Shen and Zhao. The golden couple has now retired, but Zhao is one of the national team coaches and will be doing all he can to help Pang and Tong move up from silver to gold. Tong, incidentally, is the oldest member of the Chinese team at 34, and will carry the Chinese flag at Friday’s opening ceremony.

Pairs, February 11-12 

4. Can Jiangsu province win any medals for China?

The vast majority of China’s 66 athletes hail from northeastern Heilongjiang province, and the vast majority of those come from the frozen city of Harbin. A few stragglers come from Jilin and Liaoning – the other two provinces in the top right corner of the country – while just two athletes come from Jiangsu, located on the east coast just above Shanghai. And that’s it. The other 29 provinces, municipalities, autonomous regions, SARs and Otherwise Clumsily Named Areas account for a combined total of zero athletes.

Those two from Jiangsu? Qi Guangpu, who has a good chance in the men’s aerials, and Ning Qin, China’s sole moguls competitor, who spends most of her time training in Whistler, Canada, but is a long shot for a medal at best.

Women’s moguls: qualification, February 6; finals, February 8

5. Who will thank the motherland?

And, more interestingly, who will not? Historically, Chinese athletes are expected to thank the motherland above all else – including their own mother. Short track speed skater Zhou Yang was criticized by China’s deputy sports minister for thanking her parents but not her country after winning gold in Vancouver four years ago. Don’t be surprised if she again chooses mother over motherland if she wins in Sochi.

Similarly, Li Na’s speech after winning the Australian Open last month trended on Twitter as #funniestspeechever, though naturally some on Weibo pointed out that while she thanked her coach, husband, agent, sponsors, fans and pet goldfish Nemo, she failed to mention her country. Reaction online in China was largely positive, though, with only the usual state media suspects banging the China Is Fully Responsible For All Victories drum, so attitudes have definitely come a long way. But that won’t stop the controversy should a Chinese athlete show less than the obligatory 110% patriotism. And God help them if they thank one of China’s 10 foreign coaches instead…

Mark blogs at China Sports Insider. Follow him on Twitter @DreyerChina

China wants the Olympics again. Beijing and Zhangjiakou submitted a formal nomination letter to the IOC on Sunday to joint host the 2022 Winter Olympics, according to Xinhua. If chosen — a decision should come in 2015 — Beijing would be the first city to have hosted a Summer and Winter Games.

Before we talk about the bid’s chances (spoiler: slim), let me say I’ve been to Zhangjiakou several times. It’s the laojia for my aunt and uncle, a charming city with a surprising amount of history, having served as one of the northernmost outposts against invading armies. Remnants of that history are well preserved beside a small hill that offers a nice, short hike. I took the above picture from atop that hill.

The city also happens to be small, underdeveloped, and in Hebei province. Nothing against Hebei, I’d hate to let prejudice beget jokes, but the last two times we wrote about Hebei, it was about killing Tibetan Mastiffs and fighting handicapped beggars. If we go a bit further back in the archives, there was this:

Could you find two worse cities in the wintertime, when coal usage is at its highest and the trees are barest and most helpless against the northern sands, to host an international event? People have acknowledged as much. Via SCMP:

“In the evaluation process, environment is a very important factor to be taken into account. Beijing must redouble its efforts to clean up its air if it wants to host the Games,” said Tu [Xiaokun, a basketball referee who served on the Beijing Games organising committee].

The bid will likely fail not for these reasons. Asia is getting the Games in 2018 and 2020 (Pyeongchang, South Korea in the winter, Tokyo in the summer), so there’s almost no chance it’ll get it again in 2022. Still, we’ll be rooting for Beijing and Zhangjiakou. The last time the Olympics were here, we saw a party — to say nothing of civility and cleanliness — that none of us will soon forget.

Global Times found a “scholar living in Japan” to write about Japan’s misplaced “Olympics fever” this week, presumably because Global Times writing that editorial itself would have been a bit too ironic, a bit too laughable for even Global Times. Quick excerpt from Jiao Kun’s piece, published yesterday:

Hosting the Olympics is generally believed to bring about positive effects and in particular spur economic development. It needs an enormous amount of investment in infrastructure including all sorts of sports venues as well as operational expenses, several times more than the proceeds gained from television relay and commercial sponsorship. The direct investment will create a good deal of indirect demand, thus stimulating the economic system as a whole and creating more jobs.

However, this view does not hold water, because the investment in organizing the Olympics is, in the final analysis, an input that cannot simply be translated into output.

Part of the investment is sponsored by enterprises and the rest comes from the fiscal budget of the government of the host country, so the Olympic Games, like other public services including unemployment insurance and investment in education, actually reallocates social resources instead of creating wealth.

That last line, the relocation of social resources bit, could well have been about Beijing’s efforts to dust itself off in the lead-up to the 2008 Games. And since we’re on the subject of Olympics fever, can I bring this up?

The fact is, the Olympics are always losing propositions for host countries in terms of money. And yet, despite surely knowing this, Beijing made two bids to grab the Games, both times making it to the final round of voting (in other words, the maximum amount of bribes were given). It was a price they were more than happy to pay, and the reason’s simple: it’s not about recouping every penny of investment, because that money buys a city the chance to stand front and center in the biggest pageant on Earth. How we arrive at this quadrennial event — the backdoor dealings, the corruption, the bureaucratic pissing contests – may repulse us and inspire withering editorials, but the essence of the event, the goal of it, has always remained pure. Unsurprisingly, it’s this aspect of the Games that host countries seize on and use to boast of their culture (London’s Anglocentric opening ceremony), or confidence (a “coming-out party,” in the case of China), or history (Greece), or beauty, or whatever.

Perhaps that’s why Jiao Kun’s feeling a little uneasy. Why Xinhua, subliminally, wished Istanbul had won the rights to the 2020 Games. A close rival just across a narrow sea is preparing to show off its thousands of years of history and culture. Global Times would be downright negligent to its nationalistic base if it didn’t at least try to dampen Japan’s enthusiasm, hypocrisy be damned.

Japanese Olympics fever may be misplaced (Global Times)

ISTANBUL WINS RIGHT TO HOST 2020 SUMMER OLYMPICS, reads the Xinhua headline on a September 8 edition of Changsha Evening News. There’s just one big, huge, obvious mistake:

Tokyo is hosting the 2020 Summer Olympics.

Oops. Regret the error?

A few things are happening here. First, it’s clear that Changsha Evening News feels no need to do fact-checking, because why would it ever fact-check Xinhua, the first and last source of all news in this country? Xinhua could send out a news blast that US missiles veered off course and landed in London, and at least one Chinese paper would splash US BOMBS BRITAIN across its front page.

Second: of all the cities to get wrong, it had to be Tokyo, didn’t it? The capital city of the country that just happens to have longstanding problems — which you might describe, depending on who you are, as “friction,” “acrimony,” or “hatred” — with China.

Finally, Xinhua doesn’t regret shit. It hasn’t acknowledged its error, according to Epoch Times. But it’s not as if people haven’t noticed. A couple of netizen reactions, via Epoch Times:

NJ-Peng comments “Isn’t this ‘speading rumors?’ Isn’t there a serious impact? They [the authorities] arrest [netizens] for ‘spreading rumors,’ regardless of whether or not you apologize. So will the police do anything? Can [the government] ensure equality before the law?”

Zhang Ming, Professor at People’s University of China’s Institute of International Relations, commented on Weibo, “When officials announce mistaken information, they should be held accountable unconditionally. When, however, the officials have no credibility and almost all information is false, then the system won’t question the officials’ lies and rumors.”

Changsha Evening News recalled thousands of newspapers due to Xinhua’s blunder, reportedly at its own expense. Its deputy chief editor wrote on Sina Weibo that Xinhua should “reflect on the mistake,” as SCMP phrases it. We don’t even care if that translation’s faulty, because just picturing that — Xinhua, reflecting on its mistake, what its editorialists have beseeched of countless others — is too rich.

SCMP continues:

According to people.com.cn, the website of People’s Daily, Xinhua sent a flash at 3.10am saying Istanbul had won the right to host the 2020 Games. A state-owned television station also initially misreported the win.

No one watches the watchers. Xinhua is everything that is wrong with journalism in this country, if you haven’t already figured that out from all our coverage of Xinhua’s fetish for porn and camel toes, bum cracks and floppy dicks, etc.

Xinhua Mistakenly Claims Istanbul as Host for 2020 Olympics (Epoch Times)

Much hubbub surrounded 19-year-old weightlifter Zulfiya Chinshanlo’s gold-medal win in London this summer, as it wasn’t exactly clear which country she was actually from, Kazakhstan or China. Both nations claimed her — “Chinshanlo’s Olympic page cites her birthplace as Almaty, Kazakhstan, and claims she speaks both Russian and Kazakh,” according to The Atlantic, while Xinhua stated (paraphrased by CNN) that “she was born and raised in Yongzhou, Hunan province under the Chinese name Zhao Changling,” and that she was merely on “loan” to Kazakhstan.

What’s past is past – Chinshanlo’s win will forever count toward Kazakstan’s medal tally — but for the foreseeable future, she will be competing for China under her birth name. (That the pinyin of her given name is remarkably similar to “changeling” will not go unnoticed here.) On Monday, Zhao sat in at a Changsha, Hunan province public security bureau to have her picture taken for a new ID (above), one that will restore her nationality, fully, to Chinese.

“I’m entirely Chinese now,” she said, as reported by Hunan’s Xiaoxiang Morning Post. The paperwork hasn’t been processed yet, but it’s only a formality now, as gold medalists are precious commodities here. If only Mark Kitto’s magazine had won Olympic gold, he’d totally have gotten his wish to become Chinese as well.

Zhao said her Kazakhstan name was given to her by her coach, for the sake of convenience. “I still like people to call me ‘Zhao Changling,’” she said.

And one more almost-too-perfect soundbite: “It feels good to come home, because I can again be with teacher He (Yicheng) and coach Zhou (Jihong),” Zhao said. “More importantly, I can finally eat Hunan cuisine whenever I want.”

Ah, the life of a pampered Olympic star. The only question that remains is: will she feel so welcomed after her career ends?

For the record, Zhao was born in Yongzhou, Hunan province.

By Beijing Cream

Let’s talk about journalism and the Olympics. No, not the complete indifference given to China’s 96 Paralympics gold medals, but a more familiar problem: plagiarism. A former senior journalist at the Global Times is probably still wondering what the hell hit her, after being caught lifting material and inventing quotes – including a fake interview with London mayor Boris Johnson – during last month’s Games.

The sorry saga began with the decision to send GT staffer Zhao Ran – who was in charge of the paper’s “sports desk” – to London to cover the Olympics exclusively for the paper. Despite once having actual, English-speaking (and eager) Londoners on their Beijing staff, as well as at least one Chinese-British freelancer on hand in the British capital, it was felt that Zhao’s qualifications – she’s in her mid-20s and spent two years studying something in the UK – made her ideal for the job.

And lo, the decision duly backfired in embarrassing fashion. On July 27, Tania Branigan of the Guardian filed this:

Chinese sports officials have played down their medal chances in London, despite topping the table at the last Games in Beijing.

China is fielding a streamlined London team with 396 athletes, including 29 gold medallists from the Beijing Games in 2008. The 171 men and 225 women are to compete in 212 disciplines in 23 sports.

“It won’t be a Beijing do-over for us,” said Xiao Tian, the deputy chef de mission of the Chinese Olympic delegation. “We face unprecedented difficulties in catching up with the gold haul of Beijing without home advantage.”

Later the same day, Zhao Ran wrote (by a loose definition of the word, but good enough for GT to edit, post and, last we saw, still have on its website):

China’s sports officials downplayed expectations of Team China’s performance at the upcoming London Olympic Games, as the country’s sports fan worry China might not be able to again lead the gold medal tally.

China is fielding a streamlined London team with 396 athletes, including 29 gold medalists from the Beijing Games in 2008. The 171 men and 225 women are to compete in 212 disciplines in 23 sports.

“It won’t be a Beijing do-over for us. We face unprecedented difficulties in catching up with the gold haul of Beijing without home advantage,” Xiao Tian, deputy chef de mission of the Chinese Olympic delegation, told a press briefing.

The article included an interview with a “sports reporter from The Salt Lake Tribune” and another reporter called simply “Kamesh,” who was said to work at The Hindu. (Did she mean Ananth Krishnan? Who knows.)

In another article from August 5  – entitled, ironically enough, “Games of Errors” – Zhao tackled a variety of organizational mistakes that supposedly marred the early stages of the Games, and interviewed, for some reason, “25-year-old Indian undergraduate student Jaime Gornsztejn.” The decidedly non-Asian sounding name is shared by a middle-aged financier living in London.

In other articles such as “Game Time” – which, if you search for it using the words  “Zhao Ran” on the GT website, now brings up a list of recent unrelated news articles but can still actually be found here – Zhao took an alternative approach to basic details like facts and quotes.

Here, for example, is Joseph Bailey, a 31-year-old “Internet novelist” who says of the Games: “I get up, have breakfast and chat with friends online as usual. The only difference for me is that I can collect more stories for my writing… I can handle the inconvenience; everything will be back on track after three weeks.” Indeed! But readers eager to reap the fruits of Bailey’s Olympics anecdote-gathering may have to wait a little longer. Or a lot longer. So far as anyone knows, “Joseph Bailey” does not exist — try searching the Internet for this “Internet writer.”

Other dubious interviews include a supermarket employee called “David Beard” and “Susan Whipple,” the latter a London resident who felt moved to remark “Although we don’t have tickets to the events, we do feel it’s more interesting to watch the games in London to feel the Games in the air.”

None of this might have been queried had not Zhao upped the stakes by “speaking” to idiosyncratic London mayor Boris Johnson. “The Tube has performed pretty well so far, buses are running more or less to time and people are hospitable,” Johnson told the Global Times. The same remarks appear word for word in a column Johnson wrote for The Telegraph on July 29. In the GT article, Zhao claimed that Johnson made the comments “during an exclusive interview” – so exclusive, in fact, that it appears even Johnson himself was not involved.

The rambling Johnson is famous for his embodiment of a Colonel Blimp persona, a style that’s distinctive for its bumbling pomp. In the raw draft of the article that went to the  GT copyeditor’s desk, Johnson is quoted as saying, “It is true that some people want to make a killing during the Games and we do receive a few criminal reports for steal and robber, but that’s normal and during the past four years, the criminal rate was declined continuously.” Not exactly Boris’s voice. This partly mangled phrase was nevertheless polished and duly published:

“It’s true that there have been a few cases of theft, but that’s normal,” said Johnson. “The crime rate has actually dropped significantly over the last four years,” he noted.

Though such matters are hardly a scandal to the GT management, the charade finally became impossible to ignore after the reporter submitted another piece, lifted almost entirely from an article in the London Evening Standard about, of all things, Olympic pin collecting, albeit with the bits from the Evening Standard piece placed – in quotation marks – in the mouths of supposed “interviewees,” including “Belgian collector Jamie McGill.” An keen-eyed foreign editor spotted the haphazard veering between language styles, which finally led to a scouring of Zhou’s previous pieces.

After a certain amount of hemming and hawing – the original plan was to hit her with a suspension of salary for one month – the Global Times editors did the right thing and canned Zhou… but not before pinning the offending pieces to a board in the office, hanging their staff member out to dry like a thief in a medieval gibbet. (We sent an email last night to GT’s “officer for communications and cooperation” for comment and will update if we receive a reply. See update below.)

Her apparent protests that “I expected foreign editors to improve my pieces” cut little ice with a pissed-off management (another reporter was fined at the same time for ripping off large chunks of an Economic Observer piece without due acknowledgement; in regards to that incident, GT previously emailed us, “The Global Times takes plagiarism in any form very seriously. Every editorial staff member has been informed on many different occasions of our citation rules against plagiarism”).

As mentioned, plagiarism is as rife in Chinese papers as opinion pieces by wingnut academics. This is mostly thanks to the complete lack of attention given to this sin at most universities, where even senior professors think nothing of putting together papers stolen from colleagues or compiled by teams of graduate students from Wikipedia and Google Translate.

This isn’t the first time GT has had plagiarism problems, either; one US “commentator” was discovered to be translating articles from US papers into Chinese, sending them to the paper, then having them translated back into English. That’s one of the chief recourses of Chinese journalists with a little foreign-language savvy, since it usually avoids the easy Google search that’s caught so many other plagiarists. One supposes it’s a good thing that the newspaper’s management is, at last, taking this problem seriously and adopting a “zero-tolerance” policy – though don’t expect a coherent and cohesive strategy for eliminating plagiarism to emerge anytime soon.

Update, 7:16 pm: Global Times just replied via email: “The Global Times enforces a strict zero-tolerance policy toward plagiarism. The editorial board decided to immediately terminate Zhao Ran’s employment contract after she was found plagiarizing in some of her stories. We do thank you for your continuous efforts in making the Global Times more competitive in the market. And we believe with readers like you the Global Times can always do better.”

UPDATE, 9/27, 11:07 am: The offending stories have been removed from Global Times’s website, but the cached pages can be found here: Story 1 – Guardian, Story 2 – Game of Errors, Story 3 – Boris.

Something called the “National Peasants’ Games” — the 7th edition, in fact — is currently being held in Nanyang, Henan province, which People’s Daily Online describes as a “quadrennial multi- “in which sport event… in which competitors from among the country’s rural residents take part in sports, both conventional, including basketball, athletics, table tennis, shooting, xiangqi (Chinese chess) and Tai Chi, and folk sports and games, such as wushu, tire pushing, food-carrying, rice planting, kite flying, jianzi (kick shuttlecock) and tug of war.” It’s all about “fun,” People’s Daily tells us.

But a slightly different picture emerges when one reads longtime USA Today China correspondent Calum MacLeod’s story:

Nanyang made way for a 35,000-seat arena and other facilities by knocking down the homes of over 50,000 people in Wancheng district, mostly peasants according to the local government website.

Can’t be bothered by that though, nor the fact that, according to MacLeod’s article, “anger is simmering” because “rapid urbanization has eaten up acres of farmland.

Who cares, right? As People’s Daily tells us, “the games emphasize recreation more than results.” Recreation, you hear? Fun!

I have just one question though. Does this look fun to you?

Who doesn’t love backbreaking labor?

Buckets of fun.

For best results, completely shut off your mind and accept the fun you’re having.

Sad are those misfortunate souls who never know the special fun of bag-hauling.

The man second from the left in the back row is having the most fun of them all.

Too much fun for one man or woman to take, honestly.

Just like that, the Olympics are over. As we look back, here’s our list of the 10 most noteworthy China-related stories from the London Games.

1. Liu Xiang fails. Crumbled in a heap. CCTV commentators weren’t sure how to react, so one of them cried. Sports broadcast journalism has rarely been lower.

2. Ye Shiwen is too good to be believed. Not long after 16-year-old Ye Shiwen defeated American champion Elizabeth Beisel in the 400-meter individual medley with a stunning final leg, American swim coach John Leonard went off on a rant to the Guardian about how Ye cheated. Leonard’s pontification tainted Ye’s win and reminded us that all feel-good stories have a flip side, and that flip side is a green-eyed monster of cynicism and self-interest.

3. Sun Yang is damn good, period. The gold medalist in the men’s 400-meter freestyle (Olympic record holder) and 1,500-meter freestyle (world record holder) more than deserves this GIF.

4. Shuttlers Yu Yang and Wang Xiaoli, among others, disqualified for intentionally trying to lose. We’ve said more than enough on this topic already. Start here if you need to catch up. If you’d like to add your voice to the conversation, our post here‘s the place to go.

5. Gymnast Chen Yibing, the “king of rings,” loses after his perfect rings routine, somehow. After being edged by Brazil’s Arthur Nabarrete Zanetti by 0.1 points, Chen remained more than gracious, but gymnastics head coach Huang Yubin wrote in a letter to Sina that the result marked a “dark night in the history of gymnastics” and an “injury to every one in the world who loves gymnastics.”

6. Lin Dan beats Lee Chong Wei. In a riveting men’s badminton final at Wembley, Lin Dan proved he is the best in the world — possibly of all time — by beating Malaysian rival (and friend) Lee Chong Wei in the maximum three sets.

7. Diver Wu Minxia — part of China’s diving “dream team” — became the first diver to win synchro gold at three straight Olympics, but it was a report that her father hid from her news of her mother’s cancer that grabbed headlines.

8. China sweeps ping-pong gold, with Wang Hao stealing the spotlight. The ease with which Chinese ping-pong players are winning has turned off some Chinese fans to the sport, but there was still ample suspense in the men’s singles final, when Zhang Jike took on fan favorite and veteran Wang Hao, in search of his first-ever Olympic singles gold despite a prolonged stretch as the world’s best player. He came up short yet again, becoming the first player to win silver medals at three straight Olympics. In an emotional interview after the men’s team competition, he hinted that this might be his final Olympics.

9. Cycling judges decide to not reward best women’s cycling team sprinters with gold. We’re still pretty confused as to what happened at the Velodrome on Thursday, so we’ll just post this AP report:

Cycling’s world governing body spokesman Enrico Carpani said in an email to The Associated Press that there is no longer an appeals process in cycling, so “nothing else will happen in relation with this.”

[Chinese track cycling coach Daniel] Morelon said that he vainly tried to convince race officials to overrule the decision to disqualify the Chinese pair.

“But the race jury president has absolute power,” Morelon said. “You can’t attack his ruling. He just gave me a vague explanation, claiming that he was in a hurry because of the other competitions. I asked him to see the video footage of the race on slow motion, but he refused.”

In a hurry? (Olympics judges are really weird sometimes.)

10. China men’s basketball goes winless in Olympics for first time. It’s not just that the team went winless; it’s that none of their contests were close or particularly fun to watch, with the exception of the first game vs. Spain. The only game I missed was the final one vs. Great Britain, and I’m glad. The hosts won in a 90-58 rout, ignominiously ending the Olympic careers of several of China’s players.

Honorable mentions: Weightlifter Wu Jingbiao cried after winning silver and had to be consoled by his interviewer; Qieyang Shenjie became the first Tibetan to win an Olympic medal; a Yunnan paper called weightlifter Zhou Jun a “disgrace” for not winning gold, then apologized as the country appeared to begin to deemphasize winning.

Agree or disagree with the list? Think we missed something? Let us know in the comments.

One of the NBC announcers absolutely comes to life when he sees the chubby baby stir from its sleep. “Now that’s what I call a rude awakening!” he chortles.

It’s a great moment, one of many the London Olympics gave us. You know, if you set aside all the controversy in swimming, badminton, fencing, boxing, gymnastics, cycling, more swimming, ping-pong, soccer, soccer again, and judo, among other events (off the field, there was also this, and a cyclist getting killed by a media bus, etc.), this was surely the best Olympics ever.

(Chinese video hosting sites have blocked this video because it thinks it violates Olympic and/or NBC Universal copyright. We’ll see how long it lasts on YouTube.)

As track and field takes center stage in London, a reminder that some exciting team sports will be wrapping up soon, including men’s soccer (Mexico vs. Brazil final tomorrow, though South Korea vs. Japan for the bronze at 2:45 am should be equally exciting) and basketball. Rest of your Olympics links here.

It was difficult picking just one excerpt from this story about ping-pong. “The impression that the sport’s popularity is declining in China can seem widespread here, especially among young people. Once hailed as the populist ‘all-people sport,’ it is now increasingly perceived as a leisure activity for seniors. In street parks, retired cadres pass the ball back and forth as their grandchildren crowd into nearby courts in Jordan sneakers to play what often feels the new national sport: basketball. // ‘We also played ping pong. But, as boys, we want something that makes us drip in sweat,’ explained Wang Chen, a basketball lover and a rising sophomore at Yale University from China. On a national level, athletes like basketball star Yao Ming and the hurdler Liu Xiang are new symbols of China’s athletic prowess. Swimmers Sun Yang and Ye Shiwen, after their record-breaking performance in London, sparked celebration here in Beijing, while the table tennis victories barely raised an eyebrow.” [Helen Gao, The Atlantic]

#NBCSucks. “There are many people who believe that the Olympics should be broadcast the way all other big sporting events are broadcast in the U.S. — live and unrehearsed, with the final result important enough to delay ’60 Minutes’ or your late local news. These days, while NBC shows mostly taped Olympic sports in prime time, the critics scream in newspapers, on radio shows, on television, in blogs and on Twitter — with #nbcfails hashtags — to punctuate their fury. // But Ebersol, in what he says will be his only interview at these Games, tells me that those critics have it all wrong. The Olympics, he believes, are not to be treated like other sports. ‘That’s just nonsense,’ he says. ‘The Olympics are the biggest family television there is. The Olympics are one of the last events where a whole family can gather around a television set and spend the night together.’” [Joe Posnanski, Sports on Earth]

Rogue condoms are the best kind. “It should come as no surprise that Olympics organizers take brand endorsements and official suppliers very seriously. That extends beyond logos on shorts and shoes — up to, and including, condoms. That’s right, the Olympics has an “official” condom — and organizers want to get to the bottom of how a bucket of rogue condoms reached the Olympic Village. // As has happened before at the London Games, it started with a tweet.” [NPR]

Chinese men’s basketball’s Olympics, mercifully, are over, but unfortunately, so are the Olympic careers of some veterans. “The news that the four have played their last Olympics marks the end of an era for Chinese basketball. Liu, Wang Zhizhi, Zhu and Wang Shipeng were all part of the 2006 World Championship team in Greece, the 2008 Beijing Olympic team and the 2010 World Championship team in Turkey, all three of which qualified past the group stages.” [NiuBBall]

Weibo and the Olympics. “As of Thursday, China’s Web portal Sina claims to have seen 340 million comments about the Olympics on its Weibo since the Games began. Meanwhile, the front page tracker of Tencent Weibo shows it has attracted more than 220 million tweets on the Olympics.” [Global Times]

Numerology and Liu Xiang. “The jersey number he was given at the time: 1356. Four years on, Liu entered the London Olympic Stadium wearing the same number… // Another seized-upon set of numbers were 12, 8 and 7. One user wrote, ‘Liu Xiang’s most brilliant time is 12.87 seconds, his most tragic moment happened on Aug. 7, 2012.’ In Chinese, bigger periods come first, so the date is written 2012, 8, 7.” [WSJ]

Sun Yang lip-synching musical interlude:

Finally…

Directives from the Ministry of Truth on Liu Xiang. [China Digital Times]

Li-Ning partners with USA Diving. [Li-Ning/Facebook]

Your Olympic body match. [BBC]

Malaysian Mandopop controversy is the worst kind. [WSJ]

Finally, finally…

Those Nike ads again, redone. [Tea Leaf Nation]