Greetings from Ping Pong!

On August 16th JAK's roomie CH and I went to see Ping Pong! er...Table Tennis! (doesn't sound quite as fun) It was the women's qualifying semi-final (or something like that) - basically the two teams that won then went on to compete for the bronze.

When you go through security they make you take a picture (ironic considering that usually you don't really want people seeing what your security set up is like) I tried to take a picture of the workers but all I got was a bunch of white gloves over their faces so unsuspecting CH became my photo victim :)

In the foreground is US (red) on the left and Korea (black) on the right, then behind is Japan on the left (pink) and Hong Kong/China on the right (blue-ish)

Korea beat the US 3-0 and Japan finally eeked it out over Hong Kong/China (who had the support of most of the crowd) 3-2

Each individual plays a match (best of 5 games gets the point) and then they play doubles. This is Japan v. Hong Kong. If you need to play more, the individuals play again...best of 5 matches wins so in the case of US v. Korea, there were no more games after the doubles because it was 3-0.

Korea went on to beat Japan for the bronze medal.

This large wipe-off board explained the schedule for the day and how the brackets worked...to be honest I didn't really get what is all meant until I saw the bronze match between Korea and Japan on tv the next day. :)

CH with the pictogram outside the venue (you can see the reflections of everyone leaving).

more pictogram action outside the venue. After Salt Lake 2002 I have really enjoyed seeing what different cities do with their pictograms. According to JAK, the Beijing pictograms are based on ancient Chinese symbols/characters.

The venue - known also as the Peking University Gymnasium

The greatest part about going and watching the games live is the crowd (ha! and you thought I was going to say the mascot intermission song and video...which ps sounds like a backstreet boys song with no words) No matter what country someone yells out, the crowd responds with Jiayou! [Ji-yo!]...so even at our match when someone yelled "USA!" you get good response of "Jiayou!" - of course, for the Chinese teams (and for Hong Kong, and other special districts) everyone really gets into it.

Zhong Guo! Jiayou!

I of course shout "Jiayou!!" every time, regardless :)