TV Coverage

I spent a long time today watching the Olympic coverage on TV. I watched China's defending gold medalist in air rifle perform miserably, and 2 other Chinese win gold in weightlifting and air pistol.

The Olympics are SUCH a big deal to the athletes and to the Chinese public.

I watched an interview of the defending gold medalist after she failed to win the air rifle event. There is just so much pressure and expectations on their shoulders. During the interview, she broke down in tears, so sad that she couldn't win a gold, saying all she wanted was to hear her national anthem played. All the athletes feel such a devotion and duty to their people to perform their best, and she looked devastated that she couldn't live up the expectations. The interviewer was so moved that she continued the interview, while choking on her own tears. By the end, both the athlete and interviewer and both in tears, as the interviewer tried to comfort the athlete, saying not to worry so much about the expectations and that nobody blames her for not winning gold.

Several of the news broadcasters also commentated on the immense pressure, and generally expressed sympathy for the athletes who unfairly feel the guilt of not winning.

Yao Ming was great in the Opening Ceremony. He walked with a young boy who survived the earthquake last month in China, and went back to pull out 2 of his classmates from the rubble. Yao was interviewed, and gave great praise to the young boy for his courage. Yao is such a kind person and cares so much about his country and all his adoring fans.

There have been several small protests around Beijing, usually involving a few people who unfurl a tibet flag, and then are quickly deported. I haven't seen any such protests first hand. I thought there might be some larger organized protest, but it doesn't seem like anything of that sort will occur. I'd like to see China allow protests as a natural way for people to vent frustration and for positive change to come about. But I also think these protestors are idiots for trying to disrupt such a special event meant for celebrating mankind and global understanding.

My first Olympics I watched were 1996 in Atlanta, and I've been a huge Olympics fan since then. This Olympics looks great so far. If i could be born again, I'd like to be an Olympian.

Opening Ceremony

Wow, I've been doing so much and been so busy I haven't had a chance to post for a while.

I watched the opening ceremony tonight for 4 hours standing in blistering heat outside on the large screen TV. There were literally thousands upon thousands of Chinese and foreigners stuffed together to watch the TV. I heard some Tibet activists were detained already.

So much to say...where to begin. The weather seems good in Beijing, the air seems fine, and prices all seem pretty normal.

I was wandering around yesterday, the day before the opening, and there was a buzz in the atmosphere. There was just so much built up excitement for the games. People were going crazy buying Olympics goods, shirts, stickers. Today, the atmosphere was so rowdy. The locals were thrilled to see foreigners in their home, not protesting or criticizing, but just enjoying the spirit of the Olympics. The foreigners cheered for China and their own countries. Most of the foreigners, and almost all of the locals, had Chinese flags, or stickers or face paintings of the Chinese flag. It was just a really amazing atmosphere. The Chinese seemed so proud and happy to host the Olympics and to show China to the world. Locals took photos with foreigners at every chance.

The French president showed up, after threatening not to attend....what a faggot.

As the countries started walking out during the ceremony, I was a little worried about how the audience would treat the Taiwanese and Japanese delegations. Both received very loud and welcoming cheers. Bush was momentarily boo'ed though.

The foreigners all seemed very excited and happy, yelling cheers like "australia and china are great friends". Locals sang the national anthem like 50 times.

Team China received a monstrous roar, and all the other countries received applause.

Chinese girls look way better than they did just a few years ago, which is a pleasant surprise. Stronger economy leads to fashion and makeup.

For a while, I didn't have a cell phone, and I had to make a few important calls. So I was asking some of the locals if I could borrow their cell phone to make a call. I asked a total of 5 people so far, and only 1 allowed me to make the call(and he ended up stalking the person who i called, asking to be friends with her and such). The others either flat out said no, lied to me saying they have no batteries left, or gave some other explanation. I guess you can't really do that here.

I've been visiting buddhist temples, taoist temples, a confuscian temple, museums, pagodas, and all of that in blistering heat. I visited the military museum today, which was pretty interesting. Another place for China to promote patriotism. I went to a anthropology museum a few days ago, and that was pretty awesome.

I ate a birds nest yesterday. I like eating weird food, but it was pretty gross.

I think there's a lot more that's been on my mind, but i can't remember right now. I'll update later.

Nanjing Massacre memorial

Well I've been in Nanjing, China for 4 days now, and i'll give my impressions.

First, I'm not sure if it's because of the rising modern generation, or if its specific to nanjing, but the people i've met are some of the most interesting and friendly people. When i'm on a taxi, or in a restaurant, I've been chatting with everybody and everybody is willing to chat. China has some of the coldest people, but if you have a good attitude, it also has some of the friendliest people.

I can't read the foreign news articles about Chinese sensitive news, but there's been whispers about planned terrorist attacks in beijing. I'm not sure what kind of progress these guys hope to achieve by disrupting the Olympics. Seems pretty uncivilized to me.

At a restaurant yesterday, I saw the most beautiful girl, the type where you just have to sit back and admire, without any dirty thoughts. I also watched an epic movie yesterday called "Red Cliff" which is about the Three Kingdoms warring states period in China. I actually know very little about this historical period, but watching the movie raised interest. When I have time, i'm going to go read up on this.

I also went to the Nanjing Massacre Memorial museum. There were lots of sad sites, like a live pit where 10,000 skeletons were burried. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the readings in the museum were not particularly biased, but just slightly. I think a lot of people who go to a museum like this, or a holocaust museum, walk through it and think to themselves, "this museum is very important. It is important for people to come here and learn about the truth." My feeling is that most people fail to really learn the significance of a museum like this. It doesn't matter that it happened, because what's done is done. And the lesson isn't even, "Japanese should know what they did, and learn from their mistakes." Humans by nature are very weak creatures in the mind. They are easily crazed, manipulated, and controlled. To judge the Japanese, or the Nazi's as something different and say "I would never do that" is a grave error. I feel many Chinese may criticize the Japanese for their atrocities, but fail to remember when the Chinese themselves went up in a craze and killed countless people, like what the Chinese Red Guards did. All of us have the potential to do harm like this. To me, the lesson that we should learn from these historical memories is just that all humans, no matter how good in nature, are capable of doing inhuman destruction, and that maybe if we are just a bit aware of this, we can prevent it in the future. At the end of the museum, there were paper doves and ornaments made and gifted by the Japanese School in Shanghai, which is pretty nice to see.

In any case, i think the Nanjing Massacre museum, and the Atomic bomb museum in Hiroshima are both important to visit.

In China

Well I travelled around 30 hours in total from New York to Nanjing, China. I'll try to update with interesting stories and cool things I see in my travels.

Actually a lot of interesting things happened today. On the flight, i sat next to a 40 year old man and a 26 year old girl, and we chatted a lot about various topics. I really enjoyed our conversation, because I think its rare nowadays to meet people with geuine wisdom and insight.

We talked about racism in America, marriage, and about mainland Chinese girls marrying for H1 Visa status to stay in America. It was really refreshing to hear the girl say she would never sell herself just for the opportunity to stay in America. I think my cousin, who i love, wants to marry an American just to get the right to live in America, and I think it's retarded and lame.

She also told us a story about a friend of hers. This guy was a white american, who, according to her, was very average in America. He wasn't particularly intelligent, didn't have great academics, wasn't particularly athletic or good looking, and was just a regular guy in America. But one day, he decided to go to China and teach english, for like $700 a month. And since then, he's crazy about China. He makes money for doing the easiest skill for him, he has all the girls chasing him, and he sings praises about his life in China.

We also talked about how it's a bit silly for Chinese people to spend so much money to buy foreign brands. I personally think its retarded, but maybe there is something that I'm not getting.

Historic flights

A couple months ago, there was a really interesting election in Taiwan. The left party supported relative Taiwanese independence from China, while the right party pledged to ease tensions and promote economic ties.

I supported the right party, and honestly....I cannot imagine why anybody would ever vote for the leftist party.

Just a week or so ago, Taiwan and China established historic flights between their nations. Previously, there were no direct flights between China and Taiwan. It was ridiculous. Two neighbors cannot even establish a flight to see a relative because of stubborn heads in office. So this is great news, millions of Chinese are going to be able to visit Taiwan, and will greatly help Taiwanese tourism industry. I hope, and expect, more economic relations to come and further help both economies.

Seriously, if you look at history, every single disaster or war has basically been become of one small incident or a few stupid men who could not come to terms with each other. The strait between China and Taiwan is one of the world's most potentially disastrous places in the world. All it takes is one hot head here or there to spark a major war.

So i'm glad both these great nations are restoring ties and easing tensions. I can't for the life of me see how any rationale human being would ever vote for a party that pledges to seek independence from a mainland China that is bent on bombing and invading to prevent independence.

Controversy

A friend of mine just reminded me of an interesting incident back in high school. I was upset with National Honors Society because I deemed them corrupt, and also I just didn't like the advisors. I wrote a lettor to the editor of the school newspaper to expose NHS. It was a pretty interesting time, it created quite some controversy. Some people loved it, some people hated it. It pissed off the faculty advisors, and some of my close friends (including Janet who I wrote about previously).

I remember that I was the only person at graduation who was not wearing the ceremonial outfit that NHS gave us, and it was a really proud moment for me. I don't need some stupid badge to tell me what I'm worth.

Actually my original version was probably slightly harsher, but the editors at the newspaper decided to edit some parts of it. I also included NHS's actual response to my criticism, which also appeared in the paper. To me, it doesn't really say anything, and doesn't admit to or counter any of the points that I made.

Pacquiao, Janet, and Yinbo

I watched Filipino boxer Manny Pacquiao knock out David Diaz, with my coworkers Kathleen and Weihan. It was pretty cute, Kathleen is Filipino so whenever Pacquiao got hit she would go "oh no".

There's been a lot of commentary about Pacquiao being a historic figure, for the first time giving Asian boxers legitimacy. And he does it in a big way. 1) he's now considered the pound for pound champion. 2) he doesn't fight the way a stereotypical "Asian" would. Instead of fighting smart and careful, he fights like Tyson, aggressive and powerful. I think it's great to see a guy like this breaking stereotypes, knocking out the legendary Mexican boxers left and right.

It'd be great if he really did set the stage for more Asian boxers to fight. He's a great guy, and a very good role model.

There's a lot of stupid stereotypes out there about Asians, but I think Ichiro in baseball, Yao Ming in basketball, Liu Xiang in track and field, and Manny Pacquiao in boxing will go a long way in terms of fighting ignorance and erasing stereotypes.


Recently, I think my dream for my life has become more clear than ever, that I want to bring something really special to human civilization and become a motivational speaker. My old old and best friend Janet from back home has all the potential, intelligence, and ability in the world. For the longest time, I've been highly critical of her allowing others to dictate her life, studying for teachers, or letting things get in the way of her dreams. The one thing I did not want, was for her to succumb to the pressure and become a doctor or something. Yeah, it looks good, it makes a lot of money, but I think you have only one life, and you gotta go for your dream. Last week, I got a really great letter from Janet, thanking me for my support and advice on life. Janet now has an awesome internship at Disney, and is in position to achieve her dreams, which has always been to work for Disney.

Janet wrote me, "You've taught me a lot about dreaming big and not being afraid to follow them through, so thanks for that. Without you, I'd probably be premed and lost in life. Please don't ever lose your optimism and self-confidence that's unshakeable - that's what defines Michael Zhuang"

It really makes me feel great to see this. I love Janet and she really is one of the best friends I have on this planet.

I also talked to great lengths with another really close friend, Yinbo. Yinbo has an amazing mind, incredibly gifted at math and physics. He's doing his PHD in physics at UCSB next semester. He can be a little backward minded though.

The one point I wanted to get through to Yinbo is the following. Of the people who openly proclaim today, "I'm going to achieve my big dream and be great", only 1% of those people will eventually achieve their dream.

However, of people who have achieved their big dream, 100% of them openly claimed "I'm going to achieve my big dream and be great."

So many people are afraid to go for their dreams because they are afraid to be one of those 99% who fail. There is no shame in not achieving your dream if you give it your all. But running from your dream from fear of the embarrassment of failing is just fooling oneself. You're not helping yourself in the end if you think that way.

It's like a psychological defense, aim low, so in case you fail, you won't feel bad. But you're just fooling yourself in the end. So dare to dream, think big, and go for it. Nobody will laugh at you for trying, and if they do, they're just idiots and it doesn't matter. I love Yinbo so I want to see him achieve his dreams and be happy. I hope I can help him to do that. He said that my words provoked deep thought in him, so I hope he'll come around and cast away his fears.

Anyway, thanks a lot to Janet and Yinbo for making my dream ever so clear. I'm going to reach my dream, of having the world's most innovative company that brings great things that human civilization would otherwise never see. Then, I'm gonna be a motivational speaker, and hope I can help the younger generation achieve their dreams. That's my dream.


I told my Japanese friend, Shoko, "If you're 40 and i'm 40 and we're both not married yet, lets get married". She said "Ok! Good idea!". So I guess that's pretty cool and funny.