And yet Salon prints, and prints, and prints.

...the sections of enlisted "Beijing cheering workers"...

You mean regular Chinese ticket-holders. People who bought tickets and took time off work to be at the games. But saying that would be the truth (never good enough for Krich) instead it has to be some lie about "workers" being "enlisted". Got a quote, Krich? Didn't think so.

Beijing's subway is fast and efficient, even if most of its stations, constructed in the 1950s, are bleak and rather dowdy by world standards.

Dowdy compared to New York or Chicago?! Which "world" are you talking about!? And, of course, since that's not enough of a lie for Krich, he declares that "most of its stations" were constructed in the 50s. To be precise, TWO of Beijing's SIX lines (leaving out the 3-stop "Olympic Spur" and the extension to Line 1 -- both brand new) were built last century. The other four are basically brand new.

A smattering of English signage had been added

You mean every single sign in the subway system has English or at the very least the station name spelled in Roman letters? What a surprise to see you beating the "no English" drum yet again. And yet another lie.

Day One of the China steeplechase was over and I hadn't even qualified for a place in the pack.

The "steeplechase" that only you (and others stupid enough to buy tickets for multiple far-apart venues on the same day) are competing in? Don't sell yourself so short! You qualified alright, and at the same time, you once again proved that in the Just Making Shit Up And Hoping No-one Will Notice championships, you compete at the very highest level.

Bravo! I think I _very nearly_ managed to say in several paragraphs what you brilliantly said in two lines!

Amusing, considering it's in an otherwise excellent article about being a "jerk" around know-nothing amateurs, is this line:

She swam back and forth in the pool, performing the stroke called freestyle.

Nuh-uh. "Freestyle" is the name of the race. The stroke most people perform in that race is called the front crawl (aka the Australian crawl).

Maybe someday some swimmer will invent a faster stroke -- and then suffer the indignity of having people call it "freestyle" -- turning them into a "jerk" around people watching swimming races...

An Olympic article from you that's interesting, and mostly without the fact-free slurs with which you've padded out your previous efforts -- I like it.

Here's what I wrote elsewhere about the eventual (down to the last shot!) Indian victory in the shooting event you mention:

Shooting -- the most boring sport in the world -- was utterly transformed yesterday by an utterly amazing competition between a Finn, a Chinese, and an Indian. The Olympics literally doesn't get better than that. I watched it in a Beijing suburb with an air-conditioned McDonald's upper floor full of laobaixing (Chinese for "regular folk") sitting in front of their small sodas (the price of occupying a table), who reacted to the eventual Indian victory with the most incredibly generous and warm-hearted statements. I am a stone-hearted cynic, and I was moved to tears.

Cheers!

It's so hard to get hyperbole and cod-outrage just right, but this article nailed it!

Laugh-out-loud funny, and yet informative and pacy.

Great sports writing!

(And as a 6 foot 6 beanpole, I, for one, welcome our new, taller, overlords... *grin*)

Krich writes (in an episode where he grudgingly deigns to enjoy Beijing despite his every personal effort to ensure the opposite):

And how to explain why Beijing has always been a center of ferment and enormous free personal space amid regimentation?

Great question! Why has it? Why is it? And, striking "Beijing" from that sentence and inserting "China" -- why is it still true?

Answering that question will require more than the usual American anxieties and transplanting of decades-dead cliches ("Red" China, anyone?)

Answering that question requires excellent Mandarin, years building authentic friendships in China (not, note-ye-well, business relationships) and the courage to endure living in a culture where you are the "other".

Or, on the other hand, you could simply listen to the answers that the Chinese have fashioned for themselves. Strangely, most find that harder...