I am getting my Olympics fever, slowly, with the help of the press and the calendar moving closer to the month of August.
The NYTimes.com has an interesting piece on how China saved the 1984 Olympics. I found the story heartwarming; sometimes I am such a wimpy girly man, sort of. The now defunct Soviet Union called for a boycott of the 1984 LA Olympics in retaliation to US boycott four years earlier. And China was high on the list of about 100 countries, supposedly in support of the boycott. Charles Lee, a federal prosecutor was sent to persuade the Chinese to participate in the Games, the first time ever for China. In the end, after several meetings with the sports ministers, China agreed to come and only 14 countries boycotted the Games. During the Olympics some of Chinese gymnasts requested to meet some American children, and Lee obliged by letting the young athletes meet his daughters then four and two years old. The Games turned out to be a financial and political success. Twenty four years later, China gets to host the summer Olympics.
Charles Lee, not an ethic Chinese, speaks fluent Mandarin and is married to a Chinese-born American, Miranda, who grew up in Hong Kong.
The original article is here. Please check out the pictures. Lee can be seen wearing a pair of Shuron Freeway Crystal, or something very very similar.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
-
LG just up the ante by introducing its own touch screen cellphone a week after Apple made the iPhone announcement. The PRADA phone is a col...
-
New York City is falling apart .... Buildings are collapsing , the financial market is in a tailspin and the dollar is not the dollar it us...
At that time, I was in Pembroke. I remembered seeing Ueberroth on TV confirming with some glee that the Chinese and the Romanians were coming. Can't believe that he has turned 70. My image of him is one fit guy in his late thirties or something. I also remembered the moment when China won its first ever Gold medal (and incidentally in the fist competitive event) in the LA Olympics. Gold medallist Xu Hai feng was quoted as saying something like this: "We represent the Chinese people and the Chinese people have very high expectations on us." Some other nights, some American friends also came by my room. One kid, who was about 18 then, said he wanted to cry whenever he saw the Stars and Stripes. Well, so long for this Olympic moment from one blase guy in Hong Kong.
ReplyDeleteOld Vincent
This was what we pro-Beijing leftists call independent diplomacy 獨立自主的外交政策。
ReplyDeleteWe did what's in the best interests of the Chinese people and China. We did not need to watch the baton of the Big Brother.
for me, I prefer China can be pro-US, for the benefits of Chinese people, like Poland, or Georgia, follow the big brother Uncle Sam is no wrong, you can have thousands of reasons to fxxk me, but I think embrace the Uncle Sam is in the best interst of Chinse
ReplyDelete"... I think embrace Uncle Sam is in the best interest of the Chinese people."
ReplyDeleteWP2007, you've got no backbone.