china 2 - tourney

competition was much like any other competition. lots of confusion not much organization. oh well, we're used to it by now. this year's teams included us, harvard, toronto, kenya, "congo," russia, "europe," "korea," new zealand, china, singapore, and probably a few other asian teams. teams in quote marks are teams that are actually exchange students studying in china.

there was also TONS of cameras this year. cctv had like 18 cameras or some nonsense like that. and there was the other media on top of that. the girl we had chosen to be "media" person was suddenly camera shy so i ended up doing most of the interviews. bah. but at least we had a couple non-chinese kids who didn't mind being on tv so i'd always try to drag someone out with me. one of these kids, who is 1/8th chinese and doesn't look it at all, speaks some chinese so that was super great. (let's face it, chinese looking person speaking chinese poorly does not make for good tv [talking about me, btw])

the tourney venue was beautiful. the fen river and the surrounding area was very pretty. one of the nicest venues i've raced at. the weather also cooperated fully and it was sunny (hot and humid goes without saying) all tournament. fun fact: tournament was on 6/12-13. 6/12 was actually duanwujie. i made sure to have a zhongzi that morning!)

racing itself went pretty smoothly. there was a foul up regarding our first 200m race, which i ended up missing because i was at the opening ceremony (as a flag bearer, not just cause i wasn't paying attention). but the rest of our 200m and 500m went well (two races each). we did not get to race genders this year, which sucked, but at least it meant our kids weren't super tired. thursday was 2000m day. one race and done! it's a pursuit race, but fastest boats are released first and in 30 second intervals so there's pretty much no passing. also, we were released first. hahah. but our kids did pretty well (4th of 8).

 

after races were done was the craziness of team photos. something weird this year, i'm apparently considered quite pretty in this province. i got A LOT of personal attention this year. some guy even ran up to me and rambled off his name and phone number asking me to call him. i said no, in english, no less. but there were lots of personal pictures, which is a very weird thing for me. china has become a bit of an ego boost for me, looks department wise, haha.

that afternoon the tournament people organized a trip to jinci temple for the racers. that was really great of them to do so! i probably wouldn't have gone myself since it was a bit far outside of the city and i think a lot of the foreign teams didn't get much sightseeing time so this was really thoughtful of them. but there was another foul up there with one of harvard's paddlers missing our 5pm leaving time so most of the north american teams went to the banquet / awards ceremony dirty and unshowered (we were on the same bus). (btw, our hotel sucked. we were pretty much without water for two days. one of our kids [bless his heart!] wrangled a couple rooms in the other hotel tower for us to shower in)

banquet this year was much like last year's with the craziness of teams wanting to swap jerseys and take pictures... not much drunken debauchery this year, however, thank goodness. though of course there was too much food. they also hired a few performers, all singers i think. or lip syncers at least. at least one of them must be semi-famous because some of the chinese girls went crazy over him.

afterwards we went back to the hotel. some people went out to buy drinks (of course) and i think nearly everyone did a shot or two. most of cali stayed in to play cards so i joined them, while some of the rest of cali (along with harvard and toronto) went out to karaoke and drink some more. eventually a few of us ended up at kfc where were couldn't order a bucket of chicken. it was kind of funny cause the manager told us that "no one does that." our guy ordering for us, who was probably a bit drunk still, told him that "i'm from america and we do have chicken in buckets!"

coach scott with our 3rd place trophies & medals (500m mixed)

i was kind of sad i wasn't leaving with everyone the next morning (north america was once again traveling together and they were all talking about what they were going to do in beijing). but they were to be in the lobby by 5:30am and this was finally my chance to sleep in so i wasn't too upset to be alone.