Eric's Beijing Diary

Super Bowl Beijing. Never been much of a sports fan. I guess I just have so many more important things to do. I could get philosophical about the way sports has come to have a much larger importance than what it was originally intended to, how those exercises which are meant to be preparation for battle have become the battle themselves, etc., etc. But I'll just say that I have never been a sports nut. Maybe it's because I am not very athletic. Or because I went to an elementary school that had no Physical Education program. Whatever the reason, I just have never gotten too interested in sports.

But as a student of culture, I have always felt that one should know at least something about the whole sports world, superficial as it may be. So I have tried to take time to watch the Super Bowl every year. I have been slacking off the past couple years, because I have been going through such a monumental cultural change...guess it just got left by the wayside. This year, I thought I had better do my duty.

I got up at five this morning and took a cab to the Goose and Duck Pub near the West Gate of Chaoyang Park. Two big screens and lots of other monitors scattered throughout the bar. And the whole place was filled with the faithful--waiting for game time at 7 am. Football, more than any other sport, lends itself to television. The reason is that football is play by play, so the camera can focus in on one part of the field and leave everything else. On a big screen TV, the players are life size. Before television, baseball was the national sport in the US. I believe television is what changed that. Baseball players look tiny on TV.

As I stood there sipping my coffee at 6:30 in the morning, I was thinking, "I must be out of my mind!" Getting up at the crack of dawn to go do some studying, or even to go hiking in the mountains is something I can easily justify. But to go to a bar and watch a football game? Madness. OK, I admit, the free breakfast buffet was an encouragement, but I can get breakfast at any time of the day at the coffee bar. It was good though, gotta give 'em credit. Stewed tomatoes, onions, scrambled eggs, mushrooms, really good bread, bacon, ham, home fries, and baked beans. They made their money on drinks. Coffee was 15 kuai a cup, with no free refills.

My first task was to find out who was playing. I couldn't just ask, of course. I didn't want to let on that I hadn't done my homework. So I had to go at it in a round about way.

"Who are you cheering for?" This question is risky. Sure enough, somebody asked me, "Who are you cheering for?"

"Oh, man! I just can't make up my mind this year. It's weird!"

The reason I couldn't make up my mind, of course, is because I didn't know who the teams were. I don't want to overstate this; I lived in America for forty years--I do know something about football. But when you watch one football game a year, you really don't get to know the teams or the players that well. This is especially true when you don't live in the United States, and sports news tends to focus on the other kind of football (soccer) or basketball. Basketball is big in China. All NBA games are televised here (mainly because of Yao Ming). But American football? Forget it. So for me, conversations about the coming game were naturally quite brief:

"Who do you think will take it this time?"

"Well, I think they're pretty well matched this year...personally, I think Pittsburgh has a better story...hard to say, though; Roethlisberger's only a second year quarterback."

"True."

The faithful were quite a bit more definite. Like the lady from Pittsburgh:

"Who are you cheering for?"

"Pittsburgh. I'm from Pittsburgh. We're all from Pittsburgh."

"Tell me honestly, who do you think will win?"

"Pittsburgh! Definitely! No, really, I think they'll do it!

The game began, and the die-hards were animated. The friends they had brought with them displayed varying levels of either polite patience or forced interest. And then there were the local Chinese bar staff, gazing in complete bewilderment at the screen, trying to figure out what in the world it was all about.

I had planned to leave at half-time, because Super Bowl games are usually pretty much over by half-time. This one was different. I can't remember when I have seen a Super Bowl game go 3 and 0 all the way through the first half. This one would have, if the guy from Pittsburgh hadn't shoved the ball across the line after he landed. Anyway, it became obvious that the game wasn't going to be over by half-time, so I finally grabbed a Herald-Tribune and contented myself with listening to the game in the background. I missed the little stuff, of course, but when I heard everybody holler, I poked my head out from behind the paper and watched the replay. Lazy, I know, but my endurance was wearing thin. When Pittsburgh caught a touchdown pass in the end zone half-way through the fourth quarter, I figured the game was up. I would have to say that was the best play of the game. I asked several people how they saw the outcome. One of them summed it up, "Pittsburgh is a seasoned team." Maybe he's right. Still, a couple different calls, a couple touchdowns--it would have been a different game.

This evening I had dinner with Cathy, my Chinese daughter. I was telling her about the Super Bowl. She wasn't sure what I was talking about.

"It's not soccer?"

"No. American football."

"Oh. The ball is long, not round?"

"Yes."

"Oh. I know that."

Cathy knows almost as much about football as I do.