Another Busy Weekend in Beijing

Friday night I decided to go to the Stankovic Cup (FIBA men's basketball tournament) to watch China play Puerto Rico and then Angola vs. Australia. Watching China was a priority since I'm very interested in basketball sports marketing here in China. Student tickets to the game were only 20 Yuan ($2.50), which was a bargain for two games, considering the cheapest regular priced ticket available was for 200 Yuan. I was pretty happy about that, especially since the arena was about one-fifth full and I was free to move to better seats. The game was very competitive and I was impressed by the level of play of both teams. Unfortunately, Yao Ming injured his ankle so he was in plain clothes on the bench. I must comment on the cheerleaders also, who I found very amusing. They have a ways to go before they can "stick it in, stick it in ughhh" like the Oregon Cheerleaders.

China ended up winning the game but it didn't quite end the way everybody had planned. With about a minute to go a huge brawl between the players broke out and a couple of injured Chinese players ran across the court to start fighting the Puerto Rican players. More mayhem broke out as fans started hurling water bottles on the court and the security at the arena basically sat back and did nothing. From my experience in sports marketing, the whole event management side was a joke. I was also very disappointed by the fan behavior. Instead of a basketball game, I felt like it was a hockey game (fighting) attended by soccer fan (houligan behavior).

Saturday started off with a field trip to the Summer Palace, which I found breathtaking. The grounds are beautiful with a huge lake and the buildings are exquisite. Unfortunately the main temple was closed so I'll have to go back in the future after renovations.

On Sunday, we went to Prince Gong's Palace (small, boring and not recommended) and then to the Yonghegong Lama Temple, which I found very spiritual and relaxing. Going there and burning incense and hearing the chants reminded me of my grandmother's visits to my house in LA when I was a kid and she would burn incense, pray, and chant every morning.

My uncle was in Beijing on Sunday night and inited me to a business meeting over dinner. It was my first experience in a Chinese business dinner atmosphere. I found it to be an amusing and hilarious experience with about a hundred chain smoking, biz-casual dressed Chinese/Taiwanese businessmen (three women and the rest were men) sitting around and toasting each other left and right while trying to squeeze in time to eat a few bites of dinner. I just sat back and absorbed it all. It was good to see people building Guanxi (relationships).