Asia Blog: China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam

If you organize the top-20 from the official medal table, and normalize the raw counts by the size of each country, Jamaica (with just 2.7M people) is the decisive winner:

Canada doesn’t do badly either, in 10th place. China, unfortunately, given its massive size, ends up last. So, given the recent controversy over “who won the olympics,” what is the best way to do these medal rankings? Total medals? Total golds? Normalized totals? Whichever way you go, someone is going to be unhappy.

Check out this Foreign Policy article How many ways are there to count Olympic medals? where they compare using a gold-is-worth-more weighted ranking with the current US/International methods. Another good take is BBC’s Five alternative Olympics medals tables, or Danwei’s Chinese media calls the Olympics for China. Depending who ask, China won or the US won the Olympics.

I prefer to say Canada won

Addendum of Data

The following really cute pictures were found on an iPhone shipped to the UK;they’re absolutely adorable! It’s interesting to see the inside of a Chinese iPhone factory, and also to see what kind of people are employed there.

It’s too bad she didn’t leave an address in the phone, then the guy could send her a cute “Thanks for making my iPhone” note! On a more somber note, the girl in question probably makes around 700 RMB a month, and works 15 hour days.

What is Project 119? In 2001, immediately after winning the bid for hosting the 2008 Olympics, Beijing started a project to improve China’s performance in certain medal-rich sports they typically did poorly in. The total number of medals they sought to go after totaled 119, hence the name.

Athletics: 47
Swimming: 34
Rowing: 14
Sailing: 11
Canoe / Kayak – Flatwater: 12
Canoe / Kayak – Slalom: 4
Total: 122

In Sydney 2000, China won only one medal from the list of 119; in Athens 2004, they won four. For Beijing 2008, the medal possibilities have increased to 122, and China has invested millions of dollars into their athletes and facilities preparing for this year’s games. The First Post has an article China’s Olympic plan to topple America worth taking a look at:

For the past seven years, China’s communist authorities have been running an intensive training programme reminiscent of the Soviet Union’s methods – and goal of global domination – during the Cold War era. Unprecedented military discipline, huge sporting budgets, state-of-the-art foreign technology and proven international coaches have all been incorporated into what the Chinese call ‘Project 119′.

Pricewaterhouse Coopers has projected that the Chinese team of 639 Olympic athletes (more than double the 311 it sent to Sydney in 2000, and topping the US tally of 596 athletes this year) will pip the US in Beijing by a total of 88 medals to 87. American bookies currently have China as favourite to win both the overall and gold-medal counts.

With 61 medals (to the US’s 65) and an amazing 35 gold (to the US’s 19), Project 119 is clearly off to a good start. Go China!

If you were watching the opening ceremony on NBC at home, you might not have known that the stunning fireworks at its conclusion were actual a computer rendering:

A Sky story Olympic Fireworks Faked For TV indicates that the CG fireworks were only shown to TV viewers for a limited 25-30s segment, and only internationally. The NBC footage, shot live, shows the actual fireworks that were simultaneously occurring:

The global television audience of more than three billion people watched in amazement as a series of giant footprints outlined in fireworks proceeded through the night sky from Tiananmen Square to the Bird’s Nest stadium – except they were watching a computer animation. Even the giant television screens within the stadium itself broadcast the fake images.

The dupe was revealed by China’s Beijing Times. Speaking to the paper, the man responsible for the animation said he was pleased with the result. “Seeing how it worked out, it was still a bit too bright compared to the actual fireworks,” Gao Xiaolong told the newspaper. “But most of the audience thought it was filmed live – so that was mission accomplished.”

Next, we read how the Beijing Olympics committee used a 9 year old body double (Lin Miaoke) to lipsync Ode to the Motherland, which was actually sung by 7-year-old Yang Peiyi, who wasn’t cute enough for the ceremony itself:

“The national interest requires that the girl should have good looks and a good grasp of the song and look good on screen,” Chen said. “Lin Miaoke was the best in this. And Yang Peiyi’s voice was the most outstanding.”

During a live rehearsal soon before the ceremony, the Politburo member said Miaoke’s voice “must change,” Chen said in the radio interview. He didn’t name the official. So Peiyi’s voice was matched with Miaoke’s face. “We had to make that choice. It was fair both for Lin Miaoke and Yang Peiyi,” Chen told Beijing Radio. “We combined the perfect voice and the perfect performance.”

Poor Yang Peiyi, she must feel quite let down to not actually get to perform the song she sung for the opening ceremony. Besides the fireworks, song, there’s also a nice BSOD (yay Windows) that must have embarassed Bill Gates (who attended the games), and empty stadiums, in spite of officially having sold out all the events.

Still, the games appear to be an ongoing success. I can attest, watching the olympics opening myself, in spite of whatever technical tweaks Beijing pulled to get it to work smoothly, it felt natural, genuine, and honest. I personally enjoyed it–like good magic, you really don’t want to know what nuts and bolts made the trick. Just sit back and continue to let the Beijing 2008 experience take you away!

If you wanted to watch the Olympics Opening Ceremony online, you might have had some problems so far. Friday, for us in the US, NBC’s site wasn’t working well (they hadn’t even posted the opening ceremony cuts). But now, there are a number of options available to you:

NBC’s Official Olympics Site

Direct link to their 52m ‘Opening Ceremony’ recap

The video is excellent quality, far better than Youtube, sound quality good. Unfortunately, it requires an installation of Microsoft’s Silverlight flash competitor, and has brief 20-30s advertisements before clips. You also can’t make the video full screen. However, if you live in the US, and don’t mind just watching the Olympics, the NBC site has a good selection of live video feeds as well as packaged and cut primetime recaps.

Mininova Bittorrent Search

Olympic Games Opening Ceremony Beijing 2008 PROPER 720p HDTV x264-PiX [eztv]

Using torrents to download the parts of the Olympic games you’re interested in guarantees a permanent archive, full screen high quality video, but perhaps an inferior selection of topics. Its legal status and availability differ around the world. Still, it’s a powerful online option.

Google’s Youtube Beijing 2008 Channel

Beijing 2008 Channel

If you don’t live in the US YouTube might an option for you. Google is going to syndicate at least three hours of Olympics a day on their special channel. But, the quality is crappy, and if you live in the US, you’ll just see “This channel is not available in your country.”

I also recommend you check out the Boston Globe’s 2008 Olympics Opening Ceremony Big Picture Photos and Wired’s Watch the Olympics Online Wiki for more 2008 Beijing Olympics Online!