As some of you might have heard, the Beijing Olympic Committee has opened up its fourth and final round of Olympic ticket sales on Friday. Initial news reports stated that 850,000 tickets would go on sale and would be distributed evenly throughout Fri, Sat and Sun and would be sold at each of the venues hosting the individual events. The exception to the rule was the Olympic green, which would sell tickets for the Water Cube, Birds Nest and three other venues on the Olympic Green. Needless to say, according to news reports, that venue was the most crowded. Apparently, people began queuing as early as Wednesday night. The number of people waiting in line grew to nearly 30,000 by the time the ticket booths opened at 9am Friday morning. Below is a picture of some of the chaos:
Cliff, in his wisdom, insisted that we at least camp out on on Thursday morning (1am) to score some tickets. So we packed a couple bags with essentials (snacks, drinks, magazines, & inflatable twin mattress) and off we went. First, we went to Wukesong, on the west side of town, which is the venue for Basketball competition. The hottest game around is the 10 Aug clash of the USA and CHN teams. We cabbed it across town and by the time we got there, there were already 500 some people in line. In retrospect, we should have given it a go, but our priority was to get a USA and/or a CHN ticket, and if we didn't, we weren't really interested in getting tickets to basketball. Regardless, we were intimidated by the sight and decided to check out the Capital Gymnasium to try to get indoor volleyball tickets. Unfortunately there were 1000+ people there so on we went. Our next stop was the beach volleyball venue, Chaoyang Park. We arrived at about 2am and this was the scene:
As you can see, there were many people here as well. Fortunately there was enough room in the waiting area that people could lay down some newspaper and lay down to sleep. As for us, we inflated our mattress and watched a DVD on Cliff's laptop before dozing off for a couple hours of sleep. As I said before, ticket sales opened at 9am... but in true Chinese fashion a mini-stampede initiated at 7am. Still half asleep, we stepped into our sandals, grabbed the mattress, and desperately gathered up our remaining belongings before stumbling forward in an attempt not to lose our rightful place in line. Here's a picture of all the people now standing in line for their chance at cheap Olympic tickets!!
All told, Cliff and I guess that there were nearly 3000 people waiting for Beach VB tickets. The sweet thing is that at about 8am, the riot police started rolling in... you can see their visors below.
The lines were surprisingly orderly, especially for the Chinese... there seemed to be a multi-tiered security plan--Riot police to keep the people intimidated, regular Security Bureau guys to walk up and down the lines telling people to queue up and not to push, venue security to ensure that people are staying in their individual lines and know the rules of purchasing tickets (cash or bank card only, two tickets per person) and volunteers told everyone when events were already sold out. By 11am, we had 4 tickets in hand felt pretty proud of ourselves. Afterwards we headed over to the Workers Stadium for soccer tickets... that area was much more chaotic and the people were much more unruly. We fought our way to the ticket booth and by 3pm we had 4 more tickets. The next morning I slid out of bed pretty early and stood in line for boxing tickets. The Workers Gymnasium ticketing was by-far the best, most orderly of all our experiences. All told, we scored four super tickets to the last day of Beach VB prelims (12 hour day including both morning and evening sessions!) for 100 RMB each (15USD), four tickets to womens football (soccer) for 150 RMB (23 USD) each and two boxing tickets for the last day of semi-finals (80RMB or 12USD). The reason we (and 50,000 other people) went through the @ss-pain of getting this tickets is the price point...the Chinese government promised that over 50% of the tickets would be sold for under 100RMB, so that tickets would be attainable for the average citizen. All of the ticket we got were for the best seats at the venue (A-class)--the lower-class tickets, B and C, are 2/3 and 1/3 the price of the A, respectively. All in all, we are satisfied with the tickets we were able to buy. We hope to get more, however, as the games approach and people who hoarded tickets look to sell their extras at the last minute.
To round out today's blog, we wanted to update you on the weather, which remains lethal, at best. The last couple days were not too bad, but today is exceptionally bad. T minus 12 days to the Olympics, and we still barely see some of our neighboring buildings.
The government-implemented driving restrictions (cars with odd and even numbered license plates can only drive on odd or even numbered days, respectively) and limited factory pollution have resulted in visibly reduced pollution. Or so we have been told. Additionally, their is a massive plan to launch thousands of iodine bullets into the sky to seed the clouds to make it rain outside the city, so we can enjoy sunny days here in Beijing (and so that the roofless birds nest ticket holders don't get wet). The alarming statistic of the day (44% chance of rain on the day of the opening ceremony). Nice...
Cliff, in his wisdom, insisted that we at least camp out on on Thursday morning (1am) to score some tickets. So we packed a couple bags with essentials (snacks, drinks, magazines, & inflatable twin mattress) and off we went. First, we went to Wukesong, on the west side of town, which is the venue for Basketball competition. The hottest game around is the 10 Aug clash of the USA and CHN teams. We cabbed it across town and by the time we got there, there were already 500 some people in line. In retrospect, we should have given it a go, but our priority was to get a USA and/or a CHN ticket, and if we didn't, we weren't really interested in getting tickets to basketball. Regardless, we were intimidated by the sight and decided to check out the Capital Gymnasium to try to get indoor volleyball tickets. Unfortunately there were 1000+ people there so on we went. Our next stop was the beach volleyball venue, Chaoyang Park. We arrived at about 2am and this was the scene:
As you can see, there were many people here as well. Fortunately there was enough room in the waiting area that people could lay down some newspaper and lay down to sleep. As for us, we inflated our mattress and watched a DVD on Cliff's laptop before dozing off for a couple hours of sleep. As I said before, ticket sales opened at 9am... but in true Chinese fashion a mini-stampede initiated at 7am. Still half asleep, we stepped into our sandals, grabbed the mattress, and desperately gathered up our remaining belongings before stumbling forward in an attempt not to lose our rightful place in line. Here's a picture of all the people now standing in line for their chance at cheap Olympic tickets!!
All told, Cliff and I guess that there were nearly 3000 people waiting for Beach VB tickets. The sweet thing is that at about 8am, the riot police started rolling in... you can see their visors below.
The lines were surprisingly orderly, especially for the Chinese... there seemed to be a multi-tiered security plan--Riot police to keep the people intimidated, regular Security Bureau guys to walk up and down the lines telling people to queue up and not to push, venue security to ensure that people are staying in their individual lines and know the rules of purchasing tickets (cash or bank card only, two tickets per person) and volunteers told everyone when events were already sold out. By 11am, we had 4 tickets in hand felt pretty proud of ourselves. Afterwards we headed over to the Workers Stadium for soccer tickets... that area was much more chaotic and the people were much more unruly. We fought our way to the ticket booth and by 3pm we had 4 more tickets. The next morning I slid out of bed pretty early and stood in line for boxing tickets. The Workers Gymnasium ticketing was by-far the best, most orderly of all our experiences. All told, we scored four super tickets to the last day of Beach VB prelims (12 hour day including both morning and evening sessions!) for 100 RMB each (15USD), four tickets to womens football (soccer) for 150 RMB (23 USD) each and two boxing tickets for the last day of semi-finals (80RMB or 12USD). The reason we (and 50,000 other people) went through the @ss-pain of getting this tickets is the price point...the Chinese government promised that over 50% of the tickets would be sold for under 100RMB, so that tickets would be attainable for the average citizen. All of the ticket we got were for the best seats at the venue (A-class)--the lower-class tickets, B and C, are 2/3 and 1/3 the price of the A, respectively. All in all, we are satisfied with the tickets we were able to buy. We hope to get more, however, as the games approach and people who hoarded tickets look to sell their extras at the last minute.
To round out today's blog, we wanted to update you on the weather, which remains lethal, at best. The last couple days were not too bad, but today is exceptionally bad. T minus 12 days to the Olympics, and we still barely see some of our neighboring buildings. 
The government-implemented driving restrictions (cars with odd and even numbered license plates can only drive on odd or even numbered days, respectively) and limited factory pollution have resulted in visibly reduced pollution. Or so we have been told. Additionally, their is a massive plan to launch thousands of iodine bullets into the sky to seed the clouds to make it rain outside the city, so we can enjoy sunny days here in Beijing (and so that the roofless birds nest ticket holders don't get wet). The alarming statistic of the day (44% chance of rain on the day of the opening ceremony). Nice...
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