Xin Qi Tian, Ba Yue 9

Sunday, August 9

The Olympics has started! Today, you could really feel it. I was working in transportation at the hotel, and it was another crazy day! We ran the schedule that is now going to be more of a normal day. We sent off buses to different venues, continuous shuttle buses to the Olympic Green and some shopping market buses.

At times, it would get pretty confusing and not running so well, but overall, especially for the first real day, it ran extremely smoothly.

Once I got off work, I went out to the Dirt Market, or the Antique Market as it is also known. It is this outdoors place where all the people from the country-side come into the city for the weekend to sell their goods. When you walk into the center of the market, its just all of these people with blankets laid out with their goods on it. You can find things like old coins, tea pots, jade pieces and jewery… and millions more antique things that you can’t even imagine.

Although it is called the Antique Market, though, its not all old things… some people just come to sell things that they have made… like wooden bowls and pottery. Here, there is just so much stuff to look at, that you can just walk up and down the rows and look at new and different things at each blanket.

One thing that was really shocking however, was in the center of the square, there was a huge flat-screen TV broadcasting the Olympic Games. I found this to be a really interesting mix between the old and modern China… but if you ignored the technological distractions, you could feel the strong link back to China’s past and the old, country-side customs.

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