Bacon, Eggs and the BCS in Beijing

last week...

It’s Thursday night in America, and thousands of people are ordering pizza, settling down on couches and crowding into bars to watch college football’s national championship game. But I’m just waking up in Beijing, where it’s already Friday morning. There are a handful of sports bars in Beijing, but only one that I know will show the game.

After a quick skim of the morning news, I walk out of my dreary yellow apartment complex, pass the old woman selling egg and scallion breakfast cakes on the street, weave through the legions of bicycle deliverymen carrying five times their body weight in everything from fish oil to furniture, and join the office workers making the morning commute on the city’s pristine new subway.

As Beijing’s professionals are herded into their cubicles, I sit down on a wooden bar stool at the Goose and Duck pub, a Beijing institution managed in the daytime by a Floridian with a handlebar mustache and a beard down to his sternum, to watch the Orange Bowl. Instead of chicken wings and a beer, I order a cup of cappuccino and a plate with pancakes, a small cheese omelet, bacon and sautéed mushrooms. Beijing’s sports bars are open 24 hours, and they all serve breakfast.

In a city of 15 million, there are about 15 of us who care about the game, have no obligations that keep us away from it and don’t have a satellite feed at home. I am with a friend who just started an English teaching job, and our fellow fans seem to be a collection of consultants and entrepreneurs. I’m not sure what I expected—a bunch of Gators on a study abroad trip, maybe, with their faces painted blue and orange. We’re a pretty subdued crowd, but we’re also a bunch of die-hards who made sure we had no meetings or deadlines this morning. Most of us came alone, and our American hometowns stretch from coast to coast—we come from Baton Rouge, New Jersey, Nebraska, even Vancouver.

There are no Chinese patrons, except for one guy who went to OU, which means he doesn’t really count. This isn’t just because it’s nine a.m. on a work day, and Chinese people care so little about football that they haven’t agreed on what to call it (is it American football or American rugby?). It’s also because people here opt to watch their sports at home with home-cooked food and beers that cost 30 cents instead of the seven dollars that people are shelling out back in New York. No wonder we owe the Chinese so many billions of dollars—they’re holding our bar tab.

We watch the game the way you watch most international sports in China—via a four-seconds-delayed satellite feed from the Philippines. That means ads for a Manila casino and for other programming on the satellite service, and no halftime show. But we are still graced with some fawning commentary in English, telling us what a blessed event it is to spend five minutes with Tim Tebow.

When Jonathan Phillips punches through Florida’s go-ahead field goal with more than 10 minutes to go in the fourth quarter, I’ve been in the bar long enough to forget that I’m in China and it’s not noon yet. Maybe that’s the reason that most of us start ordering beers--or maybe we just can’t stand the idea of watching a new champ get crowned without a little hops in our system.

The Chinese Oklahoma grad and the buddy he came with leave the bar when Florida scores again with three minutes left. When the game ends, the rest of us head out to the street, where the sun reminds us it’s daytime, and the hazy sky it barely shines through reminds us we’re in Beijing. Well-fed and a little buzzed, we all head off in different directions, getting back to work in a city that doesn’t know a Heisman from a garden gnome.

Comments

[buy viagra]

Breakfast is the first meal of the day. The word is a compound of "break" and "fast," referring to the conclusion of fasting since the previous day's last meal. Breakfast meals vary widely in different cultures around the world but often include a carbohydrate such as cereal or rice, fruit and/or vegetable, protein, sometimes dairy, and beverage.

Nutritional experts have referred to breakfast as the most important meal of the day. This is based on studies of the large numbers of people in the West who skip breakfast, to adverse effect on their concentration, metabolism and weight.

[generic viagra]

This isn’t just because it’s nine a.m. on a work day, and Chinese people care so little about football that they haven’t agreed on what to call it (is it American football or American rugby?).

[eyelid stye]

Maybe that’s the reason that most of us start ordering beers--or maybe we just can’t stand the idea of watching a new champ get crowned without a little hops in our system.