Changing China

China hits home run

China’s upset 4-1 win over Taiwan in the first round of the World Baseball Classic earlier this month was a small but important step for a team that battles for recognition and funding.

Although trounced by Japan and South Korea in earlier matches, the politically tinged match renewed China’s bragging rights over the self-ruled island, which Beijing declares as its own territory and has vowed to bring back to mainland rule, by force if necessary.

The loss was a bitter pill for Taiwan to swallow, which was also beaten by China at the Olympic Games, and has a far deeper baseball following stemming from U.S. aid and soft power flowing into the island in the decades after the Chinese civil war (1945-1949).

“We have to accept it, and the fact that China have made great steps in baseball,” said Taiwan coach Yeh Chih-Shien.

It was also a surprise for me, having already consigned Chinese baseball to the waste-heap of history, after it emerged in January that a local developer had started to dismantle Beijing’s Olympic baseball venue with a view to replacing it with a shopping mall.

The win over Taiwan aside, China finished eighth out of eight at the Olympic Games.

Baseball, like softball, has been trimmed from the Olympic line-up and won’t be played at the 2012 London Games. It will have to fight for inclusion at the 2016 Games against other hopeful sports, including squash, rugby, golf and karate.

How to avoid a taxing experience

While Beijing will be keen to show off gleaming new subway lines built specially to whisk people between Olympic venues and other tourist hot spots, many of the 2.5 million visitors expected to hit town over the Games period will find themselves at the mercy of a local cab driver at some stage or other.

For visitors lacking a basic grasp of Mandarin, this can be quite unnerving. As earnestly as Olympic organisers have tried to improve cab-drivers’ basic English, and while there are notable exceptions, it would be safer to assume that your driver does not speak a word beyond “hello”, “ok” and “bye bye”.

It is also wise to assume, beyond major tourist spots and some commercial buildings, that your taxi driver probably doesn’t know where your destination is.

Preparation is obviously key here. Those at star hotels can obviously ask desk staff to help write down addresses in Chinese to hand to drivers, while better hotels conveniently provide business cards with tourist sites listed.

For less cashed-up visitors, expat magazines like That’s Beijing and Time Out also helpfully provide addresses in Chinese to restaurants, bars and night clubs.