Have you been as obsessed with the Olympics as we have? I mean seriously, I think some competition or another was playing on our televisions around the clock for the last two weeks. I've loved every minute of it. I've felt a surge of pride and patriotism for this lovely country I call home: the USA. Every time we won a medal and I watched the flag raised, I felt incredible pride for our country and for each individual athlete who poured their heart and soul into those games. They are amazing people, doing things I only wish I could do with my body. I've found some love for sports I would have never really paid attention to, most notably swimming (hooray for Phelps) and beach volleyball (May-Treanor and Walsh are my heroes). I've always loved gymnastics and was rooting for Shawn Johnson and Nastia Liukin the whole way. It was awesome and I'm sad it's over.
Something else these games brought into my worldview has been China, in and of itself. China is beautiful, seriously. I've loved all of the shots of the Great Wall and temples. I've enjoyed the special op ed pieces on different events, people and places in China. It's amazing how little I knew about China. I've known some information on China but I'm ceased to be amazed by what an interesting culture, language and people it possesses. Chinese is not just one language but a combination of over a dozen dialects. More than a fifth of the world's population speaks Chinese in some form. Most of the games were played in Beijing, and others in other cities, but I found it odd that the equestrian events were in Hong Kong. One reporter on MSNBC equated the difference between Beijing and Hong Kong as the same as he distance between Chicago and Miami. Sometimes I forget how big China really is.
In these games, China won an astonishing 51 gold medals. The USA trailed them with 36. I think this is incredible in that China has an estimated 1.3 billion people and the US only has 300 million. That's a huge difference. It's like Ohio State University playing John F. Kennedy High School for a football championship. Yet the USA had 110 total medals and China only 100.
The topic I've known the most about in regards to China has been the one of human rights issues. I've always been fascinated by the on-goings amongst the people and government of China. The one child law was instituted in China in 1979. This law would not seem especially difficult for most Americans, since our average birth rate is less than 2 children per family right now. In China, however, this has caused a loss of multiple generations of children (or at least portions there in). China is a patriarchal society who rely on the birth of boys to continue one's family. The older generations depend on their sons and grandsons to care for them in their old age. Daughters, on the other hand, are not looked upon favorably because they leave their own birth families and become members of their husbands'. Shortly after Wiggly's birth, I saw a documentary entitled "China's Stolen Children," which explains how the one child law has impacted families, particularly the epidemic of kidnapped children. Did you know that a child born out of wedlock is not considered a person in China? Or that you can be forced to have an abortion? Ugh, it makes me sick to my stomach. I understand the need to control the population but in this society, it has done more harm than good. There are now three boys for every girl, families will die out without a woman to continue the family line.
Approximately 40 million baby girls have been electively or forcibly aborted in China since 1979. It makes me wonder what those girls, women could have been or become. Watching the athletes compete, made me wonder what other girls could have been there to make their country proud. Could they have been the greatest diver, swimmer, table tennis player, gymnast? It makes me sad to think about what might have been. Simply because boys are more valued than girls, we'll never know.
I also thought about some of the athletes as well, especially the particularly young ones. Most have been plucked out of their families at very young ages and forced to train in a particular sport by their government (this has also been a practice in many Soviet nations as well). I wonder about those who failed to obtain the glory at these games? What happens to them?
See, here I go worrying about things I can't possibly change.
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