Sporting prowess
It was a weekend of sports tournaments. Yesterday, Jamie's office had organised a badminton tournament. Strangely, the address of the courts was a lane off Shanghai's premier shopping street. We headed, somewhat sceptically, towards it doubting very much that we would find a badminton court amidst the Vivienne Westwood and Chanel shops lining the street but, as is often the way in Shanghai, you turn the corner and suddenly the glitz disappears and you are back in China.
We headed down the lane encouraged by the people wandering past with rackets and then, sure enough, there was an aircraft hanger of a building with a dozen badminton courts inside. The paint was peeling off the walls and there was no airconditioning in the 30 degree heat but there were some pretty keen badminton players there. Jamie joined the somewhat out of condition office colleagues and tried hard to adapt his squash game to badminton - not entirely successfully. Some of the players on the neighbouring courts were, so I was told, professional players who, in true communist style, were playing side by side with the likes of Eliot who was determinedly hitting the shuttlecock over the net next to theirs.
Today, Jamie was playing in a charity tennis tournament. Not knowing what to expect, he headed off alone to find out whether or not it was worth the rest of the family turning up. Half an hour later, I got an excited call from Jamie. "Come down, there's a 250 seat stadium and a half hour opening ceremony. So we came. Centre court was almost the size of the one at Queen's. On it were 50 or so people waiting to hear the opening speeches and a very large sound system playing "The Ride of the Valkyrie".
After interminable speeches, the former mayor Shanghai (65+) tottered onto the court in his tennis togs and declared the tournament open by serving to the strains of the theme to the Magnificent Seven.
Jamie's partner was an elderly Japanese who, it became apparent within seconds of the warm up starting, was incapable of hitting a shot in court. Jamie's opponents were a senior party cardre and a young, rather sharp looking player. Jamie and partner were wiped off the court. It was then that it became apparent that the supposedly random pairings were not quite so random after all. The former deputy mayor was playing on the next door court with an extremely good partner who essentially won his match single handedly. I found out later that he was the club pro.
Photographers swarmed around making much of the tall foreigner and his two childre. "You are like an angel" said a Chinese lady to Eliot as he shouted "good shot Daddy". When I pointed to Toby in his pushchair, she said "Two children. Happiness". Happiness indeed.
We headed down the lane encouraged by the people wandering past with rackets and then, sure enough, there was an aircraft hanger of a building with a dozen badminton courts inside. The paint was peeling off the walls and there was no airconditioning in the 30 degree heat but there were some pretty keen badminton players there. Jamie joined the somewhat out of condition office colleagues and tried hard to adapt his squash game to badminton - not entirely successfully. Some of the players on the neighbouring courts were, so I was told, professional players who, in true communist style, were playing side by side with the likes of Eliot who was determinedly hitting the shuttlecock over the net next to theirs.
Today, Jamie was playing in a charity tennis tournament. Not knowing what to expect, he headed off alone to find out whether or not it was worth the rest of the family turning up. Half an hour later, I got an excited call from Jamie. "Come down, there's a 250 seat stadium and a half hour opening ceremony. So we came. Centre court was almost the size of the one at Queen's. On it were 50 or so people waiting to hear the opening speeches and a very large sound system playing "The Ride of the Valkyrie".
After interminable speeches, the former mayor Shanghai (65+) tottered onto the court in his tennis togs and declared the tournament open by serving to the strains of the theme to the Magnificent Seven.
Jamie's partner was an elderly Japanese who, it became apparent within seconds of the warm up starting, was incapable of hitting a shot in court. Jamie's opponents were a senior party cardre and a young, rather sharp looking player. Jamie and partner were wiped off the court. It was then that it became apparent that the supposedly random pairings were not quite so random after all. The former deputy mayor was playing on the next door court with an extremely good partner who essentially won his match single handedly. I found out later that he was the club pro.
Photographers swarmed around making much of the tall foreigner and his two childre. "You are like an angel" said a Chinese lady to Eliot as he shouted "good shot Daddy". When I pointed to Toby in his pushchair, she said "Two children. Happiness". Happiness indeed.
posted by The Heywoods at 3:22 pm
<< Home