At the Head of the Charles last October, I had the chance to speak with a few of the members of the Beijing University crew team, who had traveled over 7000 miles (and due to visa issues, sans coxswain) to Boston to compete. With their average height being about 6'3, these guys broke all of my preconceived notions that Chinese people were short. When I told them in my pitifully poor Chinese that I would be in Beijing for the spring semester, they immediately told me that I should come out to watch a practice, and gave me their names, phone numbers, and email addresses.
Well, I kept those digits, and kept in touch with them, specifically a guy named Li Rui. I got an text message from him about a week ago, inviting me to come watch the team take a 2K test on the ergs. Actually, I received his text that day, about 2 hours before the erg test started. So, after making the quick and easy decision to blow off my sociology "field trip" (the majority of which, I was pleased to learn later, was spent sitting in Beijing traffic), I hopped in a cab to Beijing University.
(Zhu Ye: coxswain, TV star, and boat repairman)After practice, Li Rui, his friend Liu Zi Yu (English name: "Rocky"), and another team member invited me to go eat jiaozi with them. Being true to their culture, they wouldn't let me pay for a thing. They all could speak pretty good English (better than my Chinese, at least), so most of our conversation was in English, although I did make a valiant, if futile effort to speak Chinese.
Since I had already made plans to go watch a water practice, I met Li Rui again last Saturday morning to head out to the resevoir , but this time I brought my friend Allie, who rows for Trinity College in CT. We all piled into a taxi and headed north out of town to Changping. One hour, three wrong turns, and 150 kuai later, we pulled up to where the team practices. The place is actually a water-skiing school, but they let the Bei Da rowing team use their facilities when they come to practice. As we came in, the team was already out on the water, but they were heading back to the dock, probably due to the ridiculously strong winds that were making scary-looking whitecaps on the water. So, the rest of the day was spent just hanging out with the team.
As I was looking around at the mountains that surround the reservoir, I noticed something unusual on top of one of the more distant mountains. As I continued to look at it, I realized it was part of the Great Wall. It was surreal to think that these guys row in the shadow of something that ancient. Pretty cool. The oldest thing about where I row back home is the lake itself, which was built in the 60s.
Despite the initial disappointment at the less-than-favorable weather conditions, it was a great day. The team reminded me of my own team - everyone works hard, but they all have fun doing it, everyone has blisters on their hands, and just about every rower I talked to mentioned how much they hate the erg. If you were to plop them right down in the middle of a PSU crew practice, they'd know exactly what to do. I was really glad for the chance to meet and hang out with them. They're a great bunch of guys. I hope they make a repeat appearance at the Charles next fall.
