Shoot-around

In the midst of worrying about what topics seemed appropriate for oral presentation for an "Advanced Speaking" class for Chinese sophomores, I looked over today and again saw the Chinglish scrawled across my new basketball--"BASKET New Beijing Great Olympic Ball"--and felt the claws of procrastination sinking into my back, and into my increasingly idle hands, which then began reaching for my hi-tops in the closet. Although the AC in the room here makes whatever summer time I spend inside quite pleasant, with the window blinds drawn and the doors closed, this place, like most places associated with work, eventually gets to feeling like a cave. There were storm clouds rolling in in the distance, I could see them coming, but at the moment the sunlight was still bright outside. I threw on a sleeveless t-shirt, lending my barely-21-year-old appearance the looks of a 17-year-old, tied up the kicks, and headed outside.

Along with ping-pong (the national sport), the Chinese love badminton and basketball, or so I've seen thus far. The two-dozen or so courts that lie right outside my apartment building, between the hours of 4pm and 9pm, are absolutely packed. I presume that students, who are still on break and therefore have loads of free time, like to sleep in in the mornings, and are waiting for the heat of midday to pass before they get outside to exert themselves in sport. (The Chinese practice of xiuxi, akin to the European siesta, might also account for the late afternoon start to ball and racket games outside, as students might be either sleeping or relaxing during the early afternoon by cultural mandate.) Being the self-conscious person that I am, I seek out the court with the fewest people, look around for a court with fewer people when I get there, and then ask to join in the shoot-around.

The two Chinese undergraduates (so they looked) readily let me jump in, responding to my request in English and with smiles. One of the students is decked out in a new-looking practice jersey, and the other is dressed as if he just walked out of a library. As I look around me, I realize that all of the courts that contain less than 10 people are also taken up with shoot-arounds--not 2-on-2s, or 3-on-3s, or 1-on-1s. Even on the more crowded courts, the competition that is going on is not quite heated. The kids that are decked out in the proper attire for a basketball game are moving just as avidly and athletically as those without gear. The mood, therefore, throughout the courts, is a relaxed one. This seems appropriate--given the little I know about basketball, my untrained eyes can only pick up maybe a half-dozen dcent looking ballplayers in the whole lot taking up my field of vision. To be both bad at basketball and tense about it would be a waste of time, so the students are relaxed and at ease with what skill they have. Despite this relaxed mood permeating the space, I airball my first two shots, and reassure myself that I was right in feeling self-conscious about both my sleeveless t-shirt and the basketball ability that such a t-shirt seems to advertise. I relax, however, as the mood seems to demand, and I shoot around as rain begins to fall.

Taking free throws in the drizzle, a more accomplished-looking student ballplayer comes onto our court. I tighten up for a few shots, looking to live up to the t-shirt and the skin I'm in, then loosen up and make a nice-looking, Ewing-esque baseline jumper--not fading, just standing still, but nicely arcing and nicely dropping into the hole in mid-basket. Something is said by the newcomer in Chinese that is probably directed at me, and I don't respond--I don't speak Chinese. There's a pause, a few shots, a few misses, and as I run back into the key he approaches me and asks me what I'm studying at Tsinghua. "Uh... wo shi laoshi," I say in busted tones, laughing at myself. He gets the gist, that I am a teacher, and widens his eyes in disbelief when I later indirectly mention that I'm 24.

Bill Young, as he introduced himself, is from Liaoning province, a coastal province like Shandong that lies to the northeast of Beijing. Its southern coast comprises the north shore of Bo Hai, the bay which empties into Korea Bay and then the Yellow Sea beyond. It gets cold in Liaoning, colder than it does in Beijing, and they get snow there--not up over your head, like in Harbin, but up to around your waist and, sometimes, up to your nipples. Bill couldn't believe that the U.S. Olympic basketball team hadn't won every single Olympic basketball match that they'd ever played in, and he was happy to see that such talented athletes were able to pull it together to come away with a gold medal here in Beijing. He couldn't get over how quick Chris Paul could move. We both share a respect of Allen Iverson, despite his image problems. And no, Bill corrected me, Iverson does not have a ring--but he's still a good player.

We talked about financial engineering, or rather Bill talked to me about financial engineering, and I reassured him, despite his doubts, that he almost without a doubt has a decent job waiting for him when he gets out of college. We talked about where I went to school, and that led into a conversation about our mutual respect of Kevin Garnett. He was excited to hear that KG and I share first names. It made it easier for him to remember. He's going to see if he'll be able to take my class if I'm still around next year. For now, he's still too busy struggling to get at 3.0 in his major courses.

What would it be like to have a second name, to have to have a second name because your first name wasn't conducive to the language of commerce and the forces dominating a shrinking world? I asked Bill to reconfirm his family name, and he again said to me, "Young," which in retrospect was probably, "Yung," or "Yeong." But it seemed at that moment as if his name had been sacrificed in search of something that would be easier to attain as Bill Young. Perhaps, at that moment, it was solely for easing the conversation along--for my convenience, so that it would be easier to remember Bill's name. My Chinese name is Mai Kaiwen--in time, will that name take on characteristics all its own? Will the person called by that name, a person that presumably can speak at least a bit of Mandarin, will that person be different from the one called by my English name? Probably--how different, and different how? Will something about the other person I am, the other person I was, be sacrificed?

As we spoke, the rain subsided and a blue sky was revealed. Like many storms that sweep through the Beijing valley, this one had knocked out the smog, revealing a beautiful afternoon that had been hidden just 30 minutes earlier. The rain had mixed with the dust and grime on the court to form a kind of paste that was now all over my hands, forearms, and the ball. Every time the ball bounced off the wet court, it splashed the thin layer of muck up against the sides of our shoes.

As the sun broke through, an older woman with a creased, tanned face, with a wide-brimmed hat tied to her head, and with a threadbare floral-print shirt on biked up right onto the court and offered us two bottles of water out of the cardboard box tied onto the back of her bicycle. The box also contained a couple of bananas, and some bottles of juice drink. Both Bill and I politely refused. "Don't buy from them," Bill said as she turned and biked on to the next court. "They buy from the supermarket then make theirs more expensive. Also, it maybe old bottles with other water." I responded that I didn't have any intention to, because I had water in my refrigerator upstairs that was free. Thinking that the dirt that had accumulated on my hands was enough for now, and thinking also that I had work to get back to up in my room, I said goodbye to Bill and headed back to my apartment.