I'm back in Shanghai now after an eventful weekend. I'm going to break things up into pieces (mostly because I'm too lazy to write it all out at once). Things kicked off on Friday night when I met up with 6 other silly Shanghai frisbee players in the train station... We packed into our overnight train and we were off! The train ride to Tianjin was pretty uneventful. Mostly it consisted of us trying to play cards in the dining car and being told that we weren't allowed... Who does that?
After a relatively tame night, our train arrived arrived in Tianjin at 6am. We were disgorged into what can only be described as a smoggy haze enveloping the entire city of Tianjin. The pollution was incredible. There was no sunrise or sunset - just reddish, hazy dawn and dusk. We enjoyed some of Mr. Li's Beef Noodles at the train station and trekked over to the fields (stopping in a park on the way to play hackeysack/badminton with old people.) It was ridiculous how many old people were out and about at the crack of dawn. Why do old people wake up so early? After a couple of distractions and a police officer running over, blowing his whistle, and giving us the "time-out" hand signal (trying to get us to stop playing catch), we made it to an industrial park. I mean industrial in every sense of the word. This park brought images of Soviet-era bloc countries and Detroit put together...
The tournament itself was pretty sweet! We picked up two girls from Beijing - Larke and Lauren (who were awesome) and played 5 games with our 9 players. We didn't play particularly well, but we had a blast playing together. We managed to eke out a victory in the finals (although none of us really know how) and were rewarded with a big trophy and gaudy official certificates from the local government. Ah, China :)
Next issue - Tianjin party and bus to Beijing...
- Jon
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