"The Chinese Olympics Committee is shitting on the sweat and blood of energetic youth."

Theme Magazine has a great interview on their recently revamped blog with a member of the Beijing Organizing Committee (he calls it BOCOG - the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad). Sounds fancy, but he's just a regular Joe (or should I say Zhao) Student who, like his classmates, wanted to get involved in the Games and got a nice gig doing some translating and commentating.

Most of my classmates were selected as announcers, which means they do the intro before every event like “Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the XXIX Olympiad… etc. etc.” or “Today the weather is fine, a nice 29 degrees.”

Think about that next time you're watching the Games.

The guy seems to be your typical, nice, earnest, Olympics-loving Chinese dude - until this:

Do you realize you speak with an English accent? How did your English get so good?

Trainspotting is my favorite movie. A very memorable, very impressive movie. I guess I watch a lot of English movies. I like Jude Law’s accent a lot also and try to emulate it.

He learned English from Trainspotting and Jude Law! Eat it, American cultural hegemony!

I can further see how he was inspired by Trainspotting here:

...So, are you a volunteer?

No, not at all. I’m a step above those guys. Paid employee here. I get paid about 80 RMB (about 10 dollars) a day. Enough to get me a pair of new shoes okay? I also enjoy free transportation. Basically, what I’m trying to say is, the Chinese Olympics Committee is shitting on the sweat and blood of energetic youth. It’s great.

File under: The Chinese: Just Like Us!

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JusticeLeague wrote 4 years 43 weeks ago

re: "The Chinese Olympics Committee is shitting on the sweat an

Isn't this the same everywhere else (unfortunately)? I know plenty of energetic youths who would grab coffees and pick up dry cleanings for free just for a chance to see Carson Daly from afar while working for some junior-level manager at MTV (at least when Carson was still the shit).

mary wrote 4 years 42 weeks ago

re: "The Chinese Olympics Committee is shitting on the sweat an

So michael phelps is a douchebag , all I have to say to that is JEALOUS MUCH, to bad he an olympic winner and you are a unknown loser nobody cares about

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Lisa Wong Macabasco

Editor in chief Lisa Wong Macabasco joined Hyphen in 2006; she was previously the magazine's features editor. She has written for Mother Jones, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, AsianWeek, Audrey, Filipinas and ColorLines’ RaceWire. She graduated from U.C. Berkeley and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and co-founded the National Asian American Student Conference. A former editor at AsianWeek newspaper, she currently works as an editor in the marketing department of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

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