YJ is out running around the city as Tianjin’s answer to Brenda Starr, I’m here in The Studio with CCTV on the television, NBC on the Sling Box, and a fridge full of diet coke. I was thinking of wandering out of the hutong to join the madness, but I decided to bunker down and do the multi-television thing. Just so you know, There’s a fair to good sized chance before this whole thing is done I’m going to face “China nationalism” and “Wow, Beijing’s a crazy place” overload and begin drinking scotch heavily, but for the moment at least, let’s do an Opening Ceremony running diary.
6:58 p.m. First things first: Yes, the air today was “not great.” Whether it’s “summer mist” or a “toxic cloud of doom” depends on if you get your news from Xinhua or US local television.
7:02 NBC’s The Today Show kicks off from Beijing where today “What some people are calling ‘the most important moment in modern Chinese history’” will occur. I guess that whole Liberation-Great Leap Forward-Cultural Revolution-Opening and Reform thing was just a warm up act. Good to