A Taste of Home in Taiyuan

 Our Group down by the locker room, post-game.

 It's been one week since the other teachers, some of our friends from the university and I went to go see the provincial basketball team play their final game of the season and I think my voice and throat have finally recovered. To anyone that has ever watched a sporting event with me, on TV or at the game, can attest I can get very loud and this time was no exception. Our group was mentioned in the local newspaper as being the "main energy in the stadium." The second paragraph is the one pertaining to us if you care to stick it in Google translate.  Gerald has some videos but I'm too lazy at the moment to try and get them from him, maybe later.

The attraction for us was watching Stephon Marbury, formerly of the Celtics, Knicks, Nets, Suns and Bucks, play for the Shanxi Brave Dragons. The Brave Dragons,known in Chinese as the 山西汾酒 (Shanxi Fenjiu) which is the local liquor specialty I mentioned in my last post, are probably one of the worst teams in the league. Before Marbury's arrival 6 weeks ago they were an abysmal 3-13. How they have fared since I don't know. But regardless, on Wednesday night they thoroughly trashed their opponents to the sound of 123-90 someting.

There he is, number 33. Whether he is more fun to watch then Grizzard I don't know.

To say nothing else the experience was well worth the pain of the next few days.  It had to be one of the most fun days I've had since coming here, this semester and last.  Our seats were second row almost right behind one of the baskets so we could see all the action right up close.  Our goal was to cheer loudly enough that any other Americans in the stadium would know that Anne and I (at least) were from Boston, and that maybe, possibly, we could get the attention of and finagle a picture with Marbury.  Sadly the latter was not achieved and we can only speculate on the former.

Our team sans-Marbury sadly getting stuffed.

On a side note, as one of our friends informed me "cheerleader" is translated as 啦啦队(lala dui) for the phonetic sound of "la-la." Though they are more of a dance team since they don't do any actual cheering during the game and their dances don't involve any singing.  During time-outs and in-between quarters they have a performance routine but after those they just sit in their seats on the baselines and wait. Anyways, they were fun to watch.