Venue maps and the last round of Olympic tickets
Thursday, 24th July 2008 ~ Maggie ~ Link ~ Comments (0)
A list of ticket booths is below. The BBC's Olympic venue map is a great place to start if you don't know the location of an Olympic site. For a map that's less geographically detailed but includes the venues' Mandarin names, check out ChinesePod's Olympics site, where you can also pick up some last-minute Olympic-themed language lessons.
Get there early, and bring your passport and your sense of humor—the lines are bound to be long. Cash and Visa cards are the only two forms of payment that will be accepted. The box offices close at 6 p.m., but it's a safe bet that tickets will be sold out long before then.
Beijing's main ticket outlet is on the north side of Beitucheng Road, on the west side of the public transportation parking space. Subway lines 8 and 10 meet at Beitucheng. This booth will sell tickets for events hosted at the following venues:
National Stadium (Bird's Nest)
National Aquatics Center (Water Cube)
National Indoor Stadium
Fencing Hall of National Convention Center
Beijing Wukesong Sports Center Baseball Field
Box offices at football (soccer) preliminaries sites—Shanghai, Tianjin, Shenyang and Qinhuangdao—will only sell tickets for events they are hosting.
According to BOCOG's ticketing site, the following venues will have booths selling tickets only for events that they are hosting:
Olympic Green North venue cluster
Olympic Sports Center venue cluster
Wukesong venue cluster
Laoshan Velodrome
Beijing Shooting Range CTF/Hall
Fengtai Sports Center Softball Field
Capital Indoor Stadium
Peking University Gymnasium
Beijing University of Technology Gymnasium
Beijing Institute of Technology Gymnasium
Beijing University of Aeronautics & Astronautics Gymnasium
Beijing Science and Technology University Gymnasium
China Agricultural University Gymnasium
Triathlon Venue
Shunyi Olympic Rowing-Canoeing Park
Chaoyang Park Beach Volleyball Ground
Beijing Workers' Stadium
Beijing Workers' Gymnasium
Tags: Beijing, Chinesepod, Olympic ticketing, Olympics, venues
Mandarin Lesson: Hiking
Wednesday, 11th June 2008 ~ Maggie ~ Link ~ Comments (0)
With a growing middle class that can afford travel and gear, and a growing number of foreigners living in China and sharing their favorite activities with friends here, sports in the great outdoors are quickly gaining in popularity.If you want to learn how to talk about hiking, or 爬山, with your Chinese friends, this lesson from Chinesepod will help get you started:
Related:
The National Pastime
How Do You Say Baseball in Chinese?
Tags: Chinesepod, hiking, language study
The National Pastime
Tuesday, 29th April 2008 ~ Maggie ~ Link ~ Comments (0)
It's China's national sport, and probably the only game that even the most bookish grade school student here can beat their foreign English teacher at. Since ping pong (aka table tennis or 乒乓球, ping pang qiu) became an Olympic sport in 1988, China has won 90 percent of the gold medals and 60 percent of silvers.For a primer on talking about ping pong in Chinese, check out this lesson from ChinesePod's Olympic series. Warning: This is an upper-intermediate lesson, so it is all in Chinese.
China also exports ping-pong talent all over the world. This article by Christopher Rhoads in the Wall Street Journal discusses how immigrants to the United States have impacted the game there and highlights the mixed feelings that can create among homegrown talent.
Tags: ChinesePod, language study, ping pong, table tennis
How Do You Say Baseball in Chinese?
Wednesday, 26th March 2008 ~ Maggie ~ Link ~ Comments (0)
In the run-up to the Olympics, they have been serving up plenty of sports content, including this recent lesson on baseball. Some helpful ChinesePod users have also posted the Chinese names of baseball terms, positions and teams in the site's comments section.
By the way, the answer to the above question is bàngqiú, 棒球. Softball is lěiqiú, 垒球.
Tags: baseball, ChinesePod, language, Mandarin