{"id":3153,"date":"2015-05-01T08:27:53","date_gmt":"2015-05-01T01:27:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gordonandjudy.com\/?p=3153"},"modified":"2015-05-01T08:27:53","modified_gmt":"2015-05-01T01:27:53","slug":"day-2-suzhou-and-home-42915","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gordonandjudy.com\/?p=3153","title":{"rendered":"Day 2, Suzhou, and home, 4\/29\/15"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was worn out after yesterday, and slept soundly. Had a leisurely breakfast before heading over to the Championships. Saw some really good play. It\u2019s fun to watch the crowd as one of the popular Chinese players comes by. I\u2019ve seen a lot of the Chinese players on Chinese sports TV. Badminton and table tennis get a lot of airplay, along with soccer, NBA, and the occasional PBR (yep, bull riding). There\u2019s also lots of billiards broadcast here?<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know any of the foreign players except Timo Boll. He\u2019s German, and as a former world #1 player, he draws interest. I didn\u2019t see any sign of the American players. They had all been knocked out in the qualifiers or early rounds. The last ones were out of the brackets by Tuesday noon. I did get a chance to watch all of the top Chinese male and female stars play. Today\u2019s rounds are more formal. I watched two rounds of women\u2019s singles, one round of mixed doubles, and one round of men\u2019s singles, eight tables per round. The players all come in together with spotlights and introductions. Yesterday, as a table finished, new players were immediately brought in without any formal announcements.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_2746\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I left around 1:45, returning to the hotel to pick up my backpack (packed light this trip) and eat lunch. I took the subway back out to the train station, arriving 45 minutes before departure. They opened the gates 15 minutes before the train is scheduled to depart and we took an escalator up to the platform. Just as I came up, I saw a train light way off in the distance. Before I could open my camera on my phone, the train blew by. It\u2019s frightening how fast and quiet they are, until they\u2019re right on top of you.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_2759\"<\/a>

On my way to the subway, headed home. This large “circle” has a sign that says “Square Dancing”.<\/p><\/div>\n

\"IMG_2521\"<\/a>

In the subway station near the Expo Center<\/p><\/div>\n

The ride back to Beijing was 5 hours, 15 minutes. The path to the subway from the train was really short. I was on the Beijing Metro headed home in less than 10 minutes from the time our Suzhou train stopped. I\u2019ve been double-checking the Metro app, making sure the trains to won\u2019t stop running before I arrive at Taiyanggong. The subway begins to shutdown at different stations at 10:45.<\/p>\n

I made it to Taiyanggong Station, and walked to the apartment, arriving at 11:00. I unpacked and repacked, double-checking clothes selection, and especially paperwork. Without the correct paperwork and permits, there\u2019ll be no Tibet trip.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was worn out after yesterday, and slept soundly. Had a leisurely breakfast before heading over to the Championships. Saw some really good play. It\u2019s fun to watch the crowd as one of the popular Chinese players comes by. I\u2019ve … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gordonandjudy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3153"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gordonandjudy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gordonandjudy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gordonandjudy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gordonandjudy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3153"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/gordonandjudy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3153\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3154,"href":"http:\/\/gordonandjudy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3153\/revisions\/3154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gordonandjudy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gordonandjudy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gordonandjudy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}