My wife came home a few weeks ago telling me that she had something special for me that she thought I’d really enjoy.  To my amazement she pulled out of her purse two tickets to one of the biggest social events that this year has provided for our small town of Karamay – a basketball game featuring the Shaanxi CBA team (China Basketball Association) and an American IBL team (International Basketball League) from California.  Everybody who was anybody in this town was going to make it to this game and now I was going to be one of them.

My first reaction when I saw the tickets was to look at the price – 260 yuan ($40 US) for one ticket, and we got the nosebleed!  For those of you big-city people here in China, 260 might not seem like an expensive ticket, but for us here in Xinjiang those two tickets represented our month’s budget for groceries.  It wasn’t a regretted purchase, just not one we would make every day.  In hindsight, the arena wasn’t completely full for the game and I think the organizers could have turned a bit more of a profit by lowering the price and avoiding sticker shock.

Of those who were able to afford tickets to this event, many had never seen a black man, much less a black man who was nearly 2.1 meters (7 feet) tall! The game ended up being more of an exhibition match whose pre-game and half-time “shows” were just as much a part of the entertainment as the basketball, but it was still an memorable experience.
Here’s a few thoughts I had about the match:

• National Anthems: I noticed that unlike the American anthem, the Chinese anthem is usually just heard, not sung.  Also, you’ll never see a Chinese person put their hand over their heart during the anthem.  It’s just not the custom.
• The Dunk: Cheering is not a strong quality in the Chinese people.  This is why they had to teach the Chinese to cheer before the Olympics – they just don’t do it much.   Nobody truly cheered until one of the players dunked the ball, then they went crazy.  A short dunking contest during half time convinced me that most of these people would have been happy to just watch a dunk and then go home.
• Even Sub-Stars Have Egos: Although most of these guys were pretty good players and really nice guys, some of them acted like NBA stars with egos much bigger than their talents.  It should have been a clue to them that they were playing in some podunk gym in the middle of nowhere, China.  A couple fights broke out between the American and Chinese players and it was a bit embarrassing to watch.
• The Americans Lost: Yup, and the game wasn’t even that close.
• Sign, sign, sign: After the game these guys were polite enough to stick around to take pictures and sign autographs for all the young fans.  Ironically, when we went down to the floor to introduce ourselves to them as the only Americans in the town, they also mobbed us!  I signed shirts, pictures, and pieces of paper for kids who would probably see me in the grocery store the next week.  It was funny and awkward.

All in all a very fun experience.  I just wish that big events like this would happen more often in our city!