I love moments of global communal happiness and nothing brings those moments like international sporting events. You have a country filled with people happy to be holding such an event and you have a global swath of participants and fans happy to be there (well, except for the People’s Republic of China, of course. But really, did you expect anything else from them?)
One current example of this is the 2009 Deaf Olympics, this year being held in Taipei, Taiwan. And it happens that the sports complex at the center of the Deaf Olympics is only about a 10 minute, NT$90 (US$2.75) taxi ride from my apartment. And it happened that the weather today was beautiful. So I grabbed my kids, promising them ice cream at McDs, and headed to the recently-completed Taipei Sports Complex, affectionately known as “the Egg” locally.
I’m not sure who was behind the logistics of this thing, the Taipei City government, the government of the country of Taiwan, any number of local or international hearing impaired-related NGOs, or (most likely) some combination of those but they deserve a lot of credit. Not once did I see any shortage of people ready to help, even to the point of actively welcoming visitors and asking them if they needed help and not just standing passively by waiting for those in need to approach them. Not only that, but my own fear that there would not be enough ASL-speakers to satisfy the need was sated. Every service booth, information desk, communication center, shop, and even the post office was staffed with personnel fluent in sign language. Even more surprising was that most appeared to be local and not provided by Deaf Olympics Organization.
After hanging out a bit, buying a book of special edition stamps from the post office (well worth the NT$250 price tag), donating to the 2011 Slovakian Deaflympics effort (they have a booth next to McDs) and getting a pin from them, I finally kept my promise and bought Aidan & Ian ice cream sundaes. What did they think of the whole experience? Well, a picture is worth a thousand words, so…
The last thing I did before heading back home was to sign the visitors wall. I’m not very creative with words, so my message (including capitalization) was short and uninspired:
chinese taipei = TAIWAN *heart*
And with that I went home. If you are in Taipei, even if you don’t have tickets to any of the events, I highly suggest just heading down to the stadium and hanging out a bit. Take in the displays, the people, and the atmosphere. It’s well worth a couple hours of your life.
Below are all the photos. Click on a thumb to enlarge.
Additional Coverage
- Cycling at the Deaflympics. David Reid on the 1000 meter sprint event.
- Deaflympics.TV on the opening ceremonies Notice how they refer to Taiwan by it’s sovereign name “Republic of China”.
- From the BBC. Great Britain sent 80 athletes to Taiwan.
Odd that there’s nothing on CNN about it. Please let me know of any other links you come across.
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That’s great that you got to take your kids there. We just happened to stumble upon the cycling event near Taipei City Hall. David Reed has some great photos of it. My kids enjoyed rooting for the cyclists and predicting which color jersey would win.
If you plan on going again, let me know. We may join you.
@Scott That was the first medaled event, and our team (US) got the gold.
I want to go to the stadium again next weekend, but I’m not sure that I can convince my wife. Maybe if Daisy and Sherry poke her about it a little
Nice pics. I’m going to try and spend a bit of time there tomorrow afternoon, and maybe again next weekend.
Yeah if I can convince the family, I’ll head back there on Sunday.
Hi David, I read your posting about the Deaflympics Cycling event and noticed that you commented that Taipei lacks a velodrome facility, while this is true, there is a track venue about 1hr away from Taipei.
Traditionally at Deaflympics, the 1000m sprint is done on road bikes and for the most part on the road. Just like you saw at the Taipei City Centre. The reason for racing on road bikes is because there is not enough “specialist” Deaf Track riders in the world to support track bikes on a velodrome. If everyone of us was required to bring a track-bike, then many of us will be bringing three bikes to compete on.
I thought that the location at the City Hall was a great one. Easy access for people of Taipei to spectate and enjoy the thrill of high speed racing. The 50km points race was also held at the same venue on a 1km circuit.
I represented New Zealand at the Deaflympics and have decided to stay on here in Taipei. If you have time, please send me a message on gmail. Thanks.
@Daniel: David’s blog, and that article, are here. I have passed on to him that you left a comment on my Deaflympics article via Twitter.
Thank you so much for your interesting insight in the event.