I experienced my first “blue sky day” yesterday, which coincided with my first Olympics events.

A blue sky day refers to the air quality of Beijing and other major Chinese cities. The country’s Blue Sky program measures sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and airborne particulate matter known as PM10. Pollutants are measured on a scale of 1 to 500, with 500 considered the worst score. Any rating below 101 meets national air quality standards and is considered a “Blue Sky day.” Of course, there is some controversy http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/10/world/asia/10china.html over the accuracy of this system.

Anyway, it was nice to finally see wisps of real clouds and a light shade of blue overhead, especially as I headed to the tennis stadium for my first live event of the Games.

Transportation Trauma

We left the apartment at 8:30 a.m. for our 10:30 tickets at the Olympic Tennis Center thinking that would give us plenty of time to get there. Ha! We needed the full two hours.

Turns out the signage for transportation to the various stadiums around Beijing are not exactly clear or the easiest to even find. And you have to go through security between subway transfers and have a ticket to an event before you’re allowed on Line 8, the track that goes to the main Olympic stadiums. But the woman manning the line said for tennis we needed to take a bus.

I swear if I didn’t have Mandarin-speaking Maggie with me, it would have taken even longer to figure out how find the correct bus to get to the center. Even after we got on the right bus, she had to ask a Chinese passenger what stop we needed because even though the taped announcement says, in English, “The next stop is,” a different voice says the name of the stop in fast Chinese, which even Maggie had trouble understanding.

(Of course, we could have taken a taxi, but we’re former New Yorkers and prefer not to rely on them, except late at night. Plus, they’re not the easiest to find right now because a) demand is sky high and b) some drivers have been refusing to pick up Westerners because of their fear of not being able to communicate.)

Match Point

But we did make it and what a day it was!

Tennis is my favorite sport, so I was beyond excited. We had center court seats and even though they were near the top, they were not bad at all because the stadium isn’t that large. Much better than the seats I usually get for the U.S. Open. Only a little more than half the seats were filled though, which I found a bit surprising.

Center Court Competition

First match was Peng Shuai (China) vs. Alize Cornet (France). Cornet won, but Peng made some good attempts to try to stay in the match. Next up was Venus Williams vs. Iveta Benesova from the Czech Republic. Venus pretty much blew her away in the first set, 6-1, but Benesova rallied to win a few games the second set to make the match (6-4) last a little longer.

Court 1 Excitement

I felt a bad for Venus though as about half of the half-filled stadium emptied out after Peng’s match. (This meant though that I could move up closer to the action.) The Chinese spectators moved over to Court 1 to watch their other countrywoman, Zheng Jie, play Nuria Llangostera-Vives from Spain, which we did as well after Venus’s win. (Grounds courts are open seating so we managed to snag fourth row courtside seats(!) though this meant we were directly in the hot, hot sun.)

This match was the best of the day. I was thrilled to see Zheng play—she’s ranked just 36 but made it to the semifinals at Wimbledon this year, and had donated all her winnings (after the Chinese government took its cut) to the relief efforts of the Sichuan earthquake victims. She’s been rebounding this year after a slow 2007 season due to injuries.

The players were equals and each game was close. The first match went into tiebreak, with Llangostera-Vives winning. Second set was Zheng’s, 6-1, but the score is deceiving as many games went to deuce. Third set, Zheng took an early lead, but Langostera-Vives rallied back to tie it 3-3.

The crowd went wild. Consistently had to be reprimanded for yelling during play. They chanted Zheng Jie, jia you, Zheng Jie, jia you (pronounced like jai yo, rhymes with hi ho), which means “let’s go!” Zheng eventually won the match 6-4. The place erupted.

On my way out I caught the end of the Keifer (Germany)/Anderson (Russia) match. Keifer won. But nothing beat the great tennis played on Court 1. That alone was worth the price of the admission ticket. It was a blue sky day indeed.

Next up: Beach Volleyball