SHANGHAI—It’s sometime past nine, and I’m sprawled across the lawn in People’s Square with a few friends and hundreds of strangers (including a middle-aged couple lost in a makeout session, a boy in a T-shirt that reads I LOVE CHINA, and a legless beggar), watching the opening ceremony on a screen embedded in a skyscraper. We’re about a third of the way through the Parade of Nations, that part of the ceremony where countries display questionable fashionable decisions, en masse. People are starting to get bored. As if on cue, a pair of uniformed guys appear to sell us milk tea for only three times the normal price. But then the crowd erupts into cheers. There, onscreen, is the Canadian team.

So why the uproar? Taiwan — or Chinese Taipei, to be accurate — brought tepid applause. The reception given Hong Kong was more enthusiastic, but still nothing approaching this. At Pakistan and Cuba, the off-kilter girl next to me let out a lone cheer, explaining, “Pakistan and Cuba are China’s FRIENDS!” But Canada has something special. There, in the pack of athletes, is Mark Rowswell, a.k.a. Dashan, a.k.a. China’s most famous foreigner since Marco Polo.

A native of Ottawa, Rowswell moved to Beijing in 1988 fresh out of the University of Toronto. He spoke Chinese, so he was, naturally, qualified to host an international singing competition that same year. Then, as state news agency Xinhua put it, “The Chinese people immediately fell in love with his big eyes, sexy hair, expressive facial features and aura of cleverness.”

The rest is intensely Googleable. But suffice it to say that Dashan means “big mountain,” and he left a high bar. Now, twenty years after he shot to stardom, Chinese-speaking foreigners are inevitably compared to him.

But back to the opening ceremony. The crowd laughs when the Swedish team appears clad in traditional Chinese qipao dresses and tangzhuang jackets. They cheer Kobe Bryant and boo George Bush. But the only country that manages to top Canada’s reception? China.

(To be fair, Chris Rudge, CEO of the Canadian Olympic Committee, predicted it.)

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Posted on Friday, August 8th, 2008 at 3:57 pm. Follow comments through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comment or trackback.