By Jim Maceda, NBC News Correspondent
How remote is the former Soviet republic of Georgia to most Americans?
Here's one measure: I recently received an e-mail from a viewer wondering if this Georgia was where our Georgians (as in our Carolinans or our Virginians) originally came from.
Silly, perhaps, but the comment raises a serious concern. It's true that, as the six-day conflict in Georgia - followed by a week of shaky cease-fire - unfolded, each dateline became more exotic, and unfamiliar, than the last: Tbilisi, Gori, Poti, Tskhinvali.
Every day, our dispatches tried to answer the questions we all seemed to be asking: why had a phalanx of international reporters parachuted into Georgia to cover spiraling violence in a breakaway region? Why - at the very height of hype and excitement about the Beijing Olympic Games - had so many of us come to witness what started out as just another ethnic skirmish in the Caucasus?
Of course, there was the obvious, quick answer: This war, like previous proxy wars, was really about what you could not see - or report. What kept your adrenalin pumping in the wee hours of the morning: that primal fear of a military - even nuclear - confrontation between Russia and the United States.
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By Petra Cahill, msnbc.com editor and reporter
As China and the United States battle to claim the most Olympic medals – with gold-medal and all-medal counts being frantically tallied and talked about – many other countries' athletes are overjoyed to take home their nations' first gold, or even bronze.
Kings and presidents make personal calls to congratulate the winners, and millions cheer on their tiny delegations with pride.
"It’s a great honor for us to win Afghanistan’s first medal for the Olympics," said Farhad Kheslat, President of Afghanistan’s National Olympic Committee.
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| Behrouz Mehri / AFP - Getty Images |
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Rohullah Nikpai of Afghanistan celebrates his third-place win during the medal ceremony for the men's 58-kilogram taekwondo competition, in Beijing, on Wednesday. |
"We are quite happy, I can’t express it," Kheslat said after Rohullah Nikpai won a bronze medal for the men’s under 58-kilogram taekwondo competition.
President Hamid Karzai called the athlete to congratulate him for his contribution to the war torn country that's competed in 11 Olympic Games since 1936.
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By Stephanie Himango, NBC News Producer
"It's the first time for us to come to Beijing!" exclaimed sixteen-year-old Su Man Ye, eyes smiling through her tiny glasses.
Petite and energetic, she appeared younger than her years.
"Today we met so many new friends! People are so nice to us!"
Her exuberance was infectious, and defied comprehension when you learned a little bit about her past.
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| Stephanie Himango / NBC News |
| Fifteen-year-old Ding Yi Ru, left, of Beijing, and her new friend from Sichuan province, sixteen-year-old Su Man Ye, right, pose for a photo at the Summer Palace. |
Man Ye
traveled to Beijing during the Olympic Games with 49 other teens from Sichuan Province for a week-long camp sponsored by the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games (BOCOG). For many of the children, including Man Ye, this trip was their first time on a plane, their first time to the capital, their first time away from home.
That home is a place the world came to know in May when a devastating earthquake killed nearly 70,000 people and injured hundreds of thousands more.
For Man Ye, home is no longer the place she once knew. As a young girl, she lost her parents, and had been living with her grandmother. But in the aftermath of the earthquake, she lost her grandmother, too. Now she is looked after by a variety of teachers and distant relatives.
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By NBC News’ Producers A.J. Goodwin and John Cheang
Here’s the riddle: If you order out for Chinese food in the U.S., what do people in China go out for?
The answer: Sichuanese, Yunanese, Shanghainese, Xinjaing, Hakka, Cantonese, Hot Pot, and the list goes on.
Every region of China has its own style of cuisine featuring local ingredients and tastes. And it doesn’t all involve a wok or rice.
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| Maria Alcon / NBC News |
| A chef prepares Beijing's famous Peking Duck. |
In big cities like Beijing of course, all regions of the country are represented, and so is their food.
Here’s a breakdown on just a few of the varied foods of China’s 22 provinces that we had the opportunity to sample on assignment in Beijing. (And our apologies if this makes you hungry).
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| By Ian Williams, NBC News Correspondent |
GUANGDONG, China – Once the Olympic party is over, is China heading for an economic hangover?
Ben Schwall, for one, thinks the headache is already setting in for the country's seemingly unstoppable export machine.
"If you are a factory owner here, it’s not like you're being kicked around. Somebody has hit you over the head with a baseball bat," he said.
I met Schwall on a recent visit to the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, where he buys decorative lights for a string of U.S. retailers. "It's the perfect storm," he told me. "You've got a drop in demand. Business stinks. At the same time prices are going up."
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By Adrienne Mong, NBC News Producer
At least twice a week, Wu Ying goes to a local gym in western Beijing to work out. She joins a group of girlfriends and the occasional guy, and for a couple of hours they train with a dance instructor in a glass-walled room surrounded by treadmills and step machines.
The whole scene – some 20-odd people working up a sweat to the insistent beat of hip hop, under dim fluorescent lights – would be unremarkable if not for the fact that Wu is 70 years old.
Wu, aka China’s pre-eminent Hip Hop Granny, is a nimble Beijing native with an expressive face and elastic body. She has been performing hip-hop routines since 2003 when she saw the first National Hip Hop Dancing Competition on Chinese television.
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| Adrienne Mong / NBC News |
| A poster advertising a performance by the Hip Hop Grannies. |
"The competitors were all young people, wearing headscarves, headdresses, hats, and various clothes," recounted Wu, a retired accountant who was 66 at the time. "I thought that was very fresh."
Inspired by "the look they had in their eyes, the way they moved their fingers, heads and bodies," Wu thought hip-hop dancing would be perfect for herself and China’s aged and infirm.
"The elderly don’t like to move too much," she added. (She’s right. Even though legions of elderly Chinese can be seen exercising in city parks across the country at dawn and dusk, they tend to favor slower-tempo activities like Tai Chi or ballroom dances such as waltzing.)
Wu set out to learn hip hop dancing at a local gym and to study whatever she could about the activity. She also began looking to put together a five-member troupe to promote hip hop dancing by touring the country and by performing on Chinese TV.
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By Carol Grisanti, NBC News Producer
It went down to the wire. Would he or wouldn't he resign?
When President Pervez Musharraf announced his resignation mid-way into his one-hour address to the Pakistani nation today, the news came as a shock to many aides, pundits and journalists who were expecting him to resign only after fighting the charges against him. Musharraf had been under immense pressure from the newly elected coalition government to either resign or face impeachment charges for gross misconduct and violations of the constitution during his nine years of absolute military rule.
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| Anjum Naveed / AP |
| A Pakistani salesman listens to President Pervez Musharraf's resignation speech at an electronic shop in Islamabad, Pakistan, on Monday. |
Dressed in a dark gray suit and striped blue tie, the Pakistani leader began his speech in a defiant mood, reminding the nation of his accomplishments, but then abruptly changed to a more emotional tone. He said he had wanted reconciliation with his political opponents but they had opted for confrontation.
"It is not the time for more confrontation in Pakistan," Musharraf said, adding that he had always put the interests of the country over his own.
"In the interest of the nation, I resign from my post today," he said. "I do not want anything from anyone, nothing from anyone."
His speech was not scripted; there were no advance copies; Musharraf spoke extemporaneously from just a few notes.
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| By Ian Williams, NBC News Correspondent |
MIANZHU, Sichuan Province –I sat with Alex Qiang in a sunny square in his home town of Nanjing, a few days before the Olympics.
Wearing a cloth cap and ponytail, the twenty-seven-year-old was cradling an iced coffee, and looked every bit a child of the new China. His resume also looked the part, having studied urban planning in the Netherlands and worked in Hong Kong, he also has an apartment in the sought-after Mid-Levels area of Hong Kong Island.
But he told me he'd now quit the Hong Kong job, and had been visiting his old professors at the architecture department of Nanjing University to persuade them to get involved in re-building in the Sichuan earthquake zone, to which he was preparing to return.
"I am going to go back and see what else I can do to help. I'm keeping in touch with all the guys down there, all the volunteers," he told me.
Alex was one of any army of young volunteers who'd flocked to Sichuan soon after the May 12 quake struck, and he was part of a group I'd followed for Nightly News.
His generation, often called the Ba-Ling-Hou (the after-1980s generation), are frequently ridiculed by older Chinese. They are the one-child generation, born under China's one-child policy, often spoiled by their parents and sometimes called the "Little Emperors."
"People consider this generation to be self-centered, westernized and lacking a sense of responsibility," according to Fang Ning of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
But they seem to have found a voice and mission in the rubble of the quake, for many it was a sort of coming of age, tinged with nationalist sentiment.
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By Petra Cahill, msnbc.com editor and reporter
As political rivals China and Chinese Taipei – the name Taiwan competes under in the Olympics – stepped up to the plate Friday, the Olympic gods must have smiled down on the contentious game. After causing havoc Thursday, thunderous storms subsided, giving way to a hot, sunny, blue skies summer day. The players seemed to enjoy the weather so much they didn't want to stop playing – all the way into extra innings.
Medals were not at stake during Friday’s matchup, but national pride was.
China considers Taiwan, a democratically governed island nation of 23 million, a breakaway province that must accept eventual reunification with the mainland. The issue of independence led China to boycott the Olympics for years, but the countries have enjoyed a recent thaw in relations amid a Beijing-led effort to act as "one big family" at the Games.
The Taiwanese are wild about baseball – so much so that they consider it their national sport – and were heavily favored to win Friday’s game.
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| Petra Cahill/ msnbc.com |
| Zhou Yuchao, a Chinese Taipei fan, cheers for his team against China, at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, on Friday. |
Baseball is still a relatively new sport to China. The Chinese baseball team never competed in the Olympics before this year - it was automatically awarded a chance to compete because Beijing is hosting the games.
"Chinese Taipei is stronger than China in baseball, but in other ways in the future, we have no idea," Hou Yalin jokingly said. But her younger brother, Hou Chang Chung, dismissed any political rivalry spilling onto the baseball field, saying, "We are here just to enjoy the game. It’s just like a normal situation – Taiwan should win."
The Hous - sister Yalin, and brothers Chang Chung, and Cheng Lung -- all in their thirties -- came from Taiwan to Beijing specifically to cheer on their baseball team and were confident they'd handily beat China.
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By Titi Yu, NBC News
When Guo Jingjing and her diving partner Wu Minxia stepped on to the 3-meter diving board last Sunday, a jubilant audience watched with hushed anticipation. A breathless moment… then the two partners dove into the air with a perfect back dive to the thundering applause of their adoring fans.
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| AFP - Getty Images |
| Guo Jingjing of China dives during practice at the National Aquatics Center on Aug. 5. |
The score? Three perfect 10s and it was only the second dive of the competition. The pair went on to win the first gold in diving for China with an effortless 20 points lead.
But it wasn’t her graceful somersault or dazzling spins that had the public talking the next day. It was the tiny Tiffany necklace around her neck that had the Chinese blogs abuzz.
On Sina.com’s Olympic Blog, Chinese Netizens were busy dissecting the significance of wearing the necklace, apparently a gift from Hong Kong playboy and tycoon Kenneth Fok, who has been linked romantically with Guo.
"Does this mean she’ll be married after the gold?" wrote one enthusiastic Netizen. Another blog, in true PerezHilton fashion, posted a blow up picture of the necklace hours after the competition with speculation on the price tag.
The persistent interest in Guo’s personal life reflects the changing attitude the Chinese public has toward athletes.
Once seen as property of the country’s public collective, now athletes who rake in the gold are encouraged to pursue all the perks that come with stardom – money, fame, and corporate sponsorships. And with it, a new image for the Chinese athlete.
"Before the 1980’s people saw athletes as their own family," said China Daily Columnist Raymond Zhou, referring to China’s economic rise in the early ‘80s. "Now people see them as individuals."
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