Après moi, le déluge

I scored some freebie tickets for me and a friend to go and watch the final rounds of the day's judo on Sunday.

Unfortunately, just as we were setting off at around 4.30pm, the skies opened - one of the hugest, heaviest rainstorms I have ever seen in Beijing, or anywhere else.

Apart from some light showers that morning, we hadn't seen a drop of rain in nearly 10 days. Then we got the whole week's ration and then some in the space of less than an hour. (I guess perhaps the cloud-seeding boys get a daily allocation of 'ammunition', and were using up everything they'd saved over the previous week!)

As I have mentioned once or twice before on my blogs, Beijing's storm drain system just doesn't seem to work very well - or at all. Within minutes of this downpour starting, there were inches of standing water on all the roads. When we got to the venue, the water wasn't just standing, it was gushing in rapid torrents, scurrying in search of the nearest unblocked drain, and in many places it was three or four inches deep. My shoes are ruined.

Despite my umbrella, my friend and I both got soaked to the skin, and sitting watching judo for two hours as our sodden clothes began to steam and stink wasn't very comfortable.

The downpour had relented before we'd gone inside (if we hadn't been so anxious about getting there in plenty of time for the start of the session, maybe we would have been spared altogether), but it had resumed once more, not quite so strong but witheringly relentless, by the time we got out. And when it rains in Beijing, no cabs. Actually, I rather think that our patriotic cab drivers were declining to pick up foreigners until they'd got all of their own people home: a couple of guys with their 'For Hire' flags lit obstinately drove by ignoring us. Then again, perhaps they were just reluctant to have drowned rats mussing up their seat covers. I did see a couple of gaggles of bedraggled Chinese apparently being similarly spurned by taxi drivers.

This particular venue isn't that well-served by public transport (ooh, there could be another post in that!), so we had to make our way back to the centre of town by bus and subway and a lot of walking: it took us nearly an hour and a half.

Strangely enough, though, it was all quite jolly fun. I am used to getting the occasional thorough soaking here in Beijing, and I rather enjoy it.

Most of the Olympic visitors I saw at the venue seemed to be taking it in good part as well. But I'm sure BOCOG would rather not have this happen too many more times during the Games.