On Friday, the Chinese tennis player Li Na pulled off a fine victory against Venus Williams in the quarter-finals of the Ladies' Singles (although Williams was woefully erratic, and - according to a friend of mine who was present at the match, rather distracted by an extremely hostile and unsporting Chinese crowd who were cheering all her service faults).
Yesterday, she lost the semi-final to Russia's Dinara Safina. Oh well. Good effort, Li.
At around midnight, the CCTV channel I was watching in a bar decided to show Li Na again. Her match against Venus. In its entirety. (But without the crowd noise.)
Not the more important match that had actually been played that day.
Not any of the other major events that had taken place that day (although we had at least had a few re-runs of Usain Bolt's comprehensive victory in the 100 metres before we got on to this; but that was it - no other roundup of the day's news at all).
No, we got the day-old and no longer relevant Li v. Williams match - from start to finish.
Chinese viewers might be forgiven for supposing that Li Na has in fact won the gold medal - since they'll almost certainly be showing this match again instead of the final tomorrow.
An Olympic tourist I met in a bar last night lamented to me: "It's strange, but I'm actually missing the Olympics by being in Beijing."
I despair of this country's TV service. 'SUCKING' no longer seems an adequate metaphor to describe it. And just in case you think I am being exaggeratedly curmudgeonly about this, my post on the subject yesterday has already drawn a passionately concurring response from a passing Chinese reader.
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