{"id":40,"date":"2005-11-15T21:59:07","date_gmt":"2005-11-15T13:59:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.parforchina.com\/blog\/?p=40"},"modified":"2016-05-16T11:58:17","modified_gmt":"2016-05-16T15:58:17","slug":"hsbc-champions-tiger-who","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/forbiddengame\/hsbc-champions-tiger-who\/","title":{"rendered":"HSBC Champions: Tiger who?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This story originally appeared in the November 12, 2005 edition of the South China Morning Post<\/a> (subscription only).<\/em><\/p>\n

\"tigerwoodswhochina.jpg\"by DAN WASHBURN<\/strong><\/p>\n

While some 2,000 golf fans weathered rainstorms to track every move of the world\u2019s best golfer Friday in the second round of the HSBC Champions tournament in Shanghai, Yao Guang Mei swept leaves with a bamboo broom. She just might have been the only person at Sheshan International Golf Club<\/a> who had never heard of Tiger Woods.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll I know is that foreigners will come here to compete,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Yao, who lives in a village 30 minutes away from the course, gets paid five dollars a day to work at the club, where a lifetime membership costs $148,000 and furnished villas average $2 million. And she\u2019s happy to do it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt looks great,\u201d she said of the grounds. \u201cBut all of these big houses look the same. Sometimes I get lost.\u201d Yao stopped to chuckle before adding, \u201cBack home, I don\u2019t get to see much of this modern society. When I got the chance to work here, I was very excited to see all of these new things.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nGolf has a long way to go before it sheds its reputation of being an elitist sport in China — because it still is an elitist sport in China. And since courses are often built in poor, rural areas, luxury homes can sit across a creek from shantytowns. Two very different worlds collide.<\/p>\n

Sheshan Golf Club is located in Songjiang District, an hour west of downtown Shanghai. It used to be mostly farms and factories. But in recent years developers of planned communities with luxury homes have been snatching up the land. Not too far from the golf course is a mini-city called Thames Town and another named Santa Luz, boasting \u201coriginal Southern California villas.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tournament passes for the HSBC Champions cost RMB 2,000. That\u2019s more than the average Shanghainese family makes in a month.<\/p>\n

\u201cPoor people are the majority in China — they can\u2019t be interested in a game they can\u2019t afford,\u201d said a man surnamed Gu, who is paid $2.50 a day to direct traffic outside the club during the tournament. \u201cMaybe there are people who are interested, but to me, I\u2019m only making 950 yuan a month. There\u2019s no way I can even afford a ticket.\u201d<\/p>\n

Had Gu ever hear of Tiger Woods? \u201cNope. Sorry. This is my first day.\u201d<\/p>\n

A couple hundred meters beyond Gu, not too far from one of the parking lots for the tournament, 20-year old Yang Gui Lin sat on a small bridge and fished with a bamboo pole. The migrant worker from faraway Sichuan province normally would have been working at a nearby door and window factory, but he and all his coworkers were given two weeks off — unpaid — because of the golf tournament.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know why,\u201d Yang said. \u201cMaybe they think we would disturb the people playing. The factory can be loud.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yang said he had seen golf on television before — although he had never heard the name Tiger Woods — and admitted being a little intrigued by the game. \u201cOf course it looks interesting,\u201d he said. \u201cBut so what? I\u2019m never going to play it anyways. Only rich people can play golf.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then, 78-year-old fruit salesman Chen Zi Xue pedaled his wagon by. He had always assumed that only foreigners played golf.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course I don\u2019t know anything about golf,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t speak their language. If I understood them, I wouldn\u2019t be here selling fruit.\u201d<\/p>\n

More photos here<\/a> and here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This story originally appeared in the November 12, 2005 edition of the South China Morning Post (subscription only). by DAN WASHBURN While some 2,000 golf fans weathered rainstorms to track every move of the world\u2019s best golfer Friday in the second round of the HSBC … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,5,7,13,8,9,15,10],"class_list":["post-40","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-china","tag-danwashburn","tag-golf","tag-hsbcchampions","tag-scmp","tag-stories","tag-tigerwoods","tag-tournaments"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/forbiddengame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/forbiddengame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/forbiddengame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/forbiddengame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/forbiddengame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/forbiddengame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2152,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/forbiddengame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40\/revisions\/2152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/forbiddengame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/forbiddengame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/forbiddengame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}