The Olympics Beat: A Spectator's Memoir of Beijing

by Shannon Young

The drama, the variety, the spectacle - Shannon can't get enough of it. She is an American student who has always been fascinated by the Olympic Games; her father has a lifelong love affair with China. They team up for the Beijing games and the adventure of a lifetime. Without the filter of a small screen, Shannon and her father are hypnotized by the passion of a great nation unveiling itself to the world. This mini travel memoir is a picture of a new China and the experiences that would change one American girl's life forever

55 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 7, 2012

About the author

Shannon Young is an American twenty-something living in Hong Kong. She is the editor of an anthology of creative non-fiction by expat women in Asia called How Does One Dress to Buy Dragonfruit? and the author of a Kindle Single called Pay Off: How One Millennial Eliminated Nearly $80,000 in Student Debt in Less Than Five Years. She has written e-books including a mini travel memoir, The Olympics Beat, and a novella, The Art of Escalator Jumping. Her memoir, Year of Fire Dragons: An American Woman's Story of Coming of Age in Hong Kong, will be published by Blacksmith Books in November 2014.

A graduate of Colgate University in New York, Shannon's writing has appeared in the Hong Kong Women in Publishing Society's anthology, Mary: A Journal of New Writing, Modern Love Long Distance and The Displaced Nation. She writes a blog called A Kindle in Hong Kong and likes to spy on other people's books on the train.

Reviews

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed Shannon Young's travel memoir about her first trip to China. Although written as a novella-length piece, this book is packed with all the excitement, sights, sounds, and smells of a full-length travel memoir.

Shannon's father studied Mandarin in Beijing in the 1980s and has always held China close to his heart. When Shannon wins a scholarship at her college in upstate New York to study the Beijing Olympics, she and her father make plans to spend 10 days in the Chinese capital. Although I haven't been to Beijing in over 20 years, I felt like I was there at the Olympics with Shannon and her father, experiencing the opening ceremony, the food, the deserted part of the Great Wall they visited, the Summer Palace, and the heat and humidity of a Beijing summer, not to mention the games themselves (fencing, judo, wrestling, and gymnastics, among others).

Whether you're an old China hand or a college student who plans to study abroad--or anyone in between--there's something for everyone in The Olympics Beat.

[Laura Besley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a short book, but it packs a lot in. It's extremely descriptive and the excitement of the Olympics really comes to life. I'm not a massive sports fan, but Young describes the events wonderfully and makes me want to tune in in a couple of weeks' time!

This book is also about travelling to Beijing. Being a keen traveller, I'm always on the look-out for books about different places and cultures. Young describes Beijing in a kind and sensitive way and you get the impression that she's fallen in love with the place.

For an interview with the author, please go to my blog: www.laurabesley.blogspot.com