Host: The Lunar New Year is on February 1st, and three days later, the Winter Olympics kick off in Beijing. With China maintaining strict COVID protocols, ticket sales have been halted, and the mood in the capital there is tense. Asher Gillespie has lived in Beijing for many years, and he owns a pizzeria there. Its English name is Pie Squared.
Asher Gillespie: Farm Pie Pizza, I grew up in Michigan, so it's a Detroit-style pizza place in Beijing.
[background conversation]
Asher: You order at the counter, and then you go sit down. I've got six taps of different beers there.
[background conversation]
Host: In 2000, Gillespie went to China to study as an undergraduate for a year.
Asher: Actually, in that time, that's when they announced that Beijing had gotten the rights to the 2008 Olympics, the Summer Olympics. That was one of the reasons that China seemed so exciting at the time. You could tell a boom was coming, and I just figured there'd be a lot of job opportunities coming. In the era that I was here, so 2000 onwards, there was slowly a growing restaurant community. You could find barbecue. Eventually, some Mexican places came into town. You could find each and every type of food, and actually, that went all the way through to the 2008 Olympics. You got it by, by just having that style of food, and then during and after the Olympics, people came in over the top, and then you had to actually be good at doing that food.
Speaker 1: 2008 Drummers coincide with the 2008 Olympic year.
Host: The 2008 games were a huge moment for China, a debut on the modern world stage, as not only an economic powerhouse, but a cultural force as well.
Asher: They had that amazing opening ceremony, and we were just all blown away. Then I remember getting phone calls from my parents and friends just being like, "That was incredible." There was a real excitement for it. In summer, it's hot. I think people were working, but it just seemed like two weeks of just going around, going to every venue, trying to check out this water polo, volleyball.
Speaker 2: Officials are ready, we are ready. Let's get this gold medal match underway.
Asher: Beach volleyball, we went to some track and field, we did a baseball game. I don't know, I just felt like there was no shortage of events to go to, and people just handing tickets. We went to a soccer game. It really, really was a good time.
Speaker 3: Argentina.
Asher: When it was announced that Beijing got the 2022 Winter Olympics, we were all excited, and planning for how to maximize opportunities to do good business and have a good time during those games. This is the one. It's right in Beijing, it'll be live when we're open, right? We have a lot of local Chinese coming into the restaurant, but we also have people from all over the world in our restaurant. It would've been fun throwing on the Games, having some friendly chit-chat over a couple beers while any event is going on because everybody's going to root for their country to win, but it doesn't really matter at the end. It's all just a good time and it's a competition, so we would've loved it.
Host: That, of course, was before wave after wave of COVID started hitting the world.
Asher: We were all wondering for these last couple months, are tickets going to be on sale? Are we going to be able to go? If we go, are we going to have to be in the bubble? Are we going to have to quarantine before we go in the bubble? Are we going to have to quarantine when we go out of the bubble? These things are changing even as we speak. We're going to be watching from TV, just like everybody else is.
Host: Asher Gillespie at Pie Squared in Beijing.
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