A friend and I managed to watch a diving event as part of the "Good Luck Beijing" games -- sort of a rehearsal for the 2008 Olympics -- at the newly opened National Aquatics Center, popularly known as "The Water Cube" for its bubbly, transparent exterior.  The event was the Men’s 3m Synchronized Preliminaries (part of the 16^th FINA Diving World Cup to select August’s Olympians).

Just getting the tickets was a mind-numbing experience.

It all began when I received a weekly email newsletter advertising the diving portion of the “Good Luck Beijing” competitions. The letter redirected me first to “Emma,” a Ticketmaster-owned local events site, and then to piao.cn, one of China’s best-known online ticket vendors. Neither provided information on tickets, and both continually re-directed me to the official “Good Luck Beijing” website, which is not responsible for ticket vending.

“Good Luck Beijing” did, at least, provide a phone number. My friend called; the answer was a “Hello?” immediately followed by the Chinese “Wei?” Luckily he speaks Mandarin fluently, as the woman who answered went on in her native language to explain that tickets were still available to only two diving events: Men’s 3m Synchronized Finals and Women’s 10m Semi-Finals. She wasn’t at the ticket office, however—for whatever reason she wouldn’t explain—and so she couldn’t access the ticketing database to confirm any of this.

“Do you have the office’s number, then?” my friend asked.

“No—you can’t call them. They’re very busy,” he was told.

“Well…how do I buy tickets?” he asked.

“Go to the office: it’s open until 6.”

Ten minutes in a cab, seven flights up an elevator, several twists through non-descript winding corridors and past innumerable identical glass-walled offices later, we found ourselves in the narrow Piao ticketing cube, where event posters covered each other better than the cracked walls behind them.

The two women who sat behind the sales counter were hidden from view until we peered over.

“Hi: we’d like two tickets to the Women’s 10m Diving Semi-Finals, please,” my friend announced.

Before the Piao representative could move a finger, a woman standing on our side of the counter interrupted her phone call and blurted out “Sold out! All evening events sold out!”

This consolidator-agent-order placer went right back to her cell phone call, taking orders while paying the agent for bulk orders of tickets—so it made sense she knew the schedules, ticket availability and prices of all the events. 

One of the official Piao agents eventually turned her attention to us and groggily explained, “We only have tickets for the first event, on Tuesday morning—the Men’s 3m Synchronized Preliminaries.”

“Great—we’ll take the cheapest you’ve got!” my friend exclaimed eagerly at our first opportunity to actually pay for tickets.

“We only have the most expensive price tier.”

“Uh…great. We’ll take two.”

The nightmare didn't end there, either.  Simply getting out of the Water Cube wound up being a half-hour-long labyrinthine experience.  “No: this isn’t a chukou,” (meaning "exit") each set of guards standing at one of the three visibly marked exits impatiently assured my friend and me. “That over there—with the chukou sign—that one’s the exit,” we were told before being ushered toward yet another gate outfitted with official-looking metal detectors, green-uniformed and -capped security guards, and English-trained Olympic volunteers standing at attention.

I appreciate that the diving competitions, as part of the ongoing “Good Luck Beijing 2008” series, are a test-run prior to August’s games. But until all the Kafkaesque kinks are resolved, just getting tickets and navigating the venues could be quite a physical achievement.