The Chinese team was one of the largest ones at the Games and had to be housed on one-and-a-half floors of a dorm, as no building had enough rooms on a single floor to accommodate so many people. Each floor had a spacious living area with a large TV, refrigerator and stove, so the one on the floor exclusively occupied by the Chinese could, in essence, become their private rec room. The advance team seemed quite satisfied with the individual rooms. The organizers noted that each team was also assigned an extra room in its dorm to be used for medical treatments, and it came equipped with an examining table and some basic supplies. There were, of course, fully equipped medical facilities elsewhere in the Olympic Village, so these rooms were only intended for minor injuries like sprains, etc. which could be readily handled by team doctors.

To the utter astonishment of us all, the Chinese advance team requested over a dozen extra examining tables, and when asked where they were to be placed, they replied that they could all just be crammed into their "private" living room! The LAOOC representative asked in alarm whether they were really anticipating such an incredible number of injuries, and we were all relieved to hear that these were to be used for traditional Chinese medical massages, which are popular with athletes (even when they have no injuries) as they help relax the muscles and speed recovery. Hence, once the competition started, the living room became a strange scene where some people sat around the periphery watching TV and chatting, while others lay on tables in the center of the room receiving massages. Moreover, the stove was constantly in use, either for cooking up vast quantities of instant noodles or for boiling various herbal concoctions -- probably the most unusual living room scene in the entire Village.