Sobbing Chinese smash misconceptions of inscrutability

BEIJING (Reuters) - Liu Xiang's coach sobs uncontrollably on television after China's national hero hobbles out of the hurdles. Spectators weep in the stands.

Four women rowers collapse in their boat after winning China's first rowing gold. Overwhelmed by raw emotion, they do not know whether to laugh or cry and end up doing both in spades.

Chinese shooter Du Li, the weight of a nation on her shoulders, crumbles in tears after failing to win the first gold of the Games with 1.3 billion people willing her on.

At the Olympics, the Chinese certainly are wearing their hearts on their sleeves.

"There has been an image in the West of Chinese sport being a machine bereft of emotion. This has changed all that," said Kaiser Kuo, a columnist on the Beijinger magazine who has watched the transformation of China's psyche while the world is watching.

"There are western misconceptions that the Chinese were only capable of displaying strident nationalism. This has given a human face to athletics," said this longtime observer of a fast-changing society.

Every four years, the Olympic Games opens a fascinating window into a nation's soul.

In 1984, Los Angeles was all Hollywood pizzazz and exuberant nationalism.

In 2000, Sydney perfectly personified the Aussie extrovert's passion for sport.

In 2004, proud Greeks reveled in their ancient civilization.

Cynics might wonder how the British, notorious for their stiff-upper-lip image, might react when the Games hits London in 2012. It is not a nation that does "touchy-feely".

The Beijing Games have certainly helped to dismiss western misconceptions about China as it takes its place on the world stage as an increasingly self-confident economic powerhouse.

"The stereotype of the unemotional Chinese is not entirely accurate. I don't think coaches generally do that on television at press conferences in the west," said Susan Brownell, a researcher at the Olympic Study Centre at Beijing Sport University.

Brownell, who first came to China in the 1980s and is author of "Beijing Games: What the Olympics means to China," is fascinated by all this raw emotion and what it has done to change the world's view of China.

The noted anthropologist, who had been discussing the subject that morning on a Chinese TV show, said: "It is not unusual to see the Chinese express emotion so openly. When Beijing won the Olympic bid, people were weeping uncontrollably.

"The problem is that the West has this misconception of the Chinese which is based on formal settings where people don't want to lose face. That is where the inscrutability image comes in."

Touring the venues, she was intrigued to watch American and Australian fans lead the cheering for their athletes and get the Chinese crowds to join in.

"There was none of that ugly nationalism that people had expected in China," she said.

(Editing by Nick Macfie)