Editor’s Note: Meet Junling Cui, our exclusive wOw Woman on the scene in Beijing. For the Olympics, wowOwow goes right to the source for an insider’s perspective on the news coming out of Beijing. Junling will be reporting from both the women’s perspective and from the point of view of a Chinese national, on all things Olympics — from the athletes’ stories to the social impact of the games.

Day two

One of the most interesting figures in these games for Chinese women is the coach of the American volleyball team, a former Chinese star named Lang Ping. In the 1980s she was a huge star here in China; they called her the "iron hammer," for her spiking ability. In 1984, she led the Chinese team to gold, beating the United States team in the final in Los Angeles. When I was a kid she was an absolute national heroine, among the most famous women in China.

All of this has some Chinese women, including some of my friends, wondering how to react to her now. Everyone understands that she went to the United States to make decent money as the U.S. National coach. But China is among the elite teams, of course, in women’s volleyball, and the U.S. has been a notch below of late. Lang’s job is to change that, which makes some Chinese uncomfortable as she leads the U.S. team to Beijing to compete for the gold medal. The instinctive reaction among some is: "Hey, wait a minute. Whose side are you on? Aren’t you Chinese?" Chinese wonder whether Lang herself is uncomfortable about this. She has seemed a bit defensive about the subject, in fact, arguing that the U.S.’s level of play is well below that of China’s, so you don’t have to worry about anything.

This obviously gets to the difficult subject of nationalism that the Olympic Games always raise. But it’s a complicated subject for the Chinese. Who’s the coach, after all, of the men’s basketball team that got blown out tonight by the Americans? That would be that noted Chinese hoop genius, Jonas Kazlauskas.

Jonas Kazlauskas? What province is he from? Turns out he’s from Lithuania. So why do some Chinese women feel so uncomfortable with what Lang Ping is doing? If it’s OK for a Lithuanian to coach the men’s basketball team, is it not OK for a Chinese woman to coach U.S. volleyball? What does Lang Ping think? Stay tuned …