Let the games begin

tauringhuang.

Aug 15th 2008
From Economist.com

The city behind the spectacle


Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday


Monday
THE 29TH Olympiad begins, at least for me, with what should be a great intellectual encounter. It is a discussion, held on the morning of the opening ceremonies, in an avant-garde art gallery, between two men whose creations are among the most striking of the remarkable buildings that China has erected either for the games or in time for them: Terminal 3 of Beijing’s airport and the National Stadium, commonly known as the bird’s nest.

These two iconic edifices will define Beijing for many visitors. The terminal building, opened earlier this year, is said to be bigger than all of Heathrow’s terminals combined. Its golden roof and red columns evoke the grandeur of the Forbidden City. It cavernous, serpentine form resembles a dragon, a symbol of China.

EPAThe stadium is a mass of intertwined steel beams; it looks just like its nickname. Its image adorns a recently issued banknote—the only one in circulation with no portrait of Mao Zedong.

In most other capital cities, the designers of such monumental buildings would be in hot demand on the lecture circuit. But there are complications in China. Many of the architects involved in Beijing’s most famous Olympic edifices (or buildings erected in time for the Olympics, such as the new headquarters for state-owned television) are foreigners.

The man behind the terminal is Lord Norman Foster, a British architect. The bird’s nest architects are Herzog & de Meuron, a Swiss firm. Their artistic adviser was Ai Weiwei, who is Chinese. But Mr Ai happens to be an outspoken critic of the games.

Ten hours before the games begin, Lord Foster and Mr Ai find themselves in a small lecture room in an art gallery opened last year by a Belgian couple, Guy and Myriam Ullens, on the north-eastern edge of Beijing. The gallery itself makes some Chinese uneasy. Some of them do not like the idea that foreigners are running what has become one of Beijing’s biggest non-profit galleries of contemporary Chinese art.

Chinese officials are in a particularly prickly mood. They fear the Olympics will be marred by protests against China’s human rights record and its policies in Tibet and the western region of Xinjiang. The Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art, like many other foreign-run concerns in China, has to be cautious. At the start of the talk, the audience is reminded that the topic is Terminal 3. People are not to raise questions about politics or the Olympics.

The opening ceremony of the games is hours away from being held in Mr Ai’s bird’s nest, but the speakers and audience keep to their instructions. The bird’s nest is far too sensitive a topic. Mr Ai has condemned the way the stadium and the games in general are being used by the Communist Party to show off. This time he confines his remarks to the new terminal (about the construction of which he has helped produce a book of photographs). The gallery is doubtless grateful.

The Ullens Centre is in a cluster of former state-owned factories that have been rented out to artists and galleries. It is swarming with security officials and Olympic volunteers this morning. Officials say 798—the name of this area, after the codename of one of its former military factories—has become one of Beijing’s biggest attractions for foreigners after the Great Wall and the Forbidden City. But like many parts of Beijing, 798 feels unusually devoid of visitors. China’s paranoia about protests has led to tougher visa restrictions, which have kept many foreigners away.

The opening ceremony at the bird’s nest this evening is spectacular, but with touches of the authoritarian. Zhang Yimou, a filmmaker who once pushed the boundaries of artistic freedom in China but is now an establishment favourite, directed the spectacle.

The display begins with 2,008 soldiers dressed in traditional (civilian) gowns banging in unison on drums. It sets an uncomfortably martial tone (more than half of the 14,000 performers this evening are troops). The uniformed goose-stepping soldiers who raise the Olympic flag do not help alleviate this.

Neither do China’s leaders, who watch impassively from a podium in the sweltering heat dressed in near identical suits. Performers move in perfect unison or in regimented choreography in a way that would make North Korea, a master of such extravaganzas, envious.

China is missing its chance to smash stereotypes: the opening ceremony displays a nation marching in lockstep. It avoids overt political references, but does little to refute Mr Ai’s criticisms that the Beijing games are, for China, about politics. A normally vibrant city feels stifled. Dissenting voices are subdued.



Tuesday

AS I queue for a security check at one of Beijing’s stadiums, Chinese flags surround me. The flag is emblazoned on T-shirts and draped over spectators’ shoulders. It is on paper stickers with which fans plaster their cheeks and foreheads, and on little pennants stuck on passing cars. Wherever they happen, Olympic games elicit patriotic fervour. Is China’s response any different?

For all the Olympics’ join-hands sloganeering (“One world, one dream” is the motto chosen by China), and images of doves and multicultural frolicking on posters, the event is essentially a struggle between nations.

ReutersCitizens of the country that wins the most gold medals will feel proud. Size does not matter. If China wins just one more gold medal than America, the country will be jubilant, even though its population is four times the size of America’s.

But during these games, China finds its patriotism under unusually close scrutiny. The West’s protests against China’s crackdown in Tibet last March triggered a wave of virulently anti-Western sentiment, and many have been concerned ever since.

There were few reports of foreigners being physically attacked, but some foreign correspondents received death threats. Were it not for the deadly earthquake in Sichuan in May and the praise given by foreign countries to China’s relief efforts, the anger of China’s patriotic youth might have soured the games themselves.

The authorities worry about this. Even as they try to bolster their legitimacy by appealing to the public’s patriotic instincts, they also try to reassure the West that there is nothing to fear. In the buildup to the games citizens have been encouraged to be friendly to foreigners (as well as to report suspicious-looking ones to the secret police).

China’s Olympic cheer involves first shouting a sportsmanlike “Go, Olympics!” and a giving a double-thumbs-up. Only then is one supposed to shout “Go, China!” and raise one’s arms in the air.

But Chinese patriots could easily find themselves riled during the next couple of weeks. Western critics of China’s human-rights polices have been staging small protests in Beijing. Such gestures annoy many Chinese, well acquainted though they are with their government’s shortcomings and occasional brutality.

Notwithstanding the smog that has enveloped Beijing for much of the last few days, few of the capital’s citizens appreciate foreigners making a big fuss about the city’s appalling air quality. Sensing this, a few American athletes who wore black masks on arrival in Beijing quickly apologised for doing so.

The event I am queuing for is women’s volleyball. I have no particular interest in the sport, but, like many Beijing residents, I take whatever scarce tickets are available. As it turns out, the matches this evening provide an interesting window on the complexities of Chinese patriotism. The first is between China and Venezuela. The crowd cheers China, of course. I hear no cries of “Go, Olympics!” (to say nothing of “Go, Venezuela!”). The Chinese team wins easily.

Next is America versus Japan. Both countries have strong teams, and both are disliked by Chinese nationalists. Yet the crowd’s support for America is evident. It helps that the American team has a Chinese coach, Lang Ping, a former star player nicknamed “Iron Hammer”. And Japan’s wartime atrocities in China place the country uppermost in the hierarchy of the despised. It is a close-fought game, but, to the crowd’s delight, America wins.

The Olympics are perhaps an odd battleground for Chinese patriotism. They are a Western invention, as are many of their sports. Yet staging the games has long been a Chinese dream, a way of showing that the country is a respected member of the international community and of showing off that it has become a sporting giant. If, on August 24th when the games end, China is not at the top of the medal table and Westerners are seen as ungrateful for China’s hospitality, expect a lot of sullenness.

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Wednesday

JUAN ANTONIO SAMARANCH, a former president of the International Olympic Committee, once said that “without a lively, visible cultural programme that reflects the spirit of the host country, the Olympic games would be incomplete”. Finding such a programme in Beijing is a challenge. Spontaneous fun is even more elusive.

Veteran Olympic-games correspondents (these games are my first) speak enthusiastically of street and beach parties at the games in Athens (2004) and Sydney (2000). With perhaps a touch of hyperbole, one tells me that Sydney was taken over by Norwegians with Viking hats and painted faces. I have yet to hear of, let alone encounter, any such revellers in Beijing.

PA

China entertainsBeijing’s Olympic organisers promised the “biggest ever” cultural festival built around the Olympics—the “richest and most diverse in Olympic history” as one official described it. Journalists have been given a “culture guide” containing 100-odd pages of non-sporting events, from traditional Chinese opera to New Orleans jazz.

“Our purpose is to entertain our guests and visitors from all over the world”, wrote the chief organiser, Liu Qi, in a foreword.

Sadly, the official guide to cultural events is a minefield of inaccuracies. When I try to buy tickets to some of the foreign musical performances, I am told they have been cancelled or rescheduled.

There are fewer people around to be entertained, anyway. China has tightened visa requirements for foreign visitors in order to keep “undesirables” out. At lunchtime on Sunday, my family and some friends are the only group at a normally popular Thai restaurant on the edge of the city. The manager says business has been getting slower and slower for the last few weeks.

Beijing’s bars and nightclubs are doing somewhat better (apart from the ones that have been closed because they are deemed too close to Olympic facilities, or because they are just too seedy). Many of them had expected the police to start enforcing a long-forgotten rule that they close by 2am during the Olympics. So far, at least, the authorities have restrained themselves.

But some bar owners say they expected more customers. China’s visa clampdown appears to have kept out the young, boisterous Norwegian-Viking types. And plenty of foreigners already in Beijing seem to have decided to stay at home and watch the Olympics on television, perhaps deterred by security measures on public transport and traffic snarls around Olympic venues. Taxi drivers complain that the bonanza they expected during the games has not materialised.

There is little feel in Beijing that a huge international event is underway. The ubiquitous Olympic banners and posters, and the crowds outside venues, remind people that something big is happening. But many parts of the city are quieter than normal, with factories closed (to avoid pollution), street vendors and beggars less visible (officials have put pressure on migrants from elsewhere to leave), outdoor markets shuttered and some citizens wangling a few days at home.

Tight security is also deterring many people from visiting the Olympic Green in the north of the city, where many of the stadiums are located. This annoys corporate sponsors, who had hoped to attract big crowds to displays they have erected there. The IOC says it has asked the organisers to allow more people into the heavily guarded zone (to add to the festive mood, armoured personnel-carriers have been deployed there).

The top priority of China’s leaders is to ensure the games pass without major incidents (terrorism or protests) and that the sporting events are run smoothly. A Chinese friend tells me that he tried to climb a particularly scenic part of the Great Wall just outside Beijing, and was blocked by local vigilantes. They were on the lookout for people who might try to hang subversive banners from the edifice. Mr Liu’s professed wish that all of us are “blessed with the best in entertainment” mainly applies, it seems, to what goes on in the stadiums.

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Thursday

A DREARY grey smog hangs over Beijing once again, dulling the city’s colours and spirit. Residents so take this haze for granted that some do not even think of it as pollution. Rarely do the state-controlled media discuss smog, and the insidious effects of inhaling it.

It has enveloped Beijing for so long that the occasional day of clarity stands out vividly in one’s memory. There were August 1st and 2nd, when I happened to be out of town, but returned to find everyone talking about the blue sky.

And there was yesterday, after thunderstorms cleaned the sky. It was still cloudy, but outlines of distant buildings were sharp instead of blurred by the particulate-laden air.

EPA

Nothing but blue skies?Beijing has spent billions of dollars trying to fix the problem in time for the Olympics. It has moved some production from the city’s biggest steel factory, Capital Iron and Steel, and suspended much of what remains for the duration of the games. Another big polluter, the Beijing Coking-Chemical Plant, has been relocated.

China’s government has required new cars and buses to meet European Union emission standards, and has cut coal use sharply by switching to natural gas and other fuels.

None of this has worked (at least not as well as the government had hoped). Additional last-minute measures have done little other than inconvenience many residents. Since late July, cars have been allowed on the road only every other day, depending on their license-plate numbers. Dozens of polluting factories and quarries have been closed down. The smog persists.

Journalists covering the Olympics have been bombarding the organisers and IOC officials with questions about the air. It matters a lot for athletes in endurance events such as the marathon (the women’s race is on August 16th and the men’s on the 23rd, the day before the games end).

The marathon world-record holder, Haile Gebrselassie of Ethiopia, has said he will not run in the Beijing marathon because it might aggravate his asthma. He is due to compete, however, in the 10,000-metre race on August 17th.

Officials insist that everything is fine, and in fact most of these hazy days are “blue sky” ones by China’s relatively lax standards. The IOC has no independent monitoring system, and at least in public it meekly follows China’s line.

The BBC and the Associated Press have been conducting their own limited tests, but comparing their figures with China’s, which are derived from monitoring stations in several locations, is difficult. These independent figures often show much higher levels of particulate-matter pollutants than China’s numbers do—far higher even than the World Health Organisation’s recommended limit.

Ultimately, China alone will decide whether the air is good enough. It is not reassuring when Chinese officials insist, as they often do, that hazy conditions in Beijing’s hot and humid summer are not necessarily a sign of pollution. This is true in theory, but rarely in practice.

Nor is it reassuring that no measurements are released at all of ozone or PM2.5 (very fine particulate matter, and the most hazardous), although officials say they would like to start monitoring both next year. But least comforting of all to us residents is a comment by the WHO’s chief in China, Hans Troedsson. “We have to remember that it’s not short-term exposure that’s of concern, it’s the long-term,” he said.

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Friday

ON MY way to the office this morning, I take a walk through Ritan Park, a pleasant expanse of ancient trees and imperial relics in the middle of Beijing’s main embassy district. It is one of three city parks where protests are theoretically permitted during the Olympic games.

Nearly a week into the games, not a single protest has been reported in any of them. On my walk I pass the park’s usual kind of visitors. A group of elderly women stand in one pavilion singing “Nanniwan”, a favourite from the Communist Party’s hymn book dating back to its guerrilla days. In another a woman taps her feet on the stone floor while playing castanets.

When Beijing’s Olympic organising committee announced less than three weeks before the games began that protests could be held in these three parks, the news was greeted with some surprise. Granted, all are far from any Olympic venue, but China takes a dim view of protests. Hence its tougher visa policy in the buildup to the games, which has caused a plunge in tourist arrivals.

AP

Rare sightingThe catch was that protestors had to surmount an array of bureaucratic hurdles. Applications, including numbers of participants and any slogans they would chant, had to be submitted five days in advance. Protests deemed harmful to national security would be banned—and in China, the act of protesting itself is often considered so.

I had thought that the authorities might allow one or two protests—over a cause involving no criticism, direct or implied, of China or its friends—just to show that China is not really so repressive. The authorities have tried this before. In 2003 they allowed a couple of hundred foreigners (no Chinese were allowed to join them) to march from Ritan Park through the embassy area in protest against the war in Iraq. In 1995 they allowed foreign activists to stage protests at an international women’s conference in one of Beijing’s satellite towns.

There is plenty of time left. The Olympics, which end on August 24th, will be followed by the Paralympics from September 6th to 17th. But the authorities are clearly nervous about opening the floodgates. The protests that followed the Olympic flame around the world scared and angered them. Their fear is of similar disruption to the games themselves.

There have been a few small protests by foreigners in the last few days: “Free Tibet” banners raised near the main stadium, prayers said by Christian activists at Tiananmen Square and slogans that a man daubed on hotel-room walls. The authorities have deported some of those involved. At one protest the police seized a British journalist, dragged him along the ground and confiscated his equipment.

A couple of days before the games, a Tibetan living abroad contacted me and several other journalists in Beijing. We were to go to a hotel room, where we would be shown a film about what Tibetans living in Tibet thought of the games.

Hotel employees, however, stopped us even from getting in the lift. A handful who succeeded in making it to the room were shown only a few minutes of the film by a couple of foreign activists before they were asked to leave by a desperately worried manager (they did).

It has been far worse for Chinese citizens. Very unusually, news of the designated parks has been published in the state-controlled media. A few have taken this too literally; they have actually tried to get permission to protest.

Human Rights Watch, a New York-based NGO, says some citizens have been detained or harassed after doing so. They include Ji Sizun, who the group says wanted to protest against official corruption and abuse of power and call for greater public participation in politics. Mr Ji was arrested on August 11th after checking back at the police station in Beijing on the status of his application.

On that same day, China Youth News, the mouthpiece of the Communist Youth League, published a photograph on its website of a woman singing Beijing opera in Ritan Park. The caption said that all was quiet in “one of the specially designated zones for marches and demonstrations.” No wonder.