Beijing Olympics
As the green Beijing taxi with its orange band pulled up outside my office, I reached through the protective grille surrounding the driver to pay the 11 yuan (about A$1.80) on the meter, thanking the driver in Chinese and bidding him farewell.
As I did so, the driver pointed to the meter and said, in English: 'eleven.' Then he said 'Bye bye', leaving me dumbstruck on the pavement.
'Please wait a moment,' said the waitress in the tiny jiaozi (dumpling) restaurant not far from my home. This is a place where people barely speak Mandarin. Rather, they speak a regional dialect difficult for Beijingers to understand. But now the staff are brushing up on their English.
This is the human component of the A$30 billion redevelopment plan that has transformed the ancient imperial capital ahead of the official opening of the XXIX Olympiad at 8.08pm on 8 August 2008.
The impending Games have wrought innumerable changes on the city, both on the landscape and the mindset of its inhabitants.
Beijing looks like a place to do business these days, and there are similar changes in the minds of residents in how they relate to visiting foreigners, how they perceive China within the global context, and how they carry out commercial transactions.
The all-pervasive smell of garlic and stale tobacco is slowly being banished from the city's taxis. Cabbies who sleep in their cabs or don't air them enough risk a day's re-education, which translates into a day's lost income. Citizens are being told to sharpen up their act: be polite, stop spitting and don't talk loud-ly. In short: behave like citizens of the capital for the expected half a million overseas visitors during the Games.
The billboards that once lined the airport expressway advertising outlandish villa developments with nonsensical English phrases such as 'Wonder of national cream' have given way to more demure ads aimed at presenting a fundamentally socialist image, albeit one with definite Chinese characteristics. Any resemblance to rampant capitalism is purely coincidental.
The attempt to convert Beijing into an Olympic city, a key point in the focusing of Chinese national pride for the past six years, is quickly becoming reality.
The fact that four billion people around the world are expected to watch the Beijing Olympics on television will do an awful lot to put the city on the map. It's expected to generate a longer-term feel-good factor that can translate into a positive economic impact and mark China's emergence on the world stage.
Some Olympics are bigger than others in terms of the footprint they leave on a city. City leaders in the Catalan capital Barcelona were well pleased in autumn 1992 the Olympics regenerated their city, turning an already hip European destination into a holiday centre with a massively improved infrastructure. The city has never looked back.
Sydney hosted a great summer Olympics in 2000, but the long-term economic effect has not been dramatic. Some of the stadiums are underutilised and it's fair to say the Games were not fundamental to the economic health of the city.
London mayor Ken Livingstone has made much of the impact the Olympics will have on London in 2012. But in Beijing the impact has penetrated the psyche.
The Beijing Games will transform the capital, and in this respect they are similar to the Barcelona Olympics or Seoul in 1988 because of the large investment in infrastructure and urban redev-elopment associated with the event.
Stop someone on the street in London and ask them about the Olympic legacy on the city, and the chances are you will get a raised eyebrow, a shrug of the shoulders or a complaint about rezoning. But in Beijing, anyone you ask is more likely to say the Olympics will be a showcase for how much has changed in China and what China has to offer.
Take the example of Sun Ruoyu, a Beijing-born Australian citizen who fought to save the restaurant her family has run for 160 years in the historic Qianmen district from being knocked down to make way for the Olympic marathon route.
She is not alone. The Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions in Geneva believes 1.5 million people will have been relocated for Olympics-related projects, compared with government estimates of just over 6000.
Sun's husband was studying in Melbourne in 1989, and she joined him there in 1994. She went back in May 2007 to fight for the restaurant started by her great-grandfather.
You would think she'd be upset about the Olympics. Not a chance. 'We're very happy, proud and excited about the 2008 Olympics. My daughter is very interested in gymnastics and wants to cheer on China. We think the Olympics are great,' she enthused. Her only beef is with the way the demolition is being handled.
So much of old Beijing has been knocked down in the name of the Olympics, and so much new infrastructure has been constructed, that the city's entire personality has been altered.
Although much of the reconstruction of Beijing would have happened anyway, driven by double-digit economic growth in China and the opening up of the country to foreign investment, the Olympics have played a powerful symbolic role in shifting development from Shanghai, the mainland's biggest city and its financial capital, to the traditionally sleepy political centre Beijing.
A subway network, as an addition to the current handful of metropolitan lines, is being built in the name of the Games. Magnificent buildings such as Rem Koolhaas' CCTV tower, which will be one of the architectural wonders of the world when it is finished, are coming to fruition.
Within this context, there is a strong degree of confidence when you talk to the Beijing organisers about the Olympic legacy. 'Every Olympics is different,' says Sun Weide, deputy director for communications of the Beijing Organising Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG).
'For Beijing our goal is to have high-level Olympic games with Chinese characteristics [and] a strong legacy. We will have 31 high-level competitive venues for the event. What we intend to bring to the Games, and leave as our legacy, are three things: the High-Tech Games, the Green Olympics and the People's Olympics.'
To date, half a million people have volunteered to help with the Olympics in Beijing. The organisers need 100,000 people. In other countries, particularly developed countries, the Olympics are essentially just another sporting event, albeit a major one. But in China the games are everything.
BOCOG is not worried about facilities lying idle. Eleven of the arenas are existing facilities, and eight are temporary. The facilities will be used after the Games, because there is a growing demand for public areas in the capital. And the subways and motorways and ring roads won't be empty when the Games are over.
A priority for the Chinese government is to use the Olympics to enhance the country's image. The Games will bring in tourists. Research by Visa International shows that nine out of 10 visitors to the Games are likely to explore other parts of China, which will increase the average visitor 'yield' (or amount spent).
For the Chinese government, the Olympic dividend is a long-term game. This includes a recognition that China needs to speak English to get ahead. The language is now a key part of China's education system, compulsory in schools from primary to university level. But let's not get too optimistic English is still not widely spoken in China, and it's advisable for anyone travelling to Beijing for the Games to bring a phrasebook and a healthy dash of patience.
The excitement level in advance of the Games is rising all the time, with more and more Olympic symbols popping up. Huge construction projects are still being worked on, but there are fewer start-ups, and you can begin to get an idea of what the city will look like by next year, when much of the construction should be finished in areas such as the central business district.
By the end of the year most of the Olympic venues will be finished. The Olympic Stadium will be ready in March 2008, a bit later than expected because of its multi-functional role, explains BOCOG's Sun. The Olympic Village will be transformed into a residential area after the Games.
Many of the Olympic sites are in university areas, so they will also find an automatic population to make use of them.
Come September 2008, when the Olympics roadshow has packed up its bags, when the gold medallists' victory parades are behind them and the world's media has switched its attention elsewhere, Beijing will be a city transformed, in mind, body and spirit.
A heads-up about the Beijing Games
Civil liberties
Activists for numerous causes are expected to seize upon China's hosting of the Games to pressure the Beijing government on issues such as the conflict in Darfur, forced evictions to make way for the Olympic building program, and freedom of the press.
Air pollution
Although the organisers have promised 'the Green Games', Beijing is one of the world's dirtiest cities, choked with smog and with air pollution that is often two or three times the maximum allowed for by the World Health Organisation. Organisers are planning to keep many private cars off the streets during the Games and have closed many coal-fired power plants and polluting factories to try and improve the air. Much of the city's industry will be shut down.
Security a prioirty
Security is a big issue, and various tentacles of China's vast state security apparatus have been brought together in a single Olympic command centre. There will be 94,000 security personnel working at the Games, a number security experts expect to increase after this (northern) summer, when various procedures will be tested. With few external terrorist threats to concern them, they will focus on the perceived domestic threats from adherents to the Falun Gong spiritual group and other activist groups.
Food safety
Food safety has made headlines in China for months now, and the government has been under pressure to do something about consumer safety after a series of breaches and deaths involving toxins in food. A panel of experts has been appointed to monitor the grub. There's going to be a lot of food at the Games the forecasts are that athletes, coaches, officials and journalists will probably consume more than 75,000 litres of milk, 330 tonnes of fruit and vegetables and 750 litres of tomato sauce during the Olympics.
Flies for cash
Earlier this year, retired Beijing restaurateur Guo Zhanqi said he would buy flies for two yuan, around 20 cents each, to help clean up the city for the Olympics. Guo is giving out cash to anyone who presents him with the dead insects, and is trying to encourage a nationwide anti-fly campaign. He's got
a snappy slogan: 'No flies, new Beijing. No flies, great Olympics.'
The Olympic stadium
The Herzog & de Meuron-designed Olympic Stadium is an astonishing piece of work, a 3.13 billion yuan (A$500 million), 91,000-seat stadium that will host the opening ceremony, athletics and football events. The steel superstructure, which gives the distinctive stadium its 'Bird's Nest' nickname, is already looming over the city's fourth ring road, and organisers are confident that four months will be plenty of time to test it.
Business lessons from the Beijing Olympics
You only have one chance to make a good first impression
A crackdown on poor English in signage has meant thousands of new signs across Beijing. 'Some of the translations in China aren't clear or even polite,' said Liu Yang, director general of the Beijing Speaks Foreign Languages program. 'The government realised that if they weren't changed, the city would lose face.'
Learn from the past
Wanting to see recent practice in operation, the Beijing Organising Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG) sent hundreds of observers from various government departments to Athens. Each official was assigned a specific role, and many were required to file reports.
What do you stand for?
'The Beijing Olympics will not be about sport, they will be about creating a super brand called China', and the brand essence is progress,' a marketing expert told the China Business Review. BOCOG has said the Games will be the Green Olympics, the People's Olympics and the High-Tech Olympics. But the main message, in case the world had failed to notice, is that China has arrived as the most capable of modern nations.
Form strategic alliances
One of the advantages Beijing has over Athens is that sponsors are far more interested in reaching the local as well as the global audience. Commercial support for the Olympics is divided into three levels: Olympic partners (who pay about US$40m), sponsors (who pay about US$2030m), and service providers (companies that offer services in exchange for sponsorship).
Don't scrimp
When it came time to compile a shortlist for the design of sports venues, BOCOG went top-shelf. The Olympic Stadium ('The Bird's Nest') was designed by award-winning Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron, one of the most admired architecture firms in the world.
Reference: November 2007, volume 77:10, p. 26-29
