Another Kind of Olympic Fervor
Screening for the 2008 Olympic Opening Ceremonies is projected to take four hours. The placement of anti-aircraft batteries around the Nest is no secret, while miles of fencing (paradoxically plastered with the “One World, One Dream” slogan), and pervasive security forces make casual strolling through the Olympic Greens impossible without accreditation. Staring up at the hodgepodge combination of steel beams making up the main Olympic stadium, more net than Birds Nest, Yalcin only sighed, whispering, “This isn’t the Olympics. Das ist scheisse, this is shit…This is Alcatraz!”
A Gymnastics competitor in the 1960 Olympics in Rome, Yalcin Özer has been to every Olympics hence, excepting the 1980 Olympiad in Moscow. Fourty-eight years, twelve Olympics (and that’s assuming he meant just the summer Games), and who knows how many events attended later, he has traveled 15,000 kilometers on a motorcycle to be in Beijing for the Games. And all he can say is, “Das ist scheisse.”
This kind of reaction makes me wonder how successful the Olympics could possibly be. With security measures that stringent, there is little to encourage a Western presence. Indeed, while Yalcin and I where meandering about the outskirts of the Bird’s Nest, not a single Westerner could be seen. Everywhere we looked it was Chinese. Now, is this a bad thing? Well, honestly, yes.
This is China’s opportunity to present itself to the world, something they haven’t really been able to do in the past. And while everyone knows China is a rising superpower, with a burgeoning industry and groundbreaking economy, this is the first chance the Middle Kingdom has had to show the world that they have, to put it in terms of a debutante, arrived. If there is no western presence, or a confined one, what sort of pronouncement can China possibly make?
Let’s just cross our fingers and hope they don’t step on any feet. Or rather, they avoid the important ones.
Articles of Interest:
China’s Agony of Defeat
The Most Politicized Games Since Berlin
Calling China’s Human Rights Bluff