Beijing: Observations in the midst of the 2008 Paralympics

I successfully managed to avoid coming to Beijing during the ‘main’ Olympics. I would have liked to pay a visit – I was offered tickets to the opening ceremony – but the logistics and vastly increased hotel and transfer costs made it an entirely unfeasible trip.

However today, I am in Beijing where they are currently hosting the Paralympics – so at least I can say I was actually in Beijing during the Olympics.

The first thing to notice is how absolutely and resolutely IMMACULATE Beijing is looking. For instance on the 45 minute car journey into the City, I spotted just 3 items of rubbish (a discarded cigarette packet; a small plastic bag willow-the-wisping on the hard shoulder; and a sad-looking child’s hat sleeping in the fast lane (which to be fair could have been blown off rather than discarded). There are flowerboxes on the crash barriers every 100 yards on the motorway (God, how many plants??? Surely they should have been diverting their energy and limited water supply to growing food?). The armies of street cleaners are out everywhere – there is even a lady @ the airport whose SOLE job it is to clean/polish the up/down button on the elevator! Can you imagine that in the UK? Another YTS scheme perhaps? One way for labour to get the unemployment rates down - assuming they're still in power (which they won't be).

None of the trade mark arc-welding sparks shooting from forty storeys up in the sky were to be seen. In fact, I only saw one construction crane (a marked contrast to the state 2 months ago when the skyline was punctured by them all over Beijing). All of the half-finished buildings I saw early in the summer were ‘completed’. Actually, I remarked on that to a colleague – he said these buildings are known as ‘Ghost buildings’. They look finished on the outside – whereas they are just empty shells …. The windows have been put in but they’re not fitted out inside. It means post-Olympics they'll need to retrospectively remove the windows and start again from where they stopped!

And another mind-boggling and remarkable thing I noticed was that there are near to NO commercial messages on the tens of thousands of billboard spaces here. The only one I can see is a Coke ad … EVERY other poster site features an official Government sponsored Olympics message.

An AMAZING feat of organization to pull all of this off.

I really can’t see it happening in London 2012.

Hope I’m wrong.

M