Only 9 days and counting until the Olympics, Bejing is trying to get its ducks in a row.
With the Olympic games only a couple of weeks away, Beijing is, quite understandably, doing its final Olympic workout. Everyone—from gardeners to journalists, from taxi drivers to children, from retirees to students—seems to be working overtime preparing for China’s big coming out party.
With a count down clock ticking away the seconds until the opening ceremony on 8/8/08 at 8 p.m. (eight also happens to be a very lucky number in China, as its pronunciation “ba” rhymes with the word “fa” which means prosperity), the country is putting the icing on its coming-out cake and hanging up the streamers before the guests—thousands of foreign visitors, athletes and journalists—ring the doorbell.
What, exactly, visitors can expect from their visit to China, and how China is dealing with much of the controversy surrounding the games—I will cover at a later time. As for now, China is making let me tell you about a few interesting preparations China is making.
The government is ensuring that residents of Beijing mind their manners, with government-sponsored campaigns to discourage children from urinating in the streets or people spitting on the street. (Or worse, the “farmer’s blow”, when you plug one nostril and blow out the other.) The campaigns encourage standing in lines, rather than chaotic clusters. Of course, these are all Western standards of etiquette, and from what I’ve observed, it hasn’t quite sunk in yet with many Beijingers.
The Westernizing of Chinese culture also includes providing English lessons for cab drivers and children. In my experience so far, the children are far more advanced than the cab drivers (many of the children study English for at least an hour a day at school.)
As for the drivers, while the tourist life in Beijing would be a lot easier if the drivers spoke at least some English, it is a bit spoiled of me to expect it. After all, I could never learn Chinese in a matter of months. All I can say is “Ni Hao” “Saigen” and “Kung Pao Chicken,” which mean, respectively, “Hi” “”Good-bye” and “Kung Pao Chicken”. Oh, by the way, they’ve taken dog meat off Bejing menus so tourists won’t accidentally order Kung Pao Fido.
The city is also taking necessary strides when it comes to infrastructure and pollution. Beijing has spent around $40 billion to remodel subways and create new subways lines, reconstruct roads with an Olympic-only lane and improve the appearance of the sidewalks and roadways. The new subways are very nice, clean and air-conditioned. I would prefer to take a subway over a taxi any day. (Though with my bungled sense of direction, I need to travel with someone on the subway or I would probably find myself at a stop in inner Mongolia. Then again, with my lack of Chinese skills, I suppose the same could happen in a taxi cab.) As for the streets and sidewalks, they are also very clean (except for the occasional “farmer’s blow”). But I can’t help but notice that the streets are often manually swept with a straw broom and grass is often trimmed with a push mower.
While enhanced subways will help air pollution and traffic, the good old government isn’t stopping there. As of last Sunday, many factories were temporarily shut down and a third of the many of the 3.3 cars in Beijing were banned. Drivers with license plates ending in odd numbers were allowed to rule the road. On Monday, only cars with even-ended numbers. The difference in traffic and air quality was almost instantly noticeable.
Oh, and did I mention the Chinese government can control the weather? No, seriously. To ensure their air is clean and the grass is green, the clouds above Beijing are being seeded. I hadn’t heard of seeding before this week. For those of you in the same clueless boat, seeding involves dropping pellets silver iodide on the tops of clouds to make it rain. (Seeding is used in the US as well, in particular, before airspace launches.)
In a previous column, “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head”, I wrote of the rainy day, “The rain had cooled the hot Beijing temperature by about 15 degrees and the air was so clean I could see as far as my eyes would let me.” Now I know why. Nearly every three days in Beijing, the clouds are seeded, making it rain. I just hope it doesn’t make Mama Nature angry. Something about controlling the weather just doesn’t feel, well, natural. Come to think of it, like the forced rain is diluting the pollution, some of these forced changes seem to be diluting Chinese culture. Then again, this is my first trip to China so I have little basis for comparison.
But I’ve got to give the Beijingers one thing, if China’s coming out party is a success, it will be primarily because of the people. The students in the subway line who will send you in the right direction. The retired English-speaking engineer who now volunteers at the zoo’s panda exhibit. The businessmen who will help you order at McDonalds. The young mother who will trust you to hold her baby so she can take a picture. The construction workers who, on your way home from dinner at 11 p.m. will stop their work to say “Ni Hao” (and let’s be honest, gawk a little bit.) In their own way, all the Beijingers are sure working hard to make sure it doesn’t rain on this Olympic parade. Unless of course it’s seeded.
A lady cleaning the streets on the campus of Renmin University.
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