China on display

SHANGHAI—“We are Ready” is sung with a firm resolve in a nice and easy tune on Chinese TV by a group that looks like they are ready to belt out “We are the World” as well.

It is the eve of the 2008 Summer Games of the XXIX Olympiad, an international multi-sport event that will be held in Beijing, People’s Republic of China. It opens on the auspicious day August 8, 2008 (08.08.08), unarguably the most magical of all numbers in this decade in Chinese numerology. Including the 2008 Summer Paralympics on Sept. 6, more than 10,000 athletes are expected to compete in 302 events in 28 sports. China has been declaring its readiness the past eleven months!

Venues of those events will be mostly in Beijing with its now famous 91,000-seat “Bird’s Nest” Stadium conceived by antiauthoritarian artist Ai Weiwei who has since protested what he considers the “fake smile” use of his creation in China’s failure to own up to its shortcomings in its human rights record.

Another new Beijing landmark is the “Water Cube” for the National Aquatic Center, a stunning high-tech steel-and-membrane architectural addition to a city that has broken all kinds of construction records in preparing for this summer’s events. It was also reportedly built solely with donations from overseas compatriots outside of PRC funding.

Other sites that will host the international football events (soccer to the US audience) will include Shenyang (northeastern city where a lot of the Hanggulren—Korean Chinese—fair ladies of the karaoke Saipan nights claim to be from), Qinhuangdao (city near one of the islands reportedly explored by China’s uniting Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi for a suspected eternity potion), Tienjin, and Shanghai. Qingdao (famous German beer city) wharfs the sailing events while Hong Kong (still run by the boys of the HK Jockey Club regardless of which sovereign government is in place) barns and trots the equestrian sports.

Famed Hollywood director Steven Spielberg, who was set to advise the dramaturgy of the Olympiad’s opening ceremonies, withdraw in protest of China’s alleged indifference to the genocide in Darfur, Sudan, an item that the G8 Summit meeting in Hokkaido, Toyako, Japan recently deigned to include in its crisis-laden agenda. Darfur and Tibet, rightly or wrongly, are a sore if not often cosmetic concern of the boutique crowd among our global glitterati.

With its proactive response to the disruption of the Olympic torch relay, its detailed and popular blow-by-blow responses to the foreign media exploitation of the controversial political standoff in Tibet, its heavy-handed treatment of protesting parents in the aftermath of the Sichuan earthquake disaster, its massive displacement of city-dwellers in the rapid development of dilapidated dwellings in the capital city, China has been true to the image of the Games’ official logo, “Dancing Beijing,” a stylized calligraphic character jing, referring to the host national and one-of-four ancient capital cities.

In a sense, China has been loosening its tight centralized grip on everything that happens within its borders. With the Games’ slogan, One World, One Dream, it has been calling upon the world to unite in the Olympic spirit. Its choice of the five Fuwa as mascots of Beijing 2008, each representing one color of the Olympic rings and each of the five basic elements in traditional Chinese science, China is trying to embrace the diversity of its internal character and to show a willingness to face the complexity of its external relations.

The five Fuwas, dancing dolls, representing water, wood, fire, earth and air are the following: the female Beibei, color blue depicting the lotus and a fish to represent prosperity; the male Jingjing, color black of the environmentally friendly panda; the male Huanhuan, color red of the flame representing passion and enthusiasm; male Yingying, color yellow of the swift but endangered Tibetan antelope; and the female Nini, color green of the innocent but joyous swallow, symbol of good fortune.

China has been preparing for this Olympiad since it failed to win the host city bid for the 2000 Olympics. In a sense, it made a shift after Deng Xiaoping’s suppression of the June 4 incident (known in the critical West as the Tiannamen Square Massacre) in 1989.

I made my first China visit later that year with a group of foreign diplomatic personnel and dependents out of Manila. Beijing then had only one highway ring (the old tram route) where now, there are six with the seventh reportedly planned to be built after the Olympics; Shanghai’s Pudding was just then a wishful overlay on bureaucrats’ urban plans by the Huangpu over rice fields and fishing villages on the east side of the river.

Now, Beijing sports three forest stand rings around the city to help absorb its prodigious output of carbon monoxide; Shanghai is fast replacing, if it has not already replaced, New York as the financial and cultural center of the world. It has, at least, become the most expensive piece of real estate in the planet, with the accompanying cost and standard of living adjustment radically altering the landscape, and burdening a large portion of its dependent population.

Former IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch had said that he believes that the Beijing Games will be “the best in Olympic history.” It does look like it is shaping that way. In March, after a sojourn in Jiangsu Province, I left Pudong behind with a huge poster declaring to one and all how airport personnel, from mechanics to pilots, were prepared to graciously welcome the world.

On the plane over from Tokyo was a young girl whose parents, prior to establishing British citizenship, hailed from Ibadan, Nigeria, and who this year, among a horde of native English speakers, has been teaching English as a Second Language to the newly globalized Tunggoren (Middle Kingdom folks). It is tempting to leave PSS and join the ranks!

Now, if only I could cajole Ed Stephens to lend me his Cessna Citation X, we could get a thorough picture of China from all the venues of the Summer Olympics of 2008. For now, there is no doubt, China is ready to host the 2008 Olympiad.