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Home > Jeff Schultz > Archives > 2008 > August > 23
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Beijing Games come up short on soul
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Beijing — The first time Charles Lee came to China in 1979, there wasn’t a great preoccupation with impressing people. Beijing hadn’t been blanketed with flower pots. Teenage girls didn’t run 50 feet through rain storms to hand you an umbrella. Natives didn’t stop white people in the middle of Tiananmen Square, merely to take their picture and ask, “What do you think of our country?”
“There was one road into town,” said Lee, a former Los Angeles judge who was instrumental in China’s inclusion in the 1984 Olympics and now a USOC official. “I remember the big activity at night was to go see the magic show. Then during the daytime, we went on a tour of the light-bulb factor. That was it.”
It’s more than that now. China was intent on impressing world in these Olympics. It went beyond the booming infrastructure, the cannonball off the diving board into capitalism and even the Beijing Hooters (which fairly is in line with a slogan during Mao’s Cultural Revolution: “Unleash the fury of women as a mighty force for revolution!”)
In short, the people of China really wanted you to like them. Unfortunately, the grading for what we saw over 17 days in Beijing can’t end there.
These Olympics gave us some wonderful competition and two athletes for the ages: U.S. swimmer Michael Phelps, who won a record eight gold medals and set seven world records, and Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, who set records in the 100, 200 and as part of the 4x100 relay team.
People were gracious. Events ran smoothly. Buses ran on time. Nobody keeled over from the smog (although several came close).
But something significant was missing: atmosphere. This won’t go down as the greatest Olympics ever. They could go down as the most antiseptic.
Atlanta’s Olympics were criticized on many fronts for transportation and technical breakdowns. But at least Atlanta had a pulse. Beijing seemed closer to a perfectly dressed mannequin.
Chinese officials were determined not to allow its government’s Bar Mitzvah to become a showcase for protesters. That’s fine, to a point. But they went overboard.
There were times it seemed the Beijing Olympics weren’t taking place in a city but rather a dollhouse, with a big hand coming down to move the little pieces around. Police and security officials cleared streets of perceived undesirables. Demonstrations in Tiananmen Square were quickly smothered, like a People’s Army boot on an ant hill.
China promised the IOC openness. Instead, we got Hollywood back lots with phony housing fronts. The government set up an application process for human-rights activists. They designated three protest zones. But none of the applications were accepted. Several applicants were arrested. One woman, Zhang Wei, wanted to protest her home being leveled for Olympic construction. She received a month in prison for “disturbing social order.”
The Olympics are supposed to be a celebration, not a 24/7 ROTC march.
There were many several days when I walked through the “Olympic Green” toward competition venues. To my left were fountains and pools, wonderfully landscaped. But they were fenced off. Security guards were lined up like pawns on a chessboard. People took pictures through wire fencing.
It wrecked the scene. It set the tone. These were the look-but-don’t-touch Olympics.
USOC chairman Peter Ueberroth played the role of diplomat. “If you accept an invitation to somebody’s house and you start saying I don’t like the furniture, I don’t like this house, I don’t like the food — then you shouldn’t go. It’s not our responsibility [to speak out]. Politicians can make a statement.”
The IOC can make the statement. Don’t award the Games to any country with a failing record in human rights.
The aftermath of elaborate Opening Ceremonies spoke volumes. There were stories of 51-hour rehearsals where participants were allowed only two bathroom breaks and two meals. Several collapsed from exhaustion or heatstroke. Some performers wore diapers because they couldn’t leave the field for six hours.
Fifteen minutes before the show, a 7-year-old girl was replaced by a 9-year-old girl to lip-synch, “Ode to the Motherland.” Zhang Yimou didn’t believe the 7-year-old was cute enough. That should do wonders for her self-esteem.
In an interview with Chinese journalists, Zhang said only North Korea could’ve put on a better show (“They are uniform beyond belief!”)
Zhang added: “I have conducted operas in the West. It was so troublesome. They only work four and a half days each week. Everyday there are two coffee breaks and no overtime work at all. There cannot be any discomfort because of human rights.”
Darn those human rights.
They can wreck any show.
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