Olympic Countdown: Final Preparations and Last Minute "Changes"

With only five more days until the Openning Ceremony for the 2008 Olympics, you can bet that the Chinese are kicking it into over drive. The influx of olympians, foreigners, and broadcast crews is changing the very face of Beijing. The streets are congestion free, the air is cleaner (albeit marginally), the sidewalks are free of trash, grime, and construction materials, as Beijing is doing it's part to polish up before the whole world casts its collective gaze onto the emerging giant. For the Chinese, this is a sink or swim moment. Time to show the world just how great China is, and how much it has developed since china finally openned it's doors to the outside world in the late 1970's.

It will also provide the rest of the world with a glimpse into the "average" life of a middleclass Chinese person in the ever-expanding urban population, hopefully filling the vaccuum of knowledge that exists abroad (For example, not every chinese person knows kung fu). What many people will find, is that on the surface, China is very similar to the rest of the world. However, lurking beneath, and what may be absent from the Olympic coverage, are more complex truths or half truths that really seperate Chinese culture from the rest of the Western World. China hopes to mitigate these realities, but even now, they're starting to slip out.

The Beijing pollution, which has been a contented issue from the get-go, is first and foremost. While attempts at traffic control, shutting down chemical and coal factories, and limitting power use has slowed the output of harmful chemicals pumped into the air, the grey and ominous haze unique to many large cities in developing worlds still exists. While China assures that air levels will be safe for athletes during the Aug 8th-24th time line, the truth of the matter is that they wont be, at least not by foreign standards. In China, ever rule can be broken, and figures are constantly manipulated, how, where and when they measure the Parts per million is entirely up to the Chinese weather bureau, which provides no transparency and constantly changing standards. So when they tell you that the haze you see is humidity and moisture (they used the sauna metaphor recently), take it with a grain of salt.

Oh and on the topic of salt, did you know the Chinese have a Weather Modification Bureau? It's about 30000 people strong, and their job is to either fight off, or create rain. How do they do it? Simple, lots and lots of salts and iodines, shot out of rockets and bazookas. Be very afraid world. China now controls the weather...or so they boasted until these last few days. Now they say it may rain on the openning ceremony of the Olympics--a prospect they've spent years (literally) trying to prevent, all but guranteeing that their top scientists at the bureau would perfect a way to hold rain clouds from condensing. Maybe they should have built a fold away room on the Birds Nest just in case?

The next big deal to hit the news recently is access to internet. Foreigners, reporters especially, we assured that the internet would be unrestricted during the Olympics. Now the Chinese are going back on their word, saying that there will be "adaquate" internet access that will be sufficient for foreign needs. This has caused quite an uproar, but for me is not all that unexpected. A chinese gurantee is more of a negotiation than a set guideline. While the point is to find a common ground between the two parties, the methods of doing so can often be changed or thrown out all-together based on what's going through you're chinese counterpart's brain. Case in point, I'm in Xuzhou instead of Shanghai with the other foreign teachers. I was guranteed vacation time now, but that quickly became negotiable... I never thought I'd say this, but if there's this world needs more of, it's Lawyers--so long as they all move to China.

In the coming days, and throughout the Olympics, more and more changes are likely to occur, many of which may rub westerners the wrong way. While it's often annoying, and sometimes scary at the lack of freedom and warning, you really just have to make do. After all, this is China's home turf. If you don't like it, you can always go home and watch it on NBC.