China Digital Times

China news tagged with: Olympics views (26)

• The Home Team

  

  In the New Yorker, Peter Hessler reports on the Olympics as viewed from the village of Sancha, 90 minutes outside Beijing, where he has rented a house for several years:

  For China, 2008 had been the most traumatic year since 1989, when the Tiananmen Square massacre occurred. In March, there had been riots in Tibet, followed by a brutal crackdown by the authorities. Overseas, human-rights demonstrators disrupted the Olympic-torch relay, leading to an angry nationalist backlash in China. In May, a powerful earthquake in Sichuan province killed more than sixty thousand people. Recently, there had been a fatal attack on Chinese military police in Xinjiang, a region in the far west where much of the native Muslim population resents China’s rule. All these events had contributed to the stress of the Olympic year, but I didn’t understand the concern about the Great Wall. “They’re worried about foreigners, people who might want Tibet independence,” Wei Ziqi told me. “They don’t want them to go up to the Great Wall with a sign or something.”

  It was fear of a photo op—that somebody would unfurl a political banner and take a picture atop China’s most distinctive structure. The government also worried that a foreigner might hike in a remote area and get injured, creating bad press. For this, the authorities had mobilized more than five thousand people in the region, but labor is plentiful in rural China. And these volunteers were getting paid—another difference from the city, where patriotic students were willing to donate their time to the Motherland’s Olympic effort. Peasants were too practical for that; in addition to the free shirt, each rural volunteer received five hundred yuan a month, about seventy-three dollars. In Sancha, where the average resident earned about a thousand dollars per year, it was good money.

  » Read more
  • September 19, 2008 8:28 PM

• The “Olympics Diary” of a Tibetan

  

  The following diary was originally posted in Chinese and provides a glimpse into life in a remote Tibetan area as the Olympics were being celebrated in Beijing:

  The “Olympics Diary” of a Tibetan
  By Tashibod

  Today is Tuesday, July 22, 2008, and it is the tenth day since I came back to my hometown. Within these ten days, even when I refused to watch any TV and kept myself away from the internet, almost every day I could still hear about and see things concerning the Beijing Olympics in the home of a countryman in a remote area in Tibet. Therefore, today I decided to write a special diary - an Olympic Diary. I want to record all the details about how I felt about the Beijing Olympics in this remote place in Tibet when the Olympics were about to begin in Beijing, when I had no access to internet or TV.

  July 22, 2008, Tuesday, The Olympics Blow against My Face

  During breakfast my father, who had just come back from herding the cattle, said that there was a new bunker (diaobao) made up of sandbags at the end of the bridge over the big river, and fully armed soldiers were on duty. My father clicked his tongue in wonder and was amazed at the speed, saying “yesterday there was nothing, then this morning it suddenly appeared like this.” My family was discussing this while having breakfast. Though the old people could not remember the time when a bunker was built at the end of the bridge, no one was surprised at the appearance of the bunker. In addition, my family unanimously believes that this change was a preparatory measure taken by the government for the imminent Olympics. I was surprised to see my family’s natural and calm reaction to this event and their unanimous judgment concerning it, and I found out that they were accustomed to such things - such actions taken by the government, especially when the Olympics were about to begin.

  At the dinner table, my father said that he heard that every county seat of the entire prefecture would be sealed off, all public transport would be stopped and no cars or people were allowed to travel between the county seats. I asked my father how was it possible to do this! He said to me everything was possible, and told me that at the time of the March 14 Incident they also did this. At that time, all the transportation stopped, and only some sedan cars were allowed to travel between counties after passing through many inspections. As soon as I heard my father’s words, I also felt it is possible to do this, and the government was capable of doing anything imaginable. As long as one could ensure there would be no incidents during the Olympics, and as long as one could report to one’s superiors on completing their tasks, then interfering with the normal living habits of the people and obstructing the normal social order would be considered to be minor issues. They do not even need to think about them, let alone provide explanations for their actions.

  When I though about it further, I felt it was not good! If the county seat were to be sealed off in August, then what should I do with the present to ZH? Originally I had agreed to send it to him in late August, but if the county seat were to be sealed off, then it would be impossible for me to go to Chengdu. I pondered it over further, then I decided to send the present to my friend in Beijing.

  In the afternoon, I went to the post office, and I saw many people were in front of the counters. For post offices in small towns, there are neither rules for people to wait for their number nor the habit to line up, thus, everybody was trying to push forward. After all the trouble for me to get to the front, and after a few Han Chinese male workers from other regions finished sending their money, the clerk asked me what I wanted to send, and told me that some things which we could usually send could not be sent during the Olympics. I was thinking to myself, “Olympics this and Olympics that, in the end would it allow people to live or not?” I said to the clerk, “Why can’t I send it? I am just sending a small present!” I should be grateful to the government for not listing this small toy in the list of the contraband. Though it took me a while, at long last, I sent the present.

  Ah, I felt the flavor of the Olympics had already blown against my face.

  » Read more
  • August 25, 2008 12:27 PM

• China’s ‘Socialist Family’ Sacrifices

  

  The Washington Post looks at where all those resources used in Beijing for the Olympics came from:

  Beijing’s gleaming new sports stadiums, efficient subway lines and legions of smiling volunteers are a testament to the Communist Party’s power to mobilize a country of 1.3 billion people. But to do so, the party has had to draw vast resources from faraway towns and villages, where millions of ordinary citizens such as Li are now suffering from water shortages, blackouts and business losses brought about because of the Games.

  Other countries that previously hosted the Olympics made sacrifices of their own, particularly financially. But the actions that China has taken highlight just how far it is willing to go — and just how much its people are willing to endure — for the sake of an event that has the rest of the world watching.

  Here in Hebei province, almost 80 billion gallons of emergency water is being sent to the capital through a series of canals hastily built over the past few months. The construction has displaced farmers, leaving some patches of land so parched that it’s difficult for them to grow anything.

  » Read more
  • August 22, 2008 10:04 PM

• Joshua Kurlantzick on The Beijing 2008 Olympic Games: Not All of China is Cheering

  

  For the National Post, Joshua Kurlantzick looks at how rural citizens are viewing the Olympics:

  Not surprisingly, for many of these rural dwellers the Games might be an interesting distraction on TV, rather than a source of major pride. “It is something that only the people in cities around Beijing care about,” one young Chinese in a rural town told Rian Dundon, a photographer who studies youth culture in China’s interior. “People from Hunan [an interior province] and other far away places don’t really feel very excited about it, and I don’t feel a personal connection to it.” Indeed, Dundon found that young people in the interior were angry that whatever positive impact the Games had would be limited to the cities. “The Olympics can only affect a very small part China. The rest will be left behind,” another young rural Chinese told him.

  It is telling that when recent polls have been done of Chinese satisfaction with their current life, the samples almost never include rural people. Rural Chinese women have one of the highest suicide rates in the world, while other polls of rural areas show high rates of anger at the high taxes and fees levied on rural people, essentially so that local officials can gorge themselves. “We don’t see the point of these Games,” one peasants’ activist told me last year, just after the police had thrown her out of her temporary house for the umpteenth time to stop her from protesting more. “We thought it might be good, but it doesn’t help us.”

  » Read more
  • August 19, 2008 11:18 AM

• The Games Began. Hearts Swelled.

  

  In the New York Times, Edward Wong looks at the various manifestations of patriotism he has encountered while living in China:

  In the three months I’ve been working in this country, I’ve come to realize how complicated Chinese patriotism is.

  It has manifested itself throughout this year: in the backlash against the Western news media for its coverage of the Tibetan conflict, in brawls between pro- and anti-China demonstrators as the Olympic torch relay passed through foreign cities, in the surge of volunteerism during the May earthquake, and in the rush to make Beijing presentable to the world before the Olympics.

  When it comes to love of China, nothing is more representative these days than the feelings of Chinese toward the Olympics. I realized this when I interviewed a group of grieving parents recently in the earthquake zone. They were furious at local governments in Sichuan Province for not investigating why so many schools had collapsed. But they said they would not go to Beijing to protest until after the Olympics.

  “We don’t want to get our nation into trouble,” said Gan Tingfu, whose 16-year-old daughter died alongside hundreds of classmates in the collapse of a high school in Juyuan.

  » Read more
  • August 16, 2008 8:38 PM

• Across China’s Countryside, ‘Just Too Busy’ for Olympics

  

  Edward Cody of the Washington Post went into the countryside of China to find out what people there think of the Olympics, and discovered they are too busy working the fields to care:

  About two-thirds of China’s 1.3 billion people have remained tied to farming villages, despite the economic boom of the last 30 years. Focused on their land and their crops, many of them have felt little in common with the glitter of the Olympics, the $40 billion makeover of Beijing and the nationalist pride of their countrymen as China strides onto the international stage and take its place as a world power.

  “It is tea-drying time,” said Yi Song, 55, chuckling contentedly as fragrant green leaves were fluffed and warmed in a wheezing array of ovens that rotated ceaselessly behind him. “We don’t have time for that.”

  Most foreigners in China, particularly those participating in or attending the Olympics, have come into contact with a recently emerged modern nation of skyscrapers, traffic-clogged streets and increasingly outward-looking people with money to spend. But most Chinese have yet to enter that world. Theirs still revolves around the land, leaving, as Yi said, little time for Olympics festivities promoted by the Communist Party.

  » Read more
  • August 14, 2008 9:02 PM

• For Many Expatriates, Olympics Signal China’s Arrival

  

  Erik Eckholm writes in the New York Times:

  In April, 12 elderly civic leaders from Chinatown in New York City decided to visit the Olympic Village in Beijing to beat the crowds and see the structures that already had the world buzzing.

  As they walked inside National Stadium, known as the Bird’s Nest, the travelers recalled in a recent interview, some wept — out of pride, they said, and joy and awe at the sheer scale of China’s transformation from the “sick man of Asia” they had known as children.

  As mainland Chinese greeted the Beijing Olympics with exuberant pride, so, too, have Chinese-Americans, who have often been divided over how to deal with the Communists or the future of Taiwan, but who share a sense that China has taken a long-awaited place on the world stage.

  » Read more
  • August 11, 2008 7:41 AM

• The Olympic Dream of a Hundred Years Has Come True, How Long Until the Journey to the Constitution is Completed?

  

  Beijing based lawyer Liu Xiaoyuan (刘晓原) writes in his blog, translated by M.J.:

  A hundred years ago, “Tianjin Youth Daily” asked three questions that stunned the nation: When will China send an athlete to participate in the Olympics, when will China sent a team that represents the country to participate in the Games, when will China itself host the Olympic Games?

  The 24th years after those questions were raised, in July 1932, China, with the world’s largest population, sent a single athlete Liu Changchun to participate in the one the Tenth Olympic Games held in Los Angeles. On August 16, 1936, China sent its representing team to the Eleventh Olympics.

  During times of internal warfare, the Chinese people have achieved two Olympic dreams; the only one remaining is the hosting of the games.

  » Read more
  • August 10, 2008 5:26 PM

• From the Hutong, an Ordinary View of the Games (Photos added)

  

  The New York Times watched the Olympics opening ceremony from a home in the hutongs with a architectural preservation activist:

  “Beijing,” Jacques Rogge, the International Olympic Committee president, would say with his trademark solemnity as the long and lavish opening ceremony of the Beijing Games neared its conclusion, “you are hosts to the present, and gateway to the future.”

  From his couch, Zhang Wei could also look back more than a century.

  “That window is 120 years old,” he said, pointing to a complex weave of pinewood on the wall behind the big screen. It was all he could save from the house in the narrow Beijing alleyway known here as a hutong that Zhang’s family had inhabited for 80 years.

  Read all the Times’ Olympics coverage here.

  Here are some photos taken by a photo journalist on the Wall Street Journal: Beijing locals view of the Games.

  » Read more
  • August 8, 2008 2:52 PM

• Is Beijing Ready for the Olympics?

  

  Li Zhiqi (李志起 ), a Beijing businessman and blogger writes on his blog, partially translated by CDT:

  On my way back to home the day before yesterday, I saw fireworks in the sky above the Olympics Village. It was the rehearsal for the Opening Ceremony on August 8th. Patterns of smiley faces, flowers, suddenly changed people’s mood. The Olympics is so close to us now.

  I was asked to say “Olympics, Beijing is ready for you!” on camera after an interview with a news program on Beijing TV yesterday morning. I don’t know why, but somehow I was at a loss for words at the request.

  Are we ready for the Olympics? It looks like we are. Since I live close by the Olympics Village, I could see everyday that all the venues inside the Village have been completed, green spaces have been cultivated, teams of armed police are on duty, and tens of thousands of volunteers are being trained. Beijing is decorated with flowers and trees at all corners and looks prettier than ever before…

  However, are we really ready? Although the municipal government has ordered all street shops to use uniform decoration materials, all buildings in the neighborhoods around Yayuncun have been newly-painted, and the pavements have been replaced several times (from gravel to cement brick and then to granite), I still feel that we are not ready yet in some ways.

  For instance, drivers in Beijing still scramble for lanes and cut in lines. We still don’t wait in line when entering department stores or getting on elevators. Very few people use tissue when they spit in public, but shoot their sputum out with a loud noise “Pei”. We often find that the tissue supply runs out in public bathrooms, including those at the Capital Airport. And many people do not have the habit of flushing the toilet after they’ve used it. We have much better airplanes, but they frequently go behind schedule, and flight attendants are still impatient. I think most people haven’t realized what the Olympics has to do with their lives and what they need to do for it. They just regard it as a kind of entertainment…

  I can’t stop worrying whenever I think about these problems. Is my worrying unnecessay? Perhaps we don’t need to prepare so carefully for the Games. It might not matter much if we don’t park our bikes in orderly lines. It could be all right if we don’t know how to greet foreign visitors in English. When we dry our underwear on our balconies, we might not need to worry that it could affect the aesthetic feelings of foreign guests.

  We don’t need to pretend to be modest and humble, nor do all of us need to pose as nationalistic. Actually it doesn’t matter much whether the Olympics is a sign of China’s rising-up or not. As the Himalayas don’t need to convince people that they are high mountains, China doesn’t need to prove its growth with a landmark event.

  The Olympics might be an honor to China as a country. But to individual residents, it may mean inconvenience on their daily lives. As we Chinese have the traditional merits of endurance, patience and modesty, I believe that we could all understand and accept the strict measures Beijing municipal government put forth for the Olympics.

  Although my family live close by the Olympic Village, I feel that we are far away from the Games. I can’t agree more when I heard officials say that it’s the biggest fortune to host a safe and sound Olympics. Safety is a fortune. China needs it, and we need it, too.

  Another blogger wrote on his “A Lonely Talker” blog:

  For the security of Olympics, the government mobilized the state and society, including troops and volunteers. There is nothing wrong with this. But to make the citizens in the whole country nervous, that is not very pleasant. For example, I live in Hebei Province, neighboring to Beijing, so it should be a little busier than other provinces. But this [Olympics security measures] has been making everyone here highly nervous and even scared. It is really not neessasary. Not even mentioning government agencies, even remote villages are being required to have personnel on guard twenty-four hours a day. The most ridiculous part is that the government banned all crowds from gathering, even various training programs have been stopped. The reason is to prevent terrorists from making trouble in crowded gathering places. The national television-course university entrance exam has also been canceled. All testing papers that were already in place at the testing locations have been sealed and have to be guarded day and night.

  » Read more
  • August 5, 2008 11:11 AM

• Chinese Grumble About the Olympics, But Quietly

  

  Anita Chang reports in AP, via kansascity.com:

  From the desktop computer at the foot of his bed, Zhang Heng dares to complain about the Beijing Olympics.

  The 24-year-old blogger tells of having to sign a “civilized behavior pledge” and verify to a neighborhood committee that he is a legal resident of his building. At the Web site company where he works, everyone had to show a clean police record, because the Olympic torch route passed by the office last week.

  While many Chinese are excited about the Olympics, which begin Friday, the games have also touched off a fair amount of grumbling. Most of it is quiet, though, because the government is quick to clamp down on protest.

  » Read more
  • August 3, 2008 8:54 PM

• As the Olympics Draw Closer, I Drift Farther Away

  

  Amid all the official media buzz about the excitement of the Olympics enthusiasts, there have been increasing complaints and criticisms about the Olympics preparations from Chinese netizens. The most telling indicator of such criticism is that now “Olympics disturbing people” (奥运扰民) has already become the latest “sensitive phrase” in the Chinese search engine Baidu. The following post was written by a blogger with the online name “Speaking out when there is injustice” (不平则鸣)，translated by CDT from Sohu blog:

  » Read more
  • August 3, 2008 8:51 PM

• The Olympic Dream: A Sci-Fi Short Story

  

  The following “Sci-Fi” short story has been (re)posted in many Chinese online forums and blogs, originally from SCI-FI Great Wall blog, translated by CDT’s Linjun Fan.

  July is the hottest month of the year in Beijing. Old Zhao felt that his heart was as parched as the earth under the midsummer sun.

  “Doctor Zhang, we have waited for the operation for twelve days. Didn’t you say that we could do it this week?” Old Zhao asked.

  He tried very hard to control his emotions in front of the doctor in charge of his father. But still he held the doctor’s hand in a firm clasp, as if the doctor would waft away like smoke at any moment.

  “Please listen to me. Be patient, ” Dr. Zhang said as he tried to loosen Old Zhao’s grasp. He had come across various complicated diseases, encountered a few medical accidents, and dealt with a number of unreasonable family members of patients, but he had never run into such a touchy question, one that he felt ashamed to answer.

  Old Zhao eased his clinch, but he still stood in front of Dr. Zhang, determined to get an answer.

  “Don’t be emotional. Please don’t be emotional, ” Dr. Zhang said repeatedly, trying to clear his mind. “I know your father’s case very well. It would be all right to postpone the operation for a month. Believe me. I promise you that I will do the operation on Aug. 26, as soon as the Olympic Games end.”

  “What does the operation have to do with the Olympic Games?” Old Zhao asked. He could not figure this out.

  “They were originally not related. But since the government has set forth such rules, hospitals have to observe it. Except for urgent ones, all operations must be postponed to ensure adequate medical supplies during the Games. As residents of Beijing, we all should do our part to make the Games successful, right? ” Dr. Zhang patted Old Zhao’s arm and walked away.

  » Read more
  • August 1, 2008 12:15 PM

• The No-Show Torch

  

  Chinese reporter Guan Jun has written a story about how the city of Benxi spent tens of millions of yuan and harassed local residents in an effort to welcome the Olympic Torch, only to find out that the relay route had been changed:

  » Read more
  • July 28, 2008 8:50 PM

• Hu Fayun: A Never Delivered MP3 Player

  

  Wuhan-based writer Hu Fayun (胡发云) published the following essay on his blog, translated by M. J.:

  The Sichuan earthquake, in the first few days there was only talk of Wenchuan, Beichuan, only learned after a few days that Mianzhu was even worse. I immediately thought of a young friend with whom I became acquainted through literature. Last year, when my wife’s grandfather attended a centennial conference and I went to Ya’an, she even dropped by for a visit when I returned to Chengdu.

  I called her immediately, her cell, her landline, all disconnected. Email and messages on QQ received no response for days. I went online to search her workplace, saw the numerous injured and devastation, and suddenly I saw a familiar apartment building, split, destroyed, in ruins – ten or so days before the earthquake, she had sent a group of photos, in which appeared those apartments where she had lived, and the nearby hills, woods, and the idle goats grazing nearby. Those goats were of a maroon color, a single glance would have you believe they were deer, adorable as they were.

  » Read more
  • June 22, 2008 6:09 PM

CDT BOOKSHELF

FROM CHINESE CITIZEN BLOGGERS 公民博客:

Support CDT - Buy a Grass Mud Horse T-shirt!