Beijing 2008

Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001
From: Ceels
Subject: Beijing 2008

Well.
Beijing has the Olympics. The decision making process was broadcast live on about 16 of the 24 channels my television picks up.
I could make many cynical comments about Beijing’s presentation, but I am keeping a tight hold on them. It is very easy to be cynical in China.

The decision was announced at around 10:10pm and the entire city went bananas. Fireworks (illegal in china's big cities) were going off for the next three hours around the school. People were running through the streets. I went down to the gate to say congratulations to the guards, but my Chinese must be worse than I thought, because they thought I wanted to go out into the street and became quite distressed. It led to a waving of arms and 'you must not go out by your self'. It is nice to know they care about my well-being, but I did feel just a little like a big kid (which is what they call me, the other day one of them told me in tones of great appreciation 'you are so large and white and beautiful', mmmm.)

Yesterday and today the backslapping and self-congratulation were still going on. If I hear Beijing er-ling-ling-ba one more time I am going home.

Okay, I will just say two little things. One major point of the presentation was that they are nearly finished a three year tree planting project with something million trees put in. but I would like to point out that I have seen them planting the trees and in another three years they are all going to have to be chopped down because they will interfere with power lines, or buildings or roads or water/gas pipelines.
And the footage from the promotional video is all from the southern and eastern parts of Beijing (quite affluent) and must have been filmed last year, because we have only had one day that clear of air pollution since I’ve been here, and it was only a couple of weeks ago. So either they had a clear day last year too, or the whole thing was done on a computer.

hope everyone is well
love ceels