Beijing Olympics
news
At 8.30 we walk out of our hotel into a hot, clammy Beijing morning. Yesterday
the city enjoyed what its 17 million inhabitants call a “blue sky day”, but
today the Great Pall of China has returned. A thick haze of dust and fumes
smothers the capital, leaching all colour from the sky and erasing distant
tower blocks. Undaunted, we stride towards the main road past communal
toilets, old men in vests walking tiny dogs and a youth expectorating
noisily.
We have a mission. Armed with just two words of Chinese - ni hao
(hello) and xiexie (thank you) - and the most rudimentary knowledge
of Beijing, Jack Hill, the Times photographer, and I intend to test the
waters before 500,000 foreigners arrive for the Olympic Games.
Will they be able to navigate a vast and bewildering city whose language,
written and spoken, most find utterly incomprehensible? Have the taxi
drivers really learnt enough English to cope with foreign customers? Are the
authorities really cracking down on counterfeit clothes and pirated DVDs?
Have the Chinese stopped hawking and spitting?
We find a bus stop where a man and a woman dressed in orange shirts, each
clutching little red flags, make sure that a dozen members of the public
form an orderly queue. “Do you speak English?” I ask the man. He and the
passengers burst into nonplussed laughter. I try again. “Which bus for
Tiananmen Square?”. More laughter, but I'm in luck. A young man steps
forward. “Sixty,” he says, just as a number 60 arrives.
We pay one yuan (8p) each. There is standing room only, but the bus is
spotless and has television screens showing Chinese advertisements for
McDonald's and Head & Shoulders. We inch along clogged streets where the
once ubiquitous cyclists are now an endangered species. The electronic sign
announcing the stops is in Chinese. Happily our young friend helpfully
writes down our destination - Nan He Yan - before he alights, so that other
passengers can tell us when to get off.
We find ourselves in a broad, tree-lined boulevard where straw-hatted workers
are already sweeping the gutters and tending roadside flowerbeds. One is
even wiping down a litter bin. Beijing's streets are as clean as its air is
filthy.
We say “Tiananmen Square” loudly and in various tones to a policeman until
finally he points us through one of the immaculate little parks that have
sprouted across the city as part of its £20 billion makeover. Beside a large
fishpond, signs read “Refuse to Step On” and “Refuse to Feed”. A man with a
red flag and a whistle shepherds us across another boulevard - and there in
front of us is the vast, Soviet-style square where tanks crushed China's
young democracy movement in 1989.
A fearsome road as wide and busy as the M1 divides us from the iconic square.
We take the underpass. As we emerge, police are searching all Chinese
tourists but wave us through.
The square illustrates one of the contradictions of these Games. The huge
expanse of paving is being prettified with small gardens and ornamental
ponds. Stands are being erected. This suggests fun, festivities, an
impending party. But the authorities are terrified of mass gatherings. There
are security cameras on every lamppost, and scores of soldiers and
policemen, each standing ramrod stiff, scattered across the square. I pose
beside one for a photograph and he waves me away angrily. Later a policeman
demands my identification.
We head towards Mao Zedong's tomb, past groups of Chinese tourists led by
guides waving coloured flags on sticks. A man who knows English numbers, if
nothing else, offers us Chairman Mao watches for 180 yuan (£15) each. We
beat him down to 50 yuan (£4) for two - still a rip-off, but he had only one
arm. When we point to where the other one was, he makes shooting noises.
Alas, Mao's tomb is closed. Perhaps Mondays are set aside for touching up his
waxen corpse. As we leave, a young man approaches. “Excuse me I have word
with you,” he says. “Welcome to China. I enjoy speak perfect English.
English open door to great future. You have good travel.”
At Tiananmen's southern end, an escalator takes us down into Qianmen subway
station. Tickets cost two yuan (16p). The maps are indecipherable, so I ask
a lady with a red armband and white gloves how to reach the Olympic Stadium.
Two of her colleagues join us.
Using their fingers and occasional words of English, they indicate that we go
one stop, change trains, then 11 stops north on Line 5. They write down our
destination - Huaxinxijie Beikou. The platforms are shiny, the trains
spotless and cool. Where we change, uniformed officials marshal those trying
to board behind white lines until those alighting have done so.
Again, there is standing room only. Television screens show films explaining
the rules of tennis and other Olympic events. A young woman training to
become a tourist guide befriends us (clearly nobody older than their
mid-twenties speaks any English). Her Western name is Rebecca. She gives me
a Chinese name - Yao Ming (China's most famous basketball player). She has a
programme on her mobile phone that translates English words into Chinese and
vice versa. We defeat it by entering “Bird's Nest”, nickname of the Olympic
stadium.
At Huaxinxijie Beikou we emerge into a world of dismal grey apartment blocks
beside another roaring highway. The only colour is that of the cars' red
brake lights in the gloom. There is no stadium in sight. Rebecca rescues us.
She takes us across an overpass to a bus stop and, from a board chock-full
of Chinese characters, works out that we need route 660. There is no way in
which we could have discovered this ourselves. It starts raining, so she
empties a plastic bag of her cosmetics to protect my notebook.
We approach the 91,000-seat stadium along an avenue of newly planted trees and
bushes, and gay Olympic banners. The Bird's Nest is visually stunning but
ringed by guards and a high metal fence. We take pictures of ourselves with
the stadium as a distant backdrop. Then Chinese families start asking me to
pose with them - probably because I am 6ft3in tall and Western. I am rescued
by the arrival of a greater distraction: an American cyclist with a long
grey beard, a moustache tapering into two fine needles, and tattoos all over
his legs.
Jesse, 62, tells us in a southern drawl that he manages the Goose and Duck pub
in Beijing. He got his first tattoos when he competed in boomerang
competitions. He pulls up his Lycra to reveal thighs tattooed with pictures
of himself above the words “Live to Boom, Boom to Live”.
We are wandering towards the nearby Aquatics Centre, debating whether Chinese
collectivism could produce such eccentrics, when we bump into Jesse's
Chinese counterpart: Shi Changlin, 56, who has cycled thousands of
kilometres across China on a rickshaw bedecked with flags, loudspeakers and
flashing lights “to celebrate the Olympic spirit”.
Of the futuristic Aquatics Centre, aka the Water Cube and venue for the
swimming events, we can see only a dark, rectangular outline through the
murk.
At 12.30pm we hail a green-and-yellow taxi and tell the driver: “Zoo”. No
response. I draw a panda in a cage. His face lights up. “Tsooo!” he
exclaims. He starts the meter, a recorded voice says “Welcome to Beijing
taxi” and off we go. Beijing's cabbies are all supposed to have had
pre-Olympic lessons in basic English, but this one can say only “Sank you”
and “Welly good”. He compensates with non-stop laughter.
I have no idea where we are going. Beijing has gridiron streets with few
landmarks. Without sun you have no sense of direction. But 20 minutes and 26
yuan (£2.08) later we reach the tsooo. I give the driver 30 yuan. He pockets
the change.
There is a mobile blood donation unit outside. I offer mine. This causes
consternation. The foreigner's offer is eventually rejected on the pretext
that I cannot complete a registration form written entirely in Chinese.
Jack and I head for lunch instead. Four smiley young girls in yellow stand
beneath a sun umbrella outside a restaurant. One leads us inside. We spurn
“Pig hoof gruel”,“The old vinegar jelly fish” and “Fried goose intestines”.
Dog meat has been removed from Beijing menus for the Olympics. We choose
“Know taste pork meat pie” and “The noodle of hyancinth bean” washed down
with chrysanthemum tea - though we were tempted by “Little confused immortal
liquor”.
Zoo tickets cost 20 yuan (£1.60) each, less if you are shorter than 1.2m. Jack
crouches, but to no avail. We decide against renting an automatic guide
which promises “you needn't any work when you get the every place”. To see
the pandas - eight of them recently airlifted from the earthquake zone - you
need only follow the crowds.
By 2.45pm it is time for a sterner test. We decide to take a taxi to one of
the more obscure Olympic venues - the basketball stadium. The driver does
not understand “basketball” or “stadium”. I draw the Olympic rings and a
stick man throwing a ball through a hoop. He studies the drawing, picks up
his mobile phone and chatters away for a couple of minutes. “OK,” he says
with a smile, and sets off. His only English is “Welcome to China Beijing”.
We drive along wide roads fringed with new trees and bedecked with Olympic
bunting. We hit traffic jams where any semblance of lanes breaks down, and
wonder how much longer Beijing can absorb 1,300 new cars a day. Finally we
arrive at a huge arena.
We approach the nearest guard. I do my basketball imitation. To my dismay he
shakes his head and swings an imaginary baseball bat. Then he points to
another stadium nearby. “Basketball!”, he says. Success!
In the empty car park we watch an old man manipulating a two-headed kite with
a dexterity that would surely win gold if his was an Olympic sport. Then we
confidently hail another taxi to take us to the Silk Market, epicentre of
China's trade in counterfeit goods - but no matter how many times we say
“Silk Market” the driver does not understand. After a couple of minutes he
ejects us brusquely from his vehicle and drives off.
Another taxi picks us up. An hour later, even I realise that it is going the
wrong way. I cheat and give him the name of the nearest subway station. He
gets out at a red traffic light to consult another cabbie. The lights change
and we are stranded amid a cacophony of hooting. Eventually, at 5pm, we
reach the station. Unprompted, our driver reduces the fare for going wrong.
He drops us beside a bright blue tent manned by five of the 70,000 Beijingers
who have volunteered to help visitors to the Games. They wear matching blue
shirts and delightful smiles. Two even speak halting English. “Where is the
Silk Market?” I ask. They point to a six-storey building across the road.
“Where can I buy pirated DVDs?” Their smiles freeze. “We can only answer
questions about Olympics,” they say.
The authorities have promised to crack down on fake products ahead of the
Games, but in our 90 minutes in the bustling Silk Market, communicating on
calculators, we buy two “Ralph Lauren” sports shirts, a “Columbia” ski
jacket with fleece, and a pair of “Timberland” sports sandals for less than
we would pay in London for one genuine Nike baseball cap.
Jack wants a “Louis Vuitton” handbag for his girlfriend, but can find only
“Dolce & Gabbana” or “Ralph Lauren” bags. No problem, says a young
stall-owner who does speak English. She produces a Louis Vuitton catalogue
from beneath the counter. Jack chooses a bag. It arrives a few minutes later
in a black binliner, and we knock her down from 2,700 to 200 yuan.
Why the secrecy? The girl explains that the police regularly search for
Chanel, Burberry and Louis Vuitton bags, and issue fines, but don't care
about Ralph Lauren and Dolce & Gabbana rip-offs because those companies
have not protested.
The Government's crackdown on pirated DVDs is allegedly even harsher, so I set
out to buy the latest Indiana Jones. They are no longer on public display,
but it takes five minutes and one furtive conversation before a bootlegged
copy appears from another black binliner. It costs 10 yuan (80p).
It is now 7pm. We are tired and hungry. We head for the Wangfujing food
market. Our taxi driver exhausts his entire English vocabulary as we get
out. “Bubbye,” he says.
The market is extraordinary. From the colourful, brightly lit stalls you can
buy kebabbed scorpions, sea horses, silkworms, snakes or dragonflies. There
are boiled sea urchins, bowls of cows' tripe and mounds of lambs' testicles.
Jack and I opt for staid meat dumplings, but my phone rings before we can
eat.
I wander up a side street so that I can hear. A woman approaches me. “You want
massage?,” she asks. “You want sex and massage?” That's another thing on
which the authorities are supposed to be cracking down - prostitution.
Jack and I discuss our day. We have more or less mastered a public transport
system that is cheap, clean and efficient. Except for a single taxi driver
and a few officials, everyone has been charming. We have not been hassled,
and only mildly cheated. In no other city have we felt as safe, even from
pickpockets. We saw no drunks, no louts, and hardly anyone spitting.
But neither, of course, could we see the countless shops and shacks that have
been demolished, or the thousands of street vendors and migrant workers who
have been driven out so that Beijing can present its prettiest face to the
world.
