Beijing During the Olympics

I know, I know...I promised a post last weekend. Better late than never, right?

Beijing during the Olympics is...not as different as I'd expected from Beijing any other time except they've halted all construction and the air almost resembles breathable. Summers here seem to be hot, humid and hazy. After rainstorms, though, it sometimes "clears" up for a day or two. Normally a "clear" day means amber colored skies (don't you love pollution!) discernable from cloudy days only because of the intensity of shadows. It poured on Thursday, though, and the sky was actually blue the last couple of days. What a nice change!

Otherwise, there are a lot more foreigners than usual and they've cleaned up taxis (although drivers still speak no English). Taxi drivers now sport "uniforms" consisting of yellow button-down shirts and navy pants (those who comply, anyway). Some are excepting IC cards (subway & bus cards) for payment and some claim to offer free translation services, although, interestingly, the decal indicating that such service is available neglects to mention how to obtain it.

Our compound - apartment complexes often seem to be referred to as compounds and, indeed, that seems an appropriate appellation for ours given that it's walled, guarded and even sports metal detectors at the gates - is just down the street (maybe a mile, but by Beijing standards that's practically next door) from the Olympic Village. Overflow from the Village is being housed here. When we left for our last trip several of the buildings (there are 6 25-ish story towers) seemed essentially empty. In fact, they were scrambling to finish construction on our building and maybe some of the others. At most two of the three elevators worked at any one time and one was still walled with plywood. One day when the elevator claimed to be going down it actually took me to floor 26 (4 is considered bad luck, so we have no floor numbers with 4's in them and, to accommodate Western superstition as well, we also have no floor 13, thus 24 or 25 floors, but floor numbers up to 27). I discovered that floor 26 was an unfinished shell - even the sheetrock wasn't up yet. Not only that, but shortly after we moved in we were given a schedule for the gym in our building (there is a gorgeous gym for the whole compound across the garden but we also have our own small one in the basement); the schedule showed pretty normal hours, except during the Olympics when it was scheduled to be open noon - 2 PM only. We went down to check it out and found...nothing...just piles of construction materials. Somehow in the three weeks we were gone, the upper floors got finished, the gym is finished, all the elevators are running. They must have had an army of workers in here!

Before we left I never saw another Westerner in the compound and there was only one member of the staff (and there are a LOT of staff) that seemed to have even remotely competent English. Now the place is crawling with foreigners and I seem to be able to communicate with the office staff with no problem. I am sure the foreigners will all vanish again after the Olympics, but I hope that some of the English speaking staff will stick around. I've started Mandarin lessons and am working hard. I can now take taxis to and from work without resorting to address cards and can even give directions to other places provided I know how to get there (which is rare). I managed to tell ayi I wouldn't be home for dinner on Thursday and with a combination of speaking and demonstration she managed to tell me how to cook the dumplings she left for me to eat this weekend. Beyond that, though, communication is tough. I can't even order food to be delivered from the restaurant in our basement.

But...back to the Olympics. Aside from slightly cleaner air, a temporary increase in the number of foreigners around, and increased police patrols there really doesn't seem to be much change. Reports all suggest hotels are way underbooked. All those people you see in the stands in yellow shirts are volunteers assigned to fill empty seats and cheer. Although many events have lots of empty seats it's impossible to get tickets (well, everyone else seems to be managing, but most of the time I can't get on the ticket sales site and when I can it always claims everything is sold out, so, so far, no in-person viewing for me).

In general, the current state of the city is rather anti-climactic after the frenzy of preparation over the last couple of months. It will be interesting to see what happens after the Games are over and everyone goes home.

That's all for now. Hopefully the rest of the travelogue soon. Signing off from Beijing...