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BEIJING - In China, things are not always as they seem.
Like all Olympic host cities, Beijing has been spruced up to show its best face.
Beggars have been moved out of sight, gardens and potted plants have sprouted along roadways. The streets are clean and the citizens are more or less adhering to a dictate against spitting on the footpath.
They are certainly friendly to foreigners.
The new Beijing is of jaw-dropping scale and design, making Australasian CBDs look like suburban shopping centres.
Everything is being done to impress, but a week into the most expensive Olympic Games in history, there are a few cracks in the veneer.
CEREMONY FAKING
Magnificent as it was, the opening ceremony was partially faked. Nine-year-old Lin Miaoke, the sweet little girl who sang "Ode to the Motherland" turned out to be lip-synching the voice of another girl who was bumped on the orders of a politburo member because she wasn't deemed cute enough. The voice in fact belonged to seven-year-old Yang Peiyi, who has a chubby face and uneven teeth. Musical director Chen Qigang let it slip in an interview which appeared briefly on the news website Sina.com. "The reason was for the national interest," he said. "The child on camera should be flawless in image, internal feelings, and expression." The item was soon wiped from the website.
Ceremony organisers have also admitted that supposedly live pictures of fireworks in the form of giant footprints moving from Tiananmen Square to the stadium were in part computer-generated or pre-recorded from rehearsals.
US audiences were subjected to further trickery when NBC changed the order in which the athletes were shown marching in, presumably to keep viewers from switching off once the Americans had arrived. They were caught out when the "live" telecast inadvertently showed American athletes gathered in the centre of the arena before they had been shown marching in.
TICKETING
China announced months before the Games that every one of the 6.8 million spectator tickets had been sold. It had the effect of discouraging people who might have made a late decision to come to China in the hope of picking up last-minute tickets. The reality has been sparsely populated stands at many events, prompting organisers to recruit volunteer cheerleaders to fill some of the empty spaces and provide extra atmosphere. Officials say crowd numbers traditionally grow during the second week and blamed some of the no-shows on humid weather. It has not been explained why so many people knocked one another in the rush to buy Olympic tickets and then didn't turn up. Many people, including Australians, have been caught in internet ticketing scams, and scalpers are active around the venues.
WEATHER AND AIR QUALITY
Assurances that the air quality would improve have fallen well short of expectations. Thunderstorms cleared skies for three days in the week before the Games started, but the gloom has descended once more, despite widespread shutdown of industry and the removal of more than half the city's 3.3 million cars. It is difficult to know how much of it is pollution and how much is the haze that seems to hang over Beijing and its surrounds. Authorities fired more than 1000 rockets into the atmosphere to disperse rain clouds that threatened to ruin the opening ceremony. There was no rain on the night but conditions inside the Bird's Nest stadium were extremely trying for spectators. At 11pm it was 31 degrees with 87 per cent humidity. The weather was so oppressive that a third of the field failed to finish the men's road race the following morning.
INTERNET ACCESS
China won the right to host the Games on a promise of providing unrestricted internet access. It turned out not to be the case, with blocks on many sites, including those linked to freedom movements in Tibet and the outlawed spiritual movement Falun Gung. Restrictions on other sites like Amnesty International and BBC's China service were eased after pressure from the IOC. Download speeds remain frustratingly slow. It was an embarrassment for senior Olympic officials, including president Jaques Rogge and Australian Kevan Gosper, who had assured media organisations right up until the last days that China would fulfil its promise.
NEWSPAPERS
Like any other other Games host, newspapers concentrate on locals and in a society where the media is state controlled, it is no surprise that the coverage is glowingly positive. The letters page of the English language China Daily makes entertaining reading.
In a recent edition, a letter published under the name of John DiLorenzo from California, USA, read: "The 2008 Olympics in Beijing is a beautiful dream, fully realised. Beijing shines for all the world like a golden city on a hill."
Some one called Vantari, address was not given, wrote: "(The opening ceremony) made a statement that a country that rises on the power of its people, with solidarity and social cohesion, can accomplish great things. It was about the unified power of the people as they support the development of a new world of peace and prosperity with social harmony! China will lead the way, because it has an emerging social and ecological awareness this is based on its own philosophy and history."
- AAP
