One huge, lingering Olympic question was answered today, the day after the Opening Ceremony which wowed the world. Can ordinary people get onto the Olympic Green? Answer: NO. If you have a ticket for an event that day being held on the Green, of course you can. But if not, then you are not welcome to partake in the Olympic spirit.

Several months ago, I interviewed Alexandra Oikonomidou, a member of the Greek Olympic Committee in 2004 who is currently an advisor for Ogilvy here in Beijing. She told me that in Athens (and at pretty much ever other Olympics for that matter) every day a set number of day passes would be made available to ordinary people for a nominal fee, first come first serve. Furthermore, she told me BOCOG had announced a year ago that a year ago that “for those who didn't have tickets but still wanted to enter the Common Domain there was going to be a entry fee but quite cheap.” These get you onto the Green (the ironically named “Common Domain”) where you can check out all the corporate pavilions erected by the sponsors and otherwise just soak up the atmosphere. That was exactly what I wanted to do today, the first day of the Olympics.

Ultimately, after a lot of effort, nearly getting sunstroke, overcoming vast communication problems, and walking a million miles, I discovered that if you don’t have an event ticket or accreditation or corporate guanxi, the Beijing Olympics are not your Olympics.

I had hopes.

Down in Sanlitun this morning I asked a group of volunteers about day passes and they assured me I could get one. Where, I asked? Up at the Green…somewhere.

So off I went.

My first setback was transferring from the subway Line 10 to the Line 8 (the Olympic spur). You need a ticket for an event that day even to get into the Line 8.

Okay, I’ll take a bus.

So I crushed into the No 1 bus with a hundred other people. The No 1 is new line especially for the Olympics which starts south of the Minzu Park and loops all the way around the Olympic Green in about 45 minutes. I got somewhere which looked like there were access points and asked a group of volunteers about getting in.

What? No event ticket? No accreditation? Of course you cannot get in!

I explained very carefully that I was not trying to get into the bird’s nest or anything. I wasn’t interested in seeing a competition, I just wanted to go walk through the Green and see the corporate pavilions and get a Big Mac and a Coke. I explained to them what Oikonomidou had explained to me. They were at a total loss and moreover were totally unwilling to help me find out more information. I walked across the street right into the “Guest services” building where media guests get their day passes sorted out. I’d been through there once before making this report on the MPC and IBC and knew these were people who’d been to a lot of Olympics before. I asked one of the people there, a foreigner, about this day pass situation. No passes, he told me. I asked whether this was different from previous Olys he’d worked at and he said yes. I asked why. He lowered his voice and said tiredly, “This is China.”

Nearby I found another group of volunteers and asked again with predictable results. So again I explained how in previous Olympics, ordinary people were able to go onto the Green and enjoy the atmosphere. Frankly speaking, I don’t think they believed me. Now, I you have to understand I’m talking to them all in Chinese, so the “communication gap” wasn’t a language barrier, but a thought barrier. Example:

--Me: Why can’t ordinary people be allowed onto the Olympic Green?

--Volunteer: Security concerns.

--Me: But there are also security concerns in Tiananmen Square and anyone can go there.

--Volunteer: That’s different. There are no competitions there.

--Me: But don’t you have to go through a metal detector and security check JUST to get on the Green?

--Volunteer: Yes, of course, but there would be too many people.

--Me: So why not limit the number of day passes and make it first come first serve? That’s what they do at other Olympics.

--Volunteer (fumbling for an answer): Even we volunteers do not get to go into the Green.

--Me: Really? But you sacrifice so much time and energy for your country, don’t you think they should let you go inside and see it in return?

--Volunteer: Yes, but who would stand here at the volunteer booth?

--Me (looking at the ten other volunteers manning the same booth doing absolutely nothing): Couldn’t you take turns?

It went on like this, circling around and around. A Chinese guy who’d been listening in came in on my side. He too just wanted a day pass. He’d been separated from his family because they didn’t have enough event tickets. He wasn’t sad about missing the sports, but he said he would have liked to “relax with his family and have something to eat and drink with them inside the Green.” The volunteers started to look very uncomfortable, depressed even. And confused.

They didn’t comprehend the idea that in other Olympics things were different, with more access for ordinary people. They couldn’t believe that their own Olympics was anything less than perfect. So what happened to the BOCOG promise of cheap tickets for normal people? Oikonomidou :“My guess is that probably this policy was not applied after all due to greater need for crowd control inside the Green and in order to make sure that the guests will not have to stand in long queues in order to enter each sponsors' area open to the public.”

I’ll get onto the Green. I can always up some Edeleman PR contacts to get me day passes to go check out the GE and J&J corporate pavilions. But what about Chinese people without enough money or special connections? They can join the scrum of crazy people outside the fence. Hell, they ARE the crazy people outside the fence. These Olympics, we are all just crazy people outside the fence, even while sports arenas sit empty as athletes pour out their hearts to empty seats or robotic cheering from trained Chinese volunteers.

It’s actually a decent scene here outside the fence. But for all the wrong reasons.

Facts about the Olympic Green:

2,800

Total acres of total space on the Green, or 11,331,198 square meters

172,784

Total capacity of all the venues on the Green (17,000 + 91,000 + 19,000 + 6,000 + 17,000 + 5,384 + 17,400)

65.6

The number of square meters per spectator when the stadia are at full capacity.