With just one year until the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Jonathan Haagen takes a look at what's being done to get the city ready for its world debut.

Lu-Chin Mischke walks impatiently across the Lido Hotel Starbucks. She stands over the glob of phlegm, just discharged on the ground by a Chinese businessman, and hands the offending party a card detailing the harm done by public spitting. The man, stunned, stands dumbfounded for a moment, but then reaches for a napkin to clean the floor. “I suppose I could just let it go,” says Mischke, the founder of the Pride Institute, a non-profit organization aimed at improving Chinese etiquette, “but in just one year, the eyes of the whole world will be on China. We can’t keep hacking and spitting all the time.”

The Olympics are a powerful motivator for change. Never before has the world’s focus been directed at Beijing in the way it will be during the 2008 Games. In preparation for this unprecedented attention—and scrutiny—the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad, city officials and regular citizens like Mischke are on a mission to makeover the capital inside and out. With the Olympics just one year away, how are they doing and what is left to be done?

A Look Back

A guarded optimism permeated the streets of Beijing on July 13, 2001. The Chinese capital was the odds-on favorite to beat out Toronto, Paris and Osaka to win the Olympic bid for 2008. Government officials even planned for a “spontaneous” celebration to erupt in Tiananmen Square if Beijing was chosen. Restaurants throughout the city were flooded with Chinese ready to rejoice.

Still there was tension in the air. No one in the city had forgotten a similar day in September 1993, when Beijingers, confident that they would hold the first Games of the new millennium, saw Sydney steal their bid by a mere two votes. Subsequent reports that International Olympic Committee members were bribed to vote against China salted the wound. July 13 was not just about the location of the 29th Olympiad, it was a referendum on China’s place in the world.

Thousands gathered at Millennium Tower and in Tiananmen Square to await the announcement. Students sang songs and waved Chinese flags earlier in the evening, but an uncommon silence fell over the capital as the IOC broadcast drew closer. All of Beijing, like the millions of unlit fireworks purchased for that night, were ready to explode either in joy or disappointment. Outgoing IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch made the announcement shortly after 10:00 p.m.: The 2008 Games belong to Beijing.

The city erupted in celebration that lasted through the night. “What I most remember was the jumping,” recalls Liu XiaoLu, a teacher who was studying in Beijing at the time. “Not just young people. Very old men and very old women were dancing and jumping in the street. They were too excited to do anything else.”

New Beijing, Great Olympics

The manic energy that had Beijingers jumping in the streets in 2001 has since been channeled into grand construction projects and ambitious social campaigns designed to make next year's Olympics an event to remember.

When city officials made their bid for the 2008 Games with the slogan “New Beijing, Great Olympics,” they pledged to deliver a host city complete with state-of-the-art venues, roads unclogged by traffic and skies of blue and trees of green. With one year left to make good on these promises, the greatest success story so far is the progress of Olympic construction. In sharp contrast to the last minute scramble in Athens in 2004, Beijing planning officials say that construction in the capital is almost complete. The capital is building or renovating 37 stadiums to host Olympic competitions. Sun Weide, spokesman for the BOCOG, says that all of the venues except for the National Stadium, better known as the Bird’s Nest, will be completed by the end of this year. Each of these newly built or refurbished venues will be equipped with advanced and environmentally friendly features ranging from solar lights and irrigation systems to high-tech smoking rooms where nano air filters break down cigarette smoke into normal air. More immediately relevant to Beijing residents will be the completion of new subway lines later this year, giving Beijing almost 200 kilometers of metro lines by the time the Olympics begin.

However, the greatest challenge for city planners isn't building things from scratch, but rather in fixing problems that existed well before Beijing’s Olympic bid. Impressive structures like the Water Cube and Bird’s Nest, which together resemble a red and blue yin yang when viewed from above, are likely to lose their luster if Beijing’s “green Olympics” ends up being a duller shade of gray. Sun claims that the city has already spent US$13 billion on projects to improve the environment including planting 28 million trees just last year. However, any Beijing resident can attest to the continued incidence of days too smoggy to make out the other side of the street. Given the importance of clear skies to the prestige of the Beijing Games, short term solutions will be put into place directly before and during the Olympics. These include limiting cars on the road to as little as one third of the present number, closing down factories and construction sites and using rockets to seed clouds with silver iodide. Some measures will be tested this August to mark the one year countdown, but Sun remains silent as to what these tests will entail.

Perhaps the greatest mystery remaining about the Games next year is not how Beijing will look, but how it will behave. “Most Chinese are confident about the hardware for the 2008 Olympics,” says Ge Chenhong, a government advisor and professor at Renmin University, “but they remain more skeptical about the 'software'— Beijing’s ability to improve residents’ behavior.”

Mischke agrees: “I don’t think improving the outside of the city will mean much, if we don’t improve the inside as well.” Eager to help Beijingers lose their reputation for jumping in front of the line, expectorating rudeness, officials at the Capital Ethics Development Office sent almost 2 million etiquette books to city families. China Daily also printed numerous articles this year on acceptable spectator behavior. Even the Beijing police joined the movement, investing millions of yuan in a surveillance van equipped with infrared cameras capable of spotting spitters at a distance of 250 meters. Private operators like Mischke have also helped the cause by offering seminars to encourage good manners and positive peer pressure.

Bussing her own table, Mischke describes what it will take for the Beijing Olympics to be a success: “We have enough volunteers. We have the drive. The key will be reaching a tipping point where regular Chinese people start to exhibit pride in themselves and their country.” Across the café, a customer stamps out his cigarette on the floor, and turns to leave. Mischke hands him a card warning him of the harmful effects of littering. The man stares at her blankly and then drops the card on the floor by his cigarette butt.

“We have made a lot of progress,” Mischke sighs. “We still have some work to do, too.”
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