Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Bird's Nest

Nicknamed the Bird's Nest for its elaborate network of steel girders, Beijing's Olympic Stadium has already become a symbol of the 2008 games. Around 41,000 tons of steel were used to build the outer nest, which measures 320 meters by 297 meters. And up to 7,000 migrant workers at a time have been on site for years to build the stadium, which is the creation of Swiss architects Herzog and de Meuron working with Arup, a British design company.

Although this mammoth structure along the Fourth Ring Road has been erect and visible for quite some time, only recently has the stadium been completed and open to the public. On Sunday night, my girlfriend and I attended the Good Luck Beijing China Athletics Open, our last chance to look around inside (the only Olympics tickets I've been able to scrounge up include preliminaries in Handball and Weightlifting held at other venues). Although most of the 90,000 or so seats were empty, I was still very much impressed by the scores of Chinese spectators that came to this weekend event. Clearly, many of them also felt the need to use this opportunity to experience the magic of China's showcase Olympic venue and one of the word’s newest and most impressive engineering feats. In a city known for its dowdy image, the Bird's Nest along with other avant-garde structures popping up around Beijing have undoubtedly made a big splash – with many branding these lavish stokes as both bold and brazen.

I certainly welcome these radical designs and hope Beijing's municipal government continues to ride this wave of architectural experimentation into a new dawn of spatial conceptualization with Chinese characteristics. To illuminate their engineering prowess and their newly found adoration for aesthetics, Beijing's newer additions to their cityscape are or more or less on par with American city's brand of flamboyant self-expression. China and America are both driven to reach for the stars, to erect skyscrapers, to build enormous stadiums and shopping malls, construct the most magnificent and grandiose of all man-made structures, and to flaunt our might and power to the world. Unlike the Europeans, Americans and Chinese share a rags-to-riches story and with our commanding territories, populations, and massive economies (China’s obviously being more recent), our societies have both developed a yuppie mentality focused on superlatives – in other words, the Chinese are beginning to also show their “bling”.

The Bird's Nest (bling bling) can be certainly labeled as one of China's newest marvels. When I first walked inside, I was surprised that despite the obvious elaborate network of steel beams that permeated thunderous strength, the structure managed to retain both grace and beauty. Perhaps I'm being a little too dramatic with my verbiage, but it was definitely “dope”. The only failing point worth divulging has to do with amenities. If you plan on running a successful sporting event do not make fans stand in line at the concession stand for 30 minutes, and never ever run out of hot dogs!

The event itself, although trivial to me, ended up being fairly entertaining. I saw a few exciting track events such as the men's and women's 200 meter, 800 meter, and relay. Most of the athletes were Chinese and were at this open representing their provinces. When the men’s relay team from Sichuan won the gold, the crowd went absolutely wild and when the athlete’s tears of joy were shown up on the big screen I (and everybody else) felt extremely moved. Although this was a Chinese Open, I would have liked to see more foreigners only because I was kind of tired of standing up every 30 minutes for the victory ceremonies and listen to the Chinese National Anthem. Throughout the whole night the only other anthems played were those of Great Britain and Sudan – I don't think their were any American athletes even competing. On a side note, I was told that many Chinese spectators refused to stand for the Japanese national anthem the previous night – behavior that will certainly not be ignored by Western media during the Olympics.

Off the track, there was javelin which was only cool because the spears were returned to athletes by remote controlled cars. There was also long jump which was boring to say the least. Without a doubt, the most entertaining event that night was the men's high jump. High jump is fun because there is a level of suspense unparalleled in the other events. And because every athlete gets three tries to clear a certain height, the process is long, and personalities are exposed. This one guy from Tianjin was a real crowd pleaser. Each time he was up, he would wave his hands to get everybody to clap in rhythm, and when he made it over the bar, we would perform a touchdown dance of sorts (and if he failed, we would slap his body against the mat in disappointment). He also wore pink. Although he was unable to clear 2.40 meters, he was awarded the silver medal and thanked everyone in the crowd for their boisterous support – certainly not one of your typical robotic Chinese athletes.

With the Olympics approaching, all the pieces have started to come together. The venues are finished and major infrastructural improvements are almost online. Although traffic and pollution are still looming challenges, what worries me most would be far more devastating to China's image and to global stability following the games. For more on that subject, tune in next week…

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