Beijing, China When Boris Johnson became the London Mayor earlier this year, he was promptly informed that his first major duty would be to receive the Olympic flag on behalf of the next host city, in Beijing in August. “Sorry but that is one thing I cannot do” he is reported to have replied. “In August I will be on holiday with my family in Tuscany as always and there is no way I am going to Beijing.
Beijing looks so much better at night. The smog that has been enveloping the city by day is far less visible after the heavens darken. Street lights penetrate the gloom and the rainbow colours of innumerable neon advertising signs along the skyline are reflected in the glass-dominated structures of newly-built skyscrapers. The National Stadium, known as the Bird’s Nest, glows red after dusk. And the Water Cube aquatics venue, across the Olympic Green, turns a brilliant blue. But there has probably never been a light show like the one that illuminated Beijing to mark the opening of the 2008 Olympic Games.
The worst place to try to put Beijing’s Olympic Games into context is perhaps actually Beijing. Arrive in the city at present and the overwhelming impression is of a modern, successful, prosperous, happy and western-looking population, greeting the forthcoming sporting festival with a greater pride and joy than it has ever previously been received with. The Games of the XXIX Olympiad will superficially be the grandest in history, staged in venues that are already being seen as architectural landmarks, with every ticket for every event in Beijing sold out in advance. Even the small bore shooting.
