Festive floral display.
Demolition. Construction. Speeches, posters, TV commercials. She was a city on a mission, boldly trumpeted on the streets by an army of banners: “A More Open China Awaits Olympics 2000.”
The International Olympic Committee still hadn’t selected a site for the Millennium Olympics, and Beijing was gunning for it full force. They’d made it to the final five and viewed competition as a matter of collective will. A swath of city blocks had been razed to erect an Olympic village – stadiums, apartments, squares. All eerily vacant, waiting. China Daily published regular reports on the status of their bid, the progress of their readiness, the importance of the Olympics to their global economic position. Once closed to the world, now China was eager to play host, laying claim to the role of world leader.
“Do you think Beijing will win?” my students often asked, looking to me as their resident authority on the world beyond. Even the waiban, the university liaison for foreign professionals, sought my opinion during a tour of the Olympic village. I was supposed to be impressed. I was supposed to answer that of course Beijing would win, that it simply had to, based on the excellence of all that had been built, on the immense energy and planning that had gone into its bid, on the fact that so many political leaders had staked their reputations on victory. The Olympics were China’s destiny.
Or were they China’s overestimation? Subways and buses were miserably crowded, the airport loose, the train station grungy and outdated. I wondered if the Olympics were the last thing Beijing’s strained infrastructure could handle.
Still, who was I to answer? I knew diddly about hosting the Olympics.
“Do you think Beijing will win?”
“It looks good,” I’d say, “but other cities also want to win. We’ll have to wait and see.” A politic answer: why should I take the heat for a rejection I all but knew was coming? Let it land on the heads of the IOC – they weren’t committed to working in Beijing for a year.
We didn’t have to wonder long about the outcome: the decision came September 23, live from Western Europe. That meant 2:30am in Beijing, but no worry – the city was too wired to sleep.
One section of students invited themselves to my apartment for the color TV. The seventeen of us made a party out of it, with snacks and Uno and silly games like Bippity Bop Bop Bop. They were giddy, nervous. Win or lose, they were about to witness A Major Event in Chinese History.
Around midnight the coverage began: live shots of graying Chinese Communist Party leaders decked to the hilt, seated before a stage – dancers, acrobats, gymnasts, Beijing opera singers. Every few minutes the entertainment paused for some political inspiration, which my students collectively translated for me:
“This moment is important moment for all of China.”
“He says how Olympics are …”
“… complete …”
“ … finish …”
“… fulfill the Communist Party goals.”
“This is important for the China to show the world how we are …”
“… progress toward global leadership.”
At 2:30am the screen split in half: Chinese politicians on one side, live feed from the IOC in Europe on the other. An Official White Person stood to blather about the heritage of the Olympics, international peace and cooperation, blah blah blah – I couldn’t quite make it out beneath the Mandarin interpretation.
Then Official White Person #2 approached the podium. This was the moment.
On the left of the TV, Communist Party leaders sucked in their breaths. My students sucked in their breaths.
He began: “The International Olympic Committee wishes to thank the five bidding cities – Beijing, Berlin, Istanbul, Manchester, and Sydney – for their efforts in presenting their bids.”
But we didn’t get to hear all that – because at the mention of Beijing the Communist leaders leapt up and cheered, embraced, slapped each other’s backs. Tears poured down their grinning cheeks.
“Oh no,” I groaned.
“Wait,” my students said. They looked at me, at each other. “Did he –”
On the screen confetti was dropping, music blaring. More leaping. More embracing. Up the stairwell of my apartment building echoed muffled shouts from other floors.
All of it was too much, and finally my own apartment exploded in laughter and jumping and hugs.
“No no no,” I warned, “wait a second, he hasn’t announced the winner.” But whatever I had to say didn’t matter. I was one outsider in a small apartment on the north edge of Beijing. Who was I to say that the leaders of the world’s largest nation got it wrong?
But wrong they were, and over a language mistake so unfair it was almost a set-up. Although Beijing came first in an alphabetic list of competitors, all the Chinese heard was “Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah: BeiJING.” Even the intonation was correct: in Mandarin, Beijing is spoken with a low, bouncing tone on bei (“north”), then a higher straight tone on jing (“city”). Westerners don’t say it that way – unless it’s in the middle of a list, in which case we raise the pitch on the last syllable to indicate the list will continue. To us, the higher pitch means “Wait for it, more to come” – but to the Chinese it was the perfect intonation for a declaration.
And what a declaration, ringing to reality their most daring dream!
After a full minute of exuberance, however, something funny happened. Official White Person #2 had continued speaking (had he no clue?), and suddenly the live feed from Europe cut to people celebrating in Sydney. Side by side on the screen, Chinese politicians celebrated beside crowds of Aussies. I watched as puzzlement dawned on my students’ faces, then deepened. Something was amiss!
Had those crazy Australians heard it wrong?
Or …
Reality sagged upon the politicians. In my students, disappointment mixed with embarrassment. They felt misled, cheated, victory ripped from their fingertips by a technicality.
By 3am they trudged back to their dorms in the dark.
“More Open China” banners were still up in the morning. The announcement must have come too late for the city to get them all. They were removed under the cover of darkness the next night.
Beijing had lost by only two votes, leaders encouraged over subsequent days. They would use this experience as a learning process for their next bid. The world would come to China, they vowed – it was only a matter of time.
For the remainder of that year Beijing’s stadium village remained vacant, and no one discussed the Olympics again.
Sign of a booming economy, construction was everywhere — particularly in preparation for Beijing’s bid to host the 2000 Olympics.
