How does Beijing rank?

[pasag]

I thought the constant montages of Phelps and Bolt were awesome tbh. Couldn't get enough of the same montage.

 

[andyc]

For me Beijing has been undoubtedly the most spectacular Games to date, but there has been a vaguely disturbing undercurrent to the whole event from the outset.

Just about every aspect of the Games has been manufactured to fit the image China wants to project to the world. Some of it has been fairly innocuous (locals being told how to behave; the girl in the opening ceremony being replaced by someone more photogenic) but much of it has been more distressing (mentally ill people and other 'vagrants' being removed from the city; septegenarians being forced into labour 're-education' for applying to protest against being evicted from their homes, etc). At the height of the torch relay controversies I remember joking to a (Chinese) friend that the Chinese government could easily assemble a rent-a-crowd to follow the torch around and drown out the pro-Tibet protests; it transpired that a few days later when the torch reached Canberra they had done exactly that.

Any Olympic Games is inevitably going to be to some extent a propaganda exercise for the host nation, but the extent to which this has been the case in Beijing has been unparalleled in my lifetime at least. Moscow, LA and Berlin all would have been highly politicised, but I doubt that any of them were as tightly controlled as these Games. That said, I did watch a fair bit of it and in terms of athletic performance it was certainly enjoyable, probably up there with any previous Olympics. The whole spectacle was undeniably compelling but at the same time a little perverse, and I found it difficult to reconcile these impressions.

Agree with this. It was a cool Olympics sports wise, but I'm glad it's over, if anything just so the over the top security measures and patriotic stuff here will die down. I was traveling in Xinjiang for most of the Olympics, a province responsible for the minority groups that have been causing a lot of the trouble with bomb blasts going off and stuff. It seemed that to go to any sort of tourist spot, you had to pass through security checkpoints, with guards with AK47s and a big poster of the Olympic mascots behind them.

One of the Aussie girls we were traveling with has Chinese grandparents, so looks kind of Asian, and when she was by herself on the train, guards walking by wouldn't believe she was an Australian instead of a minority and searched all through her bags, even after she'd shown them her passport. Another friend tried to buy a plane ticket from Xinjiang to Beijing through a travel agent that happened to be a Uighur, the minority group responsible for all the trouble, but the travel agent simply couldn't buy one because she was a Uighur and the people thought she was going to use it for herself. My friend then went to the ticket booth himself and bought the ticket within 10 minutes. Beijing kicked out all the Uighurs within the city for the Olympics, even if they'd been living there for 20 years. Ridiculous.

 

[inbox24]

Hey andyc are you Chinese?

 

[PhoenixFire]

Hey andyc are you Chinese?

He is an Aussie going to school in China, I believe.

 

[andyc]

Pretty much what PF said. I lived in Shanghai from 11 to 15 because of my dad's work, and now that I've finished high school I'm back here as part of a scholarship to study Chinese at a local uni for a year.

 

[Simon]

Beijing worst Olympics that I've seen. Maybe down to the fact It was the least I've watched of any Olympics since 92, but I was bored by the fourth day.

 

[Ahmed_Tariq]

Beijing was pretty good afterall.

For me, it is going to look something like this: Beijing > Sydney > Athens > Atlanta.

 

[Langeveldt]

For me Beijing has been undoubtedly the most spectacular Games to date, but there has been a vaguely disturbing undercurrent to the whole event from the outset.

Just about every aspect of the Games has been manufactured to fit the image China wants to project to the world. Some of it has been fairly innocuous (locals being told how to behave; the girl in the opening ceremony being replaced by someone more photogenic) but much of it has been more distressing (mentally ill people and other 'vagrants' being removed from the city; septegenarians being forced into labour 're-education' for applying to protest against being evicted from their homes, etc). At the height of the torch relay controversies I remember joking to a (Chinese) friend that the Chinese government could easily assemble a rent-a-crowd to follow the torch around and drown out the pro-Tibet protests; it transpired that a few days later when the torch reached Canberra they had done exactly that.

Any Olympic Games is inevitably going to be to some extent a propaganda exercise for the host nation, but the extent to which this has been the case in Beijing has been unparalleled in my lifetime at least. Moscow, LA and Berlin all would have been highly politicised, but I doubt that any of them were as tightly controlled as these Games. That said, I did watch a fair bit of it and in terms of athletic performance it was certainly enjoyable, probably up there with any previous Olympics. The whole spectacle was undeniably compelling but at the same time a little perverse, and I found it difficult to reconcile these impressions.

What he said..

And thats why I rate Sydney and Barcelona ahead of it.. Athens seemed pretty dire, empty stadiums and boiling weather..