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Last Flight to a 'Whole New' Beijing

August 11, 2008 11:52 AM

"Nightline" recently dispatched Segment Producer, Karson Yiu to Beijing to help cover the olympic games for ABC News.  He landed in Beijing just before the opening ceremonies started, and he's been checking in with us since then.

I was on one of the last flights into Beijing International Airport last Friday. I landed around 7:00 P.M. Beijing time, an hour before the Olympic Opening Ceremony was set to begin. As I got off the plane into gleaming, yet slightly sterilized new Norman Foster designed terminal, the airport staff already seemed to be in their last rounds of clean-up. The airport was effectively shut down; all other flights would have to be diverted to the neighboring city of Tianjin. There would be no more incoming flights into Beijing until morning. The airspace had been cleared over the Chinese capital to make way for the biggest show the city has seen in a while.

On my way into the city, it was eerily quiet. New constructions lined the freeway, dormant and dark. The roads were practically empty. The city, it seemed, was on complete lockdown. That or everybody was crowding around a TV. Every couple of minutes we would drive by an army or police squad car, with an officer standing at attention outside.
You could almost feel the pull of gravity towards the National Stadium A.K.A. the "Bird's Nest."

One of the things I noticed immediately upon arrival in Beijing, was that it didn't feel like Beijing, or at least what Beijing had been like in my mind. I have visited Beijing every couple of years since 1992 and even studied here for a semester during college, but it remains unfamiliar to me, mainly because it keeps changing. The historical landmarks stay the same, i.e. Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, etc... but the rest of the city has gone through a drastic transformation.

Back in 2002, a year after the won the bid for the Olympics, the entire city was one big construction pit. The pollution was worse than it was now (imagine), dust was everywhere and people packed the streets. None of vehicles on the road followed the traffic signals and the bigger vehicle always wins. Rusty old buses jam-packed with passengers would cut across three lanes at once, smaller cars would narrowly survive from being crushed.  Streets were also filled with the homeless and beggars. Many of them were young children who roamed the streets in groups and would literally hang on to you until you gave them something or had to physically remove them.

The rough edges had its appeal. There were "unofficial" street vendors everywhere, people selling antiques on blankets on the side of the road. Couples dancing to music pumped through the public announcement system at sundown. Barbers who set up shop on a street corner, armed only with a pair of scissors and a stool.

Fast forward to 2008. Beijing seems like a whole new city. Parts of the city are immaculate. City-sanctioned volunteers, not barbers, sit at the end of each block making sure there is no litter. Gleaming new skyscrapers like the Rem Koolhaas-designed CCTV headquarters dot the city's skyline. New air conditioned buses and taxis line the streets in an orderly fashion. The streets are no longer uncomfortably crowded and the beggars and the homeless have completely disappeared (which leads me to wonder what happened to them?). It's all very new, all very sleek, all very unfamiliar...

I know Beijing has made every effort to put on a great show but I can't help but think that Beijing has lost some of its charm. It's sort of like that scene in the recent Will Ferrell movie, "Step Brothers" where having spent much of the film in arrested development, Ferrell's character is forced to grow up and act responsible. It all seems a little forced and unnatural, like a corset bound too tight. Which begs the question, what's going to happen after the Olympics? Will Beijing maintain this gleaming image or will bindings snap loose once the international attention goes away?

I guess we'll wait and see. But at least in the meantime, enjoy the show.

August 11, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (0)

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