Countdown Beijing : People's Games

It's Showtime: A Spectacle of China's Might -- and Redemption

Melinda Liu — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 14:08:08 GMT

For up-to-date coverage of the 2008 Olympics please see our new blog on the Games, "Beijing Beat". Here's our Web story on the stunning Beijing Olympics opening ceremony:

...Photo for NEWSWEEK by Mike Powell

From inside the 91,000-seat Bird's Nest stadium, fireworks dazzled and the thunder of 2,008 performers drumming on traditional fou percussion instruments rolled throughout the stadium. High-tech special effects gave even the kitschiest subject matter a startling edge. An ode to China's invention of movable type—ho hum, you might say— morphed into a vast sea of undulating cubic shapes, simulating a giant computer keyboard—and took my breath away.

When five-time Olympic medal winner Li Ning prepared to ignite the Olympic flame, invisible wires swooped him skyward for a gravity-defying space-walk around the stadium's rooftop opening. When gymnast Li, who launched a successful sports clothing and accessories empire after snagging three gold medals in Los Angeles, finally lit a gigantic torch perched on the rim of the Bird's Nest, the crowd went wild.

This was China's soft-power version of "shock and awe ." Or at least, that metaphor ran through my mind as the pyrotechnics reminded me of watching the U.S. "shock and awe" bombing of Baghdad in 2003 from my Palestine Hotel room balcony. Just as Washington's adventure in Iraq today symbolizes the beginning of the decline of U.S. influence around the world—despite its military might—so will China's hosting of these Olympics be seen as a sign that it has arrived as a global power, despite its tarnished human rights record. Nowhere will this tilting balance of power be more pointedly symbolized than in the Olympic medal count, where China may have a better than even chance of snagging the highest number of gold medals, displacing the U.S.

Flanked by leaders of the United States and Russia—among 80-some other foreign dignitaries—Chinese president Hu Jintao stiffly declared the 2008 Games had begun. Inside he had reason to feel triumphant: one theme hammered (or, more accurately, drummed) into the audience again and again was "harmony," a codeword for Hu's Confucius-influenced call for a "harmonious society." Yet Hu could also be excused for feeling jittery and overwhelmed by today's tsunami of national pride. China has always felt more comfortable in the role of an underdog, as a feisty champion of the developing world, than as a big world power.

That's because global clout brings with it global responsibilities. As a rainbow coalition of anti-China activists has shown in a series of protests this year, Hu and his comrades have dwindling excuses for standing to one side when genocide is unfolding in Darfur (Khartoum looks to Beijing for aid and moral support) or the Burmese junta (Rangoon ditto) ratchets up its repression or, indeed, the Chinese regime tightens the screws on its own population.
Shortly after tonight's opening ceremonies began, Russian tanks were reported to be rolling into Georgia—a stark reminder to Hu (and Putin for that matter) that even a sacred event such as the Olympics cannot prevent harsh political realities from intruding.

Most pundits analyzed tonight's festivities as a celebration of Chinese might. I saw a somewhat more complex message. True, the sight of goose-stepping soldiers carrying the Olympic flag (shades of Berlin 1936) or the sheer precision of thousands of performers moving intricately as one (a la Pyongyang's Mass Games) made it easy to focus on China's autocratic demeanor.

But if you read the cultural icons carefully, they also weave a tapestry of loss and redemption. The unique thing about China's current aspirations to greatness is that it's been down that road before. While Beijing's economic achievements over the past three decades have been mind-boggling, similar accomplishments took place at least twice before in its long history—a history that dominated tonight's performance, starting with the arcane fou bronze drums dating back to the Xia Dynasty (ca 2070 BC).

During the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD), China's trading routes stretched along the Silk Road to Constantinople, and the Middle Kingdom was a famous source of silks, Buddhist teachings and innovations in printing and cartography. In the Ming Dynasty, China's legendary eunuch admiral Zheng Ho (1371 -1433 AD) navigated his treasure fleets as far away as West Asia and Zanzibar, returning with tribute from vassal states and exotic finds such as giraffes. But those golden eras ended after economic setbacks and internal decline.

Tonight's show strummed many of those themes. The wire-suspended dancers who flitted across the sky high above the audience, a la Peter Pan, were apsaras (like angels) whose likenesses are painted in many Tang-era Buddhist grottoes such as those at Dunhuang, along the ancient Silk Road. And Zheng Ho warranted a whole dance performance dedicated to his seven fleets, which carried 27,000 people in all to distant lands.
Yet many of the Chinese inventions extolled (however imaginatively) tonight—from gunpowder to paper to movable printing type—were innovations that ultimately stalled in China, only to be advanced in leaps and bounds by other nations. And while the entire evening was an homage to the 2500-year-old Analects of Confucius—an ancient Chinese thinker who "comes first among the top 10 historical celebrities in the world," as the official Opening Ceremony Media Guide puts it—nothing was said of China's Great Helmsman Mao Zedong.

It was Mao who jettisoned Confucian ethics and unleashed the incredibly destructive 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution which gutted China's educational system, lobotomized the intelligentsia, and rendered the economy a basket case.

So, yes, this was a celebration to China's illustrious heritage—and of its promising future. But tonight's razzle-dazzle painted the portrait of an idealized Chinese past, of a gauzily perfect what-should-have-been instead of the rather more tawdry what-really-was. And it isn't only the ancient, imperial past that has been treated to this collective amnesia. At the finale of the evening, as sports-and-business icon Li Ning trotted like an astronaut, parallel to the ground, around the rim of the Bird's Nest, images of China's Olympics torch relay were projected against the flat panels of the rim. Predictably enough, the stops in Paris and London showed nothing of the rambunctious anti-China protests that had erupted in those and other cities to underscore China's poor human rights record, particularly in Tibet.

Not everyone believes Beijing deserves another chance to be a great power; China's hosting of the Olympics has been hotly debated and fraught with controversy ever since Beijing won its bid seven years ago. When China's critics launched protests against its policies in Tibet—after violent riots which erupted in Lhasa March 14—emotional Chinese both at home and abroad rallied to their government's defense, calling for a boycott of French goods (because of the anti-China protests in Paris) and stridently criticizing Western media for allegedly biased reporting. Some Western journalists based in Beijing received death threats.

But in a year of many surprises, the story line shifted yet again after yet another unexpected development. The devastating May earthquake in Sichuan province grabbed domestic attention and triggered an unexpected outpouring of domestic philanthropy and volunteerism that took even the government by surprise. In a flash, it seemed, strident anti-Western voices quieted down, and so did much of the Western criticism of China, at least for a time, as the international community scrambled to send rescue personnel and relief supplies to the stricken area.

China's post-Mao economic boom, which lifted hundreds of millions of residents out of poverty, has given the country another shot at the sort of international influence it had enjoyed in the Tang and Ming dynasties. And the international sympathy triggered by Sichuan's quake, which killed 70,000 people, also paradoxically gave Beijing a second chance to get the Olympics right after the PR disasters of the European torch relay.

The quake's significance was acknowledged by some of the Olympic pageantry. When the 183-person Chinese Olympics team entered the stadium to thunderous applause tonight, flag-bearer and basketball celebrity Yao Ming walked alongside a 9-year-old Sichuan quake survivor. President of the Beijing Games Organizing Committee, Liu Qi, said that after the quake the international community's "heart-warming support has heightened the morale of the Chinese nation in the reconstruction of quake-stricken areas and boosted our confidence and determination in staging successful Games." For the next two weeks, China's every move will be scrutinized as never before—will the crackdown on dissidents continue? Will the contest for gold get ugly? And Beijing will be bending over backwards not to flub this hard-fought chance to be great once again.

Torch Relay Enters Beijing: the Square, Circled

Melinda Liu — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 11:08:08 GMT

Today I de-camped at dawn to watch the torch relay in that you-know-which-famous-square. A couple dozen other journalists and I were herded to a spot facing Mao’s portrait, We waited and waited. The last time I’d waited that long in that place, that early in the morning, was in 1989 during a brief and ill-fated Beijing Spring.

Back then I was waiting for Chinese police to come clear the square of hundreds of youthful protestors who’d hung colorful silk banners off official flagpoles in front of the granite obelisk known as the Monument to the People’s Heroes. (Chinese look down on your political movement if you don’t have flags made of luxuriant silk, and if you don’t know how to brandish them just right so that the fabric floats like butterflies’ wings.) These kids in 1989 – about the same age as the youth in the square this morning -- chanted pro-democracy slogans and strummed folk-songs on guitars.

Waiting for Yao Ming and the torch relay...

That earlier time I had stayed overnight in the square, surrounded by this moonlit and surreal Chinese Woodstock scene, because the next day Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was due in town for a historic Sino-Soviet summit. I assumed police would come waving their truncheons, and maybe lobbing tear gas, to clear the square of this ragtag assembly of demonstrators before Gorby’s arrival. Otherwise the protestors would be able to hijack the summit spotlight, China’s leaders would be embarrassed, and things would get messy.

Police never came that night. Leaders were embarrassed. Things got messy.

We still don’t know exactly how many people died in the crackdown, and the topic remains an extremely touchy one still for authorities. Despite the unblocking of a number of websites on Aug. 1 -- after the IOC squawked and Chinese officials caved (sort of) -- many sites related to the 1989 crackdown remain inaccessible to ordinary Netizens.

Which is why this item will not mention the name of that famous-square-whose-name-cannot-be-mentioned.The last blog posting we did on this topic, by my colleague Jonathan Ansfield, (who did name names) not only created access problems for this blog but even managed to get certain pages of another blog blocked for a time because it had cited Jonathan’s item (sorry, Roland).

So, back to the torch relay, which entered Beijing amidst much hoopla on its way to the finale and the Aug. 8 Olympics opening ceremony. Today there were many, many luxuriant silk flags fluttering in the square. Red and white flags representing the Olympics and the Beijing Games. Lots of familiar red Chinese national flags. And a sea of crimson flags wielded by youth in matching red t-shirts, caps and backpacks all exhorting observers to revel in the glory of….Coca Cola.

Not to be outdone, on the opposite side of the square was another group of exuberant youth, with another Chinese national flag that was truly enormous. It required a number of excited kids to coordinate in holding it parallel to the ground, tilted slightly so that photographers could capture the true impact of its immense size. After all, who could be more worthy to be flag-bearers in China than these enthusiastic volunteers brought to you by….McDonald’s.

Indeed, the torch relay organizers who bussed us into the square amidst extremely tight security thoughtfully gave each journalist a bag of McDonald’s goodies. A Big Mac’s for breakfast is something I never dreamed of in Beijng (or anywhere else) in 1989.

In today’s China we don’t blink an eye as we chow down on carb-heavy Western fast food waiting for worldwide basketball celebrity Yao Ming to grab the Olympic torch and trot past icons of the Chinese Communist Party’s continuing supremacy (such as the national emblems on the Great Hall of the People), as onlookers organized by famous Games sponsors cheer and tiny shaven-headed boys dressed in daffodil-yellow pajama-style outfits perform martial-arts maneuvers while a massive security presence including a brand-new spit-polished black Hummer with police markings lurks in the alleyways, a CCTV news helicopter captures what will become the official version of the scene while flying lazy arcs over the square, and Chairman Mao Zedong’s portrait gazes sternly on the entire proceedings from the south gate of the fabled Forbidden City.

What would Mao think of all this? Marxist ideology has given way to McDonalds. The Communist party has linked arms with Coke. Beijing police watch CSI Miami for tips on how real police act and outfit themselves (even if Hummers are themselves wider than some Beijing sidestreets). The youth in the square today were not chanting “Democracy! Freedom!” as they did in 1989 but rather “Go China! Go Beijing!” Mao’s squat and stolid mausoleum was all but eclipsed by fluttering silk flags, floating over all of us like a red tide.The square has come full circle.

Even the Propaganda Dept wants records broken

Jonathan Ansfield — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 14:03:12 GMT

Okay, so Xinhua's English-language break on the attack beat the Chinese version by more than an hour. Early info on Monday’s ambush in Xinjiang was spotty too: the perpetrators' identities absent, and suspicions of a “terrorist” plot hence, as usual, thin at best. Then broadcaster CCTV, after releasing the first whiff of news in Chinese on its News Channel at noon, skipped the story entirely on the tightly scripted Evening News. By afternoon the news began tumbling down top news charts of Chinese news portals. And the next day the headline was a minor blip on the front pages of mainland papers. The story was dumped deep inside in a single-paragraph summary, at a fraction of the column inches used by official English-language coverage directed at foreign readers.

Yet one thing did impress about Chinese coverage of the Monday morning attack in Kashgar, in which two Uighurs reportedly killed 16 border police and wounded another 16: not that official media broke it, but that it did so with uncustomary hustle. The lag was a little over three hours. That’s swift for state media when it comes to an incident of this magnitude, delicacy and geographical remoteness from Beijing. It’s supersonic for news out of Xinjiang, where Chinese reports of violent plots by separatist Muslim Uighurs tend to be a challenge to confirm or deny. We foreign hacks are used to working our way back days or weeks to chase iffy revelations by Xinjiang officials or stingy official press matchers issued only in response to a Radio Free Asia dispatch or the like. That's the way it was as recently as this Spring, in fact, when the government took its leisurely time to acknowledge a spate of clashes and foiled plots.

The comparative burst of speed Monday was no fluke, Chinese journalists inform us. After the hurly burly the country went through the first half of the year, the Communist Party leadership is placing never-before-seen demands on government media to gain the edge on reporting serious disturbances and manage crises more deftly. Key to the strategy is to get the official scoop on events before overseas media do, particularly around the time of the Olympic Games.

In recent weeks the deputy head of the Party’s Central Publicity Department, Li Dongsheng, has hammered home this agenda in meetings with provincial propaganda counterparts and top representatives of “central media” organs, according to two sources within Party media organizations. According to one formulation, they and other Chinese journalists say, the orders are to diyi shijian qiangbao –to “grab” the news as soon as it happens. “Central media” include the Party papers People’s Daily and Guangming Daily, news wires Xinhua and the China News Service, broadcasters CCTV, China National Radio, and China Radio International, and official dailies China Daily and the Economic Daily. Provincial propaganda bosses would relay word to local government media as well.

Li instructed them that over the two-month “Olympic period” - July 20-September 20, through the time of Paralympics - official media should take greater initiative to report “major sudden incidents” (natural disasters, accidents, riots, terrorist attacks, etc.) . As usual, the Xinhua News Agency was intended to act as the clearing house for such news and all other Chinese media were under orders to pick up its reports. But Xinhua and other official media outlets were not necessarily to wait for explicit instructions from senior propaganda authorities before running with the news. The official embrace of up-to-the-minute news is no secret here; Beijing has been touting it in the context of new rules on official accountability and such events as the Sichuan earthquake, and the idea of an express lane for breaking events has been floating around Party propaganda circles for some time. But for the department to expressly grant such leeway is “unprecedented,” according to one of the Party media sources, who were briefed on the recent meetings. They spoke on condition of anonymity so as avoid repercussions.

As to how official outlets are to report a “sudden incident”, well, that's not going to change. Any such story still had to reflect official conventions and the Party line, or what is known in Party jargon as its “guidance of public opinion” - “not your Newsweek stuff,” as one of the sources put it. Moreover, the leeway to bypass some of the traditional channels only applied during Olympic period. “It’s still represents a new direction of transparency. It’s more open than before. In that way it’s still a form of progress,” he said, adding, “but right now only for the Olympics.”

Nor were the Party newsmen under any illusion as to the primary intent: to strengthen the authoritativeness of the Party, and minimize embarrassment to Beijing. That's especially vital with well over 20,000 foreign reporters descending on Beijing to cover the Games this week. In the briefings, Li and other propaganda bosses have made clear that the objective is try to beat them in the event of major disturbances – at least out of the blocks. (No, this does not in any way explain why on Tuesday police in Kashgar beat two Japanese journalists trying to report at the scene of Monday's attack).

Xinjiang was not the first big test case of the new M.O. on faster reporting. Reports of bus blasts in Kunming last Monday also appeared to embody the edict, sources said. “The thinking is that if you don’t report it first, the country will be on the defensive from the very start,” said the first source.

But the new M.O. did not rule out that some incidents would still remain under wraps, the other Party media journalist cautioned, pointing to information he had received from official sources of at least one other bombing incident outside Beijing in recent weeks (but which we could not independently verify). “You still cover up what you can cover up. But when you can’t cover it up, you have to report it first,” he summarized: “The point is to contest the foreign media for the right to speak.”

Propaganda's orders to get the scoop stemmed partly from the “spirit” of an “important speech” by Party boss Hu in late June, Li and other propaganda officials also made clear. Hu visited the Party flagship People’s Daily to fete its 60^th birthday, and used the occasion to articulate the media’s “active role” in “guidance of public opinion” (David Bandurski at the China Media Project offers insightful exegesis of what Hu meant). That in turn followed on the state media lessons of the first half of 2008, Li also explained - from the poor and sluggish reporting of snowstorms which plagued much of the country in January to the internationally recognized boon from coverage of Sichuan earthquake in May, and the nasty internationally waged battles over ethnic Tibetan unrest and the Olympic torch relay in-between. The new instructions were packaged as the sum-total learned from those experiences, the sources noted.

Li specifically addressed the case of Tibet, the sources said. Internally, propaganda authorities have recognized for months that the slowness to release news of the outbreak of Tibetan rioting in Lhasa was a mistake which abetted the public relations disaster internationally, they said. But after the initial paralysis, authorities were convinced, they clinched overriding domestic support and stood up to international condemnation by releasing TV clips of the Lhasa riots a few days later. Footage showed Tibetans torching cars and smashing storefronts.

“’Fifty-plus seconds of television footage surpassed the force of 100,000 soldiers,’” one of the sources cited the deputy propaganda boss saying.

Coverage of the international torch relay too had boosted the leadership’s confidence in its ability to engineer public opinion. In conversations in recent months, these sources and other Chinese media insiders have marveled at how the trajectory of nationalist protests corresponded directly to the degree of detail people were exposed to via official press. When protesters marred the opening legs in Athens and London, Chinese media were mum. But as details seeped in over the Internet from overseas media images and Chinese-language press, sources said, anti-foreign anger engulfed the Web. Netizens could read and watch in plain view what they were not being told.

The Chinese leadership took note. After the London leg, the sources said, Chinese media organs received orders from on-high to fangkai wangluo, fangkai minjian – code for “open up the Web, open up public opinion.” That order hit in the nick of time for the Paris leg, where demonstrators lunged at paraplegic torchbearer Jin Jing. This time, the handful of officially designated outlets of international news reported the scene, most notably the Global Times, a staunchly patriotic, often polemical newsstand tabloid published by the People’s Daily. Its file from Paris got top billing on the mainland news portals. Soon people were clamoring for boycotts and protests against the French hypermarket Carrefour. But in fact, Carrefour became a target somewhat by happenstance. “The Paris protests were not really bigger than London but the backlash here was much, much bigger,” said one of the sources. “Because they were publicized.”

As soon as domestic protests threatened to spiral onto the streets, though, the government began tightening the few mainland spigots of overseas news on the torch relay. Clashes in South Korea were the last to be featured. By the time of the Japan leg the taps were turned off, just before Hu was to make a historic trip there.

The torch relay to-do seems to have shown the leadership that a few carefully parsed nuggets of fresh reporting can work more powerfully than decades of patriotic government rhetoric. “They definitely feel their propaganda strategy was ultimately successful,” commented one of the Party media sources. Domestically, since at least as early as late April, the Party leadership has conceived the publicity war over Tibet and the torch relay as a victory over the dreaded nightmare of “peaceful evolution” – shorthand for Western-style democratization and the peaceful overthrow of the Party. “The torch relay completely failed in its original aims” – that is, displaying before the world China’s benevolent progress – “but they won a much bigger victory, and this victory was not expected at all,” explained another Party media source. “Many young people got to see up close that the West is not always so friendly, that the West’s peaceful evolution was not such a good thing.” He added: “Two decades of patriotic education could not make the same impact.”

At one recent meeting, sources said, Li opined that the Party had faced the greatest risk of “peaceful evolution” when the “third” or “fourth generation” of Red babies born since the Communist takeover in 1949, i.e. in the 60’s and 70’s, came of age. That danger passed in the 1980’s and 90’s, and the Party survived. With the fifth and sixth generations, born in the 80’s and 90’s and coming of age today, Li said there was “basically not a chance [of peaceful evolution].”

So there you have it. More on China’s Olympic media game plan to come in future posts…

China's 'Finest News Source'

Jonathan Ansfield — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 12:24:03 GMT

Yesterday we brought you the Extrauterine Pregnancy Express, journalist-blogger Chen Feng’s Oniony news parody on Beijing’s Olympic prep work. The unseemly title, as was explained in the post, derives from a punning Chinese nickname for the Games that's been creeping around the blogosphere (Gongwaiyun). Chen bashed out his cycle of mock dispatches in a flurry on Thursday. When complimented on his wry wit, he could only scoff back. “What’s so creative about it!”

Anyway, translated herewith is another installment:

Extrauterine Pregnancy Express Number Two

The government announced today that they will require Beijing citizens to share one kitchen knife for every five households, so as to ensure 100-percent safety during the Gongwaiyun [read: Olympics]. When not in use, the kitchen knife is to be placed in a fixed location under the protection of a specially appointed individual. It will be subjected to random inspection. Migrants will have to share one kitchen knife for every ten households, and must have a Beijing resident as a guarantor in order to use it.

When in use, the knife’s user along with the purpose and length of use must be registered, and a record must be kept with local urban management personnel. Users must re-apply when using the knife over the appointed period of use.

Asked by a reporter why such stringent regulations were being introduced, a Gongwaiyun spokesperson noted that during the period 2008 Beijing Olympics, security checks are being carried out on cars from other places entering the city, and knives the least bit large are not allowed to be brought in. But on taking into account that every single household in the city owns knives, some sharper and bigger than those being restricted, the government decided on this measure, using Yuan Dynasty controls on knives as a reference.

Not enough? Here's a bonus installment:

Extrauterine Pregnancy Express Number Four:

The government is considering more stringent measures during the period of the Gongwaiyun, in order to ensure environmental protection efforts pass muster, a spokesman announced today.

The spokesman expressed outrage at the ulterior motives of some foreign media, who've criticized Beijing's recent spectacular skies as environmental pollution. He stated, “The inability to see clearly is a kind of misty beauty, and by no means represents poor air quality.” Citing one example, he said, “In a bathhouse you can’t see clearly. That’s called steam, not pollution.” Citing another example, he said, “On the moon you can see clearly. You think air quality there is good?”

He also said, however, that in order to enable the broad masses of foreign nationals to fully understand our level of commitment to the slogan “One World, One Spring Dream,” in addition to the recent orders to halt production at a greater number of enterprises, the government will consider restricting all people considered "Three Have-nots" (no power, no money, no background) from driving their vehicles, except for those whose license plate numbers do not end in odd or even digits. "Three Have-not" enterprises will only be allowed to operate after 25:00 in the evening.

Asked by a reporter what would be done if results cannot be effectively achieved on time, the spokesman said with a mysterious smile, “The government have already identified the largest source of pollution, and will adopt stringent measures to control it.”

The government’s stringent measures, sources have revealed, will include a ban on farting by the "Three Have-not" people. Violators will be fined.

New Subway Line #10: Beijing's Great Democratizer?

Manuela Zoninsein — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 09:23:55 GMT

Ning Ning, a 26-year-old from Urumqi who moved to Beijing for a Master's painting program at Beijing's Central Academy of Fine Arts, is excited. The city's newly opened Line 10 subway brings other parts of the city closer to her, faster, than ever before: “I just want to ride around and explore with my friends!” Generally considered a private city whose hulking outer shell is tough to penetrate, the expanded underground—which opened Saturday, July 19—is making China's capital more accessible and, yes, possibly more democratic in the one area of public administration that touches virtually every resident nearly every day: transportation.

The varied territory covered by Line 10—a 25-kilometer, 22-station long inverted ‘L’ shaped route that traces the East Third Ring Road north-south and then tacks east-west—is a crash course in understanding Beijing as a city. The train travels from the ancient universe of Panjiayuan market's old-world curios in the city’s southeast to the Haidian hangouts of youth and high-tech in the far northwest—with the Central Business District (CBD), Embassy compounds, and Sanlitun entertainment quarter in between.

Formerly a 90-minute car ride (even when traffic is light, mind you), the journey can now be covered in under 40 minutes. It was launched as part of a progressive transportation package in time for the Olympics which also boasts the Airport Express elevated train and the 4-stop Olympic Park line. Moving around the city during the Games has been transformed further by anti-pollution measures that include alternating driving days for even and odd numbered car license plates and banning industrial vehicles that don't meet emissions standards.

For Ning Ning and friends, wandering about the city just for curiosity's sake “in the past was just too far, wasted so much time.” Ning Ning also fretted that “we wouldn’t know how to get back home,” which is something many in Beijing feel. Here, citizens must contend with street names constantly under revision, new thorough-fares that sprout up in just weeks, and whole neighborhoods disappearing in the time it takes one to return from a business trip. “In order to get around,” explained Annie, a 30-something administrative assistant who traveled from her office in the CBD to the Haidian Hospital in the technology hub of Zhongguancun, “you had to spend time figuring out what combination of buses and taxis to take to get around. Now, it will be much easier.”

Opaque is one way to describe travel through Beijing transport. Michael Armstrong, an American who writes a bi-weekly local column focusing on the expatriate experience and who has lived in Beijing for three years, thinks of the Chinese capital “as a bunch of little villages—and people just stay within their own townships.” The center of town is circumscribed by the circular subway Line 2, and Line 1 traces east-west artery Chang’an Avenue; Line 5 travels north-south through this central area. With the launch of line 10, those not living along one of these main thoroughfares can now connect with the sites and neighborhoods that made Beijing famous.

One of Line 10's most important connections joins Zhongguancun, the tech hub, with the CBD, which thereby connects multinational business offices with programmers and web technicians. Sean, a 25 year-old real estate agent, works in the CBD and is finding his weekly visit to Zhongguancun to arrange housing for such web wizards much easier. He can fit in more showings per day, since he spends less time in traffic. Even though he isn’t top management at his company, he now rides in comfort and just as quickly—if not more so—to his meetings. “This new train, it makes the city more modern, since more people can use it.”

A Line 10 stop is also near to both Renmin and Beijing Foreign Languages Universities, from which many interns and young employees are drawn to work in CBD businesses. Many of these students also intern or ultimately work as local staff in foreign Embassies, which can now easily be reached by transferring to Line 2. Alyssa, a sophomore at the latter school, said she and her friends took the train the first day it opened to test it out, and “found it especially helpful to go to the Embassy District, where we hope to work.”

The Line 10 connection to Sanlitun and the Worker’s Stadium area, where a throng of bars and restaurants are based, will permit youth to gather and meet up at night. In the past, Ning Ning says she wouldn’t go out there before, because it was so far away. But now “sure! I’ll probably go out a lot more, go see my friends, so we can go drinking.” For people living in the south-eastern part of town, like Paul Scaini, a Canadian 27 year-old, going out to dine in this entertainment district took up too much time and expense; now, he says the new line will connect him to the area more quickly.

Another reservoir of Beijing's youthful energy is the southeastern Shuangjing area, nearby Panjiayuan market. People who can’t afford to live at Guomao, in the middle of the CBD and near the China World Hotel, can live just two stops away and pay half the price for housing -- which is exactly what Scaini discovered when looking for an affordable home enabling him to commute to his software start-up’s office in Zhongguancun. Likewise, Sophie, an American web designer, and her husband Tianli, a Chinese filmmaker, found a place near Panjiayuan because of the cheap rent -- and in anticipation of the planned subway line. Although traditionally this has been an area of town largely populated by the elderly, Line 10 means young Chinese looking for cheaper housing don’t sacrifice access to the city.

The Guomao stop on Line 10, with OMA-designed CCTV towers in the background, is smack in the middle of the Central Business District...

Beijing's charming old hutong neighborhoods are increasingly overcome by modern gated compounds or massive skyscrapers set off from the street, both of which seem impenetrable to outsiders. Subway stops, in this context, are important as “a point of reference,” explained Armstrong. They can lessen the intimidation of a new destination. With Line 10, Beijingers have the tools to travel to new parts of town and expand their horizons from there.

A university student, Sean finally went out to visit some good school friends near Bagou, the last stop on Line 10. “I have friends who live there, but I’ve never seen their homes before. I finally got to do that.” In the past, Ning Ning said her friends were too overwhelmed by the idea of finding her apartment in the far northwest corner of Beijing. “Now, with Line 10, people are saying, ‘there’s a subway out there, that’s not so bad.’“

More of Beijing has suddenly become accessible, yes—that is what any subway aims to accomplish. But in a city where life is lived concealed within towering skyscrapers along gaping avenues or hidden behind the walls of winding alleyways, the extension of the subway system makes it more democratic. One no longer depends on insider’s knowledge in order to navigate it.

The Suzhoujie stop on Line 10, in the Haidian university district...

Protest Parks: Democracy Walled?

Jonathan Ansfield — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 03:29:28 GMT

So maybe now we know whom the new security cameras in Ritan Park are really for...Yesterday, Beijing announced plans to set aside three city parks as protest zones during the Olympics: the World Park in Fengtai district, Purple Bamboo Park in Haidian, and the expat neighborhood park of Ritan, a biosphere of foreign journos, diplomats, and business people (along with Russian traders and retired cadres). "During the Olympics, in order to ensure a smooth traffic, nice environment and good social order, we would like to ask protesters to go to the designated parks," Liu Shaowu, security chief of the Beijing Olympic Games Organizing Committee, told a news conference.

But Shao failed to make clear who, how, or if anyone would be allowed protest within those parks, let alone anywhere else in town. Olympic rules forbid political and religious displays at the sporting venues. Chinese law prohibits any protests deemed a threat to national unity or social stability. It requires would-be protesters to apply in person before police five days in advance and provide details on the demonstrators and the nature of the demo in order to get the go-ahead – which is almost never granted. In many cases, the applicants have wound up preemptively detained.

When asked to detail the protest plan, Shao did not say what if any specials allowances would made inside the zones. He did imply that standard application procedures would still hold. “As long as the demonstration has passed approvals, Chinese police will protect the legal rights of the demonstrators to gather in accordance with the law,” he said.

He added that reporters would be getting details from other channels. But so far, nothing.

When news of three parks "specially provided for demonstrators to express themselves" first hit the portal Sina.com on Wednesday, courtesy of a brief report by the China News Service, Chinese readers cheered: "This should be expanded nationally," enthused one comment attached to the piece. "When there's pressure, there's progress," mused another. But on BOCOG's web site, the official transcript of the news conference omitted Shao's mention of the three parks and the question that prompted it. The Beijing News, a progressive, centrally-sponsored daily, did not name the parks either in its story the next day. The paper's headline called the parks "legal assembly sites".

For months, rumors percolated that Beijing would designate a park or two as protest sites. Officials eventually acted in part on the recommendations of scholars who lobbied for them, the AP reports. The so-called “protest pens” were used in Athens in 2004, and Beijing has experimented with them at least once before, at the U.N. Women’s Conference in 1995. But that took place in the suburb of Huairou, out in the sticks. “Several delegates used them,” notes Jeremy Goldkorn of Danwei.org, “but they looked rather sad parading around a small, fenced-off patch of ground miles away from anywhere.”

This time the designated parks are considerably more convenient for the protesters and their target audience (us). None is near the Olympic Green where the major venues are concentrated. But Fengtai has been the stamping ground of nomadic communities of displaced hutong dwellers from the old city, as well as petitioners from around the country. Purple Bamboo Park rests amid the capital's main belt of universities. And the Ritan area is practically a foreign concession.

Authorities around Ritan have been on high-security alert in recent months (full disclosure: my wife and I run a cafe there.) Ritan is also designed to serve as an emergency base for the People’s Armed Police in case of a mass disturbance, as it was as recently as 2005, when Chinese protesters swarmed the Japanese embassy one block away. The Closed Circuit Television system was installed during the course of this spring, so now globed lenses peek through the trees over pathways.

Just last week, local police, park officials and State Security officers convened the most recent briefing on security arrangements in and around Ritan. At the meeting, they warned relevant establishments to be on guard against an array of unauthorized people and activities, because said persons and activities were variously regarded as threats to law and order, a “safe Olympics”, an image of “civility”, or the “national interests". The list of those fingered, as read back to us later, includes:

- large crowds and live performances

- excessively wild or "cuddly" partying

- illegal drug use

- “international prostitutes”

- fires, electrical accidents, and employees with criminal records

- the banned spiritual movement Falun Gong

- foreign journalists

Some of the authorities' instructions were phrased more elliptically than others, which is unfortunately typical. In the case of foreign journalists, for instance, their questions are supposed to be answered “prudently” so as to protect the nation's interests. In the words of our interlocutor, "We hope you can understand this."

Beijing Cleans Up its Bar Scene Ahead of the Games

Newsweek — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 02:45:11 GMT

By Mary Hennock and Manuela Zoninsein

The stage at D22 has fallen silent and dark--and Michael Pettis, owner of the popular Beijing rock club, says he never saw it coming. City authorities shut down the music without warning in early July because his club lacked a performance license. "They just turned up," says Pettis. "There was no notice … No time to adjust."

Beijing is full of bars, restaurants and businesses that have operated successfully for years without a full set of licenses. The rules were often so hard to understand that even city inspectors made little effort to enforce them--until now. Suddenly the city is cracking down on everyone in sight. Pettis, a 50-year-old New Yorker, has filed his license application, and all he can do is sweat out the few weeks that remain before Aug. 8. Whether or not he gets permission to reopen his bar for the out-of-town crowd of a lifetime, the Games are about to begin.

China's leaders want this Olympiad to be perfect. "The smiles of 1.3 billion Chinese will be reciprocated by the smiles of people all over the world," Premier Wen Jiabao promised at his annual meeting with foreign media earlier this year. But in the name of perfection, Beijing's inspectors are dusting off the rulebooks and pouncing on the tiniest supposed infractions. "In the last two months, all kinds of checkups have been harsher and harsher", says Tobi Demke, the Swedish manager of a Thai restaurant near the Workers Stadium expatriate bar zone. "There are a lot of regulations… and now, because of the Olympics, they really enforce them." Bar owners say inspections are taking place at least weekly. One pasta restaurant has been ordered to stop serving salads and desserts. Why? The license lists its business as "noodles," and the enforcers say that means nothing but spaghetti. "They don't understand the way it's done," says manager Angela Wang. "Western food, you eat appetizers, salad, dessert."

China has made enormous sacrifices to get ready. To clear the city's notoriously dirty skies, authorities have closed factories in a half-dozen nearby provinces and restricted cars to driving on alternate days, based on odd or even number plates. To boost security, police have set up hundreds of checkpoints on major roads into the city. But that's creating other problems. "It's difficult to get deliveries, ingredients," says French barkeep Matthieu Magery. He's been stockpiling wine recently, alarmed by rumors of a possible ban on transporting liquids during the Games.

Club owners say the government's runaway regulators are trampling the city's once-thriving entertainment scene. The nightlife guide Time Out Beijing is planning a double issue for August and September: there's not enough going on to fill two single issues. Commercial and legal uncertainties have made clubs nervous about committing to hire big-name DJs and bands. "In the month of the Olympics, there's less to write about than at any time in the last few years," says the magazine's editor, Tom Pattinson. "It's either a private party, or it's not happening."

For plenty of expatriates the party's really over: if they haven't been tossed out of the country, friends of theirs have. Formerly lax enforcement of China's visa laws has turned strict. Younger members of the expat community have been particularly hard-hit, and they're the ones who keep many of the city's nightspots in business. "Numerous bar owners have told me that a good portion of their regular customers are gone, and gone because of visa issues," says Jim Boyce, a self-confessed barfly who blogs about Beijing's nightlife. "I've lost, like, 50 percent of my customers," says Stefano Fin, proprietor of the once-bustling Aperitivo, in the suddenly quiet Sanlitun bar district. "No one comes anymore." Club owners and patrons worry that the next step might be a crackdown on Beijing's previously ignored 2 a.m. closing law.

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What Is Olympic Art?

Jonathan Ansfield — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 00:27:49 GMT

Depends on whom you ask. On the one hand, we’ve been presented in recent days with the work of ad makers TBWA Worldwide, who have ruffled feathers in China with an abortive series of sports ads. Or perhaps the word is bloodsports. Ordered up by Amnesty International in preparation for the Beijing Games, they show Chinese security forces making sadistic use of sports facilities to torture prisoners. For example:

Amnesty commissioned TBWA’s Paris office to do the series as part of a campaign to spotlight China’s human rights abuses. Amnesty later jettisoned the ads for going too negative, the Wall Street Journal reports, but did permit the ads to run once, which enabled TBWA to enter a competition in Cannes where it won a prize.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry skewered Amnesty for the ads four weeks ago, but Chinese Web users soon took up the fight on emergent foreign media sites like anti-CNN (which has more images). Now a Chinese newspaper report from last week (translation by ESWN) has prompted some Netizens to call for a boycott against the agency, who also happened to be behind a somewhat more positive Olympic campaign in China for Adidas.

Now contrast the spot of bloodsport images with this feat of Olympic inspiration from a pair of Swedes, a prize-winning submission to the Third Beijing International Art Biennale (BIAB):

The BIAB opened last week at the National Art Museum, the Great Leap Forward-era edifice in the heart of the capital. Its chosen theme: “Colors and Olympics”. This year’s Biennale was delayed a year to piggyback on the Games, in the hope it would boost the event’s mediocre profile. (Yes, the post-Maoist art spaces have become tour-bus stops, its pioneers of political pop millionaires at auction, and its avant-garde stars serious forces in the nation’s academic, intellectual and building scenes. Still, the state-sponsored brand of exhibits continue to receive a rather cool, conservative reception.)

The show got only a ripple in the press, in fact, because of a nude sculpture of a Qing Dynasty consort meant to represent the Empress Dowager Cixi. On opening day, The Beijing News reports, an exhibition goer complained because the genitalia were in plain-view, organizers said, forcing them to slip a white towel between the legs:

On the banner hanging outside the museum, the name of the show was translated liberally as “Colors and Olympism”. Olympism? Way back when, state-sponsored school was founded on Mao’s mandate that all art and literature serve the Revolution. What is the Chinese ideal of Olympism in art today?

The introduction to the show announces: “’Colors and the Olympics’, the theme of the Third Beijing Biennale, echoes with ‘One World, One Dream’, the slogan of the Beijing Olympic Games, enhancing the inner connection between contemporary art and the Olympic spirit, thus further reflecting the idea of building up a harmonious world.”

The statement pays homage to Chinese leader Hu Jintao's calls for a "harmonious world", an outgrowth of his retro-Chinese political vision of a "harmonious society".

"Colors are just like the beautiful rainbow connecting our dreams with reality, as well as art with the Olympics," Feng Yuan, deputy chair of the China Federation of the Literary and Arts Circles, one of the show’s organizers, explains in this report carried on a Ministry of Culture-sponsored Web site. From the more than 10,000 works submitted, an international panel of critics, curators and artist selected 747 by 701 artists from 81 countries, it says. "All their works express man's dreams of peace and harmony, aspirations to beauty, extolment of youth and admiration of strength," observes Wang Mingming, a panel judge and ink artist

Included in the mix was a Socialist Realist send-up to the Sichuan earthquake and ensuing rescue. The walls of the show were crammed. But attendance was relatively thin on Saturday, which is just a way of saying there’s no excuse for some of the crooked images posted below. The Biennale ends the same day as the Beijing Games, August 24. Since it’s doubtful anyone reading here will make it down to the exhibit, here are a few specimens of "Olympism" selections that sort of itched our curiosity, beginning with another shot of the Swedish installation:

Vanna Bowles / Robert Johansson (Sweden), “The Body’s Thin Shell”

Zhu Licun, “Way Home”

Xin Dongwang, “Peasant Worker”

Students of the Chinese Central Academy of Fine Arts, “Gone with Wind”

Xu Weixin, “Portrait of Samaranch”, “Portrait of Liu Changchun"

Wang Ziqi, “Harmony and Olympics in China"

Shao Yachuan et al, “Light under Ruins”

Kong Weike et al, “Never Give Up”

Lu Zhiqiang, “Crossing Hurdle”

Leng Jun, “A Girl Named Xiao Tang”

Liu Qingle, “Swimming Pool”

Zhang Ming, “Swing No. 2”

Jerome Fortin (Canada), “Seascapes”

Accessible Olympics: Changes to the Forbidden City

Melinda Liu — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 23:32:16 GMT

Preparations for the Games are bringing all kinds of changes to Beijing. Earlier this year, the Beijing Cultural Heritage Protection Center, a China-based NGO, raised concerns about an unexpected threat to the Forbidden City's historical integrity: wheelchair ramps. Jennifer Conrad explains:

Additions to the 600-year-old Forbidden City complex, home of Ming and Qing dynasty emperors and the the centerpiece of old Beijing, would help visitors arriving for September's Paralympic Games to maneuver around the site.

On its website, the Beijing Cultural Heritage Protection Center expressed concern that the plan to smooth over the paving of the Forbidden City to make it easier for wheelchairs, to lay wooden ramps across high entrance thresholds, and to install elevators to provide access for those with disabilities to the major raised halls "no doubt...all stem from a well-intentioned concern for the rights of disabled people and a desire for China to be a good host for the Paralympics, but we feel that these proposals, if implemented, may damage the Forbidden City structurally, and will certainly detract from the historical authenticity."

The changes would undoubtedly make the famous site more accessible. Last week, I visited the Forbidden City and wondered how a wheelchair could possibly navigate the complex. There were ridged ramps at wheelchair-unfriendly angles and many, many stairs. I was kind of shocked when I saw a man in a wheelchair right in the middle of the attraction; I asked him how he was getting around. He told me he could walk short distances and climb up stairs. Otherwise, access would be "impossible."

The government did announce on May 18, National Help-the-Disabled Day, that three barrier-free routes--the longest of which is about 1,000 meters--had been created within the complex and an elevator now bypasses the 100 steps leading to the top of Wumen Tower.

While the changes should allow more visitors to see the attraction, this story has a happy ending for the Beijing Cultural Heritage Protection Center, too. Because of its pressure, some of the planned alterations to the Forbidden City will be scaled back and many of the ramps, lifts, and special accommodations for the blind will be temporary and removed after the Paralympics.

Last Wednesday, I met with He Shuzhong, founder and chairman of the organization. "Now the changes are OK, but I can't completely accept them," he told me. However, he said, "This is a successful case for us, and we see it as a model for the future." But, still, shouldn't the Forbidden City always be accessible to everyone? He says his organization does want the attraction to be accessible, but thinks there are better ways to go about it, such as hiring more workers to help disabled visitors get around and using removable or less-intrusive designs for ramps.

This isn't the first time preservationists have expressed concerns about the Forbidden City: When the Western coffee chain Starbucks took up residence in one of the buildings, there was a serious backlash. With pressure from bloggers--most notably local TV anchor Rui Chenggang--and conservationists, Starbucks closed that branch last year.

Why is the UNESCO World Heritage Site under constant threats? "Many Chinese officials don't have confidence in traditional Chinese culture," He explained. "The government thinks everything is a little behind and the old buildings should be taken down to build modern buildings. And the Olympics mean things are happening 10 times faster. Someone needs to remind people to not just be concerned with the latest fashions and becoming international. They don't consider that the Forbidden City is our history--[but] if they ruin the Forbidden City, they ruin our history."

And while wheelchair advocates may applaud alterations to the tourist site to make the Forbidden City more accessible, the city may have yet more work ahead. In May the Beijing Olympic organizers were criticized for what was considered insensitive wording in a training guide for Olympic assistants. According to a story in the The Times (UK), disabled groups were horrified that the guide said, "Some physically disabled are isolated, unsocial, and introspective. They can be stubborn and controlling." Organizers quickly apologized and recalled the document, saying it would be revised.

Behind the Red Door: Sex, Stakeouts and the Games

Jonathan Ansfield — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 20:49:04 GMT

The Chinese street slang for hooker, by virtue of a homophone, is “chicken” (hence the male equivalent, “duck”). Beijing’s best-known spot for “chicken”, as far as Westerners are generally concerned, is a “lady bar” named Maggie’s. Maggie’s’ infamous allure transcends its market niche as a pick-up joint. On any given night, the crowd divides roughly into three sets: the working girls, mainly Mongolian; their clientele, mostly Viagra-aged Western businessmen; and expat voyeurs, primarily swinging-single drinkers, who revel in the interplay of the other two.

What happens at Maggie’s stays at Maggie’s. Or so they say. Most any adopted Beijinger has a memorable run-in from the club to relate, regardless of whether he or she was actually there. We recall hearing of one foreign correspondent who happened upon his boss receiving a lap dance, and another who was mistaken for a working girl by her own colleague. On one occasion, a buff young Yale grad modeled in an ad shoot with Maggie's staff (He says it turned out to be disappointingly "tame"). On another, circa the present Bush Administration's first term, 48 members of a 50-person U.S. government delegation allegedly ended the night there.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Ask the ogling observer types what draws them to Maggie’s, and they’ll speak of the dance floor and the billiards, the DJ repertoire of nostalgic Rock, the foot-long hot dogs with frittered onions, and of course the people-watching. One blogging patron put it ever so gently:

“Because Maggies makes very little effort in hiding its disreputable raison d’etre, it is not the ideal place to go for a quiet beer. I generally head in there with friends from out of town for something of a rather childish novelty value. On most of these occasions I have felt like a naughty school boy, trying my best to look inconspicuous whilst feeling a touch ashamed and embarrassed to be in there.”

A fixture on many a tour of “the real Beijing”, Maggie’s began serving the laowai (foreigner) community on the city’s East Side in 1993. As legend has it, the bar was originally opened by the kin of a senior Beijing Public Security official and a northern European business partner. Maggie’s has shifted management and locations several times since, and suffered a few scrapes with the law. But each time it has emerged with a snazzier look and a more exclusive location.

The club is currently perched anomalously beside the south gate of historic Ritan Park, along a stately row of embassies, inside a white-walled courtyard behind red double-doors (full disclosure: my wife and I run a cafe inside Ritan Park, which means I hear some of the buzz about neighboring establishments). Whatever the substance of its much-discussed police connections, the “protective umbrella” of the local Public Security Bureau has kept Maggie’s covered, along with countless similar places in China that do "take-out".

Except not during the prelude to the Beijing Olympics. In late March, police moved in on Maggie’s on orders from top Public Security authorities in the capital, and abruptly closed it down, say sources briefed by local police on the situation. (More on that below.) The sting came just days after Maggie’s reopened, following a three-month remodeling job in anticipation of the Games. According to a sign posted on the door afterward, it was only to be shut for five days for a fire code inspection. But Maggie’s has yet to reopen.

The closure spurred a tantalizing new chapter of Maggie’s lore. Rumor, theory and scantily reported innuendo flowed, and the news got Maggie’s die-hards whispering on Web forums such as Shanghai Expat.
By all accounts, the reason initially publicized for the closure -- a building code violation -- was mere pretense. Seemingly well-positioned insiders expected Maggie’s to be out of commission through at least the period of the Olympics. Beyond that, though, intelligence on the matter went soft. “More certain,” quipped one Shanghai Expat contributor, “is that the closure will likely lead to economic recession in Mongolia.”

The hot skinny on Maggie’s, around Beijing and beyond, was that some of the bar’s ladies were found murdered on the fringes of Beijing - minus certain valuably traded organs. Here the details have varied. There were either two or three women, of either Mongolian or Russian extraction, maybe both. To our knowledge, however, this grisly subplot has never been officially verified.

Whatever else happened, the conventional wisdom is that Maggie’s was bound to be ensnared in a much broader pre-Olympic dragnet on drugs, gambling, prostitution and other unlicensed activities. Police authorities launch crackdowns every summer to “sweep out the yellow” -- meaning, purge the sex trade -- from the vast array of fronts it employs in China, including bars, karaoke parlors, bathhouses, beauty salons, and hour-rate motels. But in Beijing, this year’s crackdown was launched earlier and has gone on longer. It has also carried tighter surveillance and heavier penalties.

In one extreme case in April, police barged in on a Chinese man with a prostitute in the booth of a cheap corner massage parlor. Tough justice for a john in China would normally be 15 days in detention. Instead the gentleman, a native Beijinger in the garment business, was sentenced to a half-year of re-education through labor and fined 5,000 yuan, a friend of his informed us. Authorities also notified the man’s family and employer of his indiscretion.

Soon after getting the news, his wife left him and his father died of a heart attack. The police told him they were “punishing offenders with severity” due to the Olympics. The man’s evening ended unhappily in more ways than one. He was not caught en flagrante, according to what the man told his friend. “He’d only just taken off his clothes.”

Venues catering to tourists and expats seem to be at the front lines of the killjoy campaign, suggesting the priority is to distance foreign visitors, journalists and VIPS at the Olympics from the seedy side of the socialist paradise, rather than end the lucrative festivities entirely. Around the time Maggie’s was shuttered, police busted other unseemly hangouts in the nightlife hoods of Sanlitun and Maizidian, and in the process detained dozens foreigners and Chinese on either visa violations or suspicion of illegal drug trafficking. Still, some of those joints have since reopened, in certain cases under different names, report barflies in the midst.

As to the nitty gritty of Maggie’s demise, in April, local police officials summoned other entertainment business owners in Maggie's jurisdiction to a meeting where they offered their version of events. Two persons who attended recently briefed us on what they heard. The following is based on their readback of the meeting.

During the course of the meeting, the presiding official never alluded to talk of women from Maggie’s offed for their organs. The institution’s undoing began, he asserted, with an anonymous tip from a letter posted to administrative offices of the municipal Public Security bureau. That letter complained of discrimination against Chinese patrons who were barred from entering Maggie's. “’China’s been liberated for sixty years. Why shouldn’t Chinese be permitted to enter!’” The writer's comment made provocative allusion to the foreign-run concessions of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, when segregation was enforced with signs stating, “No Chinese or dogs allowed.”

The letter also charged that people at Maggie’s engaged in erotic dancing and took drugs such as ecstasy, the official said. No one asked how the purported letter-writer might have witnessed such things without entering the bar.

It is commonly accepted as fact that illicit entertainment operations in China, as in other countries, have some sort of accommodation with neighborhood police, if not official connections who trump the police. But when senior authorities receive a tip from the grassroots or crackdown orders from on-high, they can be compelled to go over the local officers’ heads and probe their turf. Often, the ensuing investigations crack open the Pandora’s box. So it was in the case of Maggie’s, this official alleged.

On the night of the Maggie’s sting, he said, the municipal Bureau of Public Security sent police investigators to sniff out the discrimination complaints. Maggie’s did not display any sign barring Chinese, they found, but did try to discourage some Chinese from entering, the officer said. Maggie’s employees tried to explain that they were a “members-only” joint. But by this time the police were distracted by other shady movements.

While on stakeout, investigators spotted a pattern of male customers entering unaccompanied and exiting with women they met inside; from there they proceeded straight to hotels in the vicinity. In all, they trailed five such couples. At one five-star hotel, police kicked down the couple’s door. The evidence uncovered that night was sufficient for investigators to draw suspicions that Maggie’s was a “platform” for prostitution, the official said. He conducted the briefing as though those attendance were not already aware of this.

Once investigators reporter their findings, city-level authorities called in the neighborhood patrols to close down the bar. In doing so police detained Maggie’s managers and legal representatives for questioning, the official said. He did not say what if any charges or other consequences came of it.

From Maggie’s, the official said, the police investigators took the hunt to Sanlitun, where they proceeded to seal up other bars over the next couple days. In all, he said, city police had corralled a couple hundred suspected Mongolian prostitutes in the sweep and several times that number from Russia.

Other business owners were to draw a lesson from the Maggie’s bust, the official stressed. In preparation for the Olympics, he said, authorities were “comprehensively putting the environment in order.” He called on proprietors to operate in accordance with the law and with safety guidelines, in order to prevent against fires, theft, miscreants and the employment of migrants without residency permits. At one point, he particularly singled out a representative from one of Beijing’s premier karaoke chains, and made an oblique reference to its alleged prostitution links. “'Right now, no one has a protective umbrella,'” one of the sources quoted the official as saying. “'But as long as you operate legally, you will have no problem.'”

The official added that he not know when, how or if Maggie’s would be able to reopen. But the die-hard Maggie's customers, like a lot of Beijingers, suspect that the close of the Olympics will permit all kinds of extracurriculars to resume.

They may prove to be right. Earlier this week, Maggie's staff were spotted at the threshold of the club hosing down equipment and offloading supplies from a truck. We queried a bare-chested lad who identified himself as a Maggie's bouncer.

Why were you closed down?

"We weren't really closed down. It's the same here as at many other bars like us right now."

So why are you closed?

"Authorities told us to...but I'm not too clear about it."

When will you be open again?

"It's going to be just about, oh, after the Olympics."

Pre-Games Subway Security: "There Is No Why"

Melinda Liu — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 10:08:36 GMT

In the run up to the Games, China’s bare-foot spin doctors are again reminding people to be vigilant, as Fergus Naughton explains:

The head of Urumqi’s Public Security Bureau last week announced that China’s police force had cracked five terrorist groups in the Xinjiang region over the first half of 2008, and had detained 82 suspects who “allegedly plotted sabotage against the Beijing Olympics.” Citing Xinjiang security chief Chen Zhuanqwei, state media said that during this period the police had also destroyed 41 training bases of ‘holy war.’

Xinjiang terrorists, Dalai cliques, Falun Gong, secessionist splittist snake spirits…..you never know where or when they might attack. The newest focus for Beijing's beefed-up security campaign is the city's greatly expanded subway system; authorities are making huge efforts to try to ensure no security lapses during the Olympic games.

The build-up of security in the underground system has been all the more noticeable as locals fumble with coins and swipe cards upon the recent introduction of brand new automated ticketing and turnstile units at each stop, creating lengthy debates among subway goers and even lengthier queues. Each day a gaggle of young subway security guards man X-ray machines while others congregate by the turnstiles wielding magnetic wands.

And, according to the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau, the checks are working. State media reported that since they began June 29, Beijing police have detained 39 passengers who were packing ‘prohibited’ knives. Security personnel checked nearly two million subway goers and 3,400 ‘forbidden articles’ were seized. Law-breakers could face detention for between five to fifteen days, the bureau warned. The majority of seized items were ‘flammable goods such as oil, paint, wine and thinner’ and some 2,000 people carrying such materials were denied entry to innards of the subway system – artists be warned.

Initially it was solely the usual suspects – ruddy faced peasants and labourers - who were subjected to inspections and searches. But lately foreigners too have been targeted. Just the other day, a group of bewildered-looking Dutch tourists, with about 10 wide-eyed kids in tow, had all their handbags, camera cases and Snoopy backpacks X-rayed at downtown Chaoyangmen subway station in a new departure.

The whole process only took about ten minutes but it was a bizarre scene. When asked why this group of foreign families were searched -- and not, say a dodgy-looking male in his twenties with a Chinese kung fu sword strapped across his back, with “Chinese kung fu sword” embroidered along the sheath -- the security guard uttered those fateful words in Chinese: “there is no why.”

To the uninitiated, his response is not a form of post-Derridean linguistic play, nor does it echo China’s homegrown and long forgotten Chan, or Zen, Buddhism.

It simply means, there is no ‘why.’ Ask a stupid question….. So perhaps this random searching of the offensively inoffensive Dutch tourists was just that – random. And, with a claimed extra 3,000 security inspectors searching for “dangerous articles including guns, ammunition, knives, explosives, flammable and radioactive materials, and toxic chemicals” in over 93 subway stations across the city, this random stop-and-search of potential security threats could well become a reality for many of Beijing’s subterranean commuters.

Some have taken the disruptions in stride. “We don’t really mind,” said one of the Dutch parents whilst trying to restrain her child from making a run for it. “It’s for our own protection.” But protection from whom?

Talking to locals about the issue reveals a sentiment shared by many – this year there’s already been a lot of trouble in China, and during the Games they don’t want any more of it. Especially not in the capital. May’s tragic earthquake in Sichuan pushed to the back of many minds the disturbances in Tibet as well as repeated ‘terrorist threats’ from the majority-Muslim Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in the far northwest of the country.

In March of this year the government revealed that it had foiled an orchestrated terrorist attempt on a China Southern Airlines passenger flight from the Xinjiang capital of Urumqi to Beijing, and further calls were made to beef up security across the nation to prevent any future attack from taking place.

Despite some positive signs that China was beginning to take international security seriously, many observers, both Chinese and foreign, were noticeably sceptical about this ‘terror plot.’ Scant information was offered concerning the details of the plot; names, photos, police testimonies, details about precise charges and convicting evidence were hard to come by.

Many dismissed the story as mere fear-mongering, a device often claimed to be used by Western powers to boost support for their draconian ‘anti-terrorism’ laws.

But in fact, trouble could come from other disgruntled quarters too. Spontaneous protests across the country seem to hit the headlines more and more. The recent 30,000-strong riots in southern Guizhou over allegations that police covered up the death of a young girl whose parents and friends claim to have been raped and murdered by a local with government connections, exemplifies the wild-fire nature and deep-rooted grievances of many. Meanwhile, labor disputes, pollution protests, violence over forced or ill-compensated evictions continue to erupt.

So far, local citizens don’t seem to mind heightened security everywhere from local villages to expressways to the airport – and now, in Beijing’s subway. Returning from work the other day, I and a young couple who looked like they’d just raided the Adidas store, judging by the amount of NBA regalia on them, were confronted by a security officer at the downtown Wangfujing subway station.

The couple in matching Houston Rockets jerseys duly followed the uniformed subway sergeant for some X-ray shenanigans. I -- hot, damp, sweaty, and wielding a sack of Whiskas dried cat food, beef flavoured – was is in no mood for messing about, especially with the threat of hungry and bored cats awaiting my return. Motioning towards the X-ray machine I looked at the bloke in the uniform and then at my feline fodder and said “mate, you must be joking!”

Perhaps not wanting to make a scene, the guard simply said “forget about it,” and waved me on. I then waded through the forest of magnetic wands and eventually through the queues to get on to the subway platform. Overweening security may yet become a headache in coming weeks. But at least that night my fickle felines didn’t have to wait while their Whiskas bag was X-rayed by vigilant police on the lookout for suicide cat-food bombers.

Funny Money: New 10-Yuan Note Is All the Rage

Quindlen Krovatin — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 09:49:58 GMT

In the past, an assortment of ethnic minorities and communist leaders adorned China’s renminbi (RMB) or “people’s currency”, whose principal unit is the yuan.

However, in 1999 a new series of banknotes was progressively introduced, all of which featured Mao Zedong in three-quarters profile, his beatific gaze fixed on an indubitably bright future. Although individual banknotes varied in size and color, the Great Helmsman’s picture was the same on each and every bill.

Critics have argued that this new series of banknotes indicates a troubling trend towards conformity in Chinese thinking and is part of a larger process of rehabilitation that Mao’s public persona has undergone in the decades since his death during the waning years of the Cultural Revolution.

But a week ago, Mao’s calm countenance was usurped, albeit temporarily, by a force seemingly more powerful than even the Chairman’s lasting legacy in modern China. I’m talking, of course, about the Olympics.

China’s central bank issued 6 million new 10-yuan notes on Tuesday, July 8, which feature a sketch of the National Stadium or Bird's Nest, the “dancing man” emblem of the Beijing Games, and a Greek discus-thrower in case you still didn't understand that it's the Olympics, stupid.

Granted, the Central Bank has issued limited runs of commemorative currency in the past, most notably 100-yuan bills with Mao's face replaced by a golden dragon to celebrate the new millennium. But those banknotes failed to elicit even an iota of the enthusiasm engendered by the Olympics-themed bluebacks.

Already, Chinese media are reporting that enterprising entrepreneurs, in order to circumvent the one-per-person rule intended to prevent hoarding, are paying street urchins and migrant workers to wait in line at banks and pick up the new bills. These savvy philatelists can then sell the relatively rare 10-yuan notes for thousands of RMB apiece as limited-edition collectors items. It’s capitalism in its purest form. Selling money for even more money.

Counterfeit currency has long been a problem in China (if only I could lay my hands on the cab driver who slipped me a fake fifty the other night, I’d let a hundred beatdowns bloom on his garlic-eating…., but I digress). And as discerning citizens become increasingly adept at detecting suspect 100 and 50-yuan bills, forged ten-spots have flooded the market. Expect to see fakes of the Bird’s Nest bills coming soon. Mao must be rolling over in his mausoleum.

Environmental Optimism Among Beijing Youth

Manuela Zoninsein — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 09:04:27 GMT

Wednesday, July 9th was the launch of a student-led national conservation campaign called the Green Long March, referring to the epic journey by Chinese communist stalwarts retreating from Kuomintang adversaries in the 1930's. Conversations with student volunteers from the Beijing Forestry University (BJFU) revealed a sharp contrast between negative perceptions of China's environmental challenges by much of the outside world — versus the optimism and pride many locals feel on the eve of China's Olympics debut.

    The second annual Green Long March will take thousands of student environmentalists from 32 different universities along 10 routes across 26 provinces to spread awareness of conservation efforts. Part of their aim is to conduct education campaigns—and to “spread the spirit of the Green Olympics,” said Yu Jishun, the Secretary General of the Youth League at BJFU.

    Yet the "Green Olympics" slogan seems a bit laughable at the moment, at least for those of us who've been confronting Beijing's thick smog for weeks now. I looked out my window this morning and could barely identify the form of a gargantuan ‘Z’—the OMA-designed CCTV Towers and the second largest office building in the world—defying gravity just across the street.

     Despite the limited visibility in Beijing, members of China’s largest youth environmental movement are looking at their surroundings with rose-colored glasses. Han Renya, one of the volunteers, hopes that foreign visitors during the Olympics will see “the air and sky as clean; and the streets and rivers clear of trash" (she may get her wish on the latter, but hopes for clean air have been looking pretty bleak, at lease so far.) Ma Chizhi, one of the student leaders for the Green Long March, feels “encouraged by recent changes, and wants to share these successes and encourage others to participate.” He wants foreigners to understand that “during these Green Olympics, all Chinese people are trying to make our environment better.”

     This optimism, in large part, should be attributed to SEED-SCALE, a development model created by Dr. Daniel Taylor, the President of Future Generations which worked with BJFU to organize the Green Long March. Rather than “always identifying the problems, we’ve taught the students to find the successes and see how things are changing,” is how Denise van der Klamp, a Hong Kong-based organizer, explained it. Said Frances Fremont-Smith, Executive Director of the organization, “Sure, we have polluted days in Beijing; but, there are people doing what they can—and [during the Olympics] we want the world to see that.”

    To someone living in the West, reports of China’s environmental problems understandably inspire apocalyptic visions. My parents regularly worry after my lungs; friends repeat reports of silver iodide-loaded rockets shot into the skies to encourage cloud-clearing rains; former colleagues have recently learned about fear and loathing in the city of Qingdao because its algal blooms threaten to obstruct Olympics sailing races.

     While those in the West is more likely to criticize China's failings in hopes of bringing about change for the better, many Chinese are seeking recognition for their country's advances. If recent media coverage of China is any indication of what’s to come in August, Olympic events could be perceived in dramatically different ways depending on whether you're inside or outside China. It's a classic glass-half-full-or-half-empty situation.

Beijing Transformed: The Changing Face of 798's Art Enclave

Melinda Liu — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 13:47:11 GMT

What Soho is to New York and Chelsea is to London, 798 is to Beijing. Four years ago Jessica Au studied the art community's struggle to survive demolition. With the Olympics just around the corner, authorities decided to give the expat-friendly enclave a reprieve.. Recently Au returned to find 798 undergoing another kind of transformation; here's what she found:

     I was in Beijing during the sticky summer of 2004 when the fate of the city's 798 art district hung by a thin thread. Beijing's equivalent to London's Chelsea art hub was facing the bulldozers. Rumors that the owners (Seven Star Group) were on the brink of selling the hive of artist's lofts and studios to make way for an electronics multiplex had been circulating for months. Then something quite unprecedented happened. At the beginning of this year, China's leaders announced that the area, also known as Dashanzi, should be preserved as a "cultural landmark."

     Four years have rolled by since I'd last visited 798 and I was curious to see what had become of it. Just like every trip that I've made to China over the last decade, I prepared myself for the inevitable feeling of shock and awe that ensues when I'm confronted firsthand by China's ever-morphing landscape. But nothing could have quite prepared me for the full-extent of 798s facelift. As my cab driver swerved into the gates, I noticed the first of many new additions: a neon sign welcoming visitors to the district.

     The entrance to the district was buzzing with visitors. My cab driver laughed hysterically as I gawked at the newly-built tree-lined streets, glossy billboards, flower boxes, benches, public toilets, and the rows of luxury cars parked inside. With the Olympics just around the bend, teams of workers stood toiling away in the muggy afternoon heat, paving streets and erecting sign posts. "This place used to be nothing but a dump," he said. "I didn't even know it existed. Now people want to come here all the time. It's famous!"

     As I wandered through the site (some 2 million square feet) I marveled at the number of newly opened cafes, bookstores, shops, bars, and galleries -- displaying everything from Lu Peng's latest works to a collection of questionable stuffed sheep heads. Many prestigious foreign galleries have also recently set up spaces, including Marella, Continuum, as well as the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA), a Belgian foundation, which owns the world's biggest collection of Chinese art.

From humble beginnings, 798 had seemingly mushroomed into China's premier hub for contemporary art, comparable to Berlin's art district and New York's SoHo. Then, just when I thought that I had seen it all, I stumbled across a gigantic, red-brick Nike store. It's "Made In China" sneakers shamelessly on display.

Built on the grounds of a former military factory, artists first began trickling into the Dashanzi district at the start of 2001. By 2002, the site had become a place where not only China's avant-garde artists but curators, directors and writers gathered. Just four years ago, the area was a warren of dusty back alleys, galleries, studios, smokestacks and graffiti splashed on faded factory walls. There were no signposts or proper streets. There was even barely any running water or electricity. It was a bohemian ghetto of chaos and creativity, which is exactly what had endeared me to the place.

So has 798 lost its edge?

Ask any Beijinger what they think about 798 and they will tell you that they either love it or hate it. Those that loathe it are usually of the opinion that 798 has succumbed to the type of blatant commercialism that characterizes China today.

      Artists and gallery owners bemoan that as fashion boutiques and swanky nightclubs have popped up on every corner, the area has increasingly catered to tourists and casual visitors, rather than people who are serious about art. Consultants now offer guided tours in English, Japanese and Mandarin. And, together with the Forbidden City and Great Wall, 798 has been designated an official tourist destination, with as many as 10,000 people a day expected to visit during the Games, including Olympic athletes and heads of states.

      New galleries spring up so quickly that the listings in "City Weekend" and other publications can't even keep up. "In 2003 there were very few galleries in 798 but they were showing very good work," says Australian gallery owner Brian Wallace, whose Red Gate Gallery was the first foreign-owned space for contemporary art in China. "Now it has everything from high-end galleries to shop fronts and everything in between. It can be quite frustrating for visitors to wade through all the litter."

     Escalating rents have driven many artists out. Initially, they were attracted to the area because of its loft-like spaces, its proximity to the foreign embassies (the only place that they were allowed to previously exhibit their works), and above all cheap rents. Now all but a sprinkling of artists have relocated to less pretentious areas such as Song Zhuang, Bei Gao and Caochangdi Village. Rents have increased more than ten-fold since 2001, meaning that some galleries and institutions are turning to more lucrative activities to survive. These include using their spaces to promote launches of big brands, like Sony and Motorola, and even foreign fashion shows.

     Subletting too is a huge problem, with landlords often blatantly disregarding tenant agreements. "It makes me sad to see how 798 has lost a lot of it's soul in the face of commercialization," says Tamsin Roberts, whose own gallery - Red T - was one of handful of places forced to vacate in March to make space for a new, multi-story car park, ahead of the Olympic traffic. "The land is still owned by the munitions factory. They don't check or veto unsuitable galleries; they're just happy to sell spaces to the highest bidder."

        Arguably, there is no other art district in the world that is able to match 798s diversity and dynamism. The art on display is truly representative of the entire Chinese scene, from photography to oil paintings, by all of the country's leading lights, like Zeng Fengzhi, Cai Guo-Qiang and Zhang Xiaogang. More importantly, Dashanzi has given China an internationally recognized art district that is not only fostered by the government but is also pushing the boundaries of what is considered acceptable.

     "798 is very much representative of China coming to grips with its own modernity," says Texan Robert Bernell, who was the first foreigner to move his publishing company and bookstore Timezone 8 into 798 in 2001. "Chinese contemporary culture was something that the government used to regard with disdain. But art is the goose that laid the golden egg for them. And as much as they don't necessarily approve of what is happening here, they have to let it be." Whether or not 798 falls victim to its own success, Beijing's art scene will continue to blossom for many a summer to come.

Dry Olympics? Beijing's crackdown on drink-driving

Melinda Liu — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 04:18:27 GMT

Despite Beijing’s torrential downpours recently, and more storms forecast ahead, local drivers may be headed for a bit of a dry spell. Fergus Naughton reports on what happens when Beijing police decide to start testing blood-alcohol levels for all and sundry behind the wheel:

When the authorities promised to crack down on any form of doping during the Olympics, they obviously meant it. Alcohol is not necessarily considered a performance-enhancing drug -- though many a Celt or Anglo-Saxon would disagree -- but Beijing’s police force has been submitting drivers to breathalyzer tests for the past two months or so. From the main access points on Beijing’s many ring-roads, to central Changan Avenue which runs east-west past Tiananmen Square, drivers are being randomly flagged down or checked at traffic lights.

What’s surprising about all this is that the concept of being checked for drink-driving is so new that many local drivers have never even seen, or heard, of a breathalyser, let alone known how to use one.

The other night a traffic cop knocked on the driver’s window of a car at the intersection of Changan Avenue and Fuyoujie, by the central governmental headquarters of Zhongnanhai. The lady behind the wheel of the grey and purple Suzuki Alto laughed in embarrassment as the cop had to explain what the breathalyser contraption was, how to use it, and why. Even the cop laughed as he retrieved the little black gizmo -- in apparent agreement about how ridiculous the situation was.

As we observed the scene, my cab driver laughed as well. “They used to annoy us all the time,” he joked. “Now they’re after everyone.” On the far side of the road were a number of police vehicles including two cruisers, a powerful Japanese-made motorcycle and a tow truck. Behind this gaggle of law enforcers was evidence that some people had already been nabbed that night. An empty grey Hyundai Elantra and a black Audi A6 were parked forlornly behind the police tow truck while an attractive young girl in a roaring red Mazda 6 ruffled through her papers. A white-gloved traffic cop, wearing a somewhat weary expression, waited in the light evening drizzle.

According to my cab driver, who’s been working Beijing’s Xicheng district for the past three years, in the past police only breathalysed drivers if there had been a serious accident. But things have obviously changed recently.

China has laws by the library-full, but they’re often applied in such an utterly arbitrary way that people tend to simply ignore them. Now it looks like Beijing is finally seeing fit to implement some of its many traffic laws, at least in the run-up to the Games. Article 91 of the Law of the People’s Republic of China on Road Traffic Safety states that if caught for drink-driving, the driver's license will be suspended for between one and three months and the driver fined 200 to 500 yuan.

If the driver is completely plastered (though it may be hard to tell from local driving habits alone whether the person at the wheel is drunk or sober) “he shall be restrained by the traffic control department of the public security organ until he is awake from drunkenness, and he shall be placed in detention for not more than 15 days.” This is in addition to a three- to five-month license suspension and a 500 to 2,000 yuan fine.

For those unfortunate enough to be involved in more than just a fender bender while inebriated, there is a high probability that -- even for the rich and famous – stiff penalties await.

Or at least that’s what a national sporting hero discovered in a drink-driving case that would have been the stuff of tabloid dreams in the West. Year before last, state media reported that China’s Olympic table tennis champion Kong Linghui smashed his Porsche Boxster into a Beijing taxi in the wee hours of a Saturday morning.

The disgraced ping pong champ was accompanied by two unnamed ladies – obviously of svelte build as there is barely enough room to put your golf clubs into a Boxster. Kong was slapped with a 1,800 yuan fine and had his driver’s license taken off him for the maximum six months, according to the report.

Cynicism aside, perhaps this anti drink-driving push really will take a hold. Maybe local drivers will learn to “just say no” to that extra glass of Erguotou -- serious local hooch weighing in at a minimum 52 proof; the average bottle costs just 4 yuan. After years of chatting with well-seasoned Beijing cabbies and indulging in the mandatory “how much booze can you drink?” conversation, I noticed that liquor is now off the list of conversation topics -- and perhaps even the afternoon tipple has seen its day.

“It’s not worth it…Giving them 200 [yuan] and getting in trouble with the [taxi] company,” a cabbie told me the other day. “Besides, my wife would kill me,” he added with a grimace as he flicked his cigarette butt into the path of the oncoming traffic.