Flux is China’s constant—and in pre-Olympic Beijing especially so. There is a Chinese saying that richly encapsulates this society’s rapid changes. It goes something like this: ‘In the 1980s everyone greeted each other by asking “have you eaten yet?”; in the 1990s the greeting was “have you got divorced yet?”; and in 2000 everyone asks each other “have you connected to the internet yet?’” Soon the question could well be ‘have you got your Olympics tickets yet?’ Even though the Olympics are three years away, it feels as though the five-ring circus has already arrived.
When Beijing’s team proposed their city as the 2008 host they built their bid around three themes: hosting a ‘Green Olympics’, a ‘Hi-tech Olympics’ and ‘the People’s Olympics’. In order to implement each of these themes the city planners are undertaking an ambitious urban redevelopment program involving everything from building grand stadia to printing a new series of English-language textbooks for primary-school children. It is no surprise then that the motto for Beijing is ‘New Beijing, Great Olympics’.
The July 2001 announcement of Beijing’s successful bid was celebrated with great joy in the streets, bars and restaurants throughout the city. In recent times those same venues are feeling the ramifications of this success. On the whole, one senses that although the citizens of Beijing are still proud and excited to be hosting the games—a 2001 survey showed that 95 per cent of the city’s population supported the bid—they are now conscious of the immense work that is involved in bringing this ‘new Beijing’ into being.
A quick number crunch illustrates the size of the task confronting China’s capital. According to figures supplied by the Information Office of the Beijing Municipal Government, as of June 2004 Beijing had 14.2 million registered residents, with an estimated further four million people comprising the floating, or migrant, population. The floating population refers to those who have come from other cities looking for short-term work and who have not procured official residency status. More often than not this workforce is involved in the hard labour of the construction industry, with very low rates of pay and tough living conditions.
It is these more than 18 million people who are feeling the effects of the pre-Olympic development program and who will also reap its benefits. A cornerstone of the improvement to the city’s infrastructure is the development of large-scale intra-city transportation services. These have been